The dead hand of Fianna Fail

// January 25th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Uncategorized

One has to wonder just what will be the impact of so many outgoing FF TDs who are going to absent themselves from the campaign under whoever the new leader is. I have to wonder if some people in Fianna Fail aren’t wondering if retiring TDs shouldn’t do the decent thing and refuse to vote tomorrow. I’ve lost count (and it is hard to keep up with 3 more going in the last 18 hours) at this stage how many of them are going but they will almost surely be more than the margin of any victory the new leader will have.

Imagine that allowing the dead hand of party to strangle its possible rebirth. There is good reason why most parties sensible let a leader carry the can for defeat before deciding on what direction to take for the future.

Major Irish Political party unveils new details about party policy

// January 25th, 2011 // No Comments » // 2011, GE11

The Party has in response to much media comment about their lack of detail unveiled new details about it’s new Transport policy.

The party has revealed that the policy when released will be Mauve coloured with a covering exclusively provided by Moleskine, lightly scented with a hint of  lilac and the reliving of a child’s summer in Tuscany evoking memories of open top cars and sunlight dancing on upturned faces as the wind fingers at pace through their hair. The text will be bold in places but otherwise well behaved and quite plain. In adherence to the party’s commitment to diversity the text will range in size from 40 pt to 2 pt*. Fonts to be used are not 100% written in stone, but Calibri, Arial and Times New Roman will feature prominently.

The party can confirm that there will be no paragraphs of a length more than 4 sentences and with excessive usage of bullet points throughout. Several pages will consist of nothing but images of the party leader and party members pretending to be ordinary members of the public. As this is a transport policy there will be further pages devoted to images of trains, buses and cars with some bridges and roads featured too.

The policy has been described as very forward looking by those who have read it (including family members of those who wrote it and who had to be heavily prompted in their responses when doing so) with a sense of the determination of Central American strong man in its follow through.

Pressed by reporters as to the content of the policy document the party said that its contents would be profound and far reaching and affecting every aspect of transport experience. There will be extensive recourse to references to studies of similar sounding but unrelated academic studies of mice travelling on buses.

Asked what the policy would do the answer was that the policy would be transformational and make the lives of everyone it touched better. At this point the gathered media proceeded to tear their eyebrows off. All in all it was deemed the most successful policy launch that day by any party.

* (a footnote at the base of the last page indicating that all commitments are subject to the prevailing economic climate being favourable to the showering of gold coins on the populous)

Claims about an assault on academic freedom

// January 24th, 2011 // No Comments » // 2011, letters to Madam

This is the longer form version of a letter I sent to Madam last week in response to the calls for a public meeting about supposed challenges to academic freedom. It was and is a tad too long to publish, there again it would have taken up considerably less space  than the 150 names for the original letter linked above. I mean why not just sign it TUI Friends of the Paddy Healy’s Seanad campaign? And then it would have allowed other people on that day to get their letters published.

Madam,

The letter whose signatories occupies most of today’s Jan 20th) letters page reads like a missive of special pleading on behalf of exclusively or predominately TUI members in 3rd level. They are seeking to add themselves to the ever expanding list of those who view themselves, though most others wouldn’t do so, as part Ireland’s list of the most vulnerable. This time they include Ireland’s democracy as one of their number.

Certainly there must continue to be the most robust protection for academic freedom and the right to publish well grounded insights that challenge the status quo and for those people who voice unpopular but rigorously researched opinions. However that same freedom must not simply serve to unendingly protect the continued employment at the public’s expense of the incompetent, the incapable or the ineffectual. Their minority presence hurts the quality of education of the very students who will make up the future academic community that those in positions of influence should be seeking to foster.

The letter, from Paddy Healy’s Seanad campaign supporters, says absolutely nothing about seeking to ensure, for example, that reviews of teaching quality by those to whom it is delivered must form part of the ongoing assessment of performance. Nor is there indicated any willingness by those who have tenure to endure any changes in their circumstances of employment to the lot of those in the merry go round of post-doc and other research & teaching positions. The mantra is “what we have we hold and the devil take the rest of ye.

What is referred to rather archly as “managerialist structures and business models” might be termed, in plain language as, making people accountable for their work and finding a practical means to buy for their efforts. Has there been a surfeit of form-filling and Dilbertesque petty management nonsense on Irish campuses? Yes! Yet so too has there been excessive molly-coddling and feather-bedding of elements of the 3rd level community when the public purse was fuller.

A reasonable middle ground can and must exist between the gold plated tenured track that some have enjoyed to date and the unremitting uncertainty of the contracts that most post-docs and other new academic staff find themselves stuck with. Seeking to protect the former at the expense of the latter is just the sort of misguided rallying cry for the cabal that has given trades unions a bad name. Most of those working in 3rd level don’t have tenure, yet they are used by those who do to protect the status quo. It is also the case that anyone employed on one of these contracts is unlikely to feel fully able to offer a contrary opinion for fear of what the consequences from the establishment, which includes the currently tenured, might be. Where is their protection for unpopular opinion?

ENDs

Let’s be clear here, this campaign is a proxy for Paddy Healy’s campaign for the Seanad. With the departure of Sen. Joe O’Toole, Paddy sees an opening for him to be the teacher’s friend in the Oireachtas with this topic for him what the pro-life issue was for Sen. Ronan Mullen. And who knows he could be right. Scaremongering works in politics, that’s regrettable but true.

Why is Michael Martin fighting a battle he reckons he can’t win?

// January 18th, 2011 // No Comments » // 2011

People are looking at the talk around the FF confidence motion and wondering why is Michael Martin doing this now, and why is it him that is leading it?

The main reason I suspect is that the heave is designed to allow particular FF TDs who are standing in the next election to nail themselves down in the minds of the electorate as the official FF opposition to Brian Cowen and the government’s harsher measures and thus ensure that it is they and not their running mates that will be the people returned to the Dail at election time. I had noted previously that the makeup of the FF parliamentary party could be so changed in the aftermath of the election such that the prospects of one leader ship contender might increase while those of another decreased. Martin didn’t go for a heave long before now because in his view Lenihan would win any outright vote with the current parliamentary party.

However, by moving this close to the election and with the opinions and pronouncements of the likes of Michael Kennedy or Michael Moynihan fresh in their minds many FF inclined voters might cast their vote for those TD rather than their constituency mates. Thus altering the balance of support within the next FF parliamentary party.

This heave is but the first major engagement of the sure to be bloody battle of Mount st. as the supporters of various generals who would be the king over the water in the next Dail try to shift things one way or another in the interests of their favourite. And it won’t be the last engagement before election day either.

What changed in FF in the last week?

// January 17th, 2011 // No Comments » // 2011

People are asking what changed in FF to prompt the challenge to Brian Cowen, was it Anglo was it his answers in the Dail, was it the new info about who else was there? It wasn’t. It was as I noted on Political Reform on Saturday, the fact that many TDs with the election looming had actually gone out on the doors in seriousness for the first time in years. And they started with areas they knew had always been good for them.

FF activities of the last while mirror nothing as much as the frankly deluded manner in which FG approached the 2002 election. The party was completely blind as to the reality they were being presented with by the polls and carried on as it was business as usual when in fact the changed economic environment in a time of plenty meant that the usual rules didn’t apply.

It appears that only in the last week or so has it appeared that reality has dawned on them. Perhaps this is because with the starting of a countdown last November by the Greens to the calling of the election, some of their senior people like Batt O’Keeffe and their supporters have actually had to go out on the doors for the first time in earnest in many years and the reaction is far, far worse than they ever imagined it might be. With people who they knew well and had voted for them personally for years telling them bluntly that they would not do so this time out. They each thought as individuals that while the party might have lost support that they would personally be ok, the mentality that lead people to think that Alan Dukes or Nora Owen couldn’t possibly lose their seats or that DSE couldn’t possibly not elect a FG TD.

So now we appear to have FF TDs seeking to be either for or against Cowen heading into the election with the hope that the public will give them the benefit of the doubt in the polling booth and that enough of them survive for there to be a FF party to rebuild. It is a risky strategy as it is possible that such divisions will harm the intra-party transfers that FF will need to safe seats. Too divided a local ticket and they might as well be running for different and opposing parties.

Decent, honest and honourable – it isn’t enough.

// January 14th, 2011 // 5 Comments » // 2011

In recent days I’ve read on p.ie and elsewhere and heard on the airwaves about people who are decent, honest and honourable and for this set of reasons should be public representatives or hold high office.

One of the most impressive moments of the 2008 for me wasn’t any part of the razzamatazz but I guess surprisingly a contribution from Sen. Joe Biden in the Vice Presidential debate with Gov. Sarah Palin. Yeah, I’m that much of an anorak I watched it and even paid attention to what was said.

It’s about 2 minutes 45 seconds  into this clip of the later stages of the debate* in which the nominees were asked about bi-partisan ship. It highlighted for me a problem with modern politics in general and with an interesting Irish quirk to it. The problem is that too often people on the left and the right tend to question the motivation of their opponents. To listen to members of the left you’d swear that those on the right were oppose to people having good paying jobs and good schools and access to decent health care. And you’d swear blind after listening to some of the right that those on the left were planning to lock us all up for thinking a thought that diverged from the acceptable norm or buying for extra lessons for our kids after school.

The real focus in political shouldn’t be arguments over the motives we imagine for ourselves that others must have but their judgement and the substance of their argument that they make for the policy position they are supporting. It’s part of the key difference between those who are politics for personal ambition and advancement and those of us who want to see changes in matters of policy and substance.

The Irish quirk is that we have become so used to the widespread myth that all politicians are inherently dishonest, indecent and dishonourable that the mere fact someone comes forward who it is suggested is decent, honest and honourable even if they are from the same party as the incumbent that this is is a sufficient reason to vote for them. To give them a go this time. It’s not!

Instead, those traits and others like them should be a necessary** condition but not a sufficient one for voting for someone. We should be able as adults to presume unless it is shown otherwise that all those who put themselves forward for election are decent, honest and honourable. Those who crow loudest about being decent, honest and honourable are implying that all others in the field aren’t. And the same goes for the I’m local, I’m ordinary, I’m just one of you, schtick we often hear from candidates.

I don’t think Brian Cowen or Brian Lenihan or the rest of the members of the government are somehow inherently dishonest, indecent or dishonourable. I do think they is balls out wrong with the approach they’ve adopted with dealing with the various problems we’ve been faced with and they were plain wrong in how they dealt with the economy prior to the crisis which in turn made a bad situation into an awful one. Like kids that played with matches and burned and badly damaged the family home, it’s not that they did it out of shear badness but rather out of lack of cop-on.

*The full text is below but it reads much more dryly than it come across on tv at the time.

Sen. Biden “I have been able to work across the aisle on some of the most controversial issues and change my party’s mind, as well as Republicans’, because I learned a lesson from Mike Mansfield.

Mike Mansfield, a former leader of the Senate, said to me one day — he — I made a criticism of Jesse Helms. He said, “What would you do if I told you Jesse Helms and Dot Helms had adopted a child who had braces and was in real need?” I said, “I’d feel like a jerk.”

He said, “Joe, understand one thing. Everyone’s sent here for a reason, because there’s something in them that their folks like. Don’t question their motive.”

I have never since that moment in my first year questioned the motive of another member of the Congress or Senate with whom I’ve disagreed. I’ve questioned their judgment.

I think that’s why I have the respect I have and have been able to work as well as I’ve been able to have worked in the United States Senate. That’s the fundamental change Barack Obama and I will be bring to this party, not questioning other people’s motives.”

** I’m channelling my inner engineer with recourse to a standard maths phrase of a condition “being necessary but not sufficient”. In other words, it’s presence doesn’t prove a thing but it’s absence does disprove something.

The general election of 2014

// January 14th, 2011 // 2 Comments » // 2011

It is the height of arrogant presumption of someone to take the result of the next election as read but it is also prudent that someone within an political party need to think beyond the next election towards the next generation. And it should be recognised that there are times when a party’s day in the sun has passed, when it is ripe for toppling from the political mainstream and all it requires is the right push at the right time. This is what happened to the UK’s Liberal party in the 1920s where the Tories adroitly usher them out and the Labour in as their main opposition. Such a prospect was unimaginable at the end of the first World War that at the beginning of the next war that the Liberal party would be a rump in parliament not to return to government until the dawn of a new century.

I’ve previously noted that a problem exists for FF is that who within the party at a point of central control will have the stature or influence to make the hard calls especially on supporting candidates for the future that will save the party from slow oblivion. Let’s face it, it’s not going to be the likes of  Jerry Beades that does it. The same question for different reasons has to be asked within FG as to who is thinking both in terms of longer term political goals (policy objectives) and strategy to ensure that FG will be able to play a dominant part in the political discussion of the coming decades.

Here are two (perhaps extreme) suggestions I would make (based on conversations I’ve had with others), one is that after the general election and once the new Taoiseach has been chosen by the Dail that the new government should immediately amend the necessary legislation and extend the Dail term to 7 years subject to its re-approval by the Oireachtas again 4 years hence (those not tying the Labour party into a deal for 7 years where they are dependent on the FG Taoiseach’s calling of the general election that they can’t revoke, and with the commitment that the full 7 years will not availed of. This is in part to signal that the work of national recovery will be hard and politically costly but that it will work in the medium term and the government needs the space for. It is an odd feature of public policy that good and effective policy takes much longer to show results than the political system generally allows, so that governments are frequently rewarded or punished for the work of others.

FF and the rest of the opposition will be doubtlessly outraged at this move but the new government can simply reply that we are in extraordinary times (which the current government has repeatedly claimed) and that the new government needs and deserves the time to fix the problems caused by a decade and half of mistakes and missed opportunities. With what may be an overwhelming majority this change is the new government’s for the asking. Thus everyone will believe that the next election will be 4/5 years hence or perhaps longer if FG and Labour are agreeable.

But then the coup de grace on FF will be that the government should having stabilised the economic situation and with the economy growing once again, even if unemploment will still be high, hold the next general election on the same day as the local and European elections of 2014 seeking a new mandate and with the commitment to revoke the 7 year term provision. FF will simply be unable to field enough new competent or credible candidates. It will be that much hard for new FF candidates to emerge who can run for both Dail and council at the same time. Couple this with the passage of Seanad reforms such that the Seanad is elected on the day as the Dail will also deprive FF of a route back to power.

FF will most likely return to the Dail with much the same 30/40 TDs they could have post 2011 and without the gains in new cllrs they wanted in order to rebuild the party at local level and in areas where they are weakest. So FF would be facing another full term in opposition along with the knowledge that they would most likely not be the dominant party in any government they might potentially be part of thereafter. This is likely to cause a crisis of confidence within what was once a self styled political movement and not a mere party, and was the natural path to power for the ambitious person of the political centre.

Then at some stage after this 2014 election, FG should think what it really wants in its outline for the 2nd program for government that would govern the 2nd half of that government period of 2017 and beyond. If Labour are unwilling to sign up to this program than the FG Taoiseach should make it clear that she is prepared to make the same offer to what remains of the FF parliamentary party. And at that point, our little tale of the future must end…

Could the general election screw up the Census?

// January 6th, 2011 // No Comments » // 2011, yes minister

It was noted to me the other day in conversation that there might be a small problem with having the general election in March. The thing is see, we’re going to have several thousand people knocking on doors across the country on the serious business of distributing and then collecting (though that would happen in April) census forms and the last thing we would want is for them to be hunted for the doors of Ireland by people who thought they were canvassers for the election.

So remember to answer your door as while it might not be that effing politician you were expecting, it could instead be a helpful census taker who is only trying to do us all a service. And please don’t think of eating any of them.

The upcoming bloodbath of Mount St

// January 5th, 2011 // 4 Comments » // Fianna Fail

As the prospect of securing a return to government recedes and the race for the succession gathers pace, the role of the Mount st insiders and where their loyalties lie could lead to a chaotic situation in FF headquarters.

In constituencies where the party has two or more outgoing TDs (TDs A,  B and C) and if  TD A for example is perceived to be a Michael Martin man but more of Lenihan’s people are in situ in key positions at the Mount st HQ they will work more to save TD B who seems to be more their guy at all costs. It will be bedlam at HQ as the factions try to safe their own. Those whose interest is in the wider party will be pushed roughly to one side as the .

This is just another danger arising from the failure to put to bed the question of the future leadership of the party prior to the general election at a time when we all know that the first business of Fianna Fail in opposition will be to oust Brian Cowen as a means to plot a return to government as quickly as feasible. With dozens of outgoing TDs likely to not return either through retirement or defeat at the polls along with a much reduced Seanad line up then every vote will be vital. The support of a mere dozen colleagues on the first ballot could allow someone to emerge up the middle as an interim unity candidate to ensure that the factions don’t do too much damage to the party in a leadership battle.

But with many of those at HQ likely tied to various contenders, the problem for FF is that in the view of some lackeys losing TD A and thus the seat entirely might be preferable to their return to the Dail if their support was to be for  someone other than their man. With no one in FF HQ of the necessarily influence and gravitas within the broader party who has the interest of the entire party into the future as their sole priority, FF’s HQ manoeuvrings could end up throwing half a dozen savable seats overboard for the sake of the interests of the factions.

Imagine if a financial institution was directly funding an election campaign

// January 3rd, 2011 // No Comments » // 2010

Imagine if a political party had an exclusively tied relationship with a financial institution that say it meant that all members of the party would be entitled to a discount if they used that financial institution for their mortgages, insurances etc but that the discount only applied for that institution so that if they went elsewhere with their business  they would be paying more. Many thousands of punters served up for their exclusive consumption.

It’s a great boost to the financial institution as it gives them a considerably and exclusive advantage over other insurance and financial service providers with respect to these potential customers. Then imagine if the same political organisation was in turn to be in receipt of donations from that same financial institution in respect of specific election candidates who had previously held senior positions in the party in which one would presume they were in a position to influence any discussions about changing or reviewing that tied relationship to perhaps enter into a relationship with another financial institution. There would be all sorts of questions being asked about the appropriateness of this relationship and comments from the social partners as to how it appears.

Yet this is the situation between the ASTI, Cornmarket Group Financial Services and perennial Seanad contestant Bernadine O’Sullivan. It is unclear to me as an outsider what role if any the ordinary membership of the ASTI get to have in nominating Bernadine O’Sullivan or in deciding to place a few grand into her hands each time she launches her assault on the Seanad as part of the teachers’ union leadership regular “let’s compare the size of our membership*” effort, or what advantage they as members accrue from the donations that Cornmarket make to her personal election campaigns. After all, I’m sure that many insurance brokers would be happy to extend a 10/15% group discount to the thousands of teachers that would be members of the ASTI. The ones who appear to benefit most directly from this tied relationship is Cornmarket from the extra business it brings in and Bernadine O’Sullivan by funding her Seanad campaign without having to dip her hand into her own pocket, she also gets a tidy few grand from the ASTI itself. Cornmarket don’t declare who else they’ve given money too as it’s not required on their B1 return provided the aggregate amounts don’t exceed €5079 in a single year.  A Machiavellian person, which I’m not of course, might even wonder if the alternating of money from the ASTI/Cornmarket might simply be a means to get around the limit on corporation donations. But surely the leadership of a trade union wouldn’t do that with its members hard earned dues now would they?

*An effort that it would appear most teachers whether from the ASTI, TUI or INTO  find patronising and tedious as can be seen by the fact that less than 10% of  the number of those who are members of the unions end up voting for these self appointed proxies.