Slugger O'Toole

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Latest comments from MrPMartin (see all)

MrPMartin has commented 24 times (0 in the last month).

1. Comment on Sinn Fein’s seven goals towards unification?
   on 8 April 2012 at 11:19 pm

   Having problems in reading all 101comments prior to mine. Right now I only see Fr Toms last comment 1047pm. When I clicked on Older Comments, I am only shown just one other comment and the overall tally of comments for this thread suddenly changes from 101 to 51 but I am presented with no further opportunity to look at the other 99 comments. Is something broken here? Thank you

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2. Comment on It’s the English question now, stupid
   on 17 February 2012 at 11:13 pm

   It is true that an English Parliament (EP) would not be a solution due to England’s size in proportion to the UK but the solution to this is to divide England into regions and impose a devolutionary settlement to each one giving each one the same powers as Scotland and increasing the status of the Welsh and NI Assembly to the same degree too.

   After that, we would have over a dozen self-governing regions of the UK, none of which on its own would constitute more than 12% of the entire UK population.

   As to how the UK federal government operations, then one can simply look to Germany to see how a well functioning Federal system works.

   Here’s a good place to start as any to read up on the German political system:

   http://www.rogerdarlington.me.uk/Germanpoliticalsystem.html

   Also, did you know the Prime Minister of Lower Saxony is a David McAllister who is a 1st generation Briton/Scot?

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_McAllister_(politician)

   I digress.

   The solution to the West Lothian question is so patently obvious (i.e. my suggestion above), that it beggars belief it hasnt been entertained or imposed.

   The German lander were imposed and they work.

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3. Comment on Republic’s councils: Power without responsibilities?
   on 15 February 2012 at 11:04 pm

   In my considered opinion, all local government is mired in croneyism, pettyness, pet policies which are little more than ciphers for clientelism and wasting public money on endevours to help the party at large get votes for the big Parliament.

   The main and typical roles local governance, in any nation are as follows:
   Garbage collection
   Leisure centres
   Public parks
   Street cleaning

   However, do we need councils to provide these services? Take bin collections: can central government not command a National Bin day or at least have a designated bin day for each town and city without a council getting involved? We dont need councils to build and run Post Offices, do we?

   As for leisure centres, why? I am not questioning the merits of these emporiums of fitness but I am questioning why councils feel the need to build and run them? Ok, we need shops and filling stations too but we dont look to the council to run these, do we? If you think it about it more, surely publicly funded leisure centres are to the detriment of privately run leisure businesses. Does anyone seriously think people can’t use their own money save through cut or abolished rates to pay fees for newly established privately funded budget gyms? The market will always fill the gap that need creates so spare me the argument ‘what about low income groups access to gyms’. Believe me, the market would step in and provide equally cheap if not cheaper amenities.

   Street lighting, is there a difference in principle between Labour and Tory /Fianna Fail vs Fine Gael / SF vs DUP on how light banishes darkness from Maint Street, Anytown?

   Street cleaning: why can’t we create a civic society where people volunteer to clean their own communities?

   Everytime we invite the State into any room in our house, it does an ok but half-assed job while those who were in the room before the State came in, watch the State get to work and sit on the sofas, getting lazy and blase.

   When the State gets involved, it has the unintended consequence of divorcing people from how things work. Welfare was only intended for temporarily jobless breadwinners to be tided over until they found work. It was never intended to be a lifestyle choice – but it has evolved like that but that’s another thread.

   But its the same principle with councils, whereever they are. The more THEY do, the less WE do. The more THEY do, the less WE are connected to our civic duties and responsibilities.

   Here’s another example, meals on wheels. A laudable and wonderful thing indeed. No question about it but why can’t neighbours or friends or family provide this? I tell you why, the State and Statist thinking has invited the State in to play the role of surrogate family with the result that hitherto family ties and role and responsibilites slowly but surely withered away due to increasing redundancy leaving us a largely unhappy people, a people of broken homes, nuclear families and lonely old people.

   So, whither councils: I say scrap them and let the people wake up and take over roles and responsibilities that not only they should assume but would make a better and more civic and happier society for it would be a people who once again, feel a connection to the community around them.

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4. Comment on Case for unification: “I sense that republicans don’t actually know the answer themselves”
   on 14 February 2012 at 7:46 pm

   WEIDJM
   some of your argument are specious
   Regarding your assertion that the British people of NI are a tiny minority of the UK assumes we are a people apart from the rest of the UK

   We are not. We are part of a greater whole body of Britons. Going by your logic, you should campaign for independence for Leitrim as Leitrim people exercise little control over the affairs of ROI. 

   As for discrimination against minority languages, that was in the past. Move on. Bad things happened in the past in every country on Earth. 

   I see Ireland as isolationist, not belonging to NATO, the Commonwealth. Is such a policy borne from a high moral principle or just a narrow minded relic of anti Britishness that has thankfully dissipated in recent years. If I lived in such an Ireland, I would feel culturally stranded like an ex pat abandoned in a land I was born in. I rather suspect white Zimbabwe farmers feel a lot like this these days but we mustn’t discuss their plight, must we, in case liberals are offended. 

   My Irishness is founded in my love of the landscape, it’s literature, it’s spirit and it’s people. My Britishness is founded on the same. There is so much enmeshment twixt the two that it seems churlish to see a clean divide where none exists

   Hence my not wanting to be part of an Irish republic as it is founded on an ethos and principles that are alien to me. It is still a country where latent anti civicness exists as civic duty is still felt as something British and slightly shameful and foreign. I actually was told off playfully by a man in Athlone when I picked up litter by being told “aren’t you the Englishman”. He meant no harm but that comment says a lot. 

   I feel more at home in Great Britain. Its multiplicity of cultures , it’s eccentricities, it’s culture, its liberalism and language are what I have been brought up with and admire and love and feel part off. I look at the Houses of Parliament and I feel a sense of civic and historical belonging that I do not feel one single bit for Leinster House. I visit Haye on Waye for its book festivals and eccentric manners. There is no town in Irelad that compares. I visit Harrogate and Bath and wonder at its Roman heritage and beautiful tearooms. I visit the villages of southern Wales and hear colliery folk songs still being sung in its pubs. Songs borne from economic solidarity and civic relevance ; not 4 green fields or nations once again. 

   Britain I have lived in and was welcomed and felt at home. I didn’t lose my accent or deny where I came from. I suspect those with chips on their shoulders and who choose to ghettoise themselves and not mingle, would regard Britain as unwelcoming and cold as they behave in such a way as to diminish and extinguish any welcome. 

   ROI is civically and politically and culturally a different land. I like the Uk. I love the UK. It’s been good to me and for the people of NI ( I know the State got things wrong but didn’t US troops kill innocent people at Kent University without a paramilitary group being spawned? All armies behave like idiots on the streets lets face it. Its not a quintessentially British thing)

   I’m sorry but I have yet to be convinced of voting for a UI

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5. Comment on Case for unification: “I sense that republicans don’t actually know the answer themselves”
   on 13 February 2012 at 10:57 pm

   Ireland would need to ditch its petulent and rather morally ambiguous ‘neutrality’, whatever neutrality means in a world where a flap of a political wing in east Asia or the Caucauses could cause an economic or a political storm in Western Europe or N.America and vice versa.

   I dont want a united Ireland anymore than I want NI to become part of Germany or Italy, no matter how much I like those countries, simply because I am both British and Irish. and I see no reason to leave the UK or vote for partitioning the UK i.e the family of nations.

   I’ve nothing against the Republic but I dont want to be culturally or politically part of it. This may seem like anecdotal but it carries a fair degree of weight but every time I watch a political or current affairs programme on RTE, as much as they are well made and informative etc, they are, to me, just that little bit foreign and different in the much the same way I feel when I watch France 24 on Sky.

   Sure, we can unite with France and dream up a strange brew of innovative consitutionalisms etc but why should we bother? Let’s put it like this, what is wrong with being in the UK? What aspect of Irishness cannot be expressed within the UK?

   Britishness is not mutually exclusive to being Irish. It’s a famialial, inclusive term in just the same way someone can be both American and Californian.

   Just why I would want to vote to leave a culturally diverse and despite what sensationalist headlines may think, a wealthy UK to join an impoverished republic, is anyone’s guess but I’m open to persuasion.

   Can republicans persuade me why I should do this? And please dont mention 1916, famines etc. I am British and I am here and I am here to stay no matter the tragedies of the past and no matter how much they shouldnt have happened. I do feel guilt and sadness over what has been perpertrated against Ireland in the past but I’m sorry, I just love Radio 4 and my sense of belonging to a greater entity a little too much and I am not being facetious. I rather think I speak for many of my political and cultural persusasion.

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6. Comment on Time for Ireland to align with London rather than Boston or Berlin?
   on 13 February 2012 at 10:37 pm

   All countries have regional imbalances in net contribution to its treasury. In the US, Arkansas or Alabama would be net benificiaries of the US Treasury. Does anyone use this as an excuse to expel them from the Union?

   I’m afraid its the curse of the periphery. All nations have a poor periphery and the further one is from the capital, the poorer things are.

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7. Comment on Long to Reign Over Us.
   on 6 February 2012 at 9:38 pm

   Comrade Stalin

   The Queen does not have power invested on her by God. I take my politics from Bagehot, not Blackadder.

   Regarding my hypothesis on the Queen declaring war on Slovenia, the army wouldnt budge. Your assertion that a housepet which is not a dog does not necessarily lead it to being a cat, is of course true but is a non sequiter.

   Power in the UK may have originally been gifted from the monarch down to the people in the manner you describe back in the 17th century onwards but through common usage and custom, power very much rests with the people today and should the monarch or Parliament try to wrest it away, it would find it trying to budge a mountain with the nose of a dog or a non-dog.

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8. Comment on Long to Reign Over Us.
   on 6 February 2012 at 8:25 pm

   Comrade Stalin

   Please desist from ungentlepersonly language. Just because you see a definition of a word one feels inately familiar with, expresse in a different way, does not mean that it’s rubbish.

   But anyway, if that’s your definition of a republic, then yes, the UK is a republic as its power is derived from its citizenry. Even if the Queen went barmy and declared war on Slovenia, not one soldier would lift a gun because the army, de facto, takes its orders from No 10 Downing St.

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9. Comment on How ‘conservative’ Unionism lost its footing in Scotland?
   on 6 February 2012 at 8:06 pm

   It’s a poor political system that has no room for a centre-right party which has a chance of power on its own. Ireland suffered and still suffers this to this day, albeit from the opposite pole i.e. never having a strong enough leftwing party that would hold power on its own or be the major partner of one.

   Where all parties of power, be they SNP, Lab or LibDem are just variations of a socio-economic theme, Scotland will end up mired in clientelism.

   The election of Ruth Davidson instead of Murdo Fraser was an example, as Orwell would put it and if I be bold to paraphrase, an example of the Scottish Tory party doing precisely the wrong thing in unison like the Garadene swine and jumping of the cliff marked ‘oblivion’.

   Mr Fraser was right ; the party needs rebranding. Davidson et al, seem to think that the ship is more important than the journey and refuse to replace the sails because they always were there, ignoring the obvious ragged state of them.

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10. Comment on Long to Reign Over Us.
    on 6 February 2012 at 7:52 pm

    Mr Gallagher:

    So if the UK replaced the Queen with President Cowell tomorrow morning, and assuming nothing else changed ; would you then say the UK would still not be a republic because a republic, is a form of government where the majority are held in check whereas a democracy is where the majority rule ok.

    This is a very good article on the subject:

    http://lexrex.com/enlightened/AmericanIdeal/aspects/demrep.html

    The US then, going by this, would be the world’s only Republic due to the checks and balances that it’s tripartite system of government works within.

    However, Italy, Ireland, Iceland etc, are not republics but mere democracies because despite not having constitutional monarchs as heads of state, their executives are wholly derived from the majority slate of elected representatives and thus can pass any law they want. I know these countries have constitutions and laws that contravene their constitutions can be challenged but they can be passed none the less and enforced none the less pending such constitutional challenges (which are not known for their swiftness to hearing and brevity of consideration) but all other laws, within bounds of the consitution, can be passed which can be of a purely majoritarian nature.

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