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Ulsters Last Stand?: Can Unionism Move Beyond Insurance Policy Politics?
How has Ulster unionism arrived at where it is today – fractured and uncertain, yet dominated electorally by the DUP, a party that tells us it offers unionists sure footing in uncertain times? In his latest book, Ulster’s Last Stand? Reconstructing Unionism after the Peace Process (Irish Academic Press, 2010), Prof. James McAuley from the [...] read our review »
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What has The Third Man got to say about Northern Ireland?
Short answer: very little, other than he enjoyed the environs of Hillsborough Castle, enjoyed working with the local politicians, and has Gerry Adams to thank for Bobby his dog. Peter Mandelson’s book The Third Man has captured media headlines in recent weeks as the Times serialised the most juicy bits. But what did he have [...] read our review »
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Of the Old North and other Vanished Kingdoms..
I’m currently trawling through Norman Davies’s fabulous new tome – “Vanished Kingdoms” – Five stars in the (London) Telegraph’s review from Ben Wilson: All the nations that have ever lived have left their footsteps in the sand,” writes Norman Davies. “The traces fade with every tide, the echoes grow faint, the images are fractured, the human [...] read our review »
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Comment on Euro crisis: When “earth’s proud empires pass away”…
on 20 May 2012 at 10:12 pm
Once upon a time in Euroland, only the eurosceptic elves were telling the people that the euro was a political project masquerading as an economic project; and that while politicians lived in Dreamland, the markets lived in an unfamiliar and unforgiving place called Realityland.
But now, alas, even the europhiles are acknowledging that the eurosceptic elves were telling the truth all along and that the euro is likely to go down in ignominious history as quite possibly the most destructive – and certainly the most recklessly demented – idea of the latter half of the 20th century.
As always, the distant and unwelcome voices from Realityland call out yonder that there can be no monetary union without economic union; no economic union without political union, and no political union without a shared nationalism.
If there ever could be political union it would require the Germans to regard those other nations they dismiss as feckless as they regard their own nation; and all to live as a brotherhood of man (cue rainbow and flower petals dropping from fluffy clouds).
But in distant Realityland, we see that the Germans despise the Greeks and the Greeks despise the Germans – and there goes our lovely wee dream of a shared nationhood and political union.
And remember dreamers, no economic union without political union…
Yes, that is how dumb an idea the euro is.
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Comment on #EUREF: Souveraineté ou survie du déluge?
on 18 May 2012 at 9:50 pm
“It is. If I depend on an external actor, I’m not independent.”
Misguided semantic games at best, and anti-democratic fraud at worst.
Sovereignty is not derogated by borrowing. If it was, no state would be sovereign since all states borrow. Sovereignty is derogated ONLY when an applicable treaty has been ratified.
Contrary to the nefarious claim, sovereignty has not been derogated; and if it were, there would be no need to ratify the treaty wherein it is derogated.
The fraud has the purpose of leading the gullible to believe that it is a futile act to object to the surrender of sovereignty to the EU because the sovereignty has already been surrendered.
“However, our Constitutional Law is subservient to the People. The People are Sovereign, not the Constitution. If we voted in a referendum to modify the Constitution to make all EU law invalid (or subservient) within the state, it would be. No arguments.”
It’s not that simple. If the intent is to withdraw, you can’t just pass an amendment that removes reference to the treaty. The Constitution already specifies how withdrawal is to occur and that method takes precedence over all other provisions of the treaty (including the Article which declares the people to be sovereign – 6). That is for the Supreme Court to decide but I don’t see it. I recall asking Lord Norton (acknowledged as the UK’s greatest constitutional authority) on his blog whether Dicey’s doctrine meant that parliament could simply repeal the European Communities Act 1972 as the UK’s exit route and he said there is doubt about whether the courts would allow it: “You are quite right that the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty is under challenge. It has been under challenge for some time from those who query Dicey’s interpretation of the doctrine and is now queried in respect of our membership of the EU. Though it still appears to be the case that most jurists accept that if Parliament repealed the European Communities Act 1972, the courts would enforce that, there are some who now challenge this assumption.”
“We can become de jure an icon of pristine Sovereignty whenever we want.”
In reality, only 27 of the world’s 193 states have derogated their sovereignty. The 27 that have now top the list of the world’s most indebted states (with over 40% of eurozone members verging on bankruptcy), whereas the other 166 states that glow in “pristine” sovereignty are, unlike their backward and retarded counterparts in the EU, doing rather nicely for themselves. The bizarre idea that there is no viable alternative to EU rule originates, unsurprisingly, in the EU’s propaganda department (which soaks up 2.3 billion of taxpayers’ money every year).
“To clarify: since the Fiscal Treaty is not an EU Treaty, it’s not part of the European acquis and withdrawal from it is not the same as withdrawal from the EU. Its importance to the Eurozone on the other hand…”
And to clarify your clarification: it will be incorporated into law within 5 years at the latest but will be enforceable by the ECJ and other institutions immediately in those provisions that expand upon provisions existing under Lisbon.
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Comment on #EUREF: Souveraineté ou survie du déluge?
on 18 May 2012 at 5:03 pm
Ronan Lyons is spinning the line that national debt is the same thing as a derogation of sovereignty (it’s the first option in his chart). If this falsehood was true, there would, of course, be no need for a treaty to derogate the sovereignty. He starts from a false premise.
Also, the Lisbon treaty was annexed to the Constitution with a clause that states that no provision of the Constitution takes precedence over the provisions of the treaty where they conflict. As the treaty sets out how Ireland can withdraw from the EU, that is the method that takes precedence. It is therefore wrong to claim that it can occur by any other method, since all such alternative and ad hoc methods would be unconstitutional.
Incidentally, a similar provision it is also why the government is able to violate Article 6 of the Constitution without sanction from the Supreme Court in regard to bailing-out eurosystem banks – the Article is secondary to the conflicting provisions of the Maastricht treaty which require the state to act to promote the “common good” of the eurozone and not the Irish nation.
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Comment on Would the legalisation of cannibis help reduce the drug problem in Derry (and elsewhere)?
on 17 May 2012 at 12:15 pm
I see. Now I have a dilemma. Do I take the word of an annonymous poster on the Internet who obviously has a pro-drugs agenda or do I defer to the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs that I quoted above?
“The majority of cannabis sold in Britain is ‘skunk’, so-called because it has a very strong smell. It is green dried plant material rather than brown solid cannabis (hashish) which was more popular in the 80s and 90s (it was then imported mainly from Morocco). The strength of skunk now averages around 10% THC, but it can exceed 18%, whilst its CBD content is very low. Even so, it is impossible to get a toxic overdose of THC by taking cannabis in typical ways.
There is still quite a lot of imported cannabis, (herbal or hash) about but the market has changed considerably in recent years. Skunk is now the main form of the drug available – it is grown in the UK and so reduces the risk for large-scale dealers in importing the drug. It is grown under artificial light in small cannabis factories, often empty houses or disused factory spaces. Last year the police shut down over 7,000 of these factories.”
As you might notice (on second reading) that the source is the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs and not “those clowns in government are getting a false story from what is trumpeted in the media.”
OKay… it’s not really a dilemma.
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Comment on “I do apologise for anyone who misunderstood the way I was using the metaphor…”
on 17 May 2012 at 1:48 am
Glenda, funny post!
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Comment on “There are many ways to guarantee that growth won’t happen.”
on 17 May 2012 at 1:34 am
“… when Ireland ratified the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992.”
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Comment on “There are many ways to guarantee that growth won’t happen.”
on 17 May 2012 at 1:32 am
“We lost our economic sovereignty not by signing up to the bailout, but by needing it.”
That’s a great line – outstanding, in fact.
It is also complete bunkum. Economic sovereignty was derogated when Ireland ratified the Treaty of Maastricht in 1991. This set out a schedule whereby all sovereignty over Ireland’s monetary policy and some of its fiscal policy (as specified in the GSP) would be derogated to the EU and its institutions. Other types of economic policy (tariffs, trade agreements, regulation, etc) were derogated in previous and subsequent treaties such that only limited control of fiscal and taxation policy remained (taxation policy for VAT, for example, derogated).
However, sovereignty over the remnants of Ireland economic policy was not “lost” when the EU/ECB forced Ireland to bail-out eurosystem banks based in France and Germany, etc, or when the IMF attached conditions related to internal governance to their loan. No treaty was signed derogating additional sovereignty to either the EU or the IMF (or, indeed, the UK) for any of that. The EU ‘forced’ a weak europhile government to abrogate its duty to promote the national interest by threatening not to co-operate with it as the institution that controls its currency. The government could have called its bluff but led by a europhile (Biffo) chose not to.
Ireland didn’t need to bail-out eurosystem banks based in France and Germany. However, the beneficial owners of the EU (France and Germany) needed Ireland to bail-out their overleveraged banks because if Irish taxpayers couldn’t be forced to bail them out then French and German taxpayers would have to bail them out. As they had de facto control over the sovereign powers that Ireland had already derogated, they were able to abuse those powers to ensure that the burden of bailing-out their overleveraged banks was not shared with them, or placed solely upon them, but placed solely upon the Irish taxpayers instead.
Now let’s look at the logic in the glorious sentence: if economic sovereignty is lost by an unbalanced budget, then that implies that it must be restored by a balanced budget. Is this the case? No, once sovereignty over fiscal policy is derogated to the EU it will never be regained by those who gave it away even if they run a budget surplus. The ECJ had made it explicit that sovereign powers, once derogated, cannot be reclaimed by a member state.
“Given that our debt burden is already unsustainable, austerity and the kindness of friends is all we’ve got.”
As Blanche DuBois said, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” The kindness is such that you were loaned money at an extortionate rate to repay money that you didn’t owe by those who forced the losses of their own banks upon you. Loansharks and extortionists aren’t friends. Repayment of illegitimately nationalised eurosystem debts will account for more than half of all tax revenue generated by the state, not to mention the tens of billions every year existing the domestic economy in private debt repayment. Locking yourself into a deal that you can’t deliver on, and should never have entered into, isn’t a rational strategy.
The europhiles, of course, don’t care about any of that. They are only concerned about creating a single European state due to idealogical brainwashing from Monsieur Monnet.
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Comment on Would the legalisation of cannibis help reduce the drug problem in Derry (and elsewhere)?
on 16 May 2012 at 11:35 pm
“The classic daily mail line, and completly incorrect.” – changeisneeded
Which part is wrong? That most cannabis sold in the UK is skunk?
The Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs says that:
“The majority of cannabis sold in Britain is ‘skunk’, so-called because it has a very strong smell. It is green dried plant material rather than brown solid cannabis (hashish) which was more popular in the 80s and 90s (it was then imported mainly from Morocco). The strength of skunk now averages around 10% THC, but it can exceed 18%, whilst its CBD content is very low. Even so, it is impossible to get a toxic overdose of THC by taking cannabis in typical ways.
There is still quite a lot of imported cannabis, (herbal or hash) about but the market has changed considerably in recent years. Skunk is now the main form of the drug available – it is grown in the UK and so reduces the risk for large-scale dealers in importing the drug. It is grown under artificial light in small cannabis factories, often empty houses or disused factory spaces. Last year the police shut down over 7,000 of these factories.”
The devastating effects of skunk cannabis on the nation’s mental health are revealed here for the first time, showing where the drug has hit hardest around the country.
Or is it the mental health problems part?
According to The Independent:
“Some areas have suffered a tenfold increase in people mentally ill from using the drug.
Nationally, skunk smokers are ending up ill in hospital in record numbers, with admissions soaring 73 per cent. The number of adults recorded as suffering mental illness as a result of cannabis use has risen sharply from 430 in 1996 to 743 in 2006.
The government data shows how the damaging effects of the drug have swept across England.”
According to the BBC:
“People who smoke potent skunk are more at risk of psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia than those who use other types of cannabis, scientists suspect.
According to new research, regular users double their risk of psychosis but heavy skunk users increase theirs seven-fold.
UK experts have a theory it is down to skunk’s composition – it contains more of the chemical that gets users stoned.
The work is published in British Journal of Psychiatry.”
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Comment on A quick backward glance on European History…
on 16 May 2012 at 5:03 pm
It’s also worth remembering that there are others that covert your sovereignty and territory; and if you don’t hang onto it, you’ll end up as a quick colour change on the map.
As Reagan said, freedom is only ever one generation away from being lost.
Vote No!
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Comment on Would the legalisation of cannibis help reduce the drug problem in Derry (and elsewhere)?
on 15 May 2012 at 6:22 pm
Most cannabis sold today is “skunk” which has been genetically modified to deliver an extremely high level of mind-altering THC. It’s a very different drug than the trendy early cannabis and brings a whole new level of social and mental health problems with it.
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