“Finding a long-term solution for Anglo Irish Bank is by far the biggest challenge in resolving the banking crisis. The sheer size of the bank means there are no easy or low cost options.

Winding-up the bank is not and was never a viable option.”

- Brian Lenihan, March 30th, 2010

Nationalized Anglo Irish Bank will be “decommissioned,” with a decision on its fate expected within a few weeks, a junior government minister was quoted on Saturday as saying…..

…..”It has to be decommissioned, it will be decommissioned — fairly swiftly in terms of the actual decision being made in a few weeks with the permission of Europe,”

- Conor Lenihan, September 4th, 2010

In the intervening months, Anglo Irish Bank has been given 10 thousand million Euro by the Irish taxpayer.

I therefore applaud the BBC:

“The director general of the BBC admitted Thursday that his organisation had been guilty of a “massive bias to the left” but said “a completely different generation” of journalists now works at the broadcaster.

Mark Thompson told the right-of-centre Spectator magazine that there was an institutional bias when he joined the organisation, reinforcing the findings of a 2007 internal report which concluded that greater efforts were required to avoid liberal bias.

“In the BBC I joined 30 years ago, there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people’s personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left,” Thompson said.

“The organisation did struggle then with impartiality. And journalistically, staff were quite mystified by the early years of Thatcher. “Now it is a completely different generation. There is much less overt tribalism among the young journalists who work for the BBC,” he added.”

This isn’t news to anybody with a brain, but it’s reassuring to see an organisation with the self-confidence to admit to having a massive failing and to commit to addressing it. It’s an open question, of course, as to whether the BBC have succeeded in eradicating the bias, but the effort is, at least, welcome.

Now, if only we could see that kind of transparency on this side of the Irish sea. Can you imagine it?

“Hi, I’m the Irish Times, and I have a problem…….”

I mention this, because to listen to the Minister for Finance on this evening’s six one news, one would be forgiven for thinking that he at minimum regards most people in the country as stupid. Firstly, we were told (with, it must be said, the full co-operation of RTE) that the newly released exchequer figures  are good news because they show tax returns falling only 0.7% below the Government’s targets, and because the number of people signing onto the live register was fewer this year than it was for the same period last year (the latter statistic being cited as evidence, believe it or not, of “recovery”).

It’s worth reminding ourselves that we’ve been told by the leadership of this Government that the recovery was underway many, many, times before. On the 12th of July this year, the Taoiseach declared that we had “turned the corner” to recovery. He made exactly the same claim on May 6th. Way back as far as May 5th, 2009, Cowen predicted “rapid growth as early as next year” (which would be, eh, now, Taoiseach).  As a matter of pure indisputable fact, this Government has predicted the coming economic recovery once a month for the best part of two years, but we’re still waiting. Since the Taoiseach’s prediction of “rapid growth as early as next year” in May 2009, almost 100,000 people have lost their jobs.

Now, all of that discounts Anglo, which Minister Lenihan and his officials have so far gotten wrong to the tune of eighteen thousand million Euro, which seems to me the financial equivalent of trying to go to Cork and ending up, by geometric miscalculation, on Saturn. The final figure may end up to be twice that – 36 billion, and that’s for one bank alone.  But we know all this, despite Comical Lenny’s best efforts.

Now, before I pose the question that this post was meant to reiterate, let’s all breath in what the New York Times says about Ireland today (emphasis mine):

“However, it is now apparent that Ireland has not done enough to stem its march toward further crisis. The ultimate result of Ireland’s bank bailout exercise is obvious: one way or another, the government will have converted the liabilities of private banks into debts of the sovereign (that is, Irish taxpayers), yet the nation probably cannot afford these debts…..

….Ireland, simply put, appears insolvent under plausible scenarios with current policies. The idea that Ireland, Greece or Portugal can cut spending and grow out of overvalued exchange rates with still large budget deficits, while servicing all their debts and building more debt, is proving – not surprisingly – wrong….

….Under the current program, we estimate each Irish family of four will be liable for 200,000 euros in public debt by 2015. There are only 73,000 children born into the country each year, and these children will be paying off debts for decades to come – as well as needing to accept much greater austerity than has already been implemented. There is no doubt that social welfare systems, health care and education spending will decline sharply.

Watch for renewed emigration from a famously footloose population. If current policies continue, the calamity of the Irish banking system will lead to a much deeper recession and the consequences will be felt for decades. Watch also for further global financial disruption as this kind of deal starts to unravel.”

Now, unlike Brian Lenihan and Brian Cowen, the authors of that piece have no interest in misleading the Irish voter. The warnings could not be starker. The stakes cannot be higher. The potential consequences are impossible to understate.

Now to my question.

Where, in the name of God, when all of this nonsense is going on, is the national joke that calls himself the “leader of the opposition”?

And, while we’re at it, where is the pride of the Irish people

]]> http://www.mcguirk.eu/?feed=rss2&p=1022 2 http://www.mcguirk.eu/?p=1020 http://www.mcguirk.eu/?p=1020#comments Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:48:03 +0000 John http://www.mcguirk.eu/?p=1020 It’s just a thought, but one that I can’t seem to shake: Where is Enda Kenny? Do a google news search for him, and you’ll find that the last record of a public statement from him on a matter of Government policy was on August 12th.

The subject? Wild Mink. Apparently they’re causing havoc for the poor ground-nesting birds of West Mayo.

Now, forgive me for being a crank, but the Leader of the Opposition hasn’t been heard from on an issue of public policy in 23 days (if you count wild mink, that is, but I’m going to be generous). In the meantime, the country handed over another eight-point-two thousand million euros to the good folk at Anglo Irish Bank. Two thousand five hundred more people lost their jobs, joining the four hundred and fifty three thousand already unable to find a job, and the Government continued to sit on its hands.

Can Enda Kenny, who aspires to lead this country, find nothing to say?

Nothing at all?

For a whole month?

I’ve long said it, and I’ll say it again. The only thing worse than the Government in this country is the opposition.

In the meantime, sightings of Kenny are welcome. Post them in the comments.

I was joined on the panel of the Marc Coleman show last night by Carol Hunt from the Sunday Independent, Seamus Dooley from the NUJ, and Senator Mary White from Fianna Fáil, with Anglo Irish Bank the subject du jour. In a 20 minute segment starting at about 37 minutes in (below) Senator White delivered one of the more extraordinary performances I’ve had the misfortune to bear witness to.

It started during the ad break immediately preceding the 37 minute mark, when an in-studio discussion of emigration sparked a blazing row between Carol and Senator White, who in response to the news that Carol’s two sisters had had to emigrate, responded “it’s a pity about them”, in a tone which inferred that she thought the exact opposite, and told Carol to “cop herself on”.

On return from the break, Marc Coleman spoke for most of us when he suggested that the Senator and her colleagues should emigrate themselves, if it was such a good idea. Senator White went on, on air, to suggest that emigration was good for the country, and good for families, to the astonishment of everybody else in the studio.

Following a musical interlude, the discussion turned to Anglo Irish Bank. (48 mins in) Senator White opened the discussion about today’s cabinet meeting by saying, after asking God’s help to get us out of the mess, that she did not agree that it was the Government that had made the mess, and that it was all down to greedy bankers.

I posed the Senator a series of questions about what the Government knew, and when it knew it. She refused to answer the question, saying that she was “tired listening to me”, and accusing me of making “political points”. I pointed out that it was a political programme, and that I was talking to a politician. She again refused to answer, and then said that my points were illegitimate because of my “support for the Libertas party”.

The Senator went on to blame the media for “talking down the economy”, suggest again that emigration was a “good thing”, and announced that she “works hard for her money”, which I reminded her was paid to her by the taxpayer. When I suggested that maybe we should have let Anglo fail, she said that I wanted to “shut down all the banks”.

You can listen to it for yourself, but suffice to say, as I said on air, that it was a disgusting performance, from a woman who is obviously clueless. I can forgive cluelessness, having been occasionally guilty of it myself, but the attitude of the Senator to emigrants – summed up in her phrase “it’s a pity about them” is what transformed it from a performance of ineptitude to one of disgraceful ignorance, and nastiness.

It being late-night radio, and Senator White being a bit of a nobody in political terms, it’s not a big story, but Senator White’s performance was amongst the most extraordinary I’ve ever heard. I wish every voter could hear it. It’s a study in crass cluelessness.

]]> http://www.mcguirk.eu/?feed=rss2&p=1014 7 http://www.mcguirk.eu/?p=1012 http://www.mcguirk.eu/?p=1012#comments Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:19:19 +0000 John http://www.mcguirk.eu/?p=1012 Rarely will you read a more depressing, sobering piece than this one by Kathy Sheridan in this morning’s Irish Times. If you haven’t done so already, read it first before you come back here to read the rest of this post.

This piece, while brilliantly written and deeply moving, is unfortunately little more than the annual story about Ireland’s prostitution problem. It’ll attract attention for a few days, a roundtable discussion on some current affairs show, a few cheap words of condemnation from politicians, and by next weekend, it’ll have vanished from our consciousness.

It provokes the usual reactions, too. Libertarians think it’s time to legalise it. Feminists think it’s yet another reason to hate all men. Lefties think it represents the failure of the social safety net. Pro-Europeans think it’s an argument for more trans-national co-operation, and so on and so on. Yet, for all those willing to provide answers, very few seem willing to provide the important question.

Who are these men? Who are these young men who turn up in groups to take turns degrading a woman whilst laughing and joking about it? What are their careers? Who are their girlfriends? Who is their mother? Because the statistics don’t lie. A charitable assumption that the maximum number of prostitutes in Ireland is 1,000 (and that’s really being very charitable) means that if you assume for argument’s sake that each prostitute has 10 regular clients, then there are at minimum 10,000 men who use these services. Now, my math may be dodgy, but I think that’s an extremely conservative estimate on all counts.

The fact of the matter is that we all know, though we are unaware of it, men who use prostitutes. Yet to all intents and purposes, we hear little about them. In Kathy’s article, they are faceless, nameless abusers – and written from a prostitute’s perspective, that’s probably accurate?

But these men who are abusing other men’s daughters are fathers themselves. They are over-protective brothers. Jealous boyfriends. Diligent professionals. Respected members of society. Some are almost certainly politicians, others must, logically and statistically, be Gardai. Some will be doctors.

And they’re criminals. Yet, in this society, we punish the prostitute, forced by economic terror into selling access to herself and morphing into what one described in Kathy’s piece as a “human toilet”. I ask myself, what would happen if tomorrow, we passed a law saying that anybody convicted of having sex with a prostitute would have his name and photograph published in a national newspaper, and go on the register of sex offenders. I wonder what would happen if we asked the guards to organise regular raids of brothels – especially those that do a good lunchtime trade in the Dublin 2, 4, and 6 areas – and to arrest  and charge all the men found in them. I wonder what would happen if a few young lawyers or accountants or doctors had their careers ended for doing this.

We can talk all we want about prostitution. But until we realise that this is a crime against women being perpetrated by our brothers, friends, fathers, and colleagues, and punish them accordingly, it just won’t stop.

]]> http://www.mcguirk.eu/?feed=rss2&p=1012 3 http://www.mcguirk.eu/?p=1010 http://www.mcguirk.eu/?p=1010#comments Sun, 29 Aug 2010 18:01:06 +0000 John http://www.mcguirk.eu/?p=1010 Quick, and (I hope) to the point.

1) The overwhelming majority of people on the dole paid PRSI for years before they became unemployed. It is not their fault that the government has blown ninety thousand million euros on bailouts and guarantee schemes and recapitalisation schemes for bankers. Forcing, at economic gunpoint, the weakest people in society to serve the political interests of the government is inequitable, and constitutes majoritarian tyranny against a weak demographic.

2) This scheme will not remove one single person from government dependency. The dole bill will still have to be paid, and this scheme will almost certainly cost more in administration than it will save in fraud reduction.

3) Such a scheme can only be fair if all 400,000 unemployed people are expected to partake in it. As is, 10% of unemployed people will be singled out for special treatment, leaving 360,000 lucky lottery winners free to continue as usual. Again, utterly inequitable.

4) Finding people with skills to work in the economy for less than those skills are worth fundamentally undermines the value of the skill for everyone. For example, if a community wants a project built, and an unemployed architect is assigned to them from this scheme, then architects in employment are missing out on work and fees, and the person working is being paid a pittance for their labour.

5) In the alternative, assigning people with general skills to activities for which they are not specifically qualified (for example, assigning a former secretary to work with the elderly) exposes the government to potentially huge liability in the event that unmotivated, unskilled workers make a mistake. Do we think that unmotivated, unskilled workers might make a mistake?

6) The idea that the purpose of such a scheme will be to crack down on fraud is a fundamentally disingenuous one. For starters, cracking down on fraud can be accomplished by allocating existing resources to that task (spotchecks + higher mandatory sentences). More importantly, if the scheme is limited to 10% of the unemployed, as news reports suggest, it will target only 10% of the fraud. This fact will be routinely ignored by the proponents of the scheme.

7) The added costs of compliance with such a scheme will be devastating for the unemployed. Are we going to pay for the childcare for a single mother who has to go out to work for a pittance? Are we going to pay transport costs? Or are we going to force people living below the poverty line to take a real terms cut in living standards for the sake of a cheap, populist, stunt?

By definition, most of the work will be pointless. “Work schemes” tend to create work for which there is no economic market – the idea that the hedgerows of ireland need trimming will be news to the average person living in rural Ireland, for example. If the work is meaningful, it will put existing people out of jobs (for example, repainting a school may be an idea the government has in mind, but what happens the local painter). If it is meaningless, then the scheme has no societal benefit at all.

9) Why wasn’t this scheme introduced in the boom? The answer? Because while there were many many jobs which could have been done by people on such a scheme because of the labour shortage, the people in office preferred to allow immigrants to do those jobs. At a time when it could have been imaginative, there was no imagination. Now, when it is mean spirited and pointless, there is no shortage of those traits in government.

10) The human reason. Contrary to the spin that this scheme will somehow be empowering, the only emotions this kind of work will arouse in your average unemployed accountant are those of humiliation, shame, and resentment.

It’s an odious idea, designed to win votes from grumpy taxpayers on the backs of the “lazy” unemployed, and to detract attention from the failings of government. It should be resisted fiercely.

His healthcare plan, for example, is opposed by 59% of the public, and when part of it was put before the voters in missouri two weeks ago, it was rejected. The margin? 70-30.

His position on Arizona’s immigration law? (The law would give police officers the power to demand immigration papers on the spot from anyone they suspected of being in the state illegally). The President opposes it. The Public? They support that provision 73-23, and nearly 60% support the law in its entirity.

Obama says he wants to move to a nuclear free world. The public? 77% of them say that US Nuclear weapons are important for national security.

In the wake of the disaster in the Gulf, Obama supported an immediate moratorium on all offshore drilling. Even after that disaster, 64% of the public continued to support offshore drilling.

Obama supports more restrictions on the right to bear arms (to be fair in this case, it’s not been a top priority). Just 39% of the voters disagree.

I write this blog post because in the aftermath of this november’s elections, all the analysts you read in the papers here (and many in the states) will tell you that the Democrats did badly because of a “failure to communicate”, or “problems with the economy”. Some will say that voters were “angry at the lack of progress on many of his key initiatives”. Others will straight-out blame racism.

President Obama is struggling because he has a habit of taking the wrong side on 70/30 issues. Successful Democratic Presidents (at least in political terms) like Bill Clinton succeed in major part because they manage to steer a course through the centre of the political terrain(in Clinton’s case there were too many to list – welfare reform, his Sister Souljah moment, his vocal support for the death penalty). Obama in contrast has steered his presidency hard to the left, and onto the rocks. Which is why fully 57% of Americans now say that he is more liberal than they are.

So when you have a problem like that, what do you do? Well, if you’re Obama, you go and take the wrong side on yet another issue.

Noted lunatic Sarah Palin, whose crazy ideas are so odious and insane that only a tiny 70% fringe of the American voting public (including a majority of Democrats) agrees with her,put forth her further deranged gibberings on FaceBook:

“Mr. President, should they or should they not build a mosque steps away from where radical Islamists killed 3000 people? Please tell us your position. We all know that they have the right to do it, but should they? And, no, this is not above your pay grade. If those who wish to build this Ground Zero mosque are sincerely interested in encouraging positive “cross-cultural engagement” and dialogue to show a moderate and tolerant face of Islam, then why haven’t they recognized that the decision to build a mosque at this particular location is doing just the opposite? Mr. President, why aren’t you encouraging the mosque developers to accept Governor Paterson’s generous offer of assistance in finding a new location for the mosque on state land if they move it away from Ground Zero? Why haven’t they jumped at this offer? Why are they apparently so set on building a mosque steps from what you have described, in agreement with me, as “hallowed ground”? I believe these are legitimate questions to ask.

- Sarah Palin”

Again, 70% agree with Palin, despite her being, obviously, a gibbering loon.

It’s easy to watch these debates from across the Atlantic and fall into the trap of thinking that Obama is doing badly because of the economy, or because of crazy people. He’s not. He’s tanking because time and time again, he’s siding with a 30% minority of liberals against the overwhelming majority of his countrymen. And he’s going to pay the price.

“AN 80-YEAR-OLD woman is organising a one-day boycott of Sunday Mass “by the faithful women of Ireland” next month. Jennifer Sleeman from Clonakilty in Cork said she wants “to let the Vatican and the Irish church know that women are tired of being treated as second-class citizens”.

Now, truth to be told, I don’t go to mass that much myself. Once or twice a month as opposed to the weekly pilgrimage I’m technically required to make. But let me tell you this: On September 26th, I’ll be there. Right up the front. And I’ll wager that if this nonsense gains any more media traction, I won’t be the only one who makes a special effort.

Nobody forces me to be a Catholic. Nobody forces me to go to mass (hence my rather lax habits of late). Nobody forces me to be a muslim or a jew or a presbyterian, either (although, the simplicity and beauty of the latter’s services sometimes make me consider defecting). What I don’t understand about stunts like these is simple – what are they supposed to achieve? Publicity? Sure, you’ll get the usual coverage from the same shower of anti-religious whiners who’d show up to photograph the symbolic torching of a communion wafer, and you’ll certainly get some “right-on, sister” head-nodding from some of the more special cases over at the Aunty Room, but will you change anybody’s mind?

One of the nice things about being Catholic is that we’re a pretty hard bunch to offend. I suspect (actually, I’m pretty certain) that McGarry’s article was read with much mirth by a lot of people yesterday – one person who’d be familiar with the Hierarchy told me that he hoped the protest would go ahead, but only if a few old children of the sixties went right ahead and handcuffed themselves to the church gates, because attendances at mass would go through the roof that day for curiosity’s sake alone.

I tend to agree. There’s a simple choice for those people who don’t agree with the positions, beliefs, and practices of the Roman Catholic Church – leave. Heck, there’s a website devoted to it. A website, by the way, which has had acres of publicity (and that’s the Irish Times) through the roughest period of the Irish Church’s history, and has to show for it? A whopping 11,160 people who’ve bothered to take the time to fill out their forms – a mere 0.3% of the 3,681,446 people who reported themselves as Catholics at the last census.

This latest wheeze will spawn yet another round of yarns about how the church is “losing women” and “losing touch”. Some more old dears may well come forward to claim their five minutes of adoration from the usual scribes. But at some stage, somebody might do a reality check. For all the acres of coverage, hysterical radio hosts, righteous bloggy rants, and anguished decisions to give Buddhism a try, the church is still in a very strong, stable, and influential position.

If I was bothered by that fact, 0.3% would really piss me off. As it is, it just makes me chuckle.

Update: An earlier version of this post gave the figure as 0.003%. I’ve never pretended to be a maths whizz. Laugh away…..

Check out the full collection here.

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