Cassandra 2012

History Belongs With the People

2012-12-14T04:16:00.000-08:00

Over the past three years I have had the good fortune to have met, via the internet, a group of people whose shared interest is that they once were – and in some cases still are – contributors to a particular website. For me it was a writing apprenticeship. For many of them it was another source of income for people who were already professional writers with a significant body of work in print. Of those who have ceased to be contributors to that site, several have gone on to create and manage successful sites of their own. One of these, the excellent Decoded Science, contains articles intended to clarify for the non-specialist information emanating from academia. Following on from the success of the first such site its owner has proposed an expansion of the idea to cover a wide range of subjects each with its own “decoded whatever” niche site.

With my usual lack of temerity I suggested that one such site might be called “Decoded Ireland”. This led one of the participants in the discussion to introduce the subject of taxonomy – in “decoded” terms, the problem of cross-over between categories whenever an attempt is made to assign things to a collection. Specifically, does Irish History belong in a collection headed “History” or in one headed “Ireland”?

My instinctive response to this question is to assert that it is not possible to separate a place – and inter alia its people – from its history. In other words Irish History may be a sub-category of History but it is first and foremost a key element of any discourse about Ireland and the Irish. How can such an assertion be justified?

Where Does American History Begin?

I shall begin my argument by looking not at Irish history but at the history of America. Did American history start with Columbus or the Pilgrim Fathers? Evidently not: America (or the Americas) was populated by various indigenous peoples before those events so the continent’s history must include the history of those people as well as of the Europeans who came later. And those Europeans brought with them their own past history which profoundly influenced their subsequent behaviour.

During a recent BBC documentary about Simon and Garfunkel, Paul Simon spoke of his shock when a much earlier documentary, produced in the USA in 1969 drew a huge amount of opprobrium with sponsors pulling out because of the inclusive nature of the political message it contained. Simon confessed that prior to this he had no idea that the whole population of the USA did not share the liberal ideals with which he had been brought up in the North East and which he took for granted. To me that is an illustration of the different histories of the states in the North and the South of the US. And not just the Civil War, but the different histories that migrants to the North and to the South brought with them from Europe.

But American history is perhaps different from that of other places in a very particular way: many of the “founding fathers”, as those early settlers are often referred to, came to America to start a new life because they did not like aspects of life in Europe. This is true, too, of many of those who came later: the way their original homeland was being governed left them destitute or persecuted or treated as second class citizens. They were driven by the belief that they could make a better life for themselves and their families in this new land of opportunity. So the culture, the politics and social attitudes that shaped the new land inevitably diverged from the pattern of history that continued to evolve in their former homes. And it must follow also that the history of those former homes is different from what it might have been had they remained.

Roman and Other Influences on Britain

Going further back in time and looking at the British Isles, can it not be said that differences between England and the rest of the mainland and islands of this highly influential archipelago are the result of the Roman occupation? This was a period during which there was much greater assimilation between the invaders and the indigenous people close to the points of invasion than was the case beyond the borders of modern England. As a consequence Celtic influences remain strong in Scotland, Ireland and Wales 1500 years after the Romans’ departure. The North and South of the archipelago were similarly subjected to different influences by subsequent invasions and occupations. Thus the Viking influence is stronger in the North whilst the Norman influence is stronger in the South. Ireland, like England, suffered, if that is the right word, at the hands of both these later occupying forces.

Finally, when looking at Irish history it is impossible to ignore the fact that Ireland as an independent nation is less than a century old. Its creation was followed by a brief but bloody civil war that is still within living memory for some of its oldest citizens and continues to have a strong influence on the nation’s politics and culture. And yet despite that independence it retains a strong affinity with the remainder of the archipelago. Meanwhile, the part of the island of Ireland which remains within the United Kingdom, was the source of violent rebellion that spilled onto the streets of England and the Republic as recently as the 1970s and ‘80s. Indeed, as I write, protesters are issuing death threats to politicians in Northern Ireland over a decision to cease flying the Union flag on public buildings except on certain days, an issue that must seem incomprehensible to the majority of outsiders.

To conclude then, it seems to me to be axiomatic that, whether the specific subject under discussion is architecture, music, literature, the visual arts, politics or even the landscape it is inextricably linked to the history of the place where these things are found. In short, history belongs with place and people, not the other way around.

The Future is Looking Good

2012-11-13T04:17:00.001-08:00

Cassandra 2012 is retiring. He has been here for close to a year now which is about what I expected when I gave birth to him. I am quite proud of the fact that I have managed to keep him alive that long. Certainly the fact that I included 2012 in his name means that he was doomed to breathe his last no later than December 31^st 2012.

I cannot claim that he has been successful, certainly not as measured in page views. He began as an attempt to present an alternative view of Irish and UK politics in the context of collapsing currencies and government imposed austerity. There is a multitude of columnists, bloggers and angry citizens all too ready to tell the world how wrong the coalition governments in both countries are; how much pain they are causing to their populations. Cassandra 2012 came into existence in order to counter this cacophony of protest and to point out that it was not just the bankers who got us into this mess.

Previous governments created the circumstances in which bankers were able to do what they did and the vast majority of ordinary citizens who surely ought to have known better were happy to go along with the erroneous belief that how ever much they or their governments borrowed today they would be able to find the means to repay their creditors in the future. We were all complicit in the deceit – it occurs to me that conceit might be a more appropriate word – and must all now pay the price.

Work is the Only Way

“Why,” you ask, “should the bankers be allowed to get away with it?” And, in truth they shouldn’t. The problem is they did it all with other people’s money, people like you and me, people who believed that they’d get their money back with interest. If we write off those debts it is those ordinary people who will lose their savings. Either way it is us ordinary folk who will suffer, whether through government imposed austerity or through loss of savings. So Cassandra 2012 came about in attempt to remind people that the only way out of the mess is to work our way out of it.

My other objective was to provide a platform from which to market my books to potential readers. That of course depended on the blog reaching that audience, and it hasn’t. So it is time to say farewell and look forward. For if Cassandra 2012 must pass into history on or before 31^st December 2012, something has to take his place in 2013 and beyond.

Important Anniversaries

2013 marks the bi-centenary of the creation of the school that I attended in the 1950’s. It will also see mine and Freda’s golden wedding. Later in the year the 70^th anniversary of my father’s death will pass. He died when the Lancaster bomber of which he was a crew member crashed near Mannheim in Germany.

2013 is also the year in which my home town will host Europe’s largest agricultural event, the Irish National Ploughing championships. One of my neighbours when I was growing up in Herefordshire was English National ploughing champion so there is yet another link of a sort between the county of my birth and the one in which I now reside.

A much more significant link is the historical one concerning Roger Mortimer. Roger once owned a castle near my present home. He was born in Wigmore Castle in Herefordshire and is notorious for having ruled England (and Ireland!) after the suspicious death of the King and having entered an adulterous relationship with the Queen (Isabel).

Plenty of material there for a novel! I shall certainly attempt to mix these ingredients into a continuing on-line presence throughout 2013. The metaphors that spring to mind are clichés but I cannot resist the temptation to use them: “The King is dead; long live the King!” and “Something will rise from the ashes”.

Manners maketh the man

2012-09-25T10:46:00.003-07:00

A quarter of a century ago I had the privilege of representing a small part of what is now North East Lincolnshire on what was then Humberside County Council. The council was split down the middle with the Conservatives having just one more member than had Labour. This meant that we four Liberal members had a lot of power for it gave us the casting vote on every decision the council took.

About half way through our four year term of office a former member of the British Intelligence Service published a memoir containing a great deal of information that was in breach of the British official secrets act. The book – Spycatcher – was published in Australia and its sale in the UK was banned as was publication of extracts in any British newspaper. It became a cause celebre, seen by some as another example of an unpopular government’s contempt for the people.

Behaviour unworthy of men with power

A fellow member of our group obtained a copy and all four of us made an ostentatious display of passing the book between us and commenting on it during a debate in the council chamber. We saw this as an act of bravado, demonstrating our contempt for censorship and of the acts of governments of both other parties over a number of years that were exposed in the book. Looking back it seems a rather adolescent thing to have done: certainly not worthy of mature men – half of us over 45 – entrusted with the power to make decisions affecting the lives of over 800,000 citizens.

On Saturday last, 22^nd September 2012, the Irish Prime Minister, Enda Kenny, was observed apparently indulging in similar behaviour. As a member of a delegation from the Christian Democrat International political grouping he was attending an audience with the Pope. An Italian website has posted one minute and twenty seconds of footage showing him fiddling with his cell phone and failing to notice when everyone else stood to applaud.

Justified anger about clerical abuse

Mr. Kenny has made no secret of his anger at the Church’s response to decades of clerical abuse in Ireland and elsewhere. That anger is shared by many Irish people but Ireland remains a largely devout catholic country in which the Church plays an important part in people’s lives. Many still attend Mass daily; visits to sacred places such as Medugorje, Knock and Lourdes as well as Rome are undertaken by large numbers of Irish citizens.

Mr. Kenny has been granted the honour of representing these people on the world stage and it was in that capacity that he was present in Rome on Saturday. To date we have no way of knowing whether his behaviour was, like my own described above, a deliberate act of contempt or just the kind of ill-mannered inattention that the former primary school teacher would surely never tolerate in the classroom.

Phone etiquette

If the former then, like me, he was guilty of a childish act unworthy of a national leader. It would have been better, surely, to have declined the invitation. If the latter it was nothing less than sheer bad manners. It may be difficult to imagine the Pope reacting like Richard Griffiths to such behaviour but nor is it easy to believe that the Toiseach is unaware of basic etiquette.

No need to apologise or resign for speaking the truth

2012-09-11T15:46:00.000-07:00

Big’ot, n. One who holds irrespective of reason, & attaches disproportionate weight to, some creed or view. Concise Oxford Dictionary, Fourth Edition, 1950.

My dictionary may, like me, be a little on the decrepit side of old but I would contend that the definition above accurately describes someone who opposes gay marriage. So why is Nick Clegg afraid to use it? The fact that he – or, more accurately, “someone in his office” – considered doing so apparently offended some Tory back-benchers.

I haveblogged about this subject previously, prompted by a series of news items. Once again the Nick Clegg story coincides with remarks by an Irish judge that have resulted in calls for that person to resign. Those making the call believe that Irish Travellers will be unable to receive a fair trial from this judge because he remarked that some people from the defendant's ethnic background were like “Neanderthal men abiding by the 'laws of the jungle'".

It would seem that the judge’s view is shared by a significant number of ordinary Irish citizens. In the town where I live there was held today a funeral mass for a Traveller lady. The wake last night was attended by a large contingent of her relatives – she is reputed to have 86 grand-children – and local publicans closed their bars for fear of the mayhem they expected to occur should large numbers of young Traveller men be granted admission.

A judge will have seen people of that ilk being brought before the courts for riotous behaviour and will base his comments on that experience. This does not mean that he will mete out punishment to Travellers that is in any way disproportionate to that meted out to non-Traveller perpetrators of similar crimes.

To return to the Nick Clegg story, my previous blog about free speech which included particular reference to the subject of gay marriage produced an interesting discussion via the Facebook message service with Will Faulkener who presents a dailycurrent affairs discussion programme on my local radio station. In the course of that discussion he described an interview with an openly gay woman councillor who argued against gay marriage on the grounds that marriage not blessed with children is inferior.

I would contend that such a view fits precisely the definition of bigot quoted above. Are elderly people who marry, often to great media delight, in an “inferior” relationship on account of their inability to bear children? And what about those heterosexual married couples who either cannot, or choose not to, have children? Are they to be regarded as not properly married? Surely only by those who have little or no regard for reason.

Freedom to Speak, not to Hurt

2012-08-03T14:58:00.000-07:00

In the USA the boss of a fast food chain tells a religious broadcaster that he is opposed to gay marriage and the authorities in some districts threaten to ban his outlets from setting up in their town. The governor of the man’s home state declares Aug 1^st to be a day of solidarity with the fast food chain boss. (The net is full of reaction to this debate, I linked to a New York Times article believing it to be a more trustworthy source than some of the other publications that appeared when I Googled “Chic-fil-a”)
In Ireland a judge calls Social Security “a Polish charity”. Later the judge apologises citing the “context” as her excuse.
In South Africa the government takes steps to suppress news of atrocities committed by, mostly young, Blacks on their white neighbours.
In a televised discussion in the UK a black Tory MP tells a black churchman that his intolerance of gay marriage is equivalent to others’ intolerance of black immigrants. (This was featured on BBC Newsnight 2nd August 2002, I am unable to provide a link)

What do these four stories – and no doubt there are others that I could have cited – tell us about the right to free speech and the treatment of minorities in the world today?

It was, I think, Voltaire who famously said “I disagree profoundly with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” (Or words to that effect). Freedom of speech, the right to express an opinion however bizarre, is one of those “inalienable rights” guaranteed by the US constitution though not necessarily so well protected by laws elsewhere.

Duties accompany rights

But along with rights come duties and it is the duty of all those exercising the right to voice their opinion in public to consider the effect of their words on those who might hear them. It is also, it seems to me, necessary for the speaker to be able to defend his or her remarks with rational argument citing evidence. When the Irish judge was unable to do that she was right to apologise, recognising that the remark was hurtful to many hard working Polish people in Ireland.

I would like to know the basis upon which those who oppose gay marriage hold such an irrational opinion. How are they, or anyone else, harmed by the availability of such a ceremony? The rational answer must be that neither they nor anyone else is harmed by gay marriage. On the other hand, to oppose the idea is hurtful to those who wish to publicly declare their love for each other before their god and in the presence of a congregation of co-religionists.

Does that mean it is right to seek to prevent a person holding such irrational beliefs from setting up a business in my town? No, of course it doesn’t. Should defending his/her right to express that opinion extend to having a day set aside in his/her honour? Not unless you want to draw attention to unfounded opinions that are hurtful to some of your fellow citizens.

Is opposition to gay marriage equivalent to racism? Is it a “hate crime”?

We have come a long way in my lifetime

Before I attempt to answer those questions it is worthwhile taking a short trip back in time. Not so long ago it was considered perfectly rational to make the assumption that black people are inferior to white people. In parts of the USA as well as in South Africa it was against the law for blacks and whites to mix socially, let alone marry each other. This was the case less than 30 years ago in South Africa and little more than 50 years ago in the USA.

Go back another 20 years, to the time of my birth, and you would have no trouble finding people who thought it perfectly rational to argue that the world’s problems could all be laid at the door of Jews and that the solution was … you know the rest.

Within the same time frame it was illegal in many parts of the world for two men to have sexual relations. Indeed, there are still parts of the world where this is the case.

These days we, in the developed world at least, consider ourselves to be more enlightened; we understand that behaviour that takes place in private between consenting adults harms no-one else and is, therefore, not to be frowned upon by the law. We understand and accept that people of all races are equally capable of being clever or stupid, saintly or evil.

Engage the brain before opening your mouth

So incitement to, or the actual infliction of, violence against people because of their skin colour or their sexuality is inexcusable and the right to freely express such a view is, I believe, correctly prevented by the laws of most civilised societies. The same goes for expressions of hate towards particular religions, including those whose influence on the governments of some nations is so strong that those governments outlaw the practice of homosexuality. In such cases it is right to condemn the government and to argue rationally against the outdated religious teachings that are cited by the leaders of those religions. But to incite violence or to make hate filled statements is unhelpful and ought to be against the law.

So, hold whatever opinion you like but please think carefully about the consequences – the effect on potential hearers – before expressing them in public. And don’t use beliefs that you can’t back with rational argument to try to change the law of your homeland.

Motherhood, Apple Pie and Some Food for Thought

2012-05-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

I listened to the Chairman of Fine Gael which, as the largest party in the Irish Parliament, is the senior partner in the governing coalition, talking to Will Faulkner on Midlands Today this morning (18th May 2012). (The programme is re-broadcast at midnight BST tonight, that's 17:00 PDT). Charlie Flanagan also happens to be one of my local TDs (Members of Parliament; in the Irish electoral system each constituency has more than one representative). “Growth is like motherhood and apple pie,” he said, “everyone thinks it is a good thing.”

And I suppose he is not far wrong. Most people do think that growth is a good thing. But, as I argued in my previous post, there are many who disagree. I ended that piece with a promise to explore some of the ways in which it could be possible to provide for all our needs without destroying the planet in the process. But first I want to add some more food for thought for those, like Deputy Flanagan, who still need to be convinced.

I was thinking about the idea that water might be the next big source of conflict in certain parts of the world and it occurred to me that we in Northern Europe import significant quantities of fruit and other agricultural produce from such areas, notably the Mediterranean region. That produce is made up principally of water. So, whilst it is true that fruit juices are concentrated before being transported thousands of miles, it is also the case that a lot of fuel is used transferring water from a part of the world that can ill afford to lose it to one where it is relatively abundant.

Population decline is inevitable

I tried to find statistics for the quantities involved and was unable to do so. The closest I came to it was in a study carried out a few years ago by the UK conservation charity WWF. This looked into the whole question of the effect of British food imports on the planet’s most vulnerable environments. What is clear from my reading of this report is that the issue is far more complex than I had supposed. And, for me, the most startling fact to emerge was this: there is a vital resource that we all take for granted, far more so than we do water, that is disappearing at an alarming rate. That resource is soil!

Allow me to quote: world-wide, soils under agricultural management are eroding 10 to 100 times faster than they are being formed meaning that agriculture is unsustainable over relatively short historical time frames – 100 to 1,000 years. This simple constraint on the lifespan of agricultural soils explains reasonably well the pattern of the rise and decline of historical civilisations. … [worldwide we are losing] 5-10 million ha of arable land each year. Much of this soil is removed from agricultural land and ‘entombed’ in deposits that cannot be used for productive purposes. For the UK food economy, erosion of soils in the Mediterranean used for fruit and vegetable production is particularly significant.

Our diet is destroying the environment

The report also has a lot to say about the original question of water usage, generally confirming my suspicions. Here are some more quotations:

The Mediterranean Basin comprising the land draining into the Mediterranean Sea … includes some of the most intensively farmed land in the world such as the Rhone valley in France, the valley of the River Po in Italy, and the Nile Valley that supplies vegetables to the UK. It includes much of the Spanish fruit and vegetable production areas, and the Middle East, including Israel. The UK is a major and growing consumer of the relevant crops – vegetables, fruit, wine and olives.

Water is the key constraint to production ... Water demand in the Mediterranean countries doubled between 1950 and 2000, and irrigated agriculture accounts for 65% of water consumed (Nostrum 2006). The irrigated area doubled between 1960 and 2000 … with the biggest increases in absolute terms in Spain and Turkey. The food exporters to the UK are Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey. Morocco is in more recent years the focus of significant investment in intensive agricultural production, including for the UK market. This has caused extensive and irreversible environmental degradation.

There is much more but the above should be enough to illustrate the problem. Although the report focuses on the UK’s food economy, Ireland’s pattern of consumption of similar produce is comparable to that of the UK’s, only lacking in significance by virtue of its relatively small size. In simple terms, we cannot carry on like this without further irreparable damage to the planet, notwithstanding the over-arching issue of climate change.

If Growth is the Answer ...

2012-05-03T08:28:00.000-07:00

... you are probably asking the wrong question.

The political debate in Ireland, in the UK and, indeed, throughout the world is polarised between those who argue for so called austerity now - in order to stabilise budgets and support growth later - and those, mostly on the left, who argue that austerity is making things worse and we need growth now. No-one from the mainstream is prepared to face up to the possibility that growth has reached its limits; that maybe growth is the problem, not the solution.

There is however a growing number of people who argue not only that there are limits to growth but that we have reached them and that we need to find new definitions of prosperity that involve measuring the quality of life rather than material possessions. The idea has been around since at least the early 1970's. Those old enough will be able to remember the crisis in oil supply that occurred at that time. In Britain in 1973 and '74 the government introduced measures that included phased power cuts and businesses forced to operate for only three days each week. Some people began to wonder what would happen when the oil ran out altogether.

But new sources of supply were discovered and developed and the world fell back into its normal state of complacency. Governments continued to pursue growth as the means of ensuring ever increasing standards of living for their electors. Soon the developing nations began a game of catch-up which meant that their annual rate of growth was 2-3 times that of developed countries. In one of the books referred to in Tom Schueneman's piece, to which I provided a link above, its author points out that the price of crude oil peaked shortly before the economic crash of 2008. He suggests that the crash was as much a consequence of that spike in oil price as of the excessive borrowing that had accompanied it.

Four years on and growth is beginning to return in some of the advanced nations. And the oil price is once again increasing rapidly, the most visible evidence of this being the prices at the filling stations here in Ireland and in the UK. Meanwhile oil producers are developing increasingly costly and difficult ways of reclaiming the precious liquid from deep beneath the oceans, from shale and by fracking. Oil may be a long way still from running out but its price makes it economically viable to, as it were, scrape the bottom of the planet's barrel.

Oil is not the only problem

And it is not just the supply of oil that is reaching its limit. Demand for other important raw materials is, again as in the 1970s, ensuring that their prices too are increasing and new and more difficult sources of supply are being exploited, sometimes with potentially disastrous environmental consequences.

Perhaps the most worrying of all these pressures on resources is that on water supplies. We are fortunate here in Ireland to be blessed with an abundance of water. Some of it is arguably in the wrong place. There is anger in some quarters at plans to extract water from the Shannon and store it in a new reservoir in the Midlands to ensure security of supply for Dublin and its environs. That is a tiny scheme when considered alongside several gigantic water management schemes being undertaken in China.

There are those that believe that the wars that have plagued the Middle East throughout the half century of my adult life are bound to intensify in the future driven, not by a desire to control the oil supply so much as the need for access to the waters of the Jordan, Nile and Euphrates.

You will notice that, in identifying these dangers attaching to the continued pursuit of economic growth I have not mentioned climate change. The burning of fossil fuels that accompanies all our economic activity is changing our climate in ways the consequences of which are unpredictable. Droughts, storms and floods are part of it, so is the possibility of crop failure in parts of the world where food production is already on a knife edge.

Is there room for hope?

I argued in my second post of this series that austerity as experienced in Europe today would be viewed as luxury living by those who experienced the economic conditions that followed World War 2. Europe came out of that period with a programme of reconstruction that ensured two decades of near full employment.

Since the 1970s there have been varying levels of unemployment throughout the continent. It fell during the boom years, roughly 1997 to 2007, but even through that exceptional decade there remained a core of families for whom unemployment was the norm. Since 2008 unemployment has increased dramatically, at its worst in those places like Greece, Spain and Ireland, where the greatest debts accrued during those years. The fundamental question that needs to be faced is how to provide work for those millions without generating economic growth.

If all this sounds doom laden - and it is - I remain optimistic about the future, believing that humankind has the intelligence and the sense to adapt and respond to these unprecedented challenges. Sure, it will be painful for some, life is like that. But there are reasons to hope and I shall look at some of them in future posts.

Losing Friends to Cancer

2012-04-21T09:13:00.000-07:00

Maggie was the first. I met her in February 1981. I was working for a UK company that manufactured synthetic fibres. There was at the time something called The Multi-Fibre Agreement, an international trade deal that restricted the ability of developing nations to export cheap fibres into Europe. It was due for renegotiation and employees of the company were naturally worried about the possible impact on their jobs. Several of us wrote to our MPs seeking support for a deal that would protect our company's position in international markets.

In a footnote to his reply the MP for Cleethorpes mentioned a meeting taking place to protest about the re-development of the old swimming pool as a modern leisure centre. I decided to go to the meeting and find out what it was all about. Although the Conservative MP had called the meeting none of the Conservative councillors bothered to attend. All 5 members of the minority Liberal Party group did attend. Their leader did his best to explain the thinking behind the scheme and to allay some of the concerns being expressed by those whose homes were close to the site of the planned development.

I had wanted to join the Liberal Party for some time and took the chance to button-hole one of the councillors after the meeting. A tall lady with dark hair and a friendly manner she introduced herself as Maggie Smith and invited me to join her and most of the others at the Liberal Club in the town. There I met her husband Brian and Norman, the leader of the group, who had so impressed me with the clarity of his explanations at the meeting.

Political Activity

Over the next ten years we all became close friends as well as party colleagues. Maggie acted as agent at the 1983 general election. As a member of her team I saw how hard she worked - I had already seen the extraordinary amount of effort she expended on behalf of the people she represented in a ward that consisted of a mixture of private and social housing. In 1987 our roles were reversed; I was agent, drawing heavily on her experience. By then I was also a Councillor at both County and District levels.

Throughout this period we socialised, usually at the Liberal Club where all of us also worked as volunteer bar persons as well as mucking in when the Club moved premises and a great deal of building alterations and decorating was required. We went on two or three holidays to Germany together where we were entertained by members of the FDP (German Liberals) in Cleethorpes' twin town of Konigswinter.

By 1991 changes in my career path necessitated a move away from Cleethorpes but we remained in touch. A large group, including Maggie, Brian, Norman and his wife, paid a surprise visit to our new home to celebrate my 50th birthday. It was not so long after that we had a phone call to say that Maggie was in hospital in Lincoln.

Cancer Took Them

We visited her there and were shocked to see her condition. Barely able to breathe, let alone speak, she kept apologising - for not being able to entertain us I suppose. Within days she was gone and we were joining the hundreds who attended her funeral. It was there that Maggie's sister-in-law told us that Maggie had been in pain for many months but had refused to see her doctor, perhaps in fear of the diagnosis - who knows. By the time she did it was too late; the disease had taken hold and would not be denied.

If Maggie was the first friend to be taken by cancer she was not the first in our circle. Ann was barely in her thirties. The daughter of another of the Liberal Party circle in Cleethorpes she had already lost her father to the disease and her mother had, thankfully, recovered from breast cancer. Her husband was a teacher at my son's school but soon after we got to know them they moved to Norfolk. The form of breast cancer that attacked Ann must have been much more aggressive than that suffered by her mother for she died at a tragically young age.

A few years after Maggie's death we heard that Norman was undergoing treatment for bowel cancer. He recovered, or so we thought. The last time we saw him he was full of enthusiasm for the latest plans for development of a neglected part of the sea-front, something that he had been struggling to achieve for many years. Now, it seemed, there was hope that something positive was going to happen. He showed us the plans and explained how it would be a great boost to Cleethorpes' ability to attract visitors.

The remission did not last long enough for him to see the plans brought to fruition; he was dead within weeks of that last visit. I could go on with this list; Norman's sister, several family members who I won't name and ending with a lady from Portlaoise who I knew from her work with Tidy Towns and whose death a week ago prompted this reminiscence.

Support is Vital

I think I have said enough to make clear why I try to do what little I can for cancer charities. It is a horrible disease and, whilst survival rates are improving all the time, it seems that one in every two men and one in every three women will develop cancer at some point in their lives. The work of those who support patients and their families in places like the Cuisle Centre in Portlaoise as well as researchers developing new treatments is vital if premature and painful deaths like Maggie's are to be prevented in future.

The Myth of Fair Taxes

2012-04-18T03:32:00.000-07:00

Opposition to taxes is universal. That statement looks like a truism - something so obvious that it does not need to be said. And yet there are exceptions. Few object to the things that our taxes pay for, unless it is the high salaries and expenses of those charged with the task of administering them. And lately in Ireland and in the UK there is plenty of clamour from those who see the solution to their own supposedly high taxes as the imposition of even higher taxes on others.

This is usually expressed as a move toward greater fairness. So, for example, many in Ireland would like to see the introduction of a third tier of income tax, taxing marginal income above, say, €150k at 50% instead of 41%. Meanwhile, in the UK, the run up to the 2012 budget saw a debate about whether the 50% rate already in force there should be reduced.

The other suggestion that is being made in certain quarters is the imposition of a "wealth tax"; a one off charge on the assets of the richest one or two percent of the population.

Whilst I can sympathise with the anger that lies behind such arguments I have serious doubts about the practical effects of such measures were they to be introduced.

50% Income Tax doesn't work

Consider, first, the 50% income tax band: those eligible to pay tax at that rate already have a marginal rate of 41% in Ireland. If they spend most of the remaining 59% they will pay 23% VAT on their purchases. With less to spend they will pay less in VAT so the €90 increase in tax on every €1000 of income has to be offset against a reduction of €21 in potential VAT income due to the reduced spending. The net gain to the exchequer is therefore only 90-21=69 or 6.9%.

It is also important to look at the kinds of things such individuals are likely to spend their money on. Someone on a tight personal budget will inevitably make the bulk of their purchases in British or German owned chain stores on goods imported from the Far East. Those with cash to spare are more likely to spend that spare cash on high-end Irish made artisan products or imported luxury goods that earn high margins for their Irish importers. Reduce the amount they have to spend in this way and you damage Irish businesses and put Irish jobs at risk.

Wealth Tax - the best way to export the nation's wealth?

I turn now to the idea of a wealth tax. It is my understanding that the wealth that is being talked about here is not cash lying idle in some vault. It is tied up in property, in race horses, in various valuable artefacts and, mostly, in businesses. In order to liberate cash to pay a wealth tax it would be necessary for the wealthy person to sell some of those assets. A forced sale would, of course, not realise the full value of the asset sold. And who except another wealthy person would have the means to make such a purchase? And as the only Irish people with the means to make such a purchase would be seeking to sell some of his or her own assets the only serious buyers would be foreigners; Arabian sheiks and Russian oligarchs spring to mind.

The impact on jobs would perhaps not be great; the assets and the jobs they represent would still be there but now under foreign ownership. The government would have the cash to spend but the overall wealth of the nation would have been reduced and a significant part of it transferred overseas, something that not even those on the extreme left want to see. All this, of course, assumes that the wealthy would readily succumb to the imposition of such a tax without taking avoiding action such as moving themselves and their assets overseas.

The plain fact is that the only way to reduce tax is to reduce the size of the public sector. We can all point to waste and ways in which the public services could be made more efficient. But, just as we object to paying taxes we don't like it when one person's efficiency saving leads to the removal of a perk from which we have benefitted. You may say that a particular road improvement is a waste of money; I might be grateful for the opportunity to get from one place to another more quickly and in greater safety.

In reality there is a limit to what can be achieved through increasing efficiency and reducing waste. And the most effective way of bringing those savings about is to tighten budgets and leave it to the people at the sharp end to seek and to implement the necessary changes. And isn't that precisely what Fine Gael/Labour are trying to do and what everyone seems to object to almost as much as they object to taxes?

Lies, Damned Lies and …

2012-04-02T09:52:00.000-07:00

The furore over Ireland's Household Charge has degenerated in to an argument about numbers: how many had or had not registered and paid by the March 31st deadline; how many attended the protest outside Fine Gael's ardh fleish over the weekend.

Spin and miss-information continues to characterise the debate with those opposed to the charge being the worst culprits. Their campaign is full of scaremongering about the supposed unfairness of the charge which will, they claim, bear most heavily on those least able to pay.

Many people who will quite genuinely find it hard to set aside €100 towards the cost of local government services are angry and distressed. The truth is that most of the poorest citizens are exempt from the charge so the cynical rabble rousing by various bodies of the extreme left in Irish politics is playing unnecessarily on their fears.

House owners are the only people eligible to pay this charge. Tenants are not. And organisations that provide social housing - local authorities, housing associations - are also exempt from the charge.

The protest leaders harp on about the need to tax the wealthy more heavily than the poor. Show me a landlord who is not wealthy and I will show you someone who thought he or she could make a quick buck out of property during the boom years; someone, in other words, whose greed got us into this mess in the first place.

Cynicism of the extreme left

The leaders of this protest are cynically manipulating ignorant and ill-informed people. The level of ignorance and distance from reality was illustrated for me by one of the crassest statements I have ever heard. It came from a woman following a protest meeting in Tullamore last week. Interviewed on local radio she likened the situation in Ireland to that in Syria. The clip was repeated on several news bulletins throughout the day so there is no question that I might have miss-heard.

Now you can argue all you like about the number of people attending protests or registering to pay the charge but I can tell you with absolute certainty how many Irish refugees are streaming into Northern Ireland as a result of having their homes destroyed by government shelling. And I don't think anyone would dispute the figure.

What motivates the leaders of this protest? There can be little doubt that for some it is envy. For others it is the desire to create a socialist republic in which wealth would be taken from the successful and used to shore up an already featherbedded bureaucracy. Have such people not read any history? Have they seen what life is like for ordinary citizens in the planet's only remaining socialist republic? The people starve whilst their government develops nuclear weapons.

I deplore the notion that some people are in receipt of rewards out of all proportion to their contribution to society. But it is too easy to forget that unless that money is buried in a hole in the ground it inevitably finds its way back into the economy, as its (temporary) holders spend or invest it. Both activities are much more likely to create jobs for ordinary people than is any programme devised by a socialist administration.

England After the War

2012-04-01T11:38:00.000-07:00

An introduction to Summer Day

For a long time I have wanted to write about my childhood home. I tried memoir; I tried writing about my mother's life. I began to think much too late in life about what it must have been like for her, a young woman brought up in the city, to find herself in an isolated part of rural England with no-one to whom she could relate. Of course, to begin with it would have been just another in a long line of unpleasant changes wrought in the lives of English men and women by the war. You just had to make the best of it, think yourself fortunate by comparison to those still being subjected to nightly air raids and the soldiers, sailors and airmen facing death and injury at every hour of the day and night. One day it would all be over and life as it was lived before the war would return. Later, when realisation dawned that returning to London was not a practical option, she must have experienced moments of despair at the loneliness and the constant grind of having to undertake everyday chores when the means to carry them out were so limited.

As a child I was blissfully unaware of any of this except perhaps in those moments when her anxiety overflowed into impatience with my contrary ways although I would certainly have had no notion of what might have been behind such outbursts which were, in any case, no more frequent than those of any parent frustrated by their children's behaviour. For me and, later, my sister the bright meadows that surrounded our cottage and the stream that flowed behind it, tumbling over two precipitous waterfalls and through a small gorge were a wonderful playground. We saw nothing out of the ordinary in the fact that all our waste was disposed of by tipping it down the steeply sloping side of that gorge. We enjoyed fresh vegetables from the garden with no real appreciation of the back-aching work that our mother had undertaken weeks before, digging, forking, weeding, raking and hoeing in order to make it possible.

We played hide and seek in the farm buildings that overlooked the small windows of the cottage with its thick sandstone walls. The fact that the floors of sandstone flags laid directly onto clay were often wet with rising damp was taken for granted in our innocence and ignorance. Like any other boy I took delight in tormenting my sister with the rag-like spider-webs that festooned those outbuildings with their aroma of manure and rotting hay.

Peace and Quiet Spells Loneliness

The fact that we might see fewer than half a dozen vehicles on the lane on most days and that all of them were familiar to us: the farmer from across two fields or his son; the milkman who delivered fresh milk, not in bottles but ladled from a stainless steel bucket with a metal pint measure straight into our enamel jug. The postman's red van making daily collections from the letter box along the lane and the baker's van making twice weekly deliveries of bread baked locally. The rare sight of a vehicle that we did not recognise was a source of excitement to us children and looking back I can easily see how this absence of contact with the outside world would have been deeply frustrating for an intelligent woman who had once looked forward to a career as a leading hand and perhaps in time a supervisor in a garment factory.

The farmer who owned the land and the cottage would visit daily in winter when he used the pasture to fatten a dozen or so bullocks. Through the late spring, when the grass was being allowed to grow prior to harvesting as hay, we saw much less of him. In any case, those daily visits were no more than a brief walk through the yard on his way to check up on the beasts. I remember the smell of the Shag tobacco he would smoke in thin hand-rolled cigarettes. He rarely, if ever, used manufactured cigarette papers. A torn piece of newspaper or the corner from a white paper bag usually sufficed. A torn tweed jacket, sweat-stained trilby hat, dung stained flannel trousers and week-old stubble complete the picture of this man who surprised us one day with his ability to play the piano quite beautifully by ear.

Hay-making was an annual event that began with the arrival of a small green Fordson tractor with a mowing machine in tow. A few days later the rows of cut grass would be tossed and turned using pikes (pitchforks). A couple more days of drying in the July sunshine and it would be time to gather the sweet smelling dried herbage into piles called cocks. Then it would be loaded onto a horse drawn cart and stacked in the Dutch barn. Finally it would be time for the annual summer pantomime of which the leading player was the mechanical hay rake.

This device consisted of a row of curved tines mounted between two large iron wheels. It was used to gather up any hay that remained on the ground. The width of the machine across the wheels was several inches more than the space between the walls of the former pig-sty on one side of the field entrance and the bullock's winter quarters on the other. Too heavy to be carried through this gap, it had to be manoeuvred through in a series of arcs that involved a lot of head scratching, a great deal of sweat and a vast amount of cursing and swearing. This latter aspect of the performance had Mum trying to keep us away from the show but it was far too enthralling to be missed and no Buttons or Puss-in-Boots ever had a more appreciative audience.

Frost, Snow and Floods

Childhood memories are always filled with sunshine but there were days when we were confined to the tiny interior of the cottage watching rain run in rivulets down the outside of the window whilst Mum tried to distract us with books, jigsaws and such games as Ludo and Snakes and Ladders. In winter the windows would be covered with delicate leaf shapes as moisture froze on the inside as well as the outside. Sometimes the stream would break its banks and form a lake around the cottage making it impossible to access the spring from which we obtained our water.

Entertainment and information came via the wireless which required two batteries. The first a 120 volt DC unit about the size and weight of two bricks stuck together. Beneath the cardboard outer casing were 80 1.5 volt cells linked together and embedded in shiny black pitch. This was always referred to as the "high tension" battery and required infrequent replacement. The other battery was a lead-acid accumulator, an early form of rechargeable unit that had two lead plates inside a thick glass vessel full of acid. Charging was carried out at the garage in the village about three miles away. A charge lasted about a week so we had two of the things, one in use and one on charge. This necessitated a weekly trip, on foot, to the village and back carrying the accumulator.

In the winter of 1946/7 we were snowed in for several weeks. I should have started school after the Christmas holidays but was unable to do so until the Easter break was over. We relied for supplies on one of our neighbours who brought essential goods up from the village on horseback. There were no helicopters to drop food and drink to stranded house-holders in those days. The summer that followed was one of the longest and hottest experienced in England for many years.

Thinking about my childhood I wanted to write something that evoked as much of this as possible for my grand-daughter's generation and for those of any age who, perhaps, envy country-dwellers. I remembered that one of our neighbours had a glass eye, the consequence of a shooting accident. And I recalled how a family pet had to be disposed of when we eventually moved away from the cottage. Putting the two events together I came up with the idea of a boy distraught at the prospect of his pet being "put down" and causing his father to be injured. Believing he is responsible for the injury - which he supposes is fatal - he runs away.

It began life as a short story entitled Bad Boy written during a series of workshops with the Laois writer and creative writing tutor John Maher in the spring of 2009. It eventually appeared in the anthology Pulse of Life, published in November 2011 by the Laois Writers' Group. But in that form there was a long unfilled day between the shooting incident and discovery of the boy. I wanted to explore what might have happened during those hours; to the boy, to the dog and to the other family members. I also wanted to gain a better understanding of the boy and to examine the attitudes of some of the people he encounters. The result is the 61,500 word novel Summer Day which will be available to download free of charge at Smashwords throughout the month of April 2012.

Animal Rights or Human Rights?

2012-03-15T01:54:00.000-07:00

In a previous post I deplored the suggestion that a bank, via PayPal, was seeking to censor e-books. I am pleased to be able to report that that threat appears tohave been averted thanks to the campaign that was mounted by concerned organisations and individuals who would have been directly affected by the proposal.

This is an example of a successful campaign by a minority to prevent a change in custom and practice with the potential to affect us all. There are other recent examples that are less welcome. The most recent concerns the use of mice in medical research. Having several years ago harassed breeders in the UK to the point where they gave up, animal rights activists, it is now reported, have succeeded in preventing the importation of the animals into Britain.

This is a disturbing development not just because of the potential impact on the research but because it demonstrates that a small minority working quietly and virtually unnoticed have the power to prevent not one but several large organisations from carrying on a legitimate business. That is very worrying indeed if you believe in democracy. The people concerned claim that they have mounted their campaign out of concern for the animals. On the other side of the argument are the people whose lives might be saved or whose suffering might be relieved by the drugs that need to be tested on the animals.

I am tempted to ask: do these people ever swat a fly? Do they take steps to prevent the birds that enter their garden from eating slugs, snails and worms? Where do they draw the line between creatures that are to be protected and those that can be left to fend for themselves in face of predators? The mice they are protecting would not exist were they not bred for the intended purpose. Their cousins in the wild lead a far more hazardous life. The purported concern that has led this handful of individuals to take the law into their own hands in defiance of the majority population is totally misguided. It is time for the rest of us to stand up to these ignorant fools and insist that the airlines and ferry companies ignore them and their threats.

There is a second recent example of a minority group seeking to interfere with the democratic process. Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church have become quite vociferous in their condemnation of government proposals to introduce a form of marriage for gay people. When I see these men in frocks pontificating from the pulpit I am apt to start shouting at the TV screen, telling them to mind their own business!

I have no problem with the Church making rules for its members. But it has no right to seek to impose those rules on the rest of us.

Why does a bank want to censor my reading?

2012-03-03T10:11:00.000-08:00

The most widely used means of paying for goods and services on-line internationally is operated by an organisation called PayPal. It partners Smashwords, the on-line digital publishing platform and facilitates transactions between the publisher and readers. Now it has informed Smashwords that it will end that partnership if Smashwords continues to publish certain kinds of material.

Not long ago I expressed my own concerns about some of the content in the Smashwords catalogue, saying that I was not entirely happy to have my book listed alongside such material. After I posted a link to my blog post (which I have since removed) on Smashwords' Facebook page a commenter pointed out that there is a filter on the publisher's site that enables customers to exclude adult material from searches. All very well, but I have classified my book as "adult" because it contains a few passages that are, in my opinion, unsuitable for children. Anyone viewing the Smashwords catalogue with material categorised as adult filtered out will therefore be unable to discover my book.

But there is a world of difference between providing a means for individuals to exclude from view material which they regard as inappropriate and an outright ban on the publication of such material. And it is certainly way beyond the remit of a bank, real or virtual, to dictate the reading habits of its customers.

PayPal is, apparently, claiming that one or more credit card companies are imposing this requirement on them. In other words, it is a real bank that is at the root of the problem. It is bad enough that here in Europe our governments are having their economic policies determined by the banks. At least matters financial are a legitimate concern for banks. Your reading habits and mine are not.

I have heard feminists argue against pornography on the grounds that it exploits women and in many instances of film and video this is undoubtedly the case, often involving the trading of young and immature women and girls across international borders. But in the case of the written word no-one is hurt. There may be graphic descriptions of people being subjected to depraved acts against their will but it is all in the imagination of the author and his or her readers. And the thing that surprised me in Mark Coker's e-mail this morning is this: "Women write a lot of the erotica, and they're also the primary consumers of erotica." So it is they rather than men who will be most harmed by this move.

I have repeated above the claim attributed by Mark Coker to PayPal to the effect that one or more credit card companies are behind this. I can only suppose that, having thus far failed to get SOPA through the US legislature, the religious right in the so called "land of the free" is now attempting censorship through our wallets. Whoever is at the root of this challenge to freedom of speech must be stopped and stopped soon. So I am appealing to all who read this blog to write to your bank and tell them that you will not tolerate this interference in your private and perfectly legal business transactions.

The following links were provided by Mark Coker in his e-mail of 2nd March PST/ 3rd March GMT. Follow them to find contact details for the CEO of each organisation. Let's flood their mail systems with our protests.

Visa:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=V+Profile

American Express:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=AXP+Profile

MasterCard:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=MA+Profile

Discover:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=DFS+Profile

Ebay (owns PayPal):
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=ebay+Profile

Mark also said "Don't scream at them. Ask them to work on your behalf to protect you [and your readers] from censorship." The square brackets are mine. The words between them apply only if you are a writer.

There is more information about this assault on our liberty at the Electronic Frontier Foundation's website.

Test Tube Burgers - Nothing New Under the Sun!

2012-02-22T08:53:00.000-08:00

Forty years ago the company I then worked for produced a meat substitute called KESP. It received a considerable amount of publicity at the time including an appearance on the BBC's flagship Tomorrow's World.

The company specialised in the manufacture of synthetic textile fibres and the basic principal behind KESP was that a paste was made using soya flour which was then spun into a fibre in exactly the same way as nylon or polyester fibres are made. This simulated the fibrous nature of meat and the fibres where bonded together to form meaty chunks and even - if my recollection of the Tomorrow's World programme is correct - a whole ham.

This article in the New Scientist describes the 1972 press conference at which the product was launched. The company's employees were able to purchase frozen chicken and beef flavoured chunks and mince from the company shop. These could then be used in stews, curries and Bolognese sauce. In due course the company sold the production technology and the entire pilot plant to a food company. I can find no reference to its continued production and searching for the KESP brand name reveals that it is defunct.

Interestingly a research paper published in 1975 dealing with synthetic meat products reached the following conclusion: in spite of initial resistance, new developments will mean products will very soon resemble best meat in texture and further developments in the flavour and colour to the protein will make it difficult to distinguish real from imitation.

To the best of my knowledge the only product that ever came close to fulfilling that prophecy is Quorn which is produced from a fungus grown as a live culture in vats. This latest development - and here I must confess that I am at a loss as to which of the 625 articles pulled up by Google to link to - uses stem cells from cattle to grow muscle cells in a laboratory so the resulting product really is meat, not a vegetarian substitute.

Incidentally, at the same time they were developing edible spun protein, to give KESP its technical definition, the same company had a team working on synthetic tobacco. I was a smoker back then and tried one of the cigarettes. Actually I was supposed to smoke a whole pack of twenty but one puff was enough! A smoker who has inadvertently lit the wrong end of a tipped cigarette will have some idea of what the version of synthetic tobacco I was given to try tasted like. The rest of you will have to use your imaginations.

Summer Day is finished

2012-02-22T04:00:00.000-08:00

I recently completed my second novel which is set on a single day in the summer of 1947 in the place where I grew up. Here is a blow by blow account of how it was done.

The completed work is a whisker under 61,000 words. At times I am convinced it is the best work I have ever done, at others I am terrified that it is really a load of absolute tosh.

18th Jan.2012

As soon as I completed the polishing of HonestHearts I began work on my second novel. It is based on a short story I had written a couple of years ago and that is part of the collection Pulse of Life published recently by the Laois Writers' Group. By early January 2012 I had in excess of 57k words written. Having set myself a target of 3,000 words per week I actually achieved a satisfying 3.5k/week from mid-September to the end of 2011. I am now undertaking the polishing process. I want to give the main characters greater depth and to provide much more evocative descriptions of the locale. This time I do not have to rely too heavily on web based research - this second novel is set in the locality in which I grew up and draws on my own childhood memories of the place and its people.

But right now I am trying to take a critical look at each of the episodes I have written and answer some key questions about each: what does this episode contribute to the whole? What does it tell the reader about the place and/or the people involved? Is it consistent with what has gone before and/or needs to be revealed later? Does it have an internal logic that follows some part of the eight point arc and how does it fit within the overall arc of the book?

So far I have covered the first 80% of the book and made a number of minor changes. The most significant development at this point has been the realisation that two key characters were not properly developed; I had no back-story for them. So I spent a considerable amount of time during the week commencing 16th January 2012 working out a scenario for the whole family history going back over a quarter century. That has led to a number of the changes.

I still need to raise the level of the language in the descriptive passages. I want to achieve something that could be described as "lyricism" in those passages. I also need to return to the dialogue sequences and provide more internal monologue. And I need to ensure that the tone both of the dialogues and the internal monologues clearly differentiates the characters and matches their backgrounds.

21st Jan 2012.

The first stage review and revision exercise was completed this morning. Some significant changes were made in the build up to the climax, especially Sam's day. I also began to have a few ideas about improving the climax and resolution by having Henry maybe think about Bible stories and his understanding of religion and an after-life, and by having his mother arrive on the scene of his rescue.

Throughout the process some words were removed and others added. The outcome was a net increase of ca1300 words bringing the length of the finished piece to 58.8k words. Some passages that were removed were saved in a separate file for possible future reinstatement or re-use in a different part of the work.

Next is to begin a second review and revision exercise, this time concentrating on the use of language to evoke a stronger feeling for the place and people.

I can't help thinking that this process is analogous to what happens when I create a painting. I always begin by blocking in the basic shapes and their flat colours and relationships. This is done quickly with fairly broad brush strokes. Then I settle into the process of adding detail, gradually reducing the size of brush used and maybe using other techniques to add texture and to blend colours in order to achieve the right textures and to show the play of light on the surfaces of objects and leaves. Polishing my novel to achieve the desired effect of realism and emotional involvement for the reader is a lot like that.

31st Jan 2012.

This second stage process is now about half complete. As I go through revising each episode in turn I am amending my outline of the structure that I have in a spreadsheet, rearranging the suggested order of the episodes to bring them as close as possible to the real-time chronology of the events they record. I am also converting everything except remembered events into present tense.

Language generally is receiving a critical examination and, where I deem it necessary, is revised so as to develop the mood of each episode. Each episode needs to match the character of the person from whose point of view it is being told and their changing moods as the day progresses. I am not sure I have come close to achieving that yet. I am also having doubts about the relevance of certain episodes.

12th Feb 2012.

I completed the second stage process yesterday. It included the addition of a little under 2k words. But that is only part of the story. The whole thing has been transposed to present tense which I think adds immediacy but also required a considerable amount of re-phrasing. Several paragraphs of the original version were removed and new passages added, including a 250 word exposition of Henry's feelings as the end approaches.

Now I am putting together each character's contribution to the overall work. The aim of this is to check for consistency within each character's telling of his/her part in the day's events. The re-reading involved also provides a further opportunity for copy editing. Each episode, once transposed and revised in the previous stage was re-read and typos corrected on completion so I do not expect this to reveal many errors.

I still have two principle concerns: is the ending told in a sufficiently engaging way and is the use of so many view points (15!) so unconventional as to make it unpublishable? There are certainly a couple of episodes whose presence is questionable in terms of their contribution to the overall plot.

20 Feb 2012.

Final completion was achieved over the weekend. This entailed putting the whole thing together in a single file in the sequence in which it is intended to be read. The first 10,000 words were also saved in a separate file for submission to agents/publishers. I then read the whole thing from start to finish and made some more very minor adjustments and typo corrections. Next I checked out some of the historical background. During the writing I had relied on memory but I know that can be faulty and needed to be sure of some of the detail.

Among other things this revealed that the raising of the school leaving age was implemented in 1947 whereas the NHS did not come about until 1948. As my story has both taking effect in 1948 I had to make some changes. I chose to change the year in which the story is set so as to keep the references to the raising of the school leaving age which has more relevance to the plot than does the availability of free health. In fact, the cost of Jack's treatment now presents another problem for the family adding to the preoccupations that distract them from the search for Henry.

Finally I ran a series of "find" queries to identify repeated use of some verbs and to rephrase the offending passages. The same process was used to ensure that unusual (Welsh!) names were spelled consistently throughout.

An Honourable Tradition of which Ireland can be Proud

2012-02-10T08:37:00.000-08:00

Yet more opprobrium is heaped on Enda Kenny as a result of his recent statement to Bloomberg TV. And to some extent it is justified for the man often seems to be telling foreigners things that are out of kilter with what, at least until recently, he has been telling his fellow Irish men and women. But in that he is little different from any other politician and if there is one thing that Irish politicians excel at it is the art of political double speak.

But, as usual, a great deal of the criticism aimed at the Taoseach is concerned with the declared intention to pay off our debts in full. Many Irish people see the debts in question as somehow not their responsibility but instead that of faceless investors who bought bonds in failed banks. It seems to me, in my contrarian way, that in order to investigate the veracity of such a notion it is necessary to examine two straight forward questions: what happened to the money and who are the bond holders?

The €300 grand that you paid for a house that is now worth €120 grand was paid to a developer. Whilst it may be true that the developer buried some of that money in a tax haven along with all the other amounts he received from other buyers, most of it will have been paid to the employees and sub-contractors he engaged to build the house. Some will have gone to the original owner of the land on which your house and all the others are built. Some may have gone to a sales agent although many developers handled their own sales.

The point is that all of these people - with one relatively minor exception which I will come to - spent that money in Ireland and paid the taxes that enabled the government of the day to increase the wages of public sector workers and the social welfare benefits paid to claimants. In short, all that money drove the economy throughout those heady tiger years. It is still visible in all those new houses and apartments, all the luxury cars that were purchased in those years and all the gadgets in the houses. As I pointed out back in November, a lot of this ended up in countries like China - who invested it in Africa. As an aside, this latter fact should make one or two Irishmen - I'm thinking of Messrs Geldof and Bono - happy.

The developers, the sub-contractors and the businesses that boomed from all the money that well paid people in all sectors of the economy had to spend, then went to the banks and said, in effect, "look, my business is booming. Lend me the money to expand and I can do even better." It looked like what, in the vernacular is known as a "no brainer". But when everybody has the house of his and her dreams, what is the point of building more?

That is where it all came to grief. Nobody wanted to buy the third or fourth phase of the development. Marks and Spencer and Debenhams had all the retail space they could handle. Materials were bought, tradesmen paid but no-one wanted to buy. So the money suddenly stopped circulating around the system. People were laid off. Instead of paying taxes they were drawing benefits. Businesses started to go bust. With few house sales there were no development levies or stamp duty to support local and national government which ended up paying out far more than it was receiving.

The exception I mentioned earlier? A significant proportion of the incomes paid to foreign nationals working in Ireland was sent home to support family back in Eastern Europe or Africa. (More delight for the ageing rockers!)

Now consider the bond holders that so many people are eager to see "burned". The conventional view is of a Champaign and caviar scoffing bunch of spivs laughing at the gullible Irish. That is certainly a part of the reality and I am as angry as anyone at the inflated salaries and bonuses these people receive. But they are only the middle men and women in a complex web of transactions. Somewhere, way down the ladder, and forgotten equally by the spivs and by those who would seemingly see them starve, are people who placed their life savings in pension funds and trust funds at a time when government bonds were regarded as the safest places to invest. Returns might not be as good as those obtainable from stocks and shares but the risks were far less. Governments don't go bust. Governments honour their debts.

In the face of so much that has been turned on its head by this current crisis, Mr Kenny and Ireland are to be congratulated, not reviled, for holding fast to this honourable tradition.

Who should pay for your child's communion dress?

2012-02-02T03:50:00.000-08:00

I heard an extraordinary thing on Will Faulkner's radio show this morning. Apparently there is in Ireland a social welfare payment especially to cover the cost of children dressing up for their first communion. Will drew attention to a report that the government wants, not to end the payment, but to cut it back. According to the report, published in the Irish Examiner today 2nd February 2012, €3.4 million were distributed in such payments in 2011.

I have blogged previously about the extraordinary excesses of the Irish social welfare system but the discovery that such a payment is available left me spluttering into my porridge. I suppose I should not be surprised. The importance attached to such religious ceremonies within Irish culture is well known. News reports at the height of the "tiger" years claimed that some parents were hiring helicopters to bring their little treasures to Church for confirmation or first communion.

Solemn occasion sullied by materialism

It is at this time of year that such events take place and the shops are presently full of communion dresses. Hotels and restaurants advertise their availability for confirmation celebrations. I have made no secret of my atheism so I hope people will not be too shocked at my reaction. But, growing up in England I never came across any such pomp in the protestant churches I attended. Indeed, such extravagance is generally frowned upon because it is seen as being a long way from the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth that are supposed to form the basis of belief for all Christians.

In my mind confirmation and communion should be serious and solemn occasions at which the true Christian affirms his faith in the healing power of his/her Saviour, seeks the forgiveness of his/her sins and promises to lead a better life in the future. It should not be sullied by the materialistic symbolism of dressing up and partying. The idea that tax-payers should be asked to fund such behaviour at all, let alone at a time when the country is being bailed out by its European neighbours is surely beyond reason.

Irish parents are already in receipt of remarkably generous child benefits and those who qualify for this special occasion allowance will already have received a payment toward the cost of school clothing.

Kenny is Right: The Irish Were Greedy

2012-01-27T04:34:00.000-08:00

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has raised the ire of his fellow citizens by suggesting that their greed was at the root of the Irish economic collapse. How true is that?

About six months after I arrived in Portlaoise there was a release of apartments in a luxury block under construction next to the O'Moore Park GAA ground. People queued overnight to buy and they were all sold within the first hour. Some signed up and paid deposits for two or more units. Their motivation had nothing to do with a desire for a home. They believed that they would make a killing either from the rent they hoped to receive from future tenants or by selling on at a profit.

That is one example among many that illustrate the veracity of Enda Kenny's words yesterday when he said that the country had gone mad during the property boom, driven by greed. In Portlaoise not only were there more houses and apartments being built than there were ever likely to be buyers or tenants for. In addition several retail complexes were under construction or planned. Even then there were many empty units in the town centre and in each of the recently completed shopping centres. Some of these have now been occupied, but elsewhere businesses have closed leaving even more vacant premises.

This was the story right across Ireland. In our five years living here my wife and I have taken several short breaks in various parts of the country and in every town and village we've stayed or passed through there are newly built estates. At the height of the boom homes were being completed at a rate of 90,000 a year; enough to replace the whole of the previously existing housing stock within a decade. Anybody who had the temerity to suggest, as some did, that this rate of construction could not be sustained was condemned for talking down the economy.

Atmosphere of Affluence

The government was enabled to keep the level of general taxation down in part because of the revenue generated through stamp duty, a transaction tax imposed on every purchase. Social welfare payments and public sector incomes soared. But it is also unfair to read into Mr Kenny's words the suggestion that individual citizens were the only group on whom he was placing blame. I have indicated elsewhere my view that one of the underlying causes of the atmosphere that prevailed during those years of madness was the amount of money pouring into Ireland from tax payers in the wealthier nations of the EU.

In that atmosphere with new infrastructure under construction across the nation, brash new shopping centres and estates of homes described by their developers as "luxury" or "executive" even when all too often they were anything but, it was inevitable that people would forget the old adage "never a borrower or a lender be". It was easy to forget the reason why the system of hire purchase that enabled my generation to furnish our homes on so called "easy payments" was described by our parents as "the never-never".

As affluence increased steadily through the second half of the twentieth century and at an increasing pace in the first few years of the twenty first it was easy to ignore such seemingly old fashioned notions. It was all too easy to believe that, whilst it might be difficult to pay the mortgage today, tomorrow's salary increase would make it easier in the future. The more luxurious our neighbour's home and contents the more luxury we wanted for ourselves. That is the nature of greed. It feeds on itself, creating a sense of false security in its victims. Like a drug, it creates a craving that can never be satisfied. And, like a drug, when it is denied it leaves its victim with unbearable withdrawal symptoms.

As I indicated in that earlier post it is unreasonable to blame foreign tax-payers for wanting their governments to seek recompense. I can quite understand why Mr Kenny is both eager to demonstrate Ireland's willingness to repay her debts by paying off the most recent instalment to bond holders and to try to explain to the leaders of those wealthier nations how his country incurred such incomprehensible levels of debt in the first place.

Emigration: Lifestyle Choice or Dire Necessity?

2012-01-20T12:04:00.000-08:00

I am in regular contact with a number of the people with whom I was in school during the 1950s. All were born and brought up in England but a significant number of them have made their careers and still live in various "foreign parts." One runs a small mineral exploration business in central Africa, a couple live in the Philippines, another in Thailand. At least one is in Canada and another runs a website dedicated to the Norton motorcycle owners club in France. Yet another has lived in Johannesburg for many years.

Of the young men who served their apprenticeship alongside me in a small engineering company in the early 1960s, three emigrated to Canada as soon as they qualified. At that time it was possible to migrate to Australia for £10 and many did. Of my close relatives, a nephew moved his small business to Australia several years ago and has gone from strength to strength.

So there can be nothing intrinsically wrong with Minister Noonan's statement that "emigration is a lifestyle choice," for that is plainly the case in every one of the examples I have just enumerated. On the other hand, when unemployment is running at 14.3%, it is at best stupid and at worst insensitive to suggest that the recent increase in migration from Ireland is not fuelled by the lack of opportunities here. That fact was confirmed in Will Faulkner's interview with a representative from the Australian immigration service on Thursday morning's Midlands Today programme.

Not a Choice, a Necessity

A young person seeking work in Australia recently had this to say in an anonymous article in the Kerryman: "I wish I could have stayed in Ireland. I wish that I had another option other than to leave, but I didn't." So no, Minister, these days emigration is not so much a lifestyle choice as a regrettable necessity for too many of your citizens.

The Minister is also showing a degree of stupidity when he asserts that Ireland needs to ensure that it is providing the best possible education and training for its young people so that they can take advantage of opportunities overseas. This, it seems to me, is the opposite of what is required. Whilst it is true that the only people able to take advantage of overseas employment opportunities are those with marketable skills, it must also be the case that those are the very people the nation needs to retain if it is to regenerate its failed economy.

What is needed is for the banks to start lending again so that young ambitious entrepreneurial people can start new businesses and generate the jobs the country so desperately needs.

The Arrogance of Believers

2012-01-16T08:56:00.000-08:00

I see that the UK government has indicated that it will withhold funding from any "free school" that teaches creationism (Richard Dawkins Celebrates a Victory, Observer, 15 Jan 2012). This is the doctrine that the universe was created more or less as we see it now just a few thousand years ago. This is taught by some organisations as if it were a scientifically sound theory on an equal footing with evolution.

It does seem to me that it is perfectly possible to accept evolution as scientific fact, based as it is on incontrovertible evidence, and at the same time to believe in a creator. Not, of course, a creator who constructed the universe exactly as it currently appears to us, but one who set off the "Big Bang" that science tells us got it all started.

The truth is that we cannot know if there is a creator behind it all. It is difficult for the human mind to conceive of anything that has not been created by an intelligent being, let alone something as vast and complex as the known universe. And then there is that ancient conundrum: if God created the universe, who (or what) created God?

The "Chosen People" Myth

What I do think is the height of arrogance is the belief that the creator, if there is one, did it all for the benefit of the human race. And that is topped only by the belief that it was done solely for the benefit of a small portion of the human race that will at some point see the elimination of all non-believers. I also think that the existence of a creator does not in any way imply the existence of an after-life.

Nor do I believe that praying or offering sacrifices or other forms of obeisance to the creator is at all likely to make that creator change his/its/her plans so as to satisfy our personal preferences. That is not to say that I don't believe in the power of prayer so long as the word "prayer" is a way of describing a period of quiet consideration of ones difficulties, a form of meditation, in which one is enabled to come to some level of understanding of the cause of those difficulties and, thereby, see a way to overcome them.

If you have read this far you will have gathered that, when I am asked about my religion, I tend to describe myself as an atheist or humanist. It is not that I belong to a formal organisation of those who describe themselves thus, just that my beliefs seem to be more closely aligned with atheism and humanism than with any of the multiplicity of belief systems based around the notion of a supreme being.

Property Tax Pros and Cons

2012-01-06T00:51:00.000-08:00

The Household Charge currently being introduced in Ireland is an interim measure pending the introduction next year of a "property tax". It is argued that Ireland is one of the few countries in the developed world that does not levy a tax on private domestic property and use that levy to fund local public services.

The notion of taxing property, or more specifically, land, goes back a long way and is based on the belief that the land and the natural resources on and under the land should be held in common. It is not possible to make a moral case for ownership of land and natural resources to be held exclusively by a single individual or family. Any rent charged for the right to develop and use the land rightfully belongs to the community. A property tax is therefore justified on the basis that it returns to the community a portion of the value generated by use of the land.

Location, Location, Location

Whilst this can readily be seen to apply to commercial uses of land, how can it be applied to domestic property? Especially in the case of the ownership of a single dwelling? The answer can be found in the old estate agent's adage "Location, location, location". Homes that are established close to good public amenities command a higher value than those in isolated locations. It follows that the increased value that arises because of those public amenities should be taxed in order to contribute to the cost of providing those services.

In a paper produced at Dublin Institute of Technology in 2005 Tom Dunne enumerated these arguments and went on to highlight the practical difficulties associated with the implementation of such a tax. It makes interesting reading and we must hope that Enda Kenny and his advisors have studied it. [Land Value Taxation: Persuasive Theory but Practically Difficult, Dublin Institute of Technology School of Real Estate and Construction Economics, 2005]

Tax Bads not Goods

A more thorough examination of the case for a tax based on the increased value of land that arises from community provided services can be found in an earlier article by Nic Tideman which also discusses the practical issues and offers suggestions for ways to overcome them. Tideman also points out that such a tax could be developed in such a way as to benefit the community by taxing only "bads" rather than "goods". Thus a business that imposes burdens on the community such as pollution or traffic congestion, lowering the value of neighbouring property, could be taxed at a higher rate than businesses that are of benefit to the neighbourhood which might even be exempted from the tax. [The Case for Site Value Rating, T. Nicolaus Tideman, Date unknown, originally published by the British Liberal Party]

I found the Tideman article via a website called Wealth and Want. Although this is a USA based site geared to the US economic situation the articles that the site owner has assembled and to which he has provided links are from around the world and relate just as much to the Irish and wider European economy as to that of the USA. He has created an excellent resource for those seeking alternatives to our failed economic system.

I would urge anyone actively seeking solutions to our woes, rather than merely seeking to explain how we got here, to study these articles. In my humble opinion they make a very strong case for a complete re-thinking of our economic system with the potential of ensuring fairer distribution of wealth, at the same time providing greater rewards for wealth creators. As the site's masthead states "... democracy alone is not enough to produce widely shared prosperity"

Are Sales Taxes Fairer Than Income Taxes?

2012-01-01T08:27:00.000-08:00

With an increase in VAT taking effect in Ireland today (Jan 1st 2012) it is worth taking a look at the comparative fairness of taxes on sales and those on earnings.

There is a widespread belief that those individuals who receive very high earnings should pay high rates of tax on at least that part of their income that is deemed excessive. There are a number of problems with this concept. First and foremost, who determines what is "excessive" against what criteria? €100k? €500k? and just how punitive should be the tax on the portion of income that exceeds the chosen threshold?

Then there is the effect on incentives; although it is wrong to attach too much importance to this in relation to high incomes. Too often when an individual's earned income is so low that he or she receives support from a variety of social welfare programmes the marginal rate of tax becomes close to - and sometimes even exceeds - 100%. This occurs when the amount of support withdrawn as a result of crossing a particular income threshold exceeds the additional income received. That certainly is a disincentive. No one ought to be placed in the situation of becoming worse off as a result of working harder, working longer or receiving a promotion. So it is not necessary to feel too much sympathy for high earners whose marginal rate of tax exceeds, say, 50%.

More than one tax is levied on incomes

I can remember when the marginal rate of income tax on high earners in the UK was 90%. Executives justified high salary increases on the basis that, in order to give someone a £100 increase in take home pay it was necessary to raise his (and in those days it was nearly always a man) headline salary by £1000. Logically, when marginal rates fell dramatically under a previous Tory government, these individuals should have had their salaries reduced. In fact they just continued to receive big annual increases.

In most jurisdictions the tax that goes by the official title of "income tax" is not the only tax levied directly on incomes. In the UK, for example, there is "National Insurance", originally intended to cover the cost of health and social programmes this tax long since ceased to be so hypothecated and simply went into the general pool of government income. The equivalent in Ireland is PRSI.

Often these levies are applied only to income up to a certain level, thus reducing the effective margin between basic rates of income tax and the next higher band. So, for example, the basic rate might be 20% and the next band 40%, but, if the person on basic rate is also paying an 11% "Social Insurance" levy that cuts off at the same level as that at which the rate of income tax increases to 40%, the margin might look like 20% but is actually only 9%.

It's all so complicated

All this is starting to get complicated and I have only scratched the surface of the many different taxes on incomes and the allowances that can be claimed against them. And that is the other problem with income taxes. The harder you try to make them fair the more complicated they get.

Having taken a portion of an individual's earnings before he or she even gets to see its colour the government next proceeds to take another chunk from every pound, dollar or euro he or she spends. Actually, not everything because certain goods deemed essential to living, typically food and children's clothing, are exempted from sales taxes. And this is where the sales tax as a concept starts to look fairer than income tax. These days it is not possible to survive without purchasing some things that are subjected to sales taxes but it can reasonably be argued that the sales tax levied against big ticket items that only those on high incomes can afford ensure that the rich contribute more to the state's coffers than do the poor.

It is argued that such taxes act as a disincentive to consumption and that is bad for an economy but this surely happens only at the margins. If you can't afford to pay an extra 2% on the price of an item you probably can't afford it anyway. On the other hand, if paying €10k for something is no problem increasing the price by €200 probably won't stop you.

Increase sales tax on luxury goods

I would go much further, as the late Roy Jenkins did back in the days when the UK sales tax was called purchase tax, and levy a higher rate of sales tax on luxury goods. Of course, we are then presented with the problem of defining "luxury goods". One way might be to look at the average price paid for a particular category of item, say motor cars or ladies' wear, and levy the higher tax on those items for which the recommended retail price was more than double the category average. Difficult but not impossible I would argue.

And it could have another benefit: many such items are imported. Ireland and the UK could both do with reducing their level of expenditure on imported goods so a tax that acted as a disincentive would be beneficial. And, because the tax was determined against the value of the item rather than its origin it ought not to be outlawed by trade agreements as being overly protectionist.

So, on balance I tend to favour sales taxes over taxes on income when it comes to assessing their relative fairness. Of course, the elephant in the room is the size of the overall tax burden. And that depends very much on what you believe should be included on the list of things best provided by the state. Views on that vary widely across the political spectrum and between this side of the Atlantic and the USA. But that is a whole different argument.

New Approaches to Management Not Enough

2011-12-29T08:50:00.000-08:00

I recently came across an interesting article on the forbes.com business and management website. Written by Steve Denning it was a comprehensive review of a book called Fixing the Game by Roger Martin. Martin holds that by concentrating on maximising shareholder value executives have begun managing expectations instead of managing the business. It is clear from Denning's article that he is a fan of Martin's thesis. Indeed, Denning has also written a recent book, The Leader's Guide to Radical Management in which he expounds his own theories of what constitutes good management.

The goal of maximising shareholder value need not be as destructive as Martin and Denning suggest. What is required is an acceptance of two things: that shareholder value can only be maximised by keeping on doing well what the organisation does best and that shareholder value means the long term return in the form of high dividends paid against the value of shares held. Martin and Denning argue that what has been happening is that "shareholder value" has been confused with share price on the stock market.

According to Denning, Martin argues that encouraged by bonuses paid in the form of share options executives have devised and followed strategies that produced increases in share price based on market expectations. The executives have managed those expectations by means of regular announcements and predictions of profitability. So long as the predictions proved to be accurate within narrow margins demand for shares in the company was generated pushing up the price of those shares.

Old Ideas Re-invented Not the Answer

Reading the article I was struck by the similarities between the ideas being put forward in the wake of the financial meltdown of the last few years and ideas that were being widely embraced 30 years ago. In my own article ahead of the 2010 general election in the UK I discussed ways of successfully implementing efficiency savings and referred to a process called Total Quality Management. Almost twenty years ago one of the several roles I undertook in a small engineering company was that of TQM "facilitator" explaining the various techniques and strategies covered by that broad title to fellow employees.

The problem with management theorists is that they base their ideas on the assumption that economic growth is a natural and desirable goal. They are simply seeking and advocating alternative ways of achieving that goal now that the methods of recent decades have been shown to be incapable of doing so. Some of the most prescient of commentators have been advocating for at least the past two decades that this never ending pursuit of growth is killing the planet. Is it not time to take a closer look at sustainable developments of the kind advocated by the late Richard Douthwaite and other members of the organisation FEASTA?

Car on Fire? Don't Call the Fire Brigade!

2011-12-19T03:52:00.000-08:00

I was listening on Midlands Today this morning to an interview with a poor man who has received a huge bill from Laois County Council. Back in July last year he was returning home to Portlaoise from working a night shift in a homeless centre in Dublin when smoke started coming out of the cooling vents in his car. He did what any of us would in the circumstances; pulled over onto the hard shoulder, took out his mobile phone and called the emergency services.

As the fire took hold a couple of trucks pulled up and the drivers attempted to tackle the blaze with fire extinguishers from their cabs. The blaze was too severe. By the time the fire brigade arrived half an hour after the call the car was destroyed. A few weeks later the man was shocked to receive a bill from the County Council for €3.5k. After he had contested the amount it was reduced to a little over €3k. His insurance company will contribute €1k leaving the man with €2k to find.

In my previous post I discussed the forthcoming Household Charge and noted that whereas most services provided by local councils in the UK are free of charge with a proportion of the cost raised via a locally determined tax called the Council Tax, here in Ireland most services are either funded centrally by the state government or charged for. This incident illustrates precisely what is wrong with that system. Local councils are free to charge whatever they deem to be appropriate for a fire service call-out. In the case of Laois County Council the charge is based on the number of men attending and the length of time that elapses between receipt of the call and the return of the men to their respective stations. The charge is doubled for calls received between midnight and 7am.

Nineteen Men to Extinguish a Car Fire

On this occasion two fire tenders turned out from two different stations involving a total of 19 men. I have no idea to what extend that level of turn-out was determined by the firemen's terms of service but it is well known that public service workers in Ireland are grossly over-indulged; it's one of the reasons the country is bankrupt. Leaving that aside, however, the iniquity of having to pay for a service when you have absolutely no control over the cost of providing that service and no alternative is obvious.

At this point it is worth looking back at the history of fire services. Long before they were taken over by local authorities they were provided by insurance companies. You paid an annual premium to the company and in return they came and put out any fire that occurred on your premises. It was fair because the company published statistics about the number of fires attended together with an account of income and expenditure. Prospective clients could judge whether the proposed premium matched the cost of the service and whether or not it was worth paying on the basis that if they didn't pay up front they would not get the service should they ever be unfortunate enough to need it.

Where the service is provided as part of a package funded by local taxes the general point remains true. The local councils in the UK publish annual accounts showing the actual cost of running the service in order to justify the level of tax being levied. In Ireland there is no such requirement. So the council, no doubt aided and abetted by the fire-fighters, can determine how many men to send to an incident and what to charge. Moreover, where such arbitrary charges are met from the vehicle owner's insurance it has the inevitable effect of pushing up premiums for everyone.

The remedy, at least for car owners, is to have a fire extinguisher and use it should the need arise. Whatever you do, don't call the fire brigade!

Ireland's Household Charge - the Final Straw for Hard Pressed Citizens?

2011-12-16T00:46:00.000-08:00

The first of January 2012 sees the introduction in Ireland of a charge of €100 per annum to be imposed on every occupied house in the land. In theory this is supposed to be a payment towards the cost of services received by the occupants of the house. In fact it is nothing of the sort. To understand why it is necessary to look at how such services are currently funded.

In Britain in the 1980s Margaret Thatcher attempted to introduce a similar charge levied from every adult member of a household. Officially called "Community Charge", it was quickly dubbed "Poll Tax" by press and opposition parties and was widely regarded as grossly unfair. It soon met considerable resistance with rioting and widespread refusal to pay. It was not long before the idea was dropped and replaced by a "Council Tax" based on the notional value of a property.

There are a number of differences between Ireland's new Household Charge and Britain's former Poll Tax but the most significant of these is the fact that whereas the Poll Tax was a replacement for an existing levy the Household Charge is entirely new.

In Britain householders have for many decades paid a contribution to the cost of operating local government. The Poll Tax was an, albeit unsuccessful, attempt to replace an unpopular tax called "rates" - essentially a levy based on the assessed rental value of a property. Rates provided a significant proportion of the funding for local government at a time when local councils in Britain had significantly greater powers than they presently do and far more than any in Ireland.

Unfair and Undemocratic

The system was regarded as unfair because based roughly on the size of a house whereas in many instances a large house that may once have been occupied by a family now grown up could still be occupied by a single elderly individual who would be paying more towards local services than a large family in a smaller house in a less salubrious part of town. The Poll Tax attempted to remedy this by charging every person of voting age the same amount. Families with grown-up children living at home suddenly had to pay more than they had been under the old system. Because it was possible to evade the tax simply by not registering to vote it was deemed undemocratic.

Council Tax was, and remains, based on the notional value of a property but was, and has been further, ameliorated by an increase in the contribution of central government funds to local authorities together with the removal of some of those authorities' more costly responsibilities. But the tax is set and collected by the local authorities.

Local government in Ireland is presently funded part by central government and part by business rates. Moreover County Councils in Ireland have far fewer responsibilities than their opposite numbers in Britain. People already pay for refuse collection services, for example, and in most areas these are privatised. There are charges for other services - libraries, leisure centres and municipal theatre performances - and whilst these are subsidised and therefore lower than corresponding private sector facilities there is an inevitable feeling that this new levy means people are paying twice.

Prisons Overflowing

This feeling is not helped by the fact that the new charge is part of a large package of increased taxes and charges levied in the recent budget and therefore not obviously a new way of funding local services. Unlike the British Council Tax it is set by central government so there is no sense of local control over the amount or the way it is spent. It is a levy that had been signalled by the previous government with an underlying assumption that it would be offset by a reduction in other taxes. The new government seems to have used it as a means of keeping their own promise not to increase income tax. Having broken so many other promises, it might have been better had they broken that one as well instead of introducing such a regressive tax at a time of widespread hardship.

Many citizens - including several members of the Irish parliament - have vowed they will go to prison rather than pay. In itself this is a frightening prospect for it is already the case that the only way our prisons can accomodate the people that the judiciary send them every day is by the early release of existing inmates. So we could see the imprisonment of innocent citizens whilst hardened criminals are released onto the streets. There is a growing movement to oppose the charge. Many see it as the last straw in an ever increasing series of impositions on a hard pressed population. It will do nothing to assist the achievement of a "yes" vote in any referendum on measures to defend the Euro. Time for a re-think, Mr Kenny?