Profile for Peter Geoghegan
Latest posts from Peter Geoghegan (see all)
Peter Geoghegan has posted 7 times (0 in the last month).
Could Indy Referendum Become A ‘Border Poll’?
As Brian Walker notes elsewhere on these pages, David Cameron’s pronouncement that a binding Scottish independence must take place within the next 18 months has significantly altered the dynamic of the debate on Scottish sovereignty. SNP deputy Nicola Sturgeon has warned against impositions from Westminster on the timing of the vote and the nature of [...] more »
Letters from Iceland
While Ireland’s mounting debt mountain continues to cause chaos in the Eurozone, I’ve spent the past week in the one country that embraced default back in October 2008: Iceland. Not that Iceland really had much choice about defaulting; the debts of its three privatised banks, Landsbanki, Kaupthing and Glitnir, were almost ten times GDP when [...] more »
Voting Rights for Irish Emigrants
The thorny issue of voting rights for the Irish diaspora emerged again yesterday on the Marian Finucane show. As reported over at thejournal.ie, TCD lecturer Elaine Byrne suggested allowing the Irish diaspora to vote in elections for the Seanad as a means of allowing more voices have an impact on Irish politics. Meanwhile in the [...] more »
Public Thinkers Beyond The University?
Last week a BBC Radio 3 scheme looking for “a new generation of public intellectuals” closed. Initiated in collaboration with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the scheme aimed to unearth a new wave of public thinkers with an expressed “interest in broader cultural debate”. The competition was open to all – as long [...] more »
Scottish Parliament Faces Budget Crisis
Budgets, budgets, budgets. While EU monetary commissioner Oli Rehn has been in Dublin trying to force through the Republic’s budget, across the water in Scotland a budgetary crisis looms large. The Scots might not be on the verge of calling in the IMF but at present Holyrood is on course for a serious shortfall next [...] more »
We’ll All Pay for Devolved Administrations’ Budget Cuts
The reality of massive public spending cuts has finally hit the devolved administrations (if not all their politicians). As Mick highlighted in his recent essay, NICVA’s report suggests that Stormont will have to make budget cuts of (at least) £1.2 billion in the next five years. Earlier today, the Independent Budget Review in Scotland recommended a fall [...] more »
Calman Will Deepen Scots Economic Misery
In May, the new coalition in Westminster pledged to implement the long-delayed Calman Commission recommendations for the Scottish Government. The Calman report, originally published in June 2009, was sat on by New Labour, but now its recommendations for Holyrood seem certain to be introduced within the coming months. The most eye-catching feature of Calman’s proposals is in [...] more »
Latest comments from Peter Geoghegan (see all)
Peter Geoghegan has commented 5 times (1 in the last month).
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Debating the Churches’ Role in the Peace in Northern Ireland
This morning’s Sunday Sequence featured a substantial debate (about 35 minutes into the recorded programme) on a new book,Religion, Civil Society and Peace in Northern Ireland (Oxford University Press 2011), written by sociologists John Brewer, Gareth Higgins and Francis Teeney. The debate was framed in an opening vignette by presenter William Crawley in uncompromising terms, [...] read our review » -
Stay out of Libya: counterinsurgency doesn’t work
A moment of some significance in journalism perhaps, as the New York Times reviews the current talked about book, The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan by Bing West. The author is no bleeding heart but a former assistant Defense Secretary from the Reagan era who stomped his way round the Afghan [...] read our review »
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Spare us a phoney row about racism, we’ve got enough on
A silly media row about racism just had to figure in the riots’ post mortem. Was the Tudor history expert David Starkey racist on Newsnight when he said: The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture has become the fashion. And black and white, boy and girl, operate in [...] read our review »
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Comment on RBS bonus: Obscene or a nice piece of business?
on 31 January 2012 at 10:56 am
Writing in the LRB Hester/RBS-gate, Zizek has some interesting comments on why there’s a boom in bankers pay (and in boardrooms more generally, note real wages have decreased in the US since 1970s and in UK for about last 25 years).
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n02/slavoj-zizek/the-revolt-of-the-salaried-bourgeoisie
‘If the old capitalism ideally involved an entrepreneur who invested (his own or borrowed) money into production that he organised and ran, and then reaped the profit from it, a new ideal type is emerging today: no longer the entrepreneur who owns his company, but the expert manager (or a managerial board presided over by a CEO) who runs a company owned by banks (also run by managers who don’t own the bank) or dispersed investors. In this new ideal type of capitalism, the old bourgeoisie, rendered non-functional, is refunctionalised as salaried management: the members of the new bourgeoisie get wages, and even if they own part of their company, earn stocks as part of their remuneration (‘bonuses’ for their ‘success’).
This new bourgeoisie still appropriates surplus value, but in the (mystified) form of what has been called ‘surplus wage’: they are paid rather more than the proletarian ‘minimum wage’ (an often mythic point of reference whose only real example in today’s global economy is the wage of a sweatshop worker in China or Indonesia), and it is this distinction from common proletarians which determines their status. The bourgeoisie in the classic sense thus tends to disappear: capitalists reappear as a subset of salaried workers, as managers who are qualified to earn more by virtue of their competence (which is why pseudo-scientific ‘evaluation’ is crucial: it legitimises disparities). Far from being limited to managers, the category of workers earning a surplus wage extends to all sorts of experts, administrators, public servants, doctors, lawyers, journalists, intellectuals and artists. The surplus takes two forms: more money (for managers etc), but also less work and more free time (for – some – intellectuals, but also for state administrators etc).’
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Comment on Letters from Iceland
on 1 April 2011 at 9:38 pm
Fair point on the Eurozone Pete, probably should have mentioned that.
But there is a distinctly different attitude to debt (public and private) here, too, that is worth remarking on.
Having their own currency has been a mixed blessing for Iceland though. At present it’s a closed currency but when they open it up (a process supposedly due to begin soon and end in 2015), all hell could break lose with massive capital flight from Iceland.
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Comment on Northern Ireland to lose two MPs…
on 4 March 2011 at 10:46 am
Yep, it will Nevin – nobody sought to de-link Assembly representation from Westminster, which the Bill does for Wales! So the Welsh Assembly numbers will stay the same but Stormont’s won’t.
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Comment on Northern Ireland to lose two MPs…
on 4 March 2011 at 10:23 am
This is the result of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill 2010, which was tagged onto the bill for the AV vote.
The total MPs is being reduced from 600 to 650, early estimates had NI losing 3 but looks like it will be 2. Constituency boundaries will be redrawn, along strict population lines (all electorates bar Western Isles, Orkneys, Isle of Wight) must have between 95 and 105 per cent of the new quota (which is 76,600 voters) – which means that the traditional electoral wards as we know them will change dramatically (how much in the North isn’t clear but it could be quite a lot).
The focus when the AV bill was going through the Lords and the Commons was all on Labour obstruction – Labour have by far the most to lose from the changes – but these are major overhauls of the electoral map that have just been passed without a lot of voters knowing much about them.
I wonder which MPs in NI find themselves without a seat to defend at the next election?
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Comment on Voting Rights for Irish Emigrants
on 20 December 2010 at 6:26 pm
@Mark You don’t need dual nationality to vote in many EU countries.
@Mark Dowling The no taxation no representation chestnut spun about emigrant voting is both old and more than a little disingenuous – we don’t take away the votes of non-tax payers living in ROI do we?
If you look at the UK once you emigrate you are entitled to register for an overseas vote. It’s a relatively hassle free exercise that can be done on-line and doesn’t lapse for 15 years (although that is currently being challenged in the EU and could be made indefinite). Ireland, on the other hand, gives its citizens 18 months and then there are excluded from the democratic process.
But it’s also worth remembering that the proportion of Irish abroad who would actually vote if they could is liable to be very, very small. Eg in the UK only a few thousand ex-pats bother to register and vote even though it’s a pretty straightforward process.
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