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Lessons in Cute Hoorism: “Graft was accepted, for you were taking from the British…”
I’ve been catching up on some reading, recently. Most pleasantly surprised by John Drennan’s latest opus from Gill and Macmillan, Cute Hoors and Pious Protestors… It’s early days yet, but I was struck by this paragraph, part of a dissection of Fianna Fail near the beginning: One of the more fatal consequences of our colonial [...] read our review »
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Round up of Tuesday’s Political Studies Association conference
If you want to get a flavour of the proceedings at the Political Studies Association conference on its opening day, then the Storify collation below will bring you some of the images, tweets and sounds of the day. Particular highlights included: the Opening Plenary with David Blunkett, Peter Riddell and Matthew Flinders; and the late [...] read our review »
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Is Fianna Fail the new Woolworths of Irish politics?
It’s not published until 3rd March, but one book I recommend you place an advance order for from Slugger’s Bookstore is James Harkin’s Niche. Belfast émigré Harkin examines a number of stories from business, culture and politics and comes to a single insight: everywhere the broad middle is collapsing. He offers Woolworths as an iconic exemplar [...] read our review »
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Comment on Ireland’s impending experience of its own ‘Total Perspective Vortex’?
on 11 May 2012 at 1:47 pm
I don’t think it is too cynical a platform to call for a ‘No’ vote on either as it merely reflects a domestic political perspective on the government rather than an attitude towards the EU or eurozone (i.e. it says ‘get back in there and get something better out of this’).
From a wider point of view – the arguments ‘for’ the Treaty largely rely on [hegemonic] acceptance of the logic of the current plans as being somehow natural or inevitable. I assume that if the drift to the left extends beyond France and Greece, then a neu logique will displace it that states that finance houses and other lenders will have to just accept their losses rather than be bailed out via sovereign borrowing/funding.
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Comment on Ireland’s impending experience of its own ‘Total Perspective Vortex’?
on 11 May 2012 at 1:34 pm
I think that’s the clever narrative you use to explain a ‘No’ vote.
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Comment on Ireland’s impending experience of its own ‘Total Perspective Vortex’?
on 11 May 2012 at 1:00 pm
The ever-steepening gradient of austerity will reach into the thin air of high altitude by 2014 when there is an €11.9bn bond maturing in January of that year. If the state hasn’t gone back to the bond markets that would been the point that it would need a second ‘bailout’.
I’ll advance another reason for a ‘No’ – the government can’t publicly reject the Treaty – but the citizens can. That would strengthen the negotiating hand of a government that has consistently failed to look like has any sort of handle on its brief in this area.
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Comment on Ireland’s impending experience of its own ‘Total Perspective Vortex’?
on 11 May 2012 at 11:56 am
Well, as Nama Wine Lake has put it’s argument for a No vote:
If your insurance broker were to offer you the pick between the following two insurance policies which would you choose? (a) a policy which covered you for all risks, entails a premium of €1,000 and is payable now or (b) an identical policy but instead of paying now, you can pay after disaster strikes and it will still cost you €1,000. Wouldn’t you be crazy to plump for the first policy?
Given all the uncertainty, it is just speculation to claim the unknowable: that a treaty rejection would make the current (or a future bailout) more onerous (controlling both the Improbability Drive and the Total Perspective Vortex). But the permitted deficit levels in the Treaty guarantee that acceptance of the treaty will make the current bailout more onerous in Ireland (particularly when dumbly converting even more Anglo promissory notes to sovereign debt and calling it re-negotiation is merely steepening the gradient that must be climbed to meet the obligations a yes vote would bring). With the ongoing issues in Spain and Greece, the change of emphasis in France etc, delaying the referendum would actually make sense purely on the grounds that the context is shifting, as would rejecting it for the same reason (that it is actually premature to expect a sign-up to it’s provisions now – it only has to be in law by next January).
And, more so, since the drift towards the left is a better fit to the general aspirations of reconfiguring the socialised banking debts than the existing Merkel/Sarkozy approach of protecting the private sector by strong-arming other states into the nationalisation of speculators’ losses.
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Comment on Being an all-Ireland party has its downsides – Sinn Fein’s inconsistency on property taxes
on 22 April 2012 at 12:02 am
Local authorities (i.e. councils and corporations) in the south do set and levy commercial rates (on top of the usual fees and planning levies etc) so the funding model is partially in place. The real mistake here was in not bringing rates back in (and by doing so, differentiating local power from the Oireachtas to dilute the parish pump dynamic).
And, in fairness to them, APNI audience didn’t seem to recognise factoids when they were given them by the Minister.
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Comment on Being an all-Ireland party has its downsides – Sinn Fein’s inconsistency on property taxes
on 21 April 2012 at 10:24 pm
Rates (as a property tax) are set, levied, collected and spent by local authorities in the north. They are set as a flat rate, collected and spent centrally in the south (as a straightforward poll/asset tax rather than a local authority service charge). So another member of the FG-Lab govt and now APNI appear not to know or understand the difference. Frankly, I’m surprised at APNI.
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Comment on “This is part of the culture of Ireland”
on 2 April 2012 at 3:18 pm
There was a conference that specifically considered the 1200 BC issue a few years (more info here).
I’m not sure modern vernacular English derives so much from Norman French as the literary language does (it is largely still Anglo-Saxon shoe-horned into spelling and grammatic conventions from Norman French). There is a critical distinction here between the written and spoken forms – top-slicing society to replace it and some of its social conventions (e.g. the documentary language of choice) will be highly visible in the written record (i.e. estate charters, chancery rolls etc) but are unlikely to be representative of the hugh proportion of society who are illiterate.
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Comment on “This is part of the culture of Ireland”
on 2 April 2012 at 9:27 am
Yokel/Malcolm – the general problem understanding language change is that most documented examples happen when mass print culture is present. In Ireland, there was no significant overlay of Norse (or Norman French) beyond some vocabulary, even when there was known movement of people. Old English settlers and the plantations preceded the widespread adoption of English (in the 18th/19th century) by a number of centuries and needed a National School system plus print culture to more or less facilitate a change-over. In recent experience, population overlays are often accompanied by some pathogenic event which would collapse one of the two populations (think Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel) which probably did happen at the start of Neolithic c.4300 BC. If it is the immigrant population that survives obviously language change would be likely to follow. There is always the obvious complication in Ireland being an island that seems to make it much less likely that there would be large-scale population movements the further you go back into prehistory.
It is hard to see where in prehistory the archaeological record (in Ireland) would support large-scale inward migration that might promote the same process. Even the replacement of copper technology by ferrous technology (around 600 BC) was probably a response to the eventual collapse of the large-scale copper extraction and distribution networks in central Europe that failed when iron emerged as the metal of choice in southern Europe after 1000 BC or so. It seems the collapse of markets can cause chain events even in prehistory.
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Comment on “This is part of the culture of Ireland”
on 1 April 2012 at 9:31 am
Yokel, afraid there is no real evidence for actual invasions (i.e. large-scale population movement) after the end of the Ice Age until the Norse. There is circumstatial evidence that suggests inward migration around 6500 BC and again in 4300-4000 BC.
Last detailed research on Bronze Age metalwork looked at groups of objects (hoards) and found those that included non-Irish objects were treated differently and didnt evidence standard patterning that was associated with hoards that only contained Irish objects (research was by Katharina Becker for her PhD at UCD). Ireland was self-sufficient in gold in the Bronze Age but probably imported most of its copper after about 1500 BC. As its prehistory, there are no written records, and you can interpret that anyway you like (xenophobia, imports as exotica etc).
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Comment on “This is part of the culture of Ireland”
on 30 March 2012 at 7:37 pm
If it is deemed as ‘treasure’ – it is automatically acquired by the state and the Valuation committee merely determine value to be paid to the finder/landowner. Not sure the issue of acquisition is as at all optional as BBC report suggests. Convention has been for Ulster Museum (as was) to access funds for purchase (e.g. from DCAL or National Lottery) or even with help of EHS (Built Heritage).
Unless British Museum has begun to aggressively lobby, the coroners finding makes it inevitable this will end up in UM.
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Comment on Household Charge, Promissory Note, Ard Fheis: the day before April Fools’ Day
on 27 March 2012 at 12:26 pm
Sorry – I corrected the text above – the current schedule runs to 2023 (i.e. seven years before the 2016 limit of the ministerial powers), even before the proposed swap for a government bond to mature in 2025. David Hall is arguing that this arrangement was ultra vires. Seems so obvious a challenge it is hard to see why no-one mounted it before now, but then again, it will be worth following.
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Comment on Household Charge and the Home Owners and Landlords revolt…
on 27 March 2012 at 11:01 am
“Anyone who owns land of any description cannot afford £67 pa is taking the michael…”
The issue isn’t land, it’s residential property. Those who own a second house already pay non-principle private residence payments of €200 per annum per property (see http://www.nppr.ie). As PaulT has pointed out – this Household Charge is being levied as a flat rate payment to all residential properties (i.e. for every residential property you own) other than those cover by a waiver. If you own a second property you are already paying a property tax for it via NPPR. So, if you own a €2m private residence outright or are in significant negative equity it doesn’t matter, you still pay. If you own a two-bedroom apartment is some suburban hell-hole of an apartment block you pay the same as the those living in Sorrento Terrace or leafy D4.
As to the idea that the Republic is a low tax economy: tax bands are 20% and 41% for income plus a universal income levy of 2% progressing to 4% (levied on gross salary not after deductions), plus a universal social charge which also progresses from 2% to 4% then to 7% dependent on income (again levied on gross). On top of that you can add the 23% VAT levied on consumers across a wide range of goods and services, stamp duties (which are incurred on more than property transactions), VRT on cars, high tax on fuel (now pretty much the same price as in UK) and a general requirement for health insurance for any level of healthcare provision (with risk-equalisation for VHI keeping costs high regardless of age or health status).
There is, of course, low Corporation Tax because you’d not want to kill an economy by taxing it just too much …
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Comment on Household Charge and the Home Owners and Landlords revolt…
on 26 March 2012 at 11:31 am
The issue of An Post has been blamed on data protection issues and the statutory basis of various agencies (there are various related interviews during this mornings Newstalk Breakfast show which can be listened back on here, including union reps discussing proposed collection teams from local authority staff and reasons for non-payment). Briefly, it is claimed that the local authorities cannot share data with An Post (whether that is technically correct is a different matter). Registration also requires the inclusion of significant amounts of data that will form the baseline for deeper taxes to be rolled out over the next 2-3 years including [un-metered] water charges, etc. The subsidy of local authorities by central government will no doubt decrease in proportion to monies raised – thus negating the implication that this will be additional monies for local government spending.
A wholescale re-organisation of local authority financing wouldn’t be out of place, but would have to publicly be off-set by reduction in the widespread stealth taxes that have taken it’s place to raise the revenue alternatively. The household charge is regarded as little more than another stealth tax. Many people believe they paid high stamp duty as an alternative to property taxes, which has caused significant resentment here (particularly when that property is now in negative equity). One explanation being given for non-payment is that people have to register for this rather than universally being billed directly and so the do-nothing scenario has become an opportunity for a form of passive protest.
On the plus side – some campaigners have asked people to donate E100 to the children’s hospital then post in the receipt in lieu of the household charge.
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Comment on The Siege of New Forge: Unionism’s latest pyrrhic triumph.
on 23 March 2012 at 8:07 am
If this is the police service’s athletic association that it’s not the RUC AA. There *is no* RUC, sorry lads. If any PSNI money, resources or premises goes into it or are used by it, it must stop. Anyone who wants to form a RUC AA can apply for grants etc like any other private club.
And if unionism wants to continue to depress with Great British Sausage moments, I am sure that will keep exciting their electorate again and again and again, won’t it? I mean, their voters are never going to bore of this, are they?
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Comment on Household Charge and the problem of unreformed and unaccountable local government
on 22 March 2012 at 6:27 pm
Irish Times says that 300,200 only 18% had paid charge as of yesterday. According to the various press reports, on 20th Feb it was 109,600, on 28th Feb it was 142,000, on 8th March it was around 200,000 and 250,000 on 16th March. So it has been consistently adding around 50,000 sign-ups per week for the last few weeks. There are an estimated 1.6m households which are required to register, so, as of yesterday, around 1,300,000 had not yet registered (and have a week to do so).
People are required to register various details of the property which will be used to then scale up the residential property tax with no indication of whether it will be progressive or just a flat tax. Local authorities don’t provide much in the way of visible public services that can actually be cut and the property tax is generally regarded as another stealth tax.
There are a series of categories of people who qualify for waivers and it’s not known what proportion of the 18% do not have to pay (I’ve included the detail on waivers and exemptions from householdcharge.ie below):
The waivers from payment of the household charge are as follows:
Owners of residential property entitled to mortgage interest supplement
Owners of residential property located in certain prescribed unfinished housing estates (see Unfinished Housing Estates section for more detail)
Persons claiming entitlement to a waiver are required to register their property.
The exemptions are below (there is no requirement to register an exempt property):
Residential properties that are part of the trading stock of a business and have not been sold or been the source of any income since construction,
Residential property vested in a Minister of the Government or the Health Service Executive,
Residential property vested in a housing authority, including property where households are purchasing their homes under the Shared Ownership Scheme and where the local authority still retains an ownership stake,
Voluntary and co-operative housing,
Residential property subject to commercial rates and wholly used as a dwelling,
Residential property owned by certain charities or comprised in a discretionary trust, and
Residential property where a person has to leave their house due to long-term mental or physical infirmity (e.g. a person that has moved into a nursing home).
Even if all the properties were liable, and paid, it would net the state 1.6 billion euro which is just under half of the cost of the Anglo-Irish Bank debt they are trying to convert to sovereign debt with the ECB rather than pay on 31st March. It is hard to see how 1,300,000 properties are going to be registered in the last week, or, at least, enough of them for the government to claim that the optics are positive. Given that the government had budgeted for growth levels that aren’t there, and, for the income from the Household Charge, even kicking the Anglo can down the road one more time might defer a mini-budget by May but its not looking likely.
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Comment on Media bias? Or interdicting the #Mahon report?
on 22 March 2012 at 3:39 pm
@Mick – patience! The media have to cover it before it can be suggested that they are taking a particular view on it. I’m guessing that the initial reaction will have to die down before we get the position FF want to hold over the medium/long term, which won’t happen until after the Dail debate next week, at least.
By the way – Vincent Browne is doing an hour and a half long special on Mahon this evening which should at least be good cabaret.
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Comment on Media bias? Or interdicting the #Mahon report?
on 22 March 2012 at 10:37 am
Given the size of the report it will be a while before anyone digests it properly. You need to go lazy and just add a twitter widget to run in the sidebar with topical hashtags so live blogs are less bother.
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Comment on Media bias? Or interdicting the #Mahon report?
on 22 March 2012 at 10:24 am
Yeah, people are assuming Ó Cuiv contrived to be thrown out to avoid the vote. He’s a FF loyalist, no doubt, but also a cabinet veteran and I think, at this stage, he just doesn’t have a heave or new party in him. He may well just go into a surly retirement claiming guardianship of Fianna Fáil’s core values from the dreamy days of single party govts etc (as FF would see it). Mahon may be less damning than people expect. It’s the impact/response of FF that will be interesting.
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Comment on Media bias? Or interdicting the #Mahon report?
on 22 March 2012 at 9:06 am
” if the foregrounding of this concern for balance in media coverage was little more than a preparatory bombardment as Fianna Fáil attempt to interdict Mahon and it’s findings” is pretty clear in linking the two and I’d suggest it would be cynical avoidance rather than stupid. Simply sticking it to ‘Old FF’ now as if this was a shock reveal would be stupid.
Obviously – we will see how the reaction unfolds later today and over the next few days.
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Comment on Media bias? Or interdicting the #Mahon report?
on 22 March 2012 at 7:45 am
Mick – 2nd last paragraph is worth reading properly. You also need to restart the timeline with the event Gallagher organised, otherwise, it will continue to just look like another preparatory salvo. I’m suggesting that the political safety words to look out for with Mahon will be ‘media bias’.
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