Electioneering
Feb. 26th, 2011 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbIt may have crossed your awareness that Ireland is in the throes of an election to decide who gets to deal with the fallout of mortgaging our nation on behalf of private banking debt.
The interest payments on that debt, according to economist David McWilliams - who, while not always right, is less stupid than most of our homegrown economists - could amount to 85% of government income by the end of 2011. Just the interest.
Let's just take a moment of silence and consider that.
This is not a sustainable model for going forward, and the major question of the coming days is whether the new government (looking likely, at this moment, to be either a minority Fine Gael or Fine Gael in coalition with... somebody) will have the spine to alter the equation.
It will require a lot of spine. Because in order to do so, the incoming government will have to stand up to the combined pressure of a lazy and incompetent establishment in the Department of Finance, an establishment in the Irish Central Bank which is part of the problem, the loud shouty mandarins in the European Central Bank, and France and Germany, who are still ecomonically robust and determined to remain that way, even at the cost of the peripheral EU nations. Like Ireland. Greece. Portugal.
I'm not optimistic about the amount of spine any Irish politician is possessed of. And Fine Gael is home the most diehard Europhiles in Irish politics. Even Labour seems to own a sense of obligation towards the EU. I'm not much of a nationalist at the best of times, but the ECB/IMF deal that was agreed to? It's not good for the country. It's not even good for Europe, because saddling the peripheral nations with un- or barely-serviceable debt burdens, in the long wrong, will do more harm to the grand European experiment of economic and diplomatic co-operation and the furtherance of human rights than just eating the losses will.
This is not a balance-sheet argument, by the way. It's partly an ethical one, too.
Universal human rights are important. So is the continuance of a representative democracy in the face of forces determined to create kleptocracy. Oligarchy. Kakocracy.
The ratio of women to men in the outgoing Dáil is on the order of 1:8. The ratio in the incoming one, looks, as of this writing, to remain as one woman for every eight men.
The voting population of Ireland is slighty more female than male. And yet, in my constituency, out of ten candidates for election, only one - and not one from the larger parties - was a woman.
I happily gave her my first preference vote, since she is also the Socialist Party candidate and a useful person (and now, thank heavens, elected) - but really, people. This is the twenty-first century. I expect better.
Also in "I expect better," I am grieved to report that foetal personhood remains a sticking-point for far too many Irish voters. Even the Labour Party must deny that they support "abortion-on-demand" and make waffling noises about passing legislation on the 1990 "X" case precedent.
Oh, yes, I'm a godless supporter of the right to choose whether or not one must provide an organ as life-support for a tiny ball of overactive cells.
At least the bishops are mostly quiet this time around.
The interest payments on that debt, according to economist David McWilliams - who, while not always right, is less stupid than most of our homegrown economists - could amount to 85% of government income by the end of 2011. Just the interest.
Let's just take a moment of silence and consider that.
This is not a sustainable model for going forward, and the major question of the coming days is whether the new government (looking likely, at this moment, to be either a minority Fine Gael or Fine Gael in coalition with... somebody) will have the spine to alter the equation.
It will require a lot of spine. Because in order to do so, the incoming government will have to stand up to the combined pressure of a lazy and incompetent establishment in the Department of Finance, an establishment in the Irish Central Bank which is part of the problem, the loud shouty mandarins in the European Central Bank, and France and Germany, who are still ecomonically robust and determined to remain that way, even at the cost of the peripheral EU nations. Like Ireland. Greece. Portugal.
I'm not optimistic about the amount of spine any Irish politician is possessed of. And Fine Gael is home the most diehard Europhiles in Irish politics. Even Labour seems to own a sense of obligation towards the EU. I'm not much of a nationalist at the best of times, but the ECB/IMF deal that was agreed to? It's not good for the country. It's not even good for Europe, because saddling the peripheral nations with un- or barely-serviceable debt burdens, in the long wrong, will do more harm to the grand European experiment of economic and diplomatic co-operation and the furtherance of human rights than just eating the losses will.
This is not a balance-sheet argument, by the way. It's partly an ethical one, too.
Universal human rights are important. So is the continuance of a representative democracy in the face of forces determined to create kleptocracy. Oligarchy. Kakocracy.
The ratio of women to men in the outgoing Dáil is on the order of 1:8. The ratio in the incoming one, looks, as of this writing, to remain as one woman for every eight men.
The voting population of Ireland is slighty more female than male. And yet, in my constituency, out of ten candidates for election, only one - and not one from the larger parties - was a woman.
I happily gave her my first preference vote, since she is also the Socialist Party candidate and a useful person (and now, thank heavens, elected) - but really, people. This is the twenty-first century. I expect better.
Also in "I expect better," I am grieved to report that foetal personhood remains a sticking-point for far too many Irish voters. Even the Labour Party must deny that they support "abortion-on-demand" and make waffling noises about passing legislation on the 1990 "X" case precedent.
Oh, yes, I'm a godless supporter of the right to choose whether or not one must provide an organ as life-support for a tiny ball of overactive cells.
At least the bishops are mostly quiet this time around.
