Iowa Caucus Republican party

// December 31st, 2011 // No Comments » // GE11

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

It would seem that the Iowa primary is rapidly becoming less about who wins on Jan 3rd but who loses the most and who exceeds expectations enough to carry momentum into the later contests. At the moment I would predict the following

Michele Bachmann

7% – She has her core vote but in the battle to be the standard bearer of the Neo-Moral Majority within the Republican Party Santorum has won the purity battle and Perry has the organisation and the cash to fight on after this.

Herman Cain

under 1% – Gone to consult on his peccadilloes but some few folks might still give him a nod.

Newt Gingrich

15% – He could go lower than this on the night, he may well stay in the race after Iowa but if his polling numbers start go south, fast in South Carolina and Florida, I can’t see him having the organisation or cash to rally in either not to mind both.

Jon Huntsman, Jr.

3% – This seems to be what passes for the reasonable, liberal wing of the Republican Party is reduced to.

Gary Johnson

under 1% – Gone in search of the Libertarian nomination but I suspect some trickle will refuse his calls to support Ron Paul and give him a nod.

Ron Paul

19% – Has the organisation to get out a vote and hold off against the barrage of attack ads, but I would hold that his appeal is marginally more limited than the polls indicate.

Rick Perry

14% – A better showing than expected is in the offing but could well be overshadowed by the apparent last minute surge for Santorum. He has the cash and organisation to fight on though and with potentially Gingrich and Bachman out of the way there is plenty of room for him to contest with Santorum for.

Mitt Romney

24% – He just can’t move enough of the wider Republican Party to rally behind him.

Rick Santorum

16% – Apparently experiencing a big surge after an endorsement from the Family Leader organisation. Of course if this polling boost doesn’t translate into support on the night and if Perry comes in ahead of him then expect a lot of soul searching. Still it would seem it could be down to him and Perry as the main challengers to Romney.

The Government’s Gender Quotas Proposal

// December 19th, 2011 // No Comments » // GE11

Image by Karanvir Singh Sangha via Flickr

The proposal on electoral gender quotas are just the sort boneheaded solution to a problem that ends up giving the problem a bad name. Candidate Quotas will not attract the sort of women who are currently inclined to avoid contesting elections because of the well touted 4 C’s of Cash, Culture, Childcare and Confidence. Quotas do not provide childcare, and they will not fund-raise to pay for posters, election literature or the hiring of halls for public meetings, and it is hard to see what confidence a person can get from being added to the ticket in order to fulfil a quota rather than being nominated like any other candidate. Instead Candidate Quotas favour the usual sort of middle class, middle aged women who have the right sort of connections with the party hierarchy. Not that there is anything wrong with middle aged, middle class women being actively involved in electoral politics and there have been many fine examples of same down the years. And having to get nominated and win election against others irrespective of gender did them no harm at all.

The basic fact is that women are not excluded from standing either in elections or party conventions. The evidence as presented by the Yes side clearly shows that those women who make the decision to contest elections stand the same chances of being elected as men, and have even better odds than their male colleagues if they are members of political parties. There is no evidence either that women are less likely to win out at party conventions when they choose to contest them; quite the opposite.

The real problem is not that women as a group are excluded for standing for election; it is that individual women decide not to contest for entirely sensible reasons – none of which are addressed by the creation of quotas. In effect, we are saying to people who choose not to apply for a particular job, because of its nature, that we will not change the job description but instead will give them free pass on the first round of interviews. Why would anyone decide to apply for a job they weren’t previously interested in, simply because they would have to overcome one less hurdle in order to get it?

The recourse to charges of being conservative or backward simply because a person finds the case for the use of quotas to be unproven demonstrates the lack of substance underpinning these proposals. There is considerable disquiet across the political spectrum at the top down nature of the changes. This proposal was not part of Fine Gael New Politics document presented at the last party conference in 2010, nor have the ordinary membership ever had an opportunity to contribute to the debate on the broader issue of encouraging wider participation in elections beyond the narrow pool of family members of previous elected representatives, teachers, members of the legal profession and so on. It is worth highlighting that one direct consequences of this legislation at the next general election is to protect all sitting male Oireachtas members from any challenge from other men at party conventions.

It is time that local party organisations of all parties realise the practical impact of these measures and that the electorate more broadly realise that these measures will do nothing to assist the many women and men who decide elections are not for them. Many women and men, who actually know at first-hand what is involved in contesting elections, recognise that these misguided and misinformed proposals are transplanted from entirely different electoral systems. No other country with our electoral system has used gender quotas. No evidence has been produced that shows party conventions is where the core of the problem lies. Nor will the changes proposed be applied equally to all those who wish to contest an election, independents who receive state funding through the leaders allowance are exempt.

The most ludicrous aspect is that if enforcing a quota of 30% doesn’t work that it will, within 7 years, be increased to 40%. If that doesn’t work it will be doubtlessly increased further, until such time as the public conforms to the expectations of those who have the ear of the minister.

That the current situation in regard of the make up of the Oireachtas is unacceptable should not mean that any old notion not matter how badly thought out must be adopted. Surely that is a form of electoral correctness gone mad.

When political daydreaming passes for electoral analysis

// November 2nd, 2011 // No Comments » // GE11

There was a quite stunning piece of  ‘electoral analysis‘ in the Irish Times yesterday, now I’m no holder of a candle for Sinn Fein as most would know but this piece is a complete distortion of SF’s presidential campaign and it’s successes as well as it’s failures. And don’t worry I will be getting to the low speed pileup that was the Fine Gael campaign in due course.

The article has a number of clear errors in analysis that have to be down to someone completely misreading the data either due to wistful daydreaming or a deliberate attempt to pull the wool of people’s eyes. Whose eyes exactly is unclear.

For a start his basic premise is underpinned by the assertion he repeatedly makes that Sean Gallagher as a candidate, both in his profile and message, was as equivalent to FF as Martin McGuinness was to SF. This despite the many months in which Sean Gallagher was loud in his claims he was carrying no torch for FF. And while I personally believe that Sean Gallagher’s involvement with FF was considerably deeper and more significant than the ordinary foot solider that he sought to portray himself as, I think it is wildly inaccurate to suggest that all those  who supported Sean Gallagher were avowedly doing so because he was the FF nominee to the same extent as those who voted for Martin McGuinness were doing so because he was the clear nominee of the SF organisation and was clearly going about the land espousing SF policy.

Mr Flynn goes on building his house of misaddressed canvas cards by conflating vote numbers for two elections that had quite different turnouts, even though comparing the actual number of SF votes in Feb 2011 to those of Martin McGuinness in Oct 2011 makes no sense at all when one election had a turnout of 70% and the other 56%.

He further claims “…Fianna Fáil supporters, offended by the attack on a candidate who had only one degree of separation from their party, flocked to Gallagher in their hundreds of thousands.” For 100s of 1000s of voters to switch from SF to Gallagher is factually impossible. If 100s of 1000s had switched to Gallagher from SF then the SF vote must have been much higher than the polls were showing. And then even more people would have had to switch from Gallagher to Higgins to balance  out this incredibly influx of true FFers who were telling the pollsters up to days before this that they were voting for Martin McGuinness. So the drop in Martin McGuinness’ support from the polls to polling day mus have been huge, except it wasn’t: he was on 13%, 13% then 16% and finally polled 13% on election day itself. So no 100s of 1000s of FFers came home to Gallagher from McGuinness after the Frontline.

Gallagher lost 12% from the weekend preceding poll to polling day, and this supposedly with 100s of thousands coming back to him from SF. 100s of 1000s not a 100,000 but 100s of 1000s, so a multiple of a 100,000.  Sean Gallagher got 28% of the vote or just over 500,000 votes, imagine how small his vote must have been before SF’s great error on the Frontline…err..what’s that you say… Sean Gallagher was on 40% in the polls prior to this, or closer to the 700,000 figure that Michael D. Higgins got on polling day. but how could someone who gained 100,000s of votes from SF end up on 200,000 votes less than they were projected to get before SF’s gaffe. That’s FF calculus for you!

We also get a very laboured piece about how SF’s vote where they had a TD was down on their GE result,  ”Furthermore, when the performance in the 14 constituencies where Sinn Féin had TDs elected in February is analysed, it shows that it lost more than 26,000 votes” except that this drop in votes is much more down to the lower turnout overall than any great drop in the SF vote. Disguised in this guff is the real fact that the overall SF vote did go up, despite the lower turnout!

Truth be told SF actually saw a bigger increase in their vote share in those constituencies where they currently do not have a TD. With the benefits of incumbency for their sitting TDs come the next election, this means any growth in their party vote % will likely see them retain what they have with the same or even a lesser national poll and increase their representation quite nicely on even a modest overall national rise. But that’s wouldn’t make such good reading for the FF inclined insider that might be taking comfort from reading or even writing such an article.

In looking at the Dublin West by election results we get some weird guilt by association from this sentence  ”Similarly, in the Dublin West byelection, the turnout was down by 6,770 votes while the combined vote of the Labour and Fine Gael candidates fell by 6,400 votes. ” which is meant to be underlined by the follow up ” All this while what was effectively a Fianna Fáil presidential candidate and a bona fide Fianna Fáil byelection candidate were performing very well.”

So just for the casual readers at home, that’s repeat that the overall vote was down 6770 and the Labour and FG combined vote was down by 6440. This is clearly intended to get the impression that it was just the Labour and FG voters than stayed at home while the FF core came out for their man.

He then caps all his baloney with choicely overegged political mayonnaise by misusing the data to suggest that we are now privy to some magical new information about FF’s core vote that we didn’t before…what could this be, you wonder. You will wonder in vain. All the numbers suggest is that there is some potential from FF to grow their vote from the 17% achieved in Feb 2011. Yet this supposedly new fact is one that would be evident to anyone who was even remotely aware of the 2007 and 2002 election results and FF’s history of electoral success in Ireland since its foundation. FF have a potential, a potential mind, for a vote percentage higher than that achieved in Feb 2011. Shares may go up as well as down. Heavens to Betsy, what a revelation but that does nothing to prove that there is now some new higher FF core vote. I wonder if someone failed to explain the difference between actual and potential to the poor lad. There is a strong feel of a Chewbacca defense to these final two paragraphs.

The piece underlines the supposed impartial nature of the piece with the final line

“Odran Flynn is an electoral analyst” electoral illusionist is more like it.

Dublin West By Election 2011 Prediction

// October 26th, 2011 // No Comments » // GE11

With the polling for the Dublin West by election time happening tomorrow there is only a little time for me to whisk up some more egg for my face. The last poll to take place here was for the general election and you can get the full result of that here.

The main parties broke down as follows that time:

LP 29%
FG 27%
SP 19%
FF 16.5%
SF 8%

The full field this time out is below along with my predictions of % vote.

Labour Party Patrick Nulty 24.8%

Socialist Party Ruth Coppinger 21.1%

Fine Gael Eithne Loftus – 17%

Sinn Féin Paul Donnelly 14.82%

Fianna Fáil David McGuinness 12.47%

Green Party Roderic O’Gorman 2.13 %

Independent Brendan Doris – 1.39%

Independent Gary Bermingham – 1.43%

Fís Nua Peadar Ó Ceallaigh 1.2%

Independent Barry Caesar Hunt – 0.97%

Independent Benny Cooney – 0.77%

Independent John Frank Kidd – 0.58%

Independent Jim Tallon – 0.34%

I think the SF transfers break more for the SP than for Labour but while the FG’s transfers should really be expected to trend to Labour and more of less cancel that out, don’t be completely astounded if the the FF votes actually moved the FG candidate into contention herself.

Egg on face 2

// October 23rd, 2011 // No Comments » // GE11

So we’re going into the final furlong or the last straight and the race has shifted considerably since the first attempt at this I had made. And how wrong that was, or right in some cases. Never one to back away from the table when there is the chance to double down and get more egg on my face. Here is my current assessment of what the 1st preference vote percentages will be.

Gallagher 31% – this is down considerable on what the polls are saying, my reasoning being that as his support base has grown so much only in the last few weeks that it is soft and open to picking away at by each of the other candidates. Some of whom may attempt to get people to lend them a No.1 before returning it to Gallagher in transfers if only to allow them to claim some expenses. I would hold that his surge to the top is down to two factors other than his own likeability (a) to a strongly anti-politician mindset on the part of the public and (b) because Gallagher is the least urban or urbane of the candidates. Davis, Norris, Mitchell are Dublin based, Higgins for all that he is from and of the West is an academic, McGuinness has no geographical base in the south, nor does Dana in truth though more of her support is in the West than elsewhere. So Gallagher has become go-to guy for the more rural minded folks, he is their George Bush, someone they could see themselves going for a pint or mug of tea with.

Higgins 24.8% – again I have him a little weaker than the polls show him because I think that he has never nailed down the support that was there for him. He has taken no risks and while he is competent and respected, that hasn’t translated in he being seen as inspirational.

McGuinness 13.7% – He will be seen has having underachieved and I believe his candidacy has actually ill served the SF cause in the south as it reminded too many people of the darkest days troubles and how SF and republican movement were in the thick of that awfulness. Made rather excessive claims for kudos for his role in slowing and eventually stopping the destruction of an avalanche of violence than he had himself assisted in setting in motion in the first place. That said had SF run someone of considerably less prominence I suspect their support would have struggled to match the GE result, but what harm.

Mitchell 11.4% – I still reckon a fair few FGers will give their No. 1 to Mitchell once they are in the polling booth. But it will be more out of sorrow than joy. I somehow doubt that the transfers from the 3 lower candidates will be enough for him to overhaul McGuinness. I think that after this election, FG need to seriously reassess the General Election result and realise that the public’s embrace was much more one of desperation and despair than of new found devotion the party and all its works. Trust and support needs to be earned, we’re on probation with the public (as all governments are in truth) and we need to give them more reasons to vote for us, rather than reinforcing the reasons not to vote for X or Y. Because along will come a Z and get the support we had loosened from X and Y.

Norris 10.5% – Some might imagine this a disaster but being in the race and being credible for so long is a triumph in itself. I don’t think he gets enough transfers from the 2 to be eliminated before him to claim his expenses which is a pity.

Davis 4.4% – I guess this is the difference between a well-funded campaign and a well-planned one. Gallagher had a plan to mark himself as the sensible non-establishment candidate (how someone so steeped in the largest party for so long can be able to so easily tag himself as the anti-establishment candidate is truly stunning. )

Scallon 4.2%  - there is still an constituency out there for Dana, even if it is from people who feel sorry for her and themselves. She could yet make a return to Europe if she could see her vote in the West exceed 13%, that will be one of the interesting vignettes to look out for. That could be a platform for her if she could combine with Declan Ganley’s organisation.

Fine Gael’s Presidential misjudgement

// October 6th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // GE11

So it would appear that Gay Mitchell is tanking in the polls, and that his chances of winning the contest are declining faster than the Kerry team in the last 5 minutes of the All-Ireland. Now while I don’t think that his poll showing is really all that reflective of how he will do on the day;  too much of the support for Norris, Gallagher McGuinness and even Mary Davis appears to be  in groupings that traditionally do not turn out on polling day. It has to be acknowledged that there has been a failure associated with the Fine Gael campaign to date.  So even though I still expect that Gay Mitchell will do better on polling day than the current polls show, that isn’t likely to be enough for him to win (or even be even close to 2nd on the first count if Gallagher’s numbers in the older demographics holds up).

I think Gay Mitchell would be a fine president, though I also accept that many people have a pre-determined view of him that they can’t be shaken from not to mind have reversed in such a short space of time. And yet it has to be asked how can someone from the largest political organisation in the state be doing so poorly. And that comes down to the real mistake the party made, it was not in who it choose but how it went about making that choice. There was plenty of time and nothing to prevent a consultation process with the membership up and down the country. Yet nothing happened for months after the general election despite we all being aware that the Presidential election would be happening in the autumn.

After a series of elections in which the party members had gone the extra yard to get the party back into government, many were probably feeling they were due a breather. Yet instead of realising this and seeking to do something different that would engage and energise membership and to allow them have some measure of ownership of the process of selecting the party’s candidate, it was instead decided leave well enough alone and allow the inner circle of the party have the power. The result is that too many people on the ground appear to feel that since the cllrs, the parlimentary party and the national executive were the ones to pick the candidate then they should go do the heavy lifting on their own, after all they picked the candidate on their own. I believe that is a mistaken approach for many members to adopt but I can understand where they are coming from.

There is still time for the party to do a me culpa on the process and get the membership to come out for one last push over the next few weeks but more importantly the party must learn the lesson that the membership can’t be taken for granted and that if we don’t make a real effort to make the party more responsive and more open to the participation of the membership in decision making about what the party stands for and what direction we are to go in that many members will either drift away from involvement or else confine themselves to campaigning only for the individual rep they happen to be friendly with.

The Presidential election and the 2 and half men strategy

// October 4th, 2011 // No Comments » // GE11

To hell with opinion polls, let’s try picking some actual numbers based on the reading of entrails and the deductive reasoning of a biased pundit. I mean I couldn’t be much worse that this guy.

So here goes, as it stands right now this is how i think the respective candidates are really set to do on election day.

Higgins, Michael 27 %

Mitchell, Gay 18%

Davis,Mary 15%

McGuinness, Martin 14%

Norris,David 12 %

Gallagher, Séan 8%

Scallon, Dana Rosemary 6%

All things being equal candidates could be viewed as starting out with the same level of support. with 7 candidates that is 14.3%. Of course that is rubbish the public aren’t randomly drawing names out of a hat. They have biases and favour interests and dislikes of particular people and their points of view. They have their own life stories and experiences to influence how they make their choices. And the choice they make also influences their transfers. Those who vote for Dana won’t be transferring as heavily to David Norris as they do to other candidates, (that doesn’t mean no one will vote Dana No.1 and Norris No. 2 but many more more will transfer to Mitchell.

So let’s start at the bottom, Dana’s pitched worked well in 1997 but the world is a very different now. Dana has actually made the case against her being President as a bulwark against abortion when she said that no such legislation would be coming before her while she was President as the Attorney General had said so. So why vote for her them? It’s like a noted Shark hunter looking for a job with the coastguard while citing acres of evidence that there is no risk of a shark attack. Go hire someone with expertise in narcotics smuggling instead. I believe her support base will be under half what it was in 1997. So 6%

I think Dana and Gallgher are really confined to fight over an equal share of the vote, Gallagher is saying interesting things and if the campaign wasn’t about a series of denials of one’s involvement in controversies then the press might have found time to let him talk about them. Sadly it isn’t and they won’t. A lack of posters compared to others also tends to make people believe you are not serious and also are a lost cause  (or so people told me once). So he will get more than Dana but not much, hence 8%.

Now it gets interesting, Sen. Norris’ support base is too much in the hands of those who don’t vote and too much of his support is  driven by people who can’t think of a reason to not vote for him nor a reason to vote for anyone else. Once they are provided with a reason to support one of the 6 others they will drift away, or less they simply won’t remember to turn up. Couple that with the various scandals or pseudo scandals and suddenly the cuddly, slight crazy angle doesn’t have the same appeal. Now 12% might not seem like much to some folks but it’s a credible performance from an independent. So I’m saying 12% at the moment, that could trend upwards depending on the campaign or it could collapse entirely if there are more letters in the writing desk.

The notion that SF and more over the republican movement are so shielded from their past that Martin McGuinness can be talked of as a serious contender in a PR-STV one seat election shows how little the various political pundits know about elections.  SF get 10% just about 6 months ago in a national election and certainly McGuinness will increase on that but the idea that he would double in a lower turn out election when much of his base is amongst those less inclined to turn out while those with the most knowledge of his involvement in the north over the past 40 years will be very inclined not to support him. The only way he increases from this level is to tap into some of those on the harder left who are inclined to support Michael D. Higgins in despite of his Labour involvement rather than because of it. And that may well be what FG are about with their targeting of McGuinness. Boost him at Higgins expense.

Davis, the candidate who wasn’t and isn’t there. She comes across as terribly nice which is great in a way but this is the Presidency and for all that it is seen by most people as the state’s official greeter and our overseas tourist No.1, most people are aware on a certain level that the job also involves serious political judgement and knowledge of the constitution and the political realities of the country. The amazing thing about the previous Marys is not that they did all the touchy feely, dancing at the moonlight crossroad bridge but that they did that while wearing their education and knowledge of the less press friendly demands of the post so lightly. That they did the front of house tasks well was a bonus but that they could do the dull spade work had to be a given. It’s not with Davis and that is why she’s not going to challenge for the position when the race gets tighter.

So how in God’s name do I have Gay Mitchell in 2nd place? Because while he might on 14/15% amongst the population at large his appeal will work much more so to the demographics that will turn up on polling day. And he has (for all that most elements of the blogorati will despise him for doing so) seen off the sound spoken challenge of Dana for the more conservative element of the population and even those that vote for her will come, in part, back to him and he has going after a forgotten vote, middle aged men who think that the President should be more assertive on behalf of Ireland and not just the greeter No.1. I call it the two and half men strategy for rather obvious reasons, go after a large support base that others, in particular the media, turn their noses up at and you’re laughing.

Higgins is well out in front at this point and is best placed to gain more transfers from each of the other candidates than anyone else. I think he will get 20% minimum but that 27% could be picked away at if an improbable but not impossible combinations of factors were to kick in. Dana undermines him slightly in the West, Norris in the urban vote, McGuinness in working class areas and on the more ideologically inclined left, Davis in the “shure he’s terrible nice” stakes. Were that to happen the race could fall into Mitchell’s lap. But that’s not likely and unlikely things never happen in Irish Presidential elections right?

An Immodest Proposal – Let’s commit ourselves to ending inheritance

// September 19th, 2011 // No Comments » // GE11

In seeking to create a society with more equal opportunities one of the problems that we can’t get away from is the influence of family history. If your ancestors were quick witted, physically strong specimens and completely amoral then the chances are that you’ve ended up benefiting by virtue of the leg up provided by the fact that each subsequent generation had starting out in life with more wealth and privilege than those around them even if you’re no longer actually the ruler of half of Mittel Europe.

And why is this? Because we have decided to trump nature by embedding in our legal system the notion of inherited wealth and influence. At least back when the amoral ancestors, of those who are now the inherited elite of most of the human society, were getting what they could while the getting was good there was a good chance that someone else getting it from them later. If they slipped up or their offspring wasn’t up to the same standard as their parents then someone else could come along and take it from them. This they would do by being better at what it was that society valued at that time: killing people for the most part, making deals and alliances and a few other traits. Yet somewhere along the way as we created legal protections for the great mass of the people, Magna Carta and so on, those with power and influence also snuck in the slow thaw that protects both their position, and more damaging as history has gone on, that of their offspring.

We can’t go back and make human society in the time of the Pharaohs, the Emperors of Rome or the kings of Europe more equal yet one thing we can do is to end the practice of legal inheritance of vast unearned wealth (from this wealth is derived the influence) as we know it. To start to undo the constraints that mean that people do not arrive at the start of the race on an equal footing. Sure it’s a long way from the sort of  quick fix that most modern politics is about. Indeed, it’s the work of generations but it has much more chance of succeeding in the longer term and with considerably less objections than penalising those who currently seek to make the most of their talents as the income tax does when it is jerry-rigged to be a means of wealth redistribution. In fact excessively high incomes taxes do more preserve the positions of those who inherit great wealth than it does to undermine it.

Let’s face it we can’t realistically do much about what parents decide to spend on their kids while they are alive, no matter what bans or constraints you introduce parents will find a way around it. If they have wealth and influence then they will use it while they are alive. It’s part of human indeed animal nature to do what you can to further the prospects of your offspring over that of others. Yet for all that in almost all other* more primitively organised animal societies no offspring automatically inherits their parents positions of dominance and power. We actually allow people who are dead to shape the organisation of society and the rewards that accrue to people so that people are no rewarded proportionately for their efforts alone but rather than effort is for the most part a simple and limited sort of multiplier for your efforts except for a rare few who manage through little more than luck to slip through from one reward structure to another. For sure if it wasn’t them it would have been someone else similar to them, but it wouldn’t have been 50 or 50,000 of them.

The idea in rough outline would be that governments the world over would announce that from here on out inheritance taxes will increase by 1% every 5 years on amounts over €1 million and by 3% on amounts over €5 million (these limits would only increase by a rate of 1% less than inflation for a period of 50 years). That the stated aim was that within two to three generations that the Gavin O’Reilly’s or James Murdoch’s of this world should no longer be in charge of vast wealth and power by virtue of what their fathers did. That they could only occupy such positions on the basis of they being actually better than any of the other possible candidates.

It is bad for business and it is bad for society. Let’s face it inheritance is something that those on the free market right, and equal opportunity for all left should be able to unite around. People should be free to work hard and be rewarded for doing so but the starting position that you get in how much you are rewarded by shouldn’t more influence by what your grand parents did than what you have done yourselves.

By all means people should be able to ensure that their children should be comfortable perhaps even to the degree of never needing to work for their entire lives but not that their children will get incomes and wealth positions out of all proportion to their own merit. And no one could object to the right of parents to be able to provide for their off-spring who can’t provide for themselves.

For everyone else that should be the limit of it. All the increased taxes should go into targeted programs for less well off children, starting with food programs in pre and primary schools and moving up with the ages as the decades go by until every child has the best possible preparation to make the most of their abilities and to make the best possible contribution to their community and wider society when they reach adulthood. And what they earn they are free to keep and spend as they please, but once they are dead and gone that mos of that wealth goes back into the pot to fund the opportunities of others.

Naturally there would be problems with some forms of wealth like land tied up in farms but we can find ways to resolve that. That people could retain the right to farm land and to profit from that activity as their fore-bearers had but not to profit from the disposal of the land itself unless it was to sell more valuable land to invest in other land.

Do I think that anyone will rush to embrace this idea? Nope. People have had this idea before and will again, but that’s no reason not to consider it. Nor do I think it is one that will find much favour in Ireland, rather most people with find faults (and there are faults, easily found) with the rough plan of execution. Yet if anyone reading this lets the germ of the notion settle for a moment or two, no matter how barren the ground might seem I have a sneaky feeling that they might find themselves coming back to it wondering every once in a while – how could we finesse this, how could this be made to work,  so that a truly more meritocratic society could be born.

* I was going to say “all other more primitively organised animal societies” but I’m quite sure that someone will tell me that there is some rare form of ape out who let’s the eldest offspring become head of the tribe.

Conceding soft scores – the date of the Presidential election

// July 28th, 2011 // No Comments » // 2011

The announcement that the Irish Presidential election and a pair of referenda are to be held on October 27 isn’t, in the great scheme of things, all that important but in this instance it is a sign that the government is going to be worryingly prone to going native and conceding soft scores to the opposition. See the date of the election is much less significant than the day, a Thursday. Yep we’re back with voting on Thursdays again.

I had a brief exchange with someone on the twitter box and he was defending the government on the following basis that staff would not be available, that the following Monday is a bank holiday so we couldn’t have the count over the weekend and lastly it was the last possible time to have it cos we were bound by the constitution to have someone in place, that delaying another week or 9 days would leave us all devoid of a President and so laid bare to the world as not a real republic. (how it looks when a President dies and we don’t have a Vice-President in place to hold the door for visitors I don’t know. Perhaps, we’re worried the constitution will get all huffy if we don’t have a president sworn in on time and it will just debunk to Aruba)

Now let’s face it, those would be shite reasons if ff were in government & they are still shite now that we are. I happen think that we as a nation and the party that I’m a member of are better than this sort of guff.

If we want to market ourselves as a knowledge economy it would help to not treat the people living, working and voting in it like they were thick.

Ratting on the raters

// July 20th, 2011 // No Comments » // GE11

Reading the coverage of the decision by one of the ratings agencies to downgrade Irish soverign debt to junk status, one could be forgiven for thinking that this wasn’t an opinion coming from some paragons of impartial virtual who were up to a few years ago rating…oh what is the technical term for them…oh yeah…bags of utter unconscionable shite as triple A investments. Exciting and esoteric financial instruments that allowed loans to be made to people who hadn’t a hope in hell of ever repaying them and for those loans to be all dressed up in the finest of outfits, grouped with other loans of similar stinkitude and then sold across the globe with the stamp of approval of the ratings agencies. A1!

Anyone paying attention to the ratings agency’s downgrading of Ireland is like a family listening to the advice of  restaurant reviewers who gave glowing reviews to establishments that poisoned thousands of people, hundreds of whom died as a result as to where to go for Sunday lunch with granny.

Does this mean that everything in the garden of Ireland’s economy is rosy? Not at all, just that nothing much has changed in the last 6 months and for anyone to base their actions  on what the ratings agencies have to say would be lunacy. There again that pretty much describes how the masters of the universe behaved in the years up to the keel over of the economic system so I wouldn’t bet against some doing just that.