The Untouchables

Twice in the past week or so we have had the Labour Party minister for social welfare (or supposedly social protection) issue dire warnings to social recipients, people who have been means-tested by the state as being in need of social assitance. Yet while these clear threats are made against the most vulnerable in society no such warnings are given to those with wealth in Ireland or to the banks.  They are the untouchables in the contrary sense of that word to its original meaning.

Those who have created the Irish economic crisis, the big business elite, the banks, the property speculators and share-dealers, have massive sums of money ring-fenced to prevent them from going under while the unemployed, pensioners, those with disabilities and other people on the margins of Irish society are treated as pariahs and targetted for the most painful cuts while those lucky enough to still hold jobs are swamped in debt from the same corrupt lending institutions.

Why is this situation able to continue?  The answer is not difficult to find.  The people of Greece have forced the EU institutions back to the table by refusing to accept the cuts.  They have taken to the streets in their millions and their trade unions have stood firm behind workers and refused to let them be the whipping boys of capitalism.  Thus Greece looked like defaulting.  But in Ireland protest has been either muted or divided into small groups – a hospital campaign here, sacked workers there, opponents of water charges somewhere else.  The Irish working class has failed to recognise its combined strength.  On our own we are small.  We can be ignored, pushed aside and dismissed as whingers or malcontents.  United we can change things.  We can force the political elite to ditch the grossly unfair EU/IMF deal or themselves be swept away in a tide of popular strength.  What are we waiting for?

Poor Spot and the 3 Little Piggies

“Tough decisions have to be made”  has become the mantra of our new government and particularly of the Labour Party component of that government. Like Old Mother Hubbard explaining to poor Spot that she has nothing for his dinner, Labour ministers are u-turning on pre-election commitments  at a rate that would surprise Michael Schumacher.

The thing is that we are not hearing much about tough decisions when it comes to bailing out banks.  This morning I was flabbergasted to say the least to hear a commentator on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland  saying that the state would have to take over another failed lending institution, Irish Life & Permanent at a cost to the Irish taxpayer of another €3.8 billion even though the company is only worth around €16 million.   That means they are going to invest 2,375 times what the company is worth in a bid to save it.  And these people lecture workers and those on social welfare about tough decisions!

The Labour Party recently boasted loudly about the so-called government Jobs Initiative.  This involves the expenditure of €135 million in 2011 of which €106 million will come from “reallocation of resources” (cuts in other departments) and €29 million will come from a new pensions levy (on workers).   The entire allocation amounts less than one three-hundredth (1/300th or 0.3%) of what is “required” to save Irish Life & Permanent.

Irish Life & Permanent is just a company.  It is not a human being, it does not know suffering and the €16 million can be used to re-employ the workers.  More importantly the €3.8 billion that the government seem certain to pour into this black hole could vastly improve the economic situation. Let IL&P go to the wall. It is a dinosaur which, together with Anglo Irish Bank, Irish Nationwide and other small institutions should have become extinct in September 2008 when their own gambling caught up with them. The remaining two large banks should then have been permanently nationalised, not to bail out their gambling debts, but to create two dynamic state banks, one for investment in genuine job creating measures and infrastructural projects, the other as a lending bank.

I started with a nursery rhyme, Old Mother Hubbard, and I shall end with another, the Three Little Pigs.   The three little piggies went to the market.  It’s a story we all know.  The first piggy’s house of straw is soon blown down by the big bad wolf and the wolf eats the poor piggy.   The second piggy builds a house of sticks but the wolf is too strong and blows that down too and eats piggy number two.  Finally the wolf meets his match with the third little piggy who builds a house of brick.  Despite his desperate huffing and puffing, the wolf fails to blow down the house of bricks but instead he tries to climb down the chimney.  But the third piggy is too clever for him and lights a fire onto which he puts a large pan of water which boils quickly.  The wolf falls into the boiling water and the third piggy has a delicious meal of wolf stew.     It may be a mere nursery rhyme, but it has a message – learn from your mistakes.  Greece represents the first little piggy which has already been eaten.  Ireland is the second little piggy.  The wolf is at our door and we know the house of sticks built by Fianna Fail and currently being barely held up by Fine Gael and Labour is about to fall.  They continue throw tidbits at the wolf to distract him but he is very hungry and wants his pork.  We can stay in the house of sticks or make a run for the house of stone by defaulting now and putting the Irish people first.

Baldy Noonan is delusional

I was flabbergasted yesterday to hear Ireland’s Finance Minister Michael Noonan call on people to go on a shopping “splurge” and start spending money in the shops again.  I wondered if he had taken a few drinks too many before going on national radio.  On the same programme he suggested people should wear T-shirts emblazoned with the motto “Ireland is not Greece”.

First things first.  Mr. Noonan’s Fine Gael party, in coalition with the Labour Party, are continuing the austerity policies introduced by the previous Fianna Fáil led government which they agreed with the EU and IMF without consulting the people of Ireland.  These policies have seen vicious attacks on workers pay, on jobs and on the poor.  Public sector workers have been singled out for the worst attacks.  They have had an Income Levy imposed three years ago and have also been hit by other tax changes.  There is an ongoing recruitment ban in the public service which is causing chaos for the public at large.  Then there were vicious cuts in social welfare payments and move to blame the unemployed for the crisis.  Pensioners were targetted too.  All of this to bail out the Irish banks who gambled like there was no tomorrow and got themselves up to their necks to German, French, British and other foreign banks.  It was decided the banks could not be allowed to fail so the Irish people – the majority of them, the working class, would be pilloried and dragged into poverty.

Having supported in general Fianna Fáil’s knife-wielding, Noonan and his government colleagues, continued the slash and burn economics.  How can he possibly expect people to go on a shopping splurge?  With what are they supposed to buy these goods?  Get into more personal debt?   The ancient nursery rhyme “Old Mother Hubbard” comes to mind.  Like Mother Hubbard, the Irish people can see that the cupboard is bare having been stripped clean to save the banks, speculators and thieves who parties round the clock – and many of whom continue to party.

Then there’s the T-shirts with “Ireland is not Greece”.  Well Ireland IS Greece.  The workers of Ireland and the poor of Ireland are being treated the same as the Greek working class.  We are not in the same boat as Michael Noonan, the government or the business moguls of Ireland Inc. No we are in the same boat as the Greeks.   On television last night on a BBC Newsnight report on the Greek crisis I a spotted a poster with “I am Spartacus” on it, a reference to the movie Spartacus about the slave.  When Spartacus is to be executed, and his Roman captors demand he identify himself in the crowd of slaves, his fellow slaves shout in unison “I am Spartacus”.  As a result they are all executed but they go down showing solidarity because they recognise their common enemy and their common allies, their fellow slaves.   I won’t be taking up Baldy Noonan’s suggestion of wearing an “Ireland is not Greece” T-shirt, but I may get one printed with the slogan “Ireland is Greece” or something else suitable for the occasions.

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.