Category: Comment

Der Spiegel explains…

There’s some very nice explanatory journalism in Der Spiegel today. Warning; long, long, long article is very long, but enjoyable and definitely worth reading.

Der Spiegel – The Mother of All Bubbles

Written for the layman with a global outlook, it explains how we… ehem… how we are where we are… and where we’re going. Pretty even handed – quotes from conservatives (e.g Niall Ferguson) and liberals (e.g Krugman) – in fairly equal measure.

Covers pretty much the whole globe, Ireland gets a mention or two. If I was to recommend reading one article today, this would be it.

Proposals for funding reform

I’m not in agreement with the suggestions in the The Irish Times editorial today for improving – in terms of reducing corruption and improving transparency – how our political system is funded. The leader writer is rowing in behind the Director of Public Prosecutions, James Hamilton’s recent comments. I quote today’s piece…

Some senior politicians still defend private sector political funding, even though it contains within it the seeds of corruption. They argue it is an important element in a participatory democracy. Invariably, they insist no favours are provided in return for such unprompted largesse. That self-serving bluster no longer carries any conviction, particularly in relation to planning matters, where the money trail has been easily identified. It is time to make a clean cut with the past.

When Director of Public Prosecutions James Hamilton warns that political corruption will continue for so long as there is private financing of political parties, what remains to be said? Do our politicians favour a continuation of dubious practices? After all, the State now provides alternative and generous funding for the political process. There was never a better time for comprehensive reform.

I’m inherently wary of suggestions that the State get involved in funding politics. As a firm believer in the value of diversity of viewpoints it irks me to think someone in the pay of the State would be deciding who gets what funding when. No matter how independent the office deciding the allocation, it won’t be independent enough. The possibility of tiered political system emerging also worries me. Continue reading “Proposals for funding reform”

"At that point, the crisis ceases to be financial or economic. It becomes political."

This is an article by George Friedman republished with the permission of Stratfor. Freidman is a political scientist and intelligence analyst. In the following piece he argues that the current crisis is now a political rather than [solely] economic or financial issue. While looking through an American prism – though covering the European issues late in the article – much of what he says, particularly early on, is relevant to what happened, may happen and is happening in Ireland. It’s an interesting argument.

The Global Crisis of Legitimacy – George Friedman

Financial panics are an integral part of capitalism. So are economic recessions. The system generates them and it becomes stronger because of them. Like forest fires, they are painful when they occur, yet without them, the forest could not survive. They impose discipline, punishing the reckless, rewarding the cautious. They do so imperfectly, of course, as at times the reckless are rewarded and the cautious penalized. Political crises — as opposed to normal financial panics — emerge when the reckless appear to be the beneficiaries of the crisis they have caused, while the rest of society bears the burdens of their recklessness. At that point, the crisis ceases to be financial or economic. It becomes political. Continue reading “"At that point, the crisis ceases to be financial or economic. It becomes political."”

Irish CAP payments 2009

I’ve been over in Brussels for the last couple of days meeting the very good people from farmsubsidy.org. Thanks to their scraping efforts I’ve had access to the 2009 database in total, rather than the search mechanism the Department of Agriculture makes available via its website.

So, some figures. There were 137,748 payments under CAP in 2009 to Irish recipients. The average payout was €14,020. The total payout was €1,931,253,085 (€1.93bn). Here are the top 100 recipients:

The top 100 received just over €44m. The top 10 being:

THE IRISH DAIRY BOARD CO-OP
COMMERCIAL MUSHROOM PRS COOP
BAILIE FOODS LTD
GLANBIA INGREDIENTS VIRGINIA
ABBOTT IRL
R & A BAILEY LTD
WYETH NUTRITIONALS IRELAND
ROSDERRA IRISH MEATS GROUP LTD
IRISH AGRICULTURAL DEVELOP
WALTER FURLONG

Other interesting recipients include:

Robert Aylward (Mullinavat, Kilkenny) received €16,765.3
Michael Creed (Macroom, Cork) received €28,866.16
Francis O’Brien (Ballybay, Monaghan) received €80,849.71
Martin and Nicholas Mansergh (Tipperary, Co Tipperary) received €48,545.45
Noel Coonan (Roscrea, Co Tipperary) received €20,331.10
Thomas McEllistrim (Tralee, Co Kerry) received €12,313.74
Michael Moynihan (Mallow, Co Cork) received €15,507.77

And some other interesting ones:

Niall Mellon (Kilkenny) received €42,880.03
Blessington and District Forum Theatre Ltd (Wicklow) received €19,891
Thomas Bailey (Meath) received €8,513.95

One of the strange omissions, for which there may be a perfectly reasonable explanation (I’m not up on my food industry) is that Greencore, the biggest recipient in 2008 at €83,377,557, does not appear in 2009. Is this down to sugar?

Allowances for local council chairs' expenses

The expense allowances available to cathaoirleachs and leas cathaoirleachs (chair/mayor and deputy chair/mayor) of local councils are interesting to examine. Or at least would be if we could see them all in the one dataset.

Under the provisions of Section 143 the Local Government Act 2001 a local authority may pay an allowance to its chair and deputy chair for “reasonable” expenses. This means councillors vote on how much the council chair (also a councillor) gets for expenses, which are unvouched in the vast majority of cases and often untaxed. Of course that also means the allowances vary from one council to another.

Last week one New Ross Labour councillor, Bobby Dunphy, made a good case for changing this system. He proposed that mayoral expenses be reimbursed instead of awarded as a fixed amount. He told the News Ross Standard [paywalled link]…

All I was proposing was a system that would give greater openness and transparency. The only reason for opposing that would be that you did not want openness and transparency. For example, while the €8,000 is intended to cover anticipated expenses, in reality any expenses incurred can be and are claimed separately. The €8,000 is, in effect pocketed as a tax free salary. There is no scrutiny, no value for money analysis… Because it is public money we Councillors have a duty to oversee the proper disbursement of this money

It’s perhaps insightful to note that Dunbar couldn’t get another elected member to second his proposal. This meant he couldn’t speak from the floor to argue why such a change would be beneficial to the people of New Ross. According to the council website there is another Labour member on the council. Continue reading “Allowances for local council chairs' expenses”

Digest – May 2 2010

Knackered. Not much Irish stuff this week, haven’t been keeping tabs diligently enough.

HOME

Abigail Reiley’s take on the whole journalists on Twitter and breaking news question. Looking at the standards, journalistic ethics and realities regarding how the sad news of Gerry Ryan’s death emerged.

Professor Tom Garvin ruffles feathers in UCD via The Irish Times. Response from Ferdinand Von Prondzynski.

Sara Burke on the stand-off between the health unions and the HSE, with Croke Park in mind.

I’m including the blogging round-up for the EU blogosphere here because I like the idea of a blogging round-up linking to a blogging round-up. They do it with more style in Europe, evidently. Eagles, metaphors and shit like that. Don’t av’ time.

WORLD

The Omar Khadr case is on-going in a Guantanamo Bay courtroom. Videos of him being interrogated have been released by his defence team, an edited version of which I have embedded below. Khadr was arrested in Afghanistan at aged fifteen and sent to Guantanamo Bay where he has been for the last seven years. He is on trial for the murder of a US special forces soldier.

Khadr is Canadian-born – he was living in Pakistan at the time of his arrest – but the Canadian government will not seek his extradition, despite rulings by their Federal Court and Court of Appeals stating that the State must do so under law. The State is appealed to the Supreme Court which ruled that Khadr’s human rights had been breached but didn’t order the Government to demand his repatriation.

Several human rights groups have criticised both the US and Canadian governments for their attitude to the case. Khadr says he was threatened with rape and dogs during the first months of his imprisonment.

There is some evidence to show that Khadr, then aged 15, supported actions against US military operations, but none that he threw a grenade at US soldiers, the charge for which he was originally detained. In 2008 the US military accidentally released documentation detailing how there was no evidence of him having attacked US military personnel. Different charges have been dropped against him three times over his period of detention. There is also background detailing extremist Islamic beliefs but such beliefs do not in any case warrant detention. Consider the number of anarchist 15 year olds around Dublin. Spencer Ackerman is blogging from the hearings.

Conservative against Cameron. A ton of reasons why UK conservatives shouldn’t vote Tory in the forthcoming elections. Right on Right? Well I never.

Economics and climate change on the FT blogs section. The markets are watching, but not believing, seemingly. Gekko thinks the journalist has fallen for HSBC spin, he makes a good case.

Someone Once Told Me photo project.

What Gordon Brown should have said… A Fistful of Euros on bigotgate.

Fascinating post from FiveThirtyEight explaining how the model they use to forecast electoral results works.

US plans to better enforce labour laws, Chamber of Commerce outraged. Say wha’?

“‘Digital’ journalists are scabs“? Thought-through reaction by John Naughton.

Welsh economist beats Paxman on the details. Great viewing. Also, comment from John Naughton.

OTHER

Interview with Spurs full-back Benoit Assou-Ekotto. Disarmingly honest answers amounting to “it’s just a job, I’m in it for the money, a sports mercenary.”

Some more quotes from Our Saviour

Finally got around to grabbing some quotes from the Brian Lenihan interview on Monday’s Breakfast with Newstalk. Some of the nonsense is terrifying. Will be throwing bits of this into the Quotes from Brian Lenihan collection.

“The bank [of Ireland] has been put on a sound commercial footing, it’s clearly able to operate on world markets, it’s clearly going to be able to liberate itself from state support and attract funds into this country and lend to the wider economy.” – Breakfast with Newstalk Monday

Followed by a bit of banker hero-worshipping…

“Mr Richie Boucher left this country last Monday morning on a boat to England because of the volcanic ash and saved the taxpayer €1.5bn by getting these people to invest in Bank of Ireland, that’s what happen last week. During the week there was a controversy about his pension and he decided – in the national interest to support the Croke Park agreement, and also to ensure the banks plans to insure pensions in their own bank could be adavanced – that he would forego rights which he had and which flowed from a reduced salary which was sanctioned for him. That’s the situation in Bank of Ireland”.

Then this load of dross which Ivan Yates does a good job trying to cut through in an brilliant exchange… Continue reading “Some more quotes from Our Saviour”