Can we decide please?
Fine Gael and a increasingly unsure Labour Party are saying that any alternative to compliance with the terms of the IMF/EU deal is a reckless gamble. Vincent Brown (whether mischievously or otherwise) rounded on Eoin O Broin of Sinn Fein on the basis that burning the bondholders and the strategy that SF is advocating would see us unable to pay public servants, including the Gardaí, within a year or so. Scaremongering, in other words.
None of us have a crystal ball, but it seems to be that it is entirely reasonable to go back to the major European governments - the movers behind the deal - and outline in clear terms that we are not going to subject our people to this level of misery over a prolonged period and we are not going to be restricted in our ability to invest in job creation, if the democratic will of our people is to vote for parties that advocate this approach.
And there’s the rub. Are we saying that advocating anything other than an agenda suitable to the IMF - a conservative and deregulated economic approach - like the one that facilitated the runaway banks for example-is tantamount to a reckless gamble? So that’s it. Its the same political and economic approach or nothing. That’s the real danger here and it needs to be challenged. The IMF and EU don’t see Fine Gael challenging and, alas, Labour seem to be moving towards the continuation of this right wing agenda too, though I suspect that they are wobbling. I hope so
Discussion
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Comment by: William Wall
Feb 2nd 2011 at 08:02
Very succinctly put and dead on. The issue, as with the Nice and Lisbon referenda, is one of democracy. I suggest holding a referendum on the issue: Are we prepared to shoulder this unbearable debt burden, or do we want to go a different way. In either case there are risks, but the risks fall on different people.
Comment by: Pope Epopt
Feb 2nd 2011 at 10:02
A good suggestion going the rounds is the following:
Buttonhole the candidate themselves, not their canvassers, and record a question like:
along with the response. Record on camera, phone, or whatever you have to hand, and post it on Youtube.
That will sort the wheat from the chaff.
Comment by: Des Brannigan
Feb 2nd 2011 at 11:02
I wish to attend next saturdays conference in the gresham hotel.
Please advise how will i gain entrance.
Thank you,
Desmond Brannigan
01 6600737
Comment by: William Wall
Feb 2nd 2011 at 13:02
@ Pope and as your at it give them your manifesto
http://homepage.eircom.net/~williamwall/williamwall/Ice_Moon_Blog/Entries/2010/12/11_A_Citizens_Manifesto_for_the_2011_election.html
Comment by: Des Derwin
Feb 2nd 2011 at 14:02
Our left candidates and panelists need to sharpen up their media act in relation to finances and the economy. It is both a matter of ready answers and personal push.
That said, Vincent, whom I admire and read voraciously, is become a bit of a liability for the left. He is giving the third degree to people, some inexperienced but genuine, who are saying exactly what Vincent is saying in his own fucking columns! He is undermining and discrediting the left - for the sake of being the great macho anchorman? - and also his own strongly held and brilliantly broadcast views. He keeps aggressively implying to his left guests that ‘there is no money’, there is no alternative, when his own columns point out - better than anyone in journalism except Fintan and Gene - that, in his own phrase, we are a very rich country with a very poor state (due, he also argues, correctly, to the fiscal treatment of the rich).
Either Vincent eases up, and uses his show to help promote an alternative (that’s what he wants isn’t it?) or we send our people on better armed and fired up.
Comment by: Donagh
Feb 2nd 2011 at 15:02
All due respect to Vincent but I think he just doesn’t get the argument. It might be because of his schooling in the Donnie and Nesbit’s school of economics, learning at the barstool bended knee of Colm McCarthy.
In his Sunday Business Post column he puts it like this:
This suggests that he associates low growth in the short term with real redistribution, and implies that less equality etc will provide more growth. The options further down the list are less groovy from a left perspective seem, in Vincent’s mind, to be associated with higher growth in the more immediate future.
He thinks that reducing the deficit by cutting public expenditure will generate growth, and produce jobs in the economy when the opposite is the case, as FF’s policy to date has shown and will again be confirmed if FG and Labour get into power. At no point does he talk about the structural weakness of the economy or how that can be changed through investment and that there are many plausible ways to fund that investment without tearing apart the semi-states. But then he’s a politico who is good at putting other politico’s on the spot.
Comment by: CMK
Feb 2nd 2011 at 23:02
Vincent is disgracing himself on TV3 now. He’s taken the right wing “where are you going to get the missing 19bn” trope and is battering each guest, in turn, with it. Kieran Allen staring glumly into space.
Comment by: vincent wood
Feb 3rd 2011 at 00:02
@cmk
Actually think Kiaran Allen is doing very well. Maybe VB is trying to sharpen everybody up for the campaign!
Comment by: CMK
Feb 3rd 2011 at 12:02
@Vincent Wood
Yes, of course Allen quite well. Just the camera caught him looking glumly for a moment or two.