Notes On The Front

Sean Dunne, Prince Hans, the Gestapo and Hot Property Deals in Poznan

A number of European leaders have been going through a difficult patch: President Sarkozy, Taoiseach Bertie, Prime Minister Brown and caretaker Prime Minister Prodi. But spare a thought for His Serene Highness Johannes Adam Ferdinand Alois Josef Maria Marko d’Aviano Pius von und zu Liechtenstein, Sovereign Prince of Liechtenstein, Count of Reitberg and Duke of Troppau and Jagerndorf (or Prince Hans to his friends). His country, tiny Liechtenstein, has been subject to a vicious assault by its larger neighbour and linguistic cousin, Germany – an assault which if successful could bring the small country to its knees. Are we witnessing the rule of law being supplanted by a ‘might makes right’ policy in Europe? Where does the Irish government stand on this major international crisis?

And why should we care?

A Super Solution to a Super Problem

Look up in the sky!

It’s a bird, it’s a plane –

No, it’s public sector reform . . .

Ah, public sector reform. What a great set of three words. What does it mean? Anything you want. What can it solve? Any problem you have. Malleable, universally applicable – it is truly a Super-solution.

How the Left Can Successfully Argue for Higher Taxation 2: Just What the Doctor Ordered

Attention all progressives: tired of listening to neo-liberal commentators prattle on about high taxes, that whenever something worthwhile is proposed its met with ‘oh, my, taxes, taxes’, sick to the teeth at right wing-drivel about how its better to ‘hug’ disadvantaged children than actually do something for them (because that would mean taxes)? Tired of all those ‘spending out of control’, ‘government is too big’, ‘swollen bureaucracies’ mantras? Well, relief is at hand: social insurance.

A daily dose of this will chase those right-wing blues away.

Baby-Eating Time

Lock up the children – its baby-eating time. The recent budgetary numbers were bad enough. But figures I have received from an informed source within a Government department suggests that the picture painted by the Exchequer Statement for October could be overly-optimistic. The year-end tax and spend figures could be seriously out of alignment with all the consequences that will hold for the 2008 budget. When P.J. O’Mara, in the context of massive cutbacks in public services in the late 1980s, said it was ‘baby-eating’ time, it was no joke. And the Left, bereft of an independent analysis (independent from the predominant conservative consensus) is currently incapable of offering a progressive critique.

How the Left Can Successfully Argue for Higher Taxation 1: Surveying the Ground

How can the Left argue the case for taxation to fund social and economic development and not get annihilated at the polls? That is the challenge posed by a recent commentator on this blog, Aidan. I suspect most progressives would rather try their hand at conquering inter-stellar space travel. That would be a snap compared to Aidan’s challenge. But there is little doubt that if the Left wants to be taken seriously it will have to address this. So I’m jumping in. However, before I embark on that let’s first lay out the facts in an objective manner. Hence the ‘1’ in the title. I’ll come to the ‘2’ in my next post – which will propose a way forward.

Sun Tzu, Fianna Fail and The Art of Economics

Fianna Fail certainly read their Sun Tzu. The legendary author of the ancient classic, ‘The Art of War’, stated that

To defeat your enemy without fighting is best.

Yes, indeed. Fianna Fail won the economics debate long before the last election began. And they hardly had to fire a PR shot. Labour’s Pat Rabbitte TD, suggested maybe it was a mistake not to confront Fianna Fail over the economy. There’s no maybe about it. How much confidence can people have in a party that has little to say about growth, jobs, incomes, etc. With Fine Gael stuck in mucho macho mode (‘We’ll stop cost overruns, We’ll jail criminals, Grrrr’), the major governing party was never going to be in trouble.

Fun, Fun, Fun ‘Til Her Daddy Takes Her Calculator Away

We can all have fun in Household Budget Survey land. Conor over at Dublin Opinion has expressed his excitement at delving into 85 pages of dense rows of numbers and categories after devouring a take-away and a Stephen Segal film. I, too, with a glass of wine in hand after watching, what else, Sideways, sat down to satisfy my stat-lust. Where else can you find that in the bottom 40% income groups, no one buys limes? Or that the poorest 10% spend a higher proportion of their income on church contributions than anyone else? Or that the richest 10% spent nothing on funeral expenses (the rich must ‘die harder’)? This data produced by the CSO will keep us warm well into the winter nights and, as a consequence, the social and cultural debates will range from the deeply profound to the wonderfully frivolous.