Slugger O'Toole

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Latest comments from Colm McGinn (see all)

Colm McGinn has commented 26 times (0 in the last month).

1. Comment on £16 million wasted, Hidden cost of A5.
   on 17 February 2011 at 7:53 pm

   ‘Irish Unity’ is just a stunt/ smokescreen.

   What about the money? Most of £1000,000,000 (One Billion £s)

   That’s a lot of quarrying, a lot of road contractors. A lot of possibilities. Bertie Ahern’s little stunt, just loved by the other parties to that deal.

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2. Comment on Gerry Adams “considering all legal remedies open to him…”
   on 17 February 2011 at 7:11 pm

   I see Paul T (who he?) seems to be somewhat committed.

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3. Comment on £16 million wasted, Hidden cost of A5.
   on 17 February 2011 at 12:24 am

   Why do you all think it’s just a matter of the minister’s ego?

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4. Comment on Fintan O’Toole sounds great but he’s got it wrong
   on 26 November 2010 at 2:40 pm

   ‘Debt, there is no Jubilee’

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTdLgtzD9eU&feature=player_embedded#!

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5. Comment on Fintan O’Toole sounds great but he’s got it wrong
   on 24 November 2010 at 5:42 pm

   Your analysis is more about optimism on the nature of Capital, and pessimism on the human condition, than ‘very clear parameters for change’.

   ON: “what I call the dictatorship of the eponymous shareholder.” Not so. The dictatorship is of the very large shareholders, usually through the vehicle of corporate investment. This usefully conceals ownership, and puts things ‘at a remove’ from the other life of the shareholder, private or corporate. The little owner, implied in eponymous, is purely a makeweight.

   ON: “This is certainly not the form of capitalism that Adam Smith would have recognised and as an evolution it has been, in my view, a step too far subverting the interests of the State and commonwealth to the overriding power of the market. However the current financial storm throughout the world is correcting this situation to an extent, and the correction is yet in its infancy.” AND “Capitalism is about producing pins and selling them to a market, it’s not about high finance and that is why we in the west are finished.”

   Capitalism is about using capital, to organise and to supply any goods or service that is/are profitable. Where we are now is an entirely predictable outcome. If Adam Smith wrote in any given late 18th century presentation of ideas, there was (post Marx) a clearer picture of possible longer range outcomes. That’s where we are now. (‘We are where we are’….. Donncha just love it!) A world of externalised costs, where resource use and pollution are threatening our species, & many other species, very existence. So we obviously agree on that point, anyway.

   ON: “Firstly the State has re-emerged as a great power player and ultimately this is going to have to continue”. That’s almost a platitude, in the context of this discussion. No it has not.

   ON: “Also the paradigm of Western economic dominance is shifting and it is not the west that is leading global recovery but the emerging economics in what we used to call the Third World.”

   Which is fine. China now no longer needs the West; their home market is of 1,200 million persons, of whom only 25% are so far, ‘effective consumers’. We (the West) will start re-engaging in manufacturing, though not necessarily of textiles & such, until a clearer resolution of globalisation becomes apparent.

   AND ” The social solidarity and prosperity that emerged in the 1950s and 60s is going to be a thing of the past and with it will go expendable things human rights and all the luxuries of equality. Unfortunately the future is bleak. It could be arrested by a Stalinist centralised industrialism and collectivisation, but the force required to divest Irish Kulaks of their chattels would require a powerful Politburo of government elites.”

   I’m torn between saying ‘Bollocks!’ to the pessimism implied, and gleefully recognising that if that’s where the more conservative commentators are, then the job of those of us who want change & prosperity & survival, is somewhat easier.

   ON: “but I haven’t heard anything from you for change other than a rather nebulous let’s put on our jack boots and protest.” It’s an unusual juxtaposition, to imply that the jackbooted minions of oppression are the protesters.

   On my prescriptions, it seems to me that we are now on the edge of a 1930s type depression. It’s hard to say yet what the inflation implied in rising costs from China, allied to opportunity for European manufacturers will mean. Interesting times.

   I think, that leaving the environmental & economics issues to one side, (momentarily) the other big issue is of personal freedom, which is threatened by the power of TNCs and of various government bureaucracies. I think the solution to that, bearing in mind the need for police & intelligence agencies to supervise various terrorist groups, is to say, ‘Yes, I know you are examining my bank account, my e-mails, my political opinions, and all; that is fine, so long as I know.’

   That is to say, set a legal framework for supervision of ‘the spooks’, because they are doing this now without supervision, and that’s the way they like it. There was a debate in Strasbourg, about 2 years ago, which illustrated this.

   And see “http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1363841.stm

   BBC News Online technology correspondent Mark Ward (Friday, 1 June, 2001,)

   Echelon exposed- This week saw the publication of a long-awaited European Commission report on the Echelon electronic eavesdropping network.

   The report confirmed the existence of the network, which is operated by intelligence services in US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and revealed that it had the ability to routinely tap phone calls and faxes as well as almost any type of net-based communication. ”

   If you had that set of laws, then you (you, I, J Citizen) could see where the money went; it would rapidly become very difficult, or impossible, to defraud tax authorities, to trade illegally, to punt stolen goods (E.g. tropical hardwoods, ‘blood’ diamonds), to buy the sinews of war for one’s little terrorist event.

   You can see how the spooks don’t like the thought of democratic supervision. They are on a very big boondoggle of money & power.

   With that dysfunction of the financial system ‘fixed’, then real world economics can come properly into play. Note that the 30s only ended with the huge investment & activity of WW2; I think a similar investment effort is needed to bring nearly all of our energy to renewables (*~ 50% Solar, 35% wind/ wave, 5- 10 % odds & ends of hydroelectricity, ~ 5- 10% of petroleum)

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6. Comment on Fintan O’Toole sounds great but he’s got it wrong
   on 24 November 2010 at 2:50 pm

   ON: “In theory year zero sounds like a great idea. Sweep away the institutions of State and class privileges; great! ”

   No it doesn’t and never did, sound like a great idea.

   You can say ‘socially equitable market capitalism’, but such a thing does not really exist. Or rather, it exists at a micro level, (I trade in that sector of small business) but is not how the world is run at present.

   That world is one where the mega corporations are now, & very dangerously, approaching a parity of power with elected governments. Those corporations, the Trans National, are completely unaccountable, except when law is applied to attempt to correct their abuses. We wealthy people in ‘the West’ don’t notice these abuses, because we benefit (in a short term way) from them. Costs are ‘externalised’ such that poor, dark skinned people pay them. Costs of environmental degradation, of ill health, and of reduced or zero democracy for them.

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7. Comment on Fintan O’Toole sounds great but he’s got it wrong
   on 24 November 2010 at 2:39 pm

   Neil, thank you for that claification, but towards the end, you continue what is, in it’s effect, a part of a campaign in favour of a status quo.

   ON: “There’s no such thing as a benevolent despot. Fintan might fancy himself as some kind of Übermensch to liberate us from our slumber,” I don’t see that at all, in anything Fintan O’Toole has written, & not in this piece.

   & ON: “but basically everyone will just continue slumbering” A peculiarly bleak assessment of the Irish people. I suppose that would fit with Burke.

   ON: “As animals we are conditioned with a Darwinian survival instinct and participation in the democratic process will first and foremost always be me fein and based on individual reasoned choices.” Me Too.
   I just don’t like it when I see the greater number of citizens/ subjects, ‘conned’ by the commentariat of ‘received wisdom’.

   ON: “If you think you can usher in a socialist republic by spouting theory at people you are solely mistaken. ”

   I’m not really a theory person, I’m more interested in practical things. Theory is good, as a tool for thought, but it’s not politics. I don’t want to usher in anything other than my survival, and the survival & prosperity of our wider community. That becomes a political project.

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8. Comment on Fintan O’Toole sounds great but he’s got it wrong
   on 24 November 2010 at 1:32 pm

   Re:

   “If the people have let down their own ideals then it is the people’s fault – but that is the people’s business not pseudo socialist intellectuals.”

   Indeed. Democracy is an absolutely awful system of government; – until one looks at the alternatives.

   The way you phrase that (which means also the way you think on it), “but that is the people’s business not pseudo socialist intellectuals” implies that to criticise government (the people don’t ‘have ideals’, on these matters. They just want an acceptable level of performance), is naive & ‘pseudo’.

   I wish to claim membership of this group you identify; I’m quite intellectual, believe in social justice & a large degree of economic equality.

   Am I to be dismissed? As ‘pseudo’?

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9. Comment on Fintan O’Toole sounds great but he’s got it wrong
   on 24 November 2010 at 12:41 pm

   What a load of balls, rather than a ‘reasoned and elegantly written article’!

   A great deal of self satisfied commentary on here. Do you guys actually believe it, or are you just ‘running interference’?

   Re:
   ‘Burke got it right. “When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the loss cannot possibly be estimated. From that moment, we have no compass to govern us, nor can we know distinctly to what port to steer.”’

   Burke was a polemicist, writing for a political effect (in favour of a conservative world view) 220 years ago. A while ago.

   In the intervening years, many aspects of change are apparent, but one unchanging is that those who have accreted power and money, will not give any part up without struggle. They will always find willing acolytes in support of their position, who will self- vindicate by referencing the received wisdom of the status quo.

   A small example of what is happenning in this world; Sunday Times ‘Rich List’: the wealthiest 1,000 persons in UK now own £342 Billion. Personal wealth. They made £77 Billion of that (nearly 1/4) in the previous 12 months. (May 2010) How did you all do in the past 12 months?

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10. Comment on Fintan O’Toole sounds great but he’s got it wrong
    on 24 November 2010 at 9:36 am

    That’s an interesting piece of political analysis.

    Now, how did Fintan O’Toole ‘condemn generations of the conservative poor to FF representation’?

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