Internet Commentator

The Daily Wail

I've never been too impressed with the Oirish Daily Mail but this particular op-ed about how awful things are in contemporary Ireland plumbed new depths of reactionary conservatism:

You don’t need me to tell you that Ireland has changed significantly over the last ten years and that among the changes wrought has been higher density living. As apartment complexes have risen up and spread across our urban geography, we find ourselves living at closer quarters for longer, especially as we watch bijou artisans cottages with postage stamp gardens and reasonable postal codes disappear rapidly over the horizon of affordability. Tensions are inevitable.

[...]

Perhaps you’re living next to a flat which the Department of Social and Family Affairs has inveigled an unscupulous or, worse, innocent dupe of a landlord to fill with tracksuit-wearing howayas whose daily toil it is to smoke crack until all hours of the morning, interminably listening to a looped Aslan EP at deafening volume while their “burds” top up the household income with a little light prostitution. And your life is a Dantean purgatory.

In an increasingly urbanised and high-density Ireland, noise disputes are becoming more and more prevalent. And serious. Apart from the stress and nauseating worry which can result, what are the chances that the fifth time in as many nights that you pop down the corridor to have a word with those Latvian young fellas about the all-night techno parties which are keeping your wife and new-born child in a state of constant, mewling wakefulness, especially your wife, you’ll be bringing along your baseball bat?

Did I say Daily Mail? Sorry, got mixed up there. It was...

Neutrality and the "triple lock"

Planet Potato has a post about Ireland's "triple lock on neutrality" which quotes the Minister of Defence:

I want to make the absolutely clear again today: In any consideration of Irish troops acting overseas that this Government will not allow our policy of military neutrality to be eroded. The triple-lock will remain. Ireland will only participate in military activity overseas with Government, Dáil and UN authorisation

I have to agree with Mr Potato. Stated thus, the triple lock* is preposterous, regardless of the composition of the UN security council. I'm not quite sure what the purpose of obtaining UN approval is - if there's an action that the government wants to do, how does it further Ireland's interests in any way that it be prevented from doing so on the whim of any of the countries who fluke a seat on the council. The thing is, this is a separate issue from neutrality. I'm against neutrality anyway** but even if I was in favour of neutrality, this triple lock would surely contradict it unless "neutrality" is taken to mean "allied with the UN ".

* incidentally, shouldn't it be the double lock? The first two "locks" kind of go together, the government generally governs only by consent of the Dail.

** One of the many reasons not to favour neutrality is the nauseating moralising associated with Ireland's neutral stance. This moralising is doubly nauseating because it's not based on any substance, but is an inversion of the truth. There is no moral high ground in refusing to take sides. I'd be a lot more tolerant of neutrality-boosters if they admitted that neutrality is a piece of amoral realpolitik - given that, thanks to our proximity to the UK, we aren't in any direct danger, it's much cheaper to "free-ride" off others than contribute to any military alliances.

Division of labour

Frank Fitzgibbon suggests that a certain priest/political activist might find an occupation more suited to his expertise.

Maybe I missed something, but don’t we elect politicians to devise social policy? Given the crisis in the vocations business, wouldn’t Fr Healy be better employed signing up to run a parish? Of course, he’d have to give up those trips to Government Buildings, not to mention all those appearances on Questions & Answers, but surely saving souls for the next world is a worthwhile alternative.

The cost of corruption

I was prompted by a post of Cian's to consider the question of who, precisely, pays the cost of corruption. Cian sets out what I'd say is a fairly widely held view:

When the developers got their hands on West Dublin up went the endless acres of houses, nominal services were put into the areas. Small central villages were supposed to support huge numbers of people. The developers cared not one wit, nor the councillors who operated so cosily with them.

Now, this might feel intuitively right: The inner circle of favoured developers undoubtedly benefitted. While the people who now live in these areas undoubtedly have gripes about the place. But are these directly linked? I'd say that the closer you examine this, the intuitive link evaporates.

Firstly, consider that the estates in question consist of private, not public housing. To get to a "harm" or "cost" imposed on the residents of such housing, who, after all, have voluntarily chosen to rent or buy there, it will be necessary to make a case for a market failure. Let's say that everyone who lives there would like, say, a playground and a local pub within walking distance but for whatever reason the market fails to provide them. Now, I'm generally skeptical of market failure arguments and think that there are often much better explanations for phenomena lazily labelled as market failures but for the purposes of argument let's go with this particular flow. The problem is that it is hard to see how this problem is connected to corruption per se.

Let's imagine two estates. One by a corrupt developer - Kickback Close and one by a developer who played by the rules - Honest Alley. Now, if we are going to claim that buyers or renters have no way of signalling their willingness to pay a premium for additional services, playgrounds and the like, there is no particular reason for the developers of Honest Alley to offer anything to residents over and above that offered by the developers of Kickback Close. One might excoriate the council for failing to insist that corrupt developers include such amenities but the fact is that they have also failed to insist that incorrupt developers include such amenities. The corruption such as it existed, related mainly to the rezoning of certain tracts of lands at the expense of others and not to insufficient regulation of the quality of resultant estates (Note also that this not about corrupt allocation of public contracts whether for housing or infrastructure).

Then if the "cost" borne by residents of such areas may be attributable (assuming the market failure argument to be correct*) to insufficient oversight by planning officials, rather than corruption per se, who does bear the cost of corruption, or why is it wrong? Well, people primarily affected by a corrupt system are not the end-punters who generally get what they paid for - a house they liked at the time in an area they wanted to live in at the time - but rather the adjoining landowners and competing developers who played by the rules and didn't bribe politicians or planning officials. Secondly, the cost of corruption is borne by the overall economy - it is a deadweight cost and there is a well established (inverse) correlation between corruption and economic activity.

Why does this matter? After all, if corruption is wrong, do we really need to determine why it's wrong to counter it. I'd say, yes, particularly if you are concerned about possible remedies for the wrongs you attribute to corruption or seek to prevent them from occuring in the future.

* The alternative explanation is that there is no market failure, that each developer knows too well that the punter, however much he might gripe about their absence now, or however much he might gratefully accept them for free, doesn't actually prize such additional amenities sufficiently to pay a premium he would quite happily discharge for, say, a Plasma screen TV.

Ditto to that

Like Hugh, I'm not really one for St. Patrick's day:

The disneyfied green overload on the streets of this country tomorrow is too much for this green blogger to stomach. In some ways I feel in league with old codgers and creaking nuns who think that St. Patrick's Day has lost its meaning, although I never thought it had much meaning in the first place. I would find it preferable if the were limited to parades after 10 o'clock mass with the Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland and the Knights of Malta, and then the pub for those who felt so inclined.

Also like him, I'm off to France for the weekend and (as if to validate my characterisation below) intend to scarf quite a bit of foie gras, surely the epitome of evil food.

The New Reality

The loss of 300 plus manufacturing jobs with NEC in a part of Co. Meath not exactly overflowing with same is a kick in the tender areas, of course, but while I applaud the local SIPTU trade union reps for maintaining a realistic, and fairly balanced attitude, I fail to see the benefit of a government minister trailing along on this trip.   The nitty-gritty of an electoral  fight in a multi-seat constituency may provide the answer but Demmo should remember that government policy in relation to the ITC area consists, more or less, of beefing up the research and development sector and trying to really push the lure of science as a second and third level subject for students.  Manufacturing in this economy, devoid of some unique added value,  is being outsourced and while some breast-beaters may mourn the loss of semi-skilled employment opportunities, companies like Motorola have survived and thrived since closing their plants in Ireland.  NEC may yet do the same and kick some high-grade R & D work back here in a few years but a company shackled to top dollar pay rates for transferable jobs won't last long.  Pity nobody whispered similar in the shell-like of ATGWU boss  Mick O'Reilly , before he appeared on Matt Cooper's radio show earlier this week requesting, nay demanding, pay rises in excess of CPI before he and his cohorts agree to any further social partnership *shudder* discussions.   Dude's lost it...in the course of a severly abridged and  less than hardball debate with Jim Power , our esteemed comrade referred to the  Friends First economist as "the IBEC representative".  Even Cooper scoffed.  Good short term memory there, Mikhail.

Anyone for the last of the syndicalist principles, now?

This just in from Radio Moscow ,  esteemed social partners SIPTU have  accepted the terms  offered by Irish Ferries management and this epoch-defining, family-dividing, battle against capitalism red in tooth and claw is over.  And hey, all it took was a lock of cold, hard cash and red-circling of employees' pay and conditions.  The money quote (boy, is it ever) for me is attributed to SIPTU gauleiter, Jack O'Connor

his union would be willing to go into partnership talks if they addressed job displacement, exploitation and protection of employment standards, but it would not be prepared to participate in what he called a charade.

Well, Jackie Boy, if  by 'charade' you mean your organisation's Canute-like stance against the open economy and your logic-defying grab for fickle public sympathy with a nasty, overt edge of xenophobia then it is one parlour game you already know inside out.   Social partnership, with any luck, will be dead in the water by the time we're making turkey soup.

If you can't grasp logic, teach

In a rare manifestation of cop-on among the FF part of the Cabinet,  Mary Hanafin has let the education sector's  Millie Tants and Dave Sparts know that they will have their snouts removed temporarily from the trough should they decide to attend this Friday's exercise in futility/ICTU Day of Protest.  There's little point in rehashing what can be 'confidently asserted'  about the Irish Ferries case: majority of workforce accepted redundancy terms; Ireland's full employment status should prevent lengthy unemployment period for redundant staff; Irish people will puff and bluster and still use a ferry company that's a sight lot cheaper than the more ethically-sound (by leftist standards) rival, but the teachers' brass neck make one cling to this little mantra of common sense.   You can take it from li'l ol' bureacrat me that no public sector worker will ever have to fear being outsourced, for those of a contractually established nature enjoy jobs for life, so while the teachers may have touchy-feely empathy with Irish Ferries staff, they have no comprehension of financial realities.  And the same goes for most, if not all, public sector workers.   These professions of solidarity are worth precisely diddly squat.   My wife said it best in the course of our slog of a commute to Dublin this morning: "It's not enough that teachers will get this Thursday off, but they also want another taxpayer-funded jolly the day after.  Nice work if you can get it." 

Rip-off rant

Gerry offers his 2c:

85c for a litre of milk! I was in the North last week and bought a litre for the equivalent of 83c. What a f**king rip-off this country has become...

Has The Celtic Tiger turned on its cubs, Part the Millionth.

A heavily advertised piece on Ireland's boombastic economy in the current Newsweek  deviates, in some small measure, from the usual ochón go deo garment-rending 'feel' pieces that fill our print and broadcast media with nauseating regularity.    It's boilerplate stuff that smacks of the US obsession with fact-checking e.g. for every Joe Higgins bleat, there's a counterblast from Constantin Gurdgiev  but it's nice to see the current administration get a little love:

And Ireland's government—the ruling Fianna Fail (Soldiers of Destiny) Party, in power for most of the last 20 years—deserves plenty of credit. If the Celtic tiger roars, it's partly because of smart, enterprise-friendly policies. Those big investors, from Dell to Intel, aren't interested in the dreamy green landscapes of Olde Eire. They like Europe's lowest corporate taxes—just 12.5 percent—and a clever work force. Ireland also plowed much of its EU development cash into overhauling an antiquated education system. Now only Japan's work force boasts a higher proportion of scientists and engineers.

Mind, if the likes of 'Fast' Eddie Hobbs think  it's only the under 35s that  are getting shafted on indirect taxes and the like, he's evidently never seen my pay slip and any ailing working stiff in Ireland has long since paid his subs to a private health insurer.