Enda Kenny is on the move. No, not to visit the thousands of Irish people affected by the recent floods. Nor to visit any of the homeless families trying to live in a single hotel room without going mad. No, Enda’s off to Switzerland for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.
There he’ll be able to rub shoulders, not just with powerful politicians from other countries, but with billionaires and CEOs of international companies – Denis O’Brien not least among them all. Enda has let it be known that he’s there “to promote Ireland in Davos as a key location for international business and investment”.
The number of international businesses operating out of Ireland is, of course, one of Enda’s proudest boasts: Apple, Google, Facebook – the list goes on, and for God’s sake don’t ask about how much tax they pay. The idea is that they bring jobs, that as they prosper the rest of the twenty-six counties will prosper in their wake.
It’s the old rising-tide-raises-all-boats mantra. Oddly enough, it doesn’t seem to be working on a global scale. That’s to say, some boats are being lifted very high and an awful lot of others are stuck in the sludge and shingle.
Only the other day Oxfam released some figures, the most striking of which was that 62 grotesquely rich people are worth as much as half of the world’s population. You digested that yet? Sixty-two vs half the world. Another figure: 1% of the world’s population own more than all the other 99% put together.
Which puts me in mind of Danny McGettigan. He was from Donegal and served his time with me as a boarder in St Columb’s in the 1950s. During the boom years, I happened to run into him outside Moville in Co Donegal. After pleasantries and memories had been shared, I asked him how the Celtic Tiger was affecting this part of Donegal. “Celtic Tiger? There’s little sign of that fucking baste around here”.
That’s the answer to the conundrum of the south of Ireland having one of Europe’s fastest-growing economies, yet that state awash with homelessness, an appalling health service, makey-up jobeens and home eviction. Cherish all of the children of the state equally? Yerrah, get real.
It’s the rich wot get the pleasure/And the poor wot get the blame/It’s the same the whole world over/Ain’t it a blooming shame.
And forever will be amen………
Perfect comment, Danny McGettigan`s comment good !!!
If Danny had been a real Donegal man it would have been a ‘fecking baste’!
Not the Donegal men or Dannies I know…
Before the rising (actually between May and July 1911) our local pragmatic incrementalist labour leader William Walker got into a spat with James Connolly in the pages of Forward which was a socialist magazine. People who like the bottom half of the Internet might enjoy it because it seems very contemporary.
The starting point is that Connolly wants an independent Irish Labour Party that would affiliate with other countries. Walker wants Ireland’s labour movement to remain part of the existing British Labour movement.
Connolly says Walker is inspired by fear of unionism in Belfast and that his internationalism is really parochialism. Walker says Connolly is all talk and his just wants his own little empire. There’s a bit where Walker lists achievements in Belfast and Connolly dismisses them as nothing better than the municipal socialism of Chamberlain’s Birmingham. Walker then asks if Connolly has every done anything but flit between countries looking for groupies.
Here’s the link.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1911/connwalk/
There’s a very familiar Internet-warrior bit where Walker complains that Carnegie’s libraries have made it too easy for people (like Connolly) to just cut and paste other people’s ideas – the Wikipedia of its time – and asks if Connolly ever has an original thought.
After the last letter the editor ends the exchange by saying that if the conversation can’t move to a discussion of principles it had better stop.
You wonder if the conversation would be any different a hundred years later. If you believe Sinn Fein the Irish labour movement hasn’t kept pace with British socialism at all. If Walker were alive he might ask Sinn Fein who they are to complain as they’ve been in revolutionary mode (like Connolly) since their inception and have sought no links with the trade union movement – even ignoring trade unionist please for peace during the troubles.
Seeing as it’s 1916 you might also wonder if Connolly came under other criticism that he was a spoofer, not a doer, and if that had anything to do with his decision to go out in a blaze of glory.
That’ll knock the romanticism out of them ,Jude!!..”There’s little sign of that fucking baste around here”…..Indeed!! …and yet they’ll glom on the coat-tails of that one percent and strive in every way to join that elite , while slobbering over photos of them in “Hello ” magazine while lapping up episodes of “Downton Abbey”….That’s the real world alright…
It seems it is difficult for some to distinguish between a bat and a bath. The EDRF gravy train’s next scheduled stop is Dún Laoghaire. The Enda Regional Disbursement Fund, was halted as it was about to set off with 1.2 million euro to help bats. Much to the disappointment of the mammals, the funds will now be used to develop a pool, a jetty and cycle path. Some savoured the aroma of gravy as the crock of gold was produced to fund various cultural and aesthetic pursuits. It would appear that it is just desert for flood victims, the unemployed and homeless people.
Slab Murphy should have been Irelands representative after all him and his friends in SF could have done a seminar on tax evasion as they are market leaders.
Neill.is.one.bitter.and.angry.man.
I.think.you.are.right.Jim.
I.am.trying.to.bring.Neill.into.the.light.but.it.requires.great.patience.
But in the Ireland of today Slab and his like are dragged through the courts, while Apple, Dell, Microsoft who might defraud the taxman (apparently legally) are lauded and entertained regally.
Why the different treatment?
Too big to fail!
Tax evasion and tax avoidance Sherdy.
Neill, are you really comparing Slabs tax evasion (convicted by a non jury court, btw) of a million or two with the tens of billions, maybe even hundreds of billions, of tax evaded by giant companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, etc?…..
Yes because what apple and Google do is lawful what slab Murphy did wasn’t do you understand the tax system?
Good old neill. If it’s in the papers it must be true. Maybe somebody will buy you that book on Nairac for Xmas.
Sorry it was in the courts Fiosrach rather than the papers a subtle but telling differnce
for anybody faced with the devastation of having their homes, shops and businesses flooded, here’s some advice and the help of an expert geologist
https://eurofree3.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/coping-with-flooding-in-ireland/
Is Enda the Ennui really a Failure of the Fianna stripe?
That, Esteemed Blogmeister, is the question which is, by your blog today, prompted to put its head above the parapet.
Another visitor to Davos, Robert Louis Stevenson, once acutely observed: ‘To be wholy devoted to some intellectual exercise is to be a success in life’.
Clearly, on the basis of that observation, the PM of the Free Southern Stateen, is not just a Failure of the Fianna stripe but an abject one at that. Although that may well be an exercise in tautology, or even toutology itself.
Even though the polar opposite of each other in every other respect, RLS and E the E both went to Davos for similar reasons: tuberculosis in the case of the novelist in 1880 and in the case of the navelist, conspicuous over-consumption in 2016.
It is safe to say that another Davos devotee, one Denis O’Brien, large of girth, broad of beam, wide of grin, deep of pocket and vast of fortune, is the equivalent of 1% of the Free Southern Stateen’s population and the equal of the other 99% in wealth.
Perhaps, at a water cooler moment during some, erm, downtime in Davos, renowned for the coolness of his water, Enda the Ennui might ask DOB to explain in lay man’s terms – say, using matchsticks in the manner of LSD Lowry – just precisely how he got his start in this biz of becoming a billionaire.
As the PM’s expertise in these complicated financial matters do not, alas, rise much above the level of Primary School sums. Besides, as the conspicuous over-consumption of DOB was mainly centred on the communications industry, the explanation is scarcely to be found in the homogeneous hackitariat.
Perhaps, if Enda the Ennui had stayed closer to home – Dame Street, mar shampla – he might well have learned more. Just a simple matter of swopping Davis for Davos. (Amazing, all the same, a difference one oul’ vowel can make).
And while there is only one Davos, he would have had a choice between two Davises, albeit in statuesque form. Call one statue, Tommy Davis, Snr and the other, Tommy Davis, Jr. While the older one is incomparably the superior – the one which stands in the atrium of City Hall – this statue may well be a non-runner. On account of the current Ard-Mhear Atha Cliath / Mayor of Dublin, being a (gulp) mortal Shinner, Criona Ni Dhalaigh.
So, for argument’s sake, let’s settle for the other statue, Tommy Davis, Jnr., the bronze monstrosity which bears more than a passing resemblance to the brain. child. of. Frank. N. Stein. After a short spell spent seated next to this statue (preferably with his back turned) even Enda the Ennui might well learn something else about the Swiss canton in which Davos is located, and at a much reduced cost to the public exchequer. (The statue is just a short queue away from the Central Bank).
Graubunden is the canton in question and it was there, during the 9th century in the abbey of Reichenau that the most famous poem in the insular (allegedly) language of Leprechaun was sribbled down on the margins of a monastic manuscript (vellum).
It concerned a cat, not necessarily a fat one, but certainly a white one. It has attracted the attention of globally-famous poets, even of the Nobel nobility, on the look out for a leg up via the translation ladder, during, perchance, a down turn in the poet’s personal economy.
This morsel of feline knowledge re a not so tubby tabby might not necessarily put more money in the kitty of the Free Southern Stateen, but it might remind Enda the Ennui that ‘ar a shon fein a dheanann an cat cronan’.
Miaowwwww.
PS Apologies / Bron orm for omitting to mention that as part of the process to translate this oldest of all Leprechaun poems into contemporary ex-Erse verse the opportunistic poet is required to undergo a brief, intensive course.
This involves both the morphing of Old Leprechaun lines into manageable, modern, media friendly Hiberno-English prose and a speed-reading of all previous translations (281 and counting).
It’s officially called The Pangur Management Course but is colloquially known as ‘Putting the Cat among the Pingni’.
I have literally just finished reading Irish economist David McWilliams book: “The Good Room”. McWilliams books I highly recommend to anyone who finds Economics hard to understand because they are explained in simple terms and can be funny at times.
To put it bluntly, Ireland is in deep shit. Seriously deep shit. My da who lives in Dublin and has done courses in Dublin University in Computer Science, Economics and other topics (hes a big geek and a bit of a book worm) has been telling me since 2006 (when the “boom” or “celtic tiger” was roaring) that the shit was going to hit the fan. He was telling me at the time how his friend was going to invest in property and he told his friend not to, it was all going to go pear shaped. A lot of months later his friend thanked my da for saving him 50,000 euros. The whole thing did indeed go pear shaped.
Now, I asked myself at the time when the Irish economy crashed: “How could my da see the crash coming but the politicians/bankers didn’t?”. The answer I got from David McWilliams. McWilliams explains that the Irish mind set, the very culture of Irish society, is one of denial and a mind set of “Things will be OK”, especially when it comes to money. He’s not talking about all Irish people but clearly a majority do have this sort of mind set. The Spanish and Italians are similar. Greek politicians make the Irish politicians appear sane and responsible. The Germans on the other hand, along with other Nordic countries, have a realistic mind set. They don’t sit around crossing their fingers and thinking things will turn out alright. The Irish media played a massive role in encouraging this mind set by constantly churning out articles like “housing prices can only go higher, get in, invest or you’ll be locked out”. The rest is history.
The reality is the “Celtic Tiger” was an illusion, it wasn’t real, it was funded by debt, debt and more debt thanks to Ireland’s membership of the Eurozone which allowed Banks to lend more, recklessly more. A strong economy is one that is productive, that makes things, that exports things that can be used. The Ireland of the “boom years” wasn’t that. The only things being made here then was thousands of homes that sooner or later would lay empty because people weren’t earning enough in their incomes to buy them.
So how can we fix the Irish economy? Well McWilliams has a few ideas. He firstly points out what the Irish Government SHOULDNT do and that is pretend we can pay off all our debts. We simply cant. That is the lies the current FG/LAB coalition is spreading around the World but investors aren’t fooled. The scary thing is the Irish Government believes their own propaganda (remember the Irish mind set of “Everything will be grand, we’ll get there”?). Austerity has never, according to McWilliams, ever worked in any country. It hampers growth, it INCREASES debts (exactly what has happened in the UK under Cameron, he has borrowed more in 5 years than Brown/Blair has in 12) and makes economic recovery even more unlikely. McWilliams is clear: our economy wont ever recover under austerity, how can it? how can the economy improve if people spend less and save more? It is like bleeding an ill patient and hoping he recovers, the patient will only get weaker.
So, to get to the point, McWilliams says massive amounts of Irish debt needs written off (Just like in Greece), especially Irish BANK debt. He says thousands upon thousands of people will default their mortgages if some sort of write down or deal isnt made to help them. If people default, then it will be mayhem and Ireland will more likely have to leave the Eurozone and adopt the Punt again (which, in the long term, would actually be a good thing). McWilliams also says the Government has to spend more in the local economy (isn’t that Sinn Fein’s position? but I thought they were economic lunatics?….) but this is being hampered due to the demands of austerity from Europe. If people have money in their pockets, they spend, that expands businesses, which hire more people, etc. That’s what Ireland has to do but the Irish Government are weaklings and are afraid to confront Europe like Spain, Greece and Italy have done. If austerity continues then the economy for the average people wont recover, it simply wont, the only place that will see any growth is Dublin but the rest of Ireland will be an economic wasteland due to EU policies of backing the banks over the REAL economy.
All the EU has done with partial bailouts to Greece and other countries is buy time, that’s all. I can now see why many in Sinn Fein would prefer to leave being in Government in the south till 2021 because the South’s economy is a ticking time bomb and its due to explode over the next few years. Better it exploding under Fine Gaels watch than the Shinners….
Thanks Ryan. So should I vote for Irish unity in a referendum then or not?