FIRST CAMERON, NOW MAY.

Posted on by October 20, 2017

This morning the Guardian headlines with, “Theresa May pleads with EU27 for Brexit deal she can defend.” I seem to remember not too long ago that David Cameron found himself doing the exact same thing.

The difference of course is that David went to Europe to avert the possibility of a vote against staying in the Union. He wasn’t looking for much, just a little sweetener, a bit of give and take, something he could go back to the British people with to swing the vote in favour of continuing British EU membership.

In their blindness and arrogance, the other leaders told David to fuck off. They said it was a British matter and it was up to him and his Tory party to sort it out. Obviously none of them believed for a moment that the British people would dare vote to leave the EU. They could never, in their insulated lives with their pack mentality, imagine Britain having the courage to go it alone. They got that one very wrong, didn’t they?

Now it is the turn of another civilized patient leader from the UK to once again plead for common sense to prevail. Theresa simply wants to avoid a hard BREXIT. She would like to move the conversation away from punishing the UK for its democratic decision and concentrate instead on how we can all get on in the future with the minimum disruption.

I blamed the EU leaders for the British vote because they left Cameron hang out to dry. They could have done many positive things for the UK which would have resulted in a different vote, but they didn’t. They chose to sneer at the British instead and delighted in their discomfort.

I predict if they do that again with May then the EU economy will also suffer badly, starting with Germany’s biggest industry, cars. If the British find themselves alone with their backs to the wall then they will get creative and resourceful. They’ve done it before. They have a way of closing ranks in their National interest when they have no other choice.

With the problems in Catalonia and the Basque country, Muslim violence in Western Europe, growling in Hungary and Poland and a committed eurosceptic taking over in Austria, now is the time for the EU to show good leadership and understanding.

Sadly, I do not believe there is a single one of them capable of it, but I hope I’m wrong.

POPULAR DEMOCRACY OR DEMOCRATIC POPULISM.

Posted on by October 18, 2017

I’m not a hundred per cent sure where I’m going with this one. I’m struggling to form an opinion or reach a conclusion on it so bear with me and if you have anything to add that might enlighten both me and my readers, feel free to comment.

Firstly, I find good definitions helpful in giving an accurate background for anything. So Democracy is literally “rule of the people”. In modern usage it is a system of government in which the citizens exercise power directly or elect representatives from among themselves to form a governing body, such as a parliament. Democracy is sometimes referred to as “rule of the majority”. Over many decades here I was content enough to believe that this is what was happening in my country as I went about my daily life. It wasn’t perfect of course and there were some corrupt people in power and some evil ones as well. But I always had that blind belief that we were democratic in the main and the will of the ordinary people was being observed.

Looked at more closely, (if I ever had), I could have examined the four pillars of democracy, (a) A political system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections-√ (b) The active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life-√ (c) Protection of the human rights of all citizens-√ and (d) A rule of law, in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens-√ We elected them every four years, those people who wanted to get more involved did so, the Gardai patrolled the streets and we all relied on the fact that we had our basic rights guaranteed, so-√

But I think it was around the mid-eighties when I sat back and reflected one day that I was paying 60% combined tax on my income and 19% compound interest on my loans. No matter how hard I worked, (and I worked seven days a week back then), I couldn’t seem to get ahead. A civil servant I knew sneered at me one night and said, “Sure you are only working your ass off for the bank.” On television at night you could see the politicians in their fine clothes with State Mercs. waiting to whisk them off. In the bank you were almost invited to genuflect before the manager. The system, as set up in our democracy, was, it seemed, rigged against us getting ahead. The first seeds of my resentment took root then.

However, we are a good natured people mostly and any victory by an Irish team on a sport’s field anywhere was enough for us to forget our troubles and celebrate. But it was a dreary daily grind and we were always busy and under pressure. In the press there often were articles about just how bad things were for the common people under communism and that line in journalism always made one feel relieved we lived in a democracy. You felt as if whatever problems you had, they’d be ten times worse if you lived in Eastern Europe. It was a sort of, “Lesser of two evils.”

I voted against the ‘Nice Treaty’ in 2001 mainly as a reaction to all of the well-heeled politicians urging us to vote for it. But while I had only glanced at the headlines of the Nice Treaty, I downloaded and studied every word of the Lisbon Treaty in 2008, (once bitten, twice shy). It troubled me that so much of  the wording was vague legalise and was open to interpretation and having seen how the EU could twist any wording to suit their interests, I voted against Lisbon too. Then we was ordered to go back and vote again, and this time get it right. A fortune of public money was spent to scare the shit out of us if we rejected Lisbon II for second time and thus it was passed. We were sold fear instead of the truth.

Then came the bank crash of 2008 and the, ahem, democratic decision, (in Europe), to convert the private debts of the Irish banks into the public debts of the Irish people. The authors of this scandal were the unelected commissioners who warned our feeble politicians that, “A bomb would go off in Dublin if we didn’t accept this obvious injustice.” The so-called bailout was an electronic exercise. The ECB and the IMF just brought billions of imaginary money into existence and did an electronic credit transfer to the Irish banks first. These banks were then instructed to transfer it straight back to the major banks of Europe they had borrowed from. This had the effect of taking bad loans off the books of European banks and dumping them on the Irish ones. But under instruction, our Government also pledged to underwrite all Irish bank debt so the whole lot of it was simply converted into a debt the Irish citizens owed. There followed years of austerity among the ordinary people as a result and many died from lack of medical care or committed suicide due to desperation or homelessness. Hundreds of thousands of our most educated young were forced to emigrate to find work, reducing even further our ability to pay back loans we never took out.

My point is that all of this was done in the name of democracy. The personas and faces of the politicians have changed but they are all still the wealthy secure people today that they were in 2007 even after all of the austerity for the rest of us. The banks are back more arrogant than ever and the EU is now calling the shots in the guise of the more vocal unelected commissioners. My belief though is that the elites in power, both in politics and finance, have pushed too far. They seem to have forgotten the ‘will of the people’ entirely and are doing as they like in their own interests. Any time there is a peep out of us, they create some new law to shut us up. Over the last ten years I have both sensed and heard the whispered frustrations of many of those ordinary people and related strongly to it.

Then came BREXIT in the UK followed quickly by the election of Trump in the US. It seems populism emerged naturally all over the place. There were jitters among the elite over both the French and Dutch elections. This week it continued in the Austrian elections with the People’s party and the Freedom party emerging as the big winners. Populism is a spontaneous movement that champions the common people, usually by favourable contrast with an elite. It is a reaction to the arrogant bullying of the trusted majority by an elitist minority through their mis-use of the powers invested in them by us in a democracy. In other words, I am leaning towards the opinion that populism is the natural reaction to the corruption of a democratic system by the few and it is therefore a mild form of revolution. It is the collective growl of warning rather than the opening shots of all out war. If you think about it, democracy is corrupted if the only choice you are given is two unattractive propositions and you ‘must’ choose one of them. Populism then becomes the third way.

In the mainstream media the word populism is spat out like some poisonous evil practiced by an ignorant few. Our own tax money is used against us to frighten us away from any populist thought. We are, ahem, discouraged from voting for so many independent candidates because, we are told, it destroys the Government’s ability to operate and none of us wants to be guilty of bringing down the country, do we? Of course, this is just more of the tried and tested trick of selling us fear. But I believe too that populism should not be necessary in a healthy democracy. I would prefer if the reasons for this new populism did not exist but I can see too that it is a growing phenomenon. In reality, populism should be the rule of democracy itself, not an alternative to it. At heart a healthy democracy is a populist one by definition. I do not believe that the ordinary people are responsible for the problems populism might bring though. Instead I think it is the powerful elites whom we have trusted to act in our interests who must take the blame if the system is brought down. They had and have the power to make democracy a more attractive alternative but they have not done so.

So there is my dilemma. For the last few years I have gone to the ballot box and randomly given my preferences to anyone but the mainstream parties. In doing so I have been hoping to lessen the ability of whichever party/parties form a Government to abuse the trust we put in them. It is a protest vote against the status quo because there is something seriously unfair and wrong with that status quo. For me that is what BEXIT and Trump was about and the people in those countries now have to think what to actually do with the victories they have won. The Austrians will be joining them soon in that quest. It is an upheaval but without violence and like any major shift or change, it brings with it uncertainty. Trump is an oddity on the international stage and the UK currently is in a purgatory of some kind as negotiations on its future external relationships continue. In this country our elites are once again overheating the property market for their short term gains and a financial bubble is again growing with the inevitable consequence of that not too far down the road again. And yet all we hear is talk of our wonderful stability. This is very worrying.

But I am not sure that populism is automatically the answer either. It is the reaction certainly and in reaction to it, the elites cling to power and become even more cunning. The recent budget was an effort to pacify rather than change anything when change is what’s so desperately required. Moving the goalposts around does not change the pitch we are on. So like I said, “I’m not a hundred per cent sure where I’m going with this one.”

Help?

 

 

APPLE JAM.

Posted on by October 17, 2017

So Apple still rumbles along in Ireland despite the EU’s best efforts to attract it to the ah, mainland.

Central to the Apple saga is of course money. The richest company in the World has loads of it and greedy grabbing hands are reaching out for a share of it. Donald Trump wants the USA to get its hands on a lot of it, Mad Mags, the EU competition commissioner wants Ireland to get €14 billion of it so that the rest of Europe can fight squabble over their share. Unsurprisingly, Apple would like to keep their gotten gains safe and secure offshore and they have a battery of high-end legal Dicks to fight off any advances. But what is truly at stake here?

For a variety of reasons, Ireland has attracted all of the major names in both the Pharmaceutical and Technology industries and these big boys originate in the United States. They all maintain their Global Headquarters in America but most of them have also chosen to headquarter in Ireland for their non-American business. But the good old USA has stubbornly insisted that Corporate Tax on their side of the pond be in the region of 37%. The big boys pay the piper Stateside for what they do over there but they’ve all looked for a much better deal for their overseas profits and that’s where Ireland came in. We had lowered our corporate rate to 12.5% years before.

So which of them are here? Apple has been based in Cork since 1980 and has recently invested €850m in a new data centre in Galway. In Dublin’s Silicon Docks, you’ll find the EMEA Headquarters for social media giants Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. E-commerce stars Amazon, Etsy, Zalando, Groupon, PayPal, AirBnB and Uber are all based here, as well as IT staples such as Siemens, HP, Intel, Dell, Microsoft and Symantec. Representing the gaming sphere, you’ll find EA, PopCap, Riot Games and Zynga. And key Cloud Service pioneers include Adobe, Dropbox, Salesforce and SAP, who have centres in Dublin and Galway.

Apple alone holds $231 billion overseas, or 94 percent of the $246 billion cash hoard the company had as of the end of 2016, according to Moody’s annual investor report, which was released in July. As they seek to avoid repatriation taxes, the total amount of cash held overseas by U.S. companies climbed to $1.3 trillion at the end of 2016, up from $1.2 trillion in 2015, Moody’s said.

But Apple are not the only ones. Microsoft, which according to the Moody’s report had 95 percent of its $131.2 billion cash hoard abroad at the end of 2016; Alphabet Google (60 percent of $86.3 billion) and Oracle (88 percent of $52.8 billion). Cisco, with their European Headquarters in Holland, had 87 percent of their $71.8 billion abroad. The term abroad should be understood as some zero-tax haven like the Cayman Islands. I haven’t the time to cover the big Pharmas headquartered here but you’d have to think the likes of Pfizer and the rest of them here have a few bob squirreled away too.

The Donald though has a plan. He is proposing to drop the US Corp. rate to just 20% and going further by declaring a tax repatriation holiday for a period, with a temporary 10% rate to attract the loot back to Momma. If it works that will be some Mother-lode. It would represent a massive investment in US business and industry instead of the usual Arms Industry recipients. The US not only stands to get 10% of $1.3 trillion, (Trillion for fucks sake!), but the other 90% of it could be brought to bear on investing in the American workforce and bringing manufacturing jobs back home, a change from training their kids in warfare and invasion. This would put the American fox squarely in the EU chicken coop. In such a scenario, Ireland would quietly and discreetly blend into the background scenery while the big egos in Brussels would scream blue murder at the Yanks. A European/US trade war would be on the cards with the unedifying prospect of sanctions against America and vice versa.

If that did happen though, who do you think Brexit-Britain would side with? …………… Yup! Me too.

 

VICTORIA & THE IRISH FAMINE.

Posted on by October 3, 2017

I don’t watch much TV so I haven’t seen the new series called “Victoria.” I was aware of it and knew it was a portrayal of the life and times of Queen Victoria in the UK but that’s about it.

Apparently though, another installment was shown on Sunday night, this one dealing with the Irish Famine, (1845 -19852). I did not see this either but I did learn about the Famine while in school and read a couple of books on the topic subsequently. It was Ireland’s darkest hour and was instrumental in changing us forever. It left the island diseased, denuded, depressed and damaged forever. We lost a million people to death, two million to forced emigration and the remainder riddled with sickness and a sense of hopelessness.

And yet, outside Ireland, little is known about it. But what caught my eye was the ordinary British reaction to the show on Sunday. The ‘Twitterati’ were out in force with the soundbites after it ended.

“Bay Alden @BayAlden
Horrifying learning about Potato Famine. Elitism, bigotry, leaders protecting their own interests over peoples lives. Genocide.”

“Frankie Magpie @Magpie_Dreams
#VictoriaITV is a genuinely hard watch tonight. Half my family are Irish & I studied Irish history at A Level. It’s incredibly complex.”

“joanie  @nicodiangeli
#Victoria I don’t know much about the Irish famine but now I understand why the Irish are so angry,, #VictoriaITV”

“hashtags1ngle @hashtags1ngle
Oof. #VictoriaITV was tough watching tonight. Famine sucks.
10:01 PM – Oct 1, 2017”

“brooke @brookelebaron
Watched tonight’s @VictoriaSeries & now I can’t sleep b/c I’m thinking about being a nursing mother in the Irish Potato ”

“Daisy [email protected]
The ignorance in U.K if what happened in the Famine is shocking #Victoria #lessonsofhistory”

“James Beglin @jamesbeg
Such a sad and moving episode of #Victoria last night on the Great Famine. One million dead; it should be taught in British schools.”

“Mr I @Ingramsean32
Incredible episode of #Victoria this week, thanks @DaisyGoodwin and all cast! Adding this and reactions to lessons on the potato famine!”

It is stating the bleeding obvious to say that the ordinary Irish people today, (2017), are not angry with the ordinary British people of today as regards the Famine. I have many friends and acquaintances across the UK and I know that they are in no way responsible for the Irish Famine. Events in history must always be seen in the context of the times they took place. In 1845 Europe there was inequality everywhere. The rich were very rich and the poor, who were the majority, were very poor indeed. Ireland had been occupied by it’s much more powerful colonial neighbour and as is the case with all colonies, the invader steals the indigenous wealth.

Wealth in 1845 Ireland was the land and its produce and it was forcibly taken from the Irish and handed to British landlords. The former Irish owners were then allowed to farm the their perviously owned land and the resultant produce went to the landlord and was shipped for sale back to the UK by him. The now Irish labourer was allowed to stay on in what had always been his cottage but even there, he had to pay a rent for the privilege. Then, and only then, was he also allowed to plant in a modest garden around the cottage for his own consumption. The Irish were not permitted to own a horse and the meat from all animals were handed over by law, with the exception of the odd chicken. So it was the produce from the garden that the Irishman and his family lived on. This led to the reliance on the potato. What was not known at the time was that potatoes had to be rotated. It was unwise to plant them in the exact same patch of ground year on year. Added to that, in 1844 a mysterious blight hit the country, affecting several kinds of plants. But it was the total dependence of the native Irish on the potato for life itself that began the calamity. The potato harvest of 1845 was devastated with this deadly blight and it failed.

The swollen bellies of barefoot children are images we associate with African famines of the 20th century yet their white Northern counterparts began appearing at the roadsides all over Ireland by the end1846 and black ’47. Reasonable commentators suggest that it was at that point, the British authorities could have brought the famine to an end. It wasn’t as if they didn’t see it happening and indeed, some of their number even reported back to London about it.

But we switch then to the context of the time and the British Parliament was operating the biggest Empire in the world. India, Africa, Australia and vested interests in America were prominent as well as an active policy of divide and conquer in mainland Europe. Ireland or reports of an alleged famine over there were way down the list. There was an understanding among the powerful in London that the Irish were an ignorant backward people and not worth the effort. More important matters of national interest, (to this world power), elsewhere on the world stage meant that a small localized problem on a remote island off her Western shores, should not trouble Britain. So nothing little or nothing was done.

This led to the coffin ships, hundreds of them, that transported the Irish all over the globe in conditions that killed nearly half of them on their voyages. The lucky ones arrived to partial slavery in the United States, Canada, South America and Australia. These Irish hadn’t a word of English between them and little in the way of knowledge or skills required by the hosting countries. As a result, they were not treated very well. But somehow they made it and today, sixty-million Americans claim Irish heritage. It might also interest readers to know that there are, “Fifteen Irish Inventions That Changed The World.”

Okay, it is isn’t much but that is from a small remote country which was not allowed to evolve its own industrial revolution. Indeed, prior to the famine years the native Irish were not permitted any schooling so even those few modest inventions are a miracle.

When I read the tweets above from UK residents it was obvious that the history of Ireland was not taught in UK schools. Conversely, we were taught quite a bit of British history in our schools, which is hardly a surprise since our total history for eight-hundred years consisted of fighting the British invader for freedom. Sadly though our British neighbours know nothing about any of that and can be resentful that we Irish staged a rising in 1916, fought a war of Independence after that and having finally made it, stuck to our neutrality during WWII. They do not understand how there could ever have been a Provisional IRA either and some of the more forthright British I have met on my travels in the seventies believe the Irish are an ignorant, ungrateful, treacherous people and the UK have the moral right to just wash their hands of them.

But that too is just another misunderstanding that I put down to not knowing the facts. The reality for the Irish is that generations of our forefathers suffered centuries of oppression and death at the hands of a much more powerful foe. In my own Father’s lifetime, independence was achieved at last and I was born into a Free Irish Republic sixty-one years ago. I have related here before how as a young man I visited and worked in London and was treated very civilly. I liked it over there anytime I did visit but was always happy to get back to my own place too. I have no doubt that British tourists to Ireland feel the same way when they get home. We’ve all moved on and the famine happened over one hundred and fifty years ago.

But like the UK Tweeters, I believe it would do no harm for British kids to learn a little bit more about the historical contacts between our two countries. It might better inform them as to why we are all where we are today. And of course, knowing your history can help you avoid making the mistakes of that history again.