Slugger O'Toole

Latest comments from Seymour Major (see all)

Seymour Major has commented 663 times (18 in the last month).

1. Comment on Opening skirmish in Independence campaign
   on 25 May 2012 at 12:55 pm

   “But it’s a long haul to 2014.”

   It certainly is and I think sentimentality will play a huge part in the changes of support that will happen between now and then.

   I imagine Alex Salmond will be cool enough about the opening fgures. This year, we have the Queen’s Diamond Juibilee celebrations and the Olympic games with lots of waving of union Jacks. Come 2014, the Commonwealth games come to Scotland and the 700th anniversary of Bannockburn will be celebrated. Nicely timed from the Nationalist point of view.

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2. Comment on Euro crisis: “With that we buried the Maastricht Treaty, the legal basis for currency union”
   on 22 May 2012 at 9:11 pm

   I think the Germans have already thought beyond a few countries like Greece, Portugal and Ireland leaving the euro. They wont budge an inch on the firewall or underwriting the currency until they get everything their own way. Their big problem is how to protect Spain and Italy before they get them under proper political control. I dont see how they can solve that one.

   It is time that the Mr. Scallys of this world stopped spewing out unrealistic solutions in their newspaper columns. Giving the European Parliament the right to initiate legislation would not bring union, let alone evolve to reduce the democratic deficit. You need to go much further than that. The first big step on that road is not the right to initialise the legislation. It is the giving to MEPs complete political independence.

   To make that happen, you would need an amendment to the treaties so that MEPs are immune from being de-selected by the political parties that they represent – unless they have been found to be corrupt or unfit for office but not on political grounds – at the EU elections.

   Once that happens, the MEPs are free to join or leave the political groups that they want to be part of. The latter then become actual Euro-Parliamentary parties. Those Euro-Parliamentary parties then negotiate a consensus between them and eventually join up into a coalition which is capable of commanding a majority of votes. But the evolution has to go further. That same coalition then forms its own committee. That becomes the new de facto executive.

   In the opening period of the existence of these new institutions, there is a power battle between the new de facto executive and the existing European Commission which is the “real” European executive. The Presidency of the Commission is the first to come under the new executive control as it is elected by the Parliament. Eventually the de facto executive wins the battle to exercise all the Commission’s powers. This is followed by a further treaty change whereby all commissioners are elected by the European Parliament.

   The final stage of political union is the transfer of the remaining sovereign national powers of taxation, defence and foreign policy to the European Parliament. The timescale, however, is the problem with this theory. There are just too many microsteps in between those treaty steps to achieve it in the timescale envisaged by the Germans (10 years).

   It is also a timetable that is completely unrealistic in terms of saving the euro.

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3. Comment on Total Politics: Top 20 NI Blogs…
   on 20 May 2012 at 2:37 pm

   Since the vote was taken, a lot of water has passed under the bridge. The results are out of date, never mind the links (which still include Burke’s corner)

   I would say that Ian Parsley will be in the next top 20 list. He is consistently improving as a political thinker and already outstrips the overwhelming majority of NI politicians in that department.

   Jeffrey Peel at 17 is just about right but would and should be higher if he wrote more often.

   All bloggers have their hobby horses and that is what oftne makes them more fun to read. I enjoy Jeffrey’s attacks on religion, even though I dont agree with hist atheist militancy.

   Slugger just about deserves its No. 1 spot but at this stage in its development, it should not be so close to losing that spot.

   I dont think there is enough diversity on this website (I am not talking about Unionist / Nationalist diversity). I would like to see more bloggers who are known for their politican views – people like Turgon and Chris Donnelly but on the left / right spectrum (like Jenny (can you poach her?) as well as well as the Unionist / Nationalist spectrum.

   I would also like to see more blogs about sport. In fact, I would welcome a sports blogger on slugger that is an expert and concentrates solely on sport. No disrespect to Dewi who writes about rugby or to Pete writing about cricket but I think they would both agree they are not experts.

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4. Comment on Normality and rugby
   on 19 May 2012 at 2:18 pm

   There is a bit of a sporting feast today (particularly if you like, as I do, football, rugby and cricket).

   Later, I have an encounter with friends at the local. With the Rugby at 5 and the soccer at 7.45, that is quite a lot of Heineken to get through.

   Before I get brainless, I will be supporting Ulster and Bayern Munich (the latter because I support Spurs)

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5. Comment on “The link between taxing and spending is basic to democracy…”
   on 19 May 2012 at 1:29 pm

   PaulT 19 May 2012 at 9:33 am

   If the £10m figure is correct, it is probably £10m net of taxes. In 2009, the actual total spending was £19m with £12 million in tax receipts (source Sec of State for NI). The deficit appears to have widened.

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6. Comment on The Hain contempt case: a warning to England from Northern Ireland
   on 19 May 2012 at 1:08 pm

   Mr. Hain was lucky, in my view, that Mr. Larkin did back down. He has got away with the book being sold and more publicity to go with it, thus presumably increasing the sales.

   Mr. Larkin has used an unfortunate choice of words. He might have said “public confidence in the independence and integrity of the Northern Ireland Judiciary.” Instead, he has said:

   “….public confidence in the administration of justice”

   of which I, personally – for reasons connected with the system and administration of legal aid – have very little.

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7. Comment on Euro crisis: “Tis agoreuein bouletai?”
   on 19 May 2012 at 12:00 pm

   Thank you dwatch. That Independent Article was a very good read.

   The article is one of many others which links the politics of Europe to National psychological damage caused by the Second World War. Europeans on the continental mainland were never politically healed after that war, just as Ireland was not politically healed in terms of its relationship with the UK following its independence. Those impairments meant that economic logic was ignored as political decisions were driven by emotion.

   The trouble is, most European political leaders still do not appear to share this insight. It looks as though Rome will have to burn before that happens.

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8. Comment on Euro crisis: When “earth’s proud empires pass away”…
   on 19 May 2012 at 10:49 am

   I love reading articles that involve historicity. It sort of reminds me of articles written by Turgon.

   One of the problems with the analogy of Empire overreach is that too few people see the EU as an empire, although if you called it the “Holy Roman Empire, mark II” you would be quite close to the mark. Now, when did that Empire overreach?

   I think that happened many centuries before it officially ended, i.e. once it became clear that the Empire would be dominated by the Germans (there is a bit more than a parallel there).

   As to Ireland, when were substantive economic issues ever debated during an Irish referendum campaign on Europe? The substantive economic issues were always a matter of cross-party consensus and the debates repeatedly reduced to social issues.

   I completely agree that Maastricht 1992 was the overreaching measure of the EU project. Unfortunately, there has never been any right-of-centre criticism of the EU project in Ireland. Had there been, you would have seen genuine vigorous debate, as there was in Britain when Mrs. Thatcher was Prime Minister.

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9. Comment on “The link between taxing and spending is basic to democracy…”
   on 18 May 2012 at 1:05 pm

   Great clip. Newton is bang on the apple

   with the exception of one minor labelling point. “tight little tories” is really not quite accurate.

   There is also a distortive link between the size of the public sector and the propensity of voters to put tax issues very low down the political agenda. The reality is that NI is full of “tight little socialists” as well.

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10. Comment on “I do apologise for anyone who misunderstood the way I was using the metaphor…”
    on 18 May 2012 at 10:04 am

    Martina Anderson may not have realised it but she has unwittingly done the cause of normal politics a bit of a favour by drawing attention to her own classism.

    Classism and left-right politics go hand in hand. So, more of the same please Martina. Please have a go Employers. Please have a go at those who aspire to earn more money. Please have a go at entrepreneurs. Please defend serial benefit claimants who dont want to be anything else. Please defend Northern Ireland for having the highest percentage of DLA claimants per capita. Oh yes and finally, please attack Rory for touching the Ulster Banner.

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