Fanfare or Funfair – Fine Gael gets egg on face

Yesterday Fine Gael hastily cancelled a press conference in which they were going to put forward the first anniversary of their term in goverment with a celebration of sorts.  Then Labour Party minister Pat Rabbitte came on RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland and called his coalition partner’s event “silly” and Taoiseach Enda Kenny, who was listening to Rabbitte as he was having his cornflakes, called the whole event off.

The debacle reminded me a bit of a mishap on BBC radio during the Second World War in which the King of Norway, Haakon II, was to give an address to his country, which had just been occupied by Germany with the help of the traitor Vidkun Quisling.  The BBC director told staff to introduce King Haakon with suitably solemn music or perhaps a fanfare.  So they sent down to the sound library with a request for a recording of a fanfare – you know the kind of thing, trumpets and drums.  Unfortunately there was a slip of the pen or tongue between the studio and sound library and they were sent back a recording of a funfair by mistake.  Even more unfortunately, nobody bothered to check that the right recording had been sent.  So as the King of Norway cleared his throat and prepared to address his beleagured nation the drum roll began, followed by “Roll up, roll up, join the fun of the fair” accompanied with roaring elephants, tigers and whimsical sounds of clowns, monkeys and laughter.

At least some anonymous sound engineer at the BBC could be blamed for what happened King Haakon’s address to the nation, but the Fine Gael non-event of yesterday can only be blamed on the Fine Gael handlers, including the advisors  whom the Irish taxpayers are paying handsomely.   So as Labour and Fine Gael try to put a gaudy gloss on their first year in office, optics and charades continue to take the place of action as the new government begins to look more and more like the old.

Howlin in the wind

I see that the Minister for Public Expenditure (sic) and Reform Brendan Howlin has asked the public to send him their ideas on how to make €5 billion in public spending cuts over the next three years. Mr. Howlin is a member of the Labour Party, Ireland’s sister party of thePASOK party of Greek Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou who is looking for even bigger cuts in Greek public spending.   Like Papandreou, Howlin is touting the line that “things are much worse than we thought” which is the excuse given to people in both Ireland and Greece who thought they were voting for change from a deeply unpopular government which was inflicting vicious hardship upon the people.

Minister Howlin isnt’ interested in hearing from people who are opposed to cuts.  He isn’t interested in listening to anyone who suggests that Ireland should stand up to the EU and IMF even though that’s what his party said that they do once they were elected into government.  He isn’t interested in hearing from anyone who says that we should cut the banks loose and let them solve the problems they created from himself.    No, Brendan Howlin wants the people to tell him how to cut their own living standards even more.

Howlin says that the best suggestions will be published on his departmental website.  What he means is that the “right” suggestions will be published.  No doubt these will be the type of suggestions already made in abundance by the well-heeled economists, businessmen and by the likes of IBEC, the CIF and the Irish Hotels Federation.

Eaten Bread

“Eaten Bread is soon forgotten” is an old saying which is popular in Ireland and probably in Britain and other English speaking countries.  It is generally used as a chastisement to someone who was given money or a charitable gift to chide them for asking for more.  But if you think about it, eaten bread in the real sense as a food, is quite rightly soon forgotten because once it is consumed the person becomes hungry again.    Take the case of Greece at the moment and the ongoing crisis about the need for a second “bailout” for the Greek economy from the EU and IMF.  The “benefactors” are demanding that the Greek people take another round of the most vicious austerity in more than 70 years.  The fact that it is the European project and the Euro which is in reality being bailed out is not mentioned.  The message is that the Greeks, and the Irish, were profilgate and took too much from tthe table of plenty when times were good.  But the facts do not bear this out.

“We all partied” is the message being given out by governments.  It is the companion-piece to “we’re all in this together”.  Well we are NOT all in this together. I do not see much sign of poverty or suffering among the elites that run Europe.  Despite high-profile pay cuts for government ministers and a well publicised referendum on cutting judges pay in Ireland, the ‘great and the good’  have continued to party.  Just last weekend as I sat out looking at the beauty of Cork Harbour  I noticed that the number of speedboats and yachts has not fallen significantly.  One new cabin cruiser passed me by, it’s bronzed passengers parading themselves to ensure they were seen.    The vessel was well over 50ft (15m) in length and would have cost in the region of €300,000 to buy, possibly a lot more.  Jealous?  Me?   No way, I love boats and the sea but I would much prefer a small punt to splash about in or something more practical.  The point is that there are a sizeable number of people in Ireland, and no doubt in Greece too, who have barely been touched by the recession.  The same people are the investing and speculating class.  These are the bondholders that our government keeps talking about burning but the only heat they will feel will be an Adriatic holiday or the heated swimming pool in their Spanish villa.   These people are not worried about hospital cutbacks or pay cuts (they’re the ones grumbling about having to pay the minimum wage to their workers).

The reality is that the elite class of Europe – the bankers, stockbrokers, speculators, developers and their pliant politicians and servile media who serve their masters first and then themselves, are waging a war against the people who make up the majority of Europe’s population – the workers and the poor.  They do so through a policy of “divide and conquer”.  They set private sector workers against public sector workers, they set immigrants against natives, they create illusions of class difference among workers so that many workers who are slightly better off are sold the lie that they are middle class.   And when all else fails they use nationalism with the images of slovenly Greeks and profligate Irish portrayed to German, French and British workers.
In a sense we are all in this together – but only if “we” means the working class – the ordinary people of Europe and excludes the real spongers at the top, the people who have create the crisis.   Although the slogan “Workers of the world, unite!” was first written over 150 years ago it is more relevant than ever.