between the rock and the cold, cold sea

"In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing. Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism."

~~ Oscar Wilde, February 1891. "The Soul of man under Socialism". Fortnightly Review 49 (290): 292–319.


GONZALO
I have great comfort from this fellow: methinks he
hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is
perfect gallows. Stand fast, good Fate, to his
hanging: make the rope of his destiny our cable,
for our own doth little advantage. If he be not
born to be hanged, our case is miserable.

~~Wm Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I Scene I.

Discuss.

It 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.

February. The weather is caught between winter and spring. Sunlight and rain and the peculiar thin quality of light I associate with winter falling on spring-greening fields, brown furrows sprouting viridian, turning grey estuary-water to brown depths that ripple and go still.

The towns along the railway line are ugly as ever, without the silvery patina of frost or the golden warmth of summer to elide their flaws. They crawl like fungus up overlooking hills, sprawl out across the landscape, and the city itself looks damp and tawdry and grey.

The lampposts are bearing fruit. The same men's faces stare down from election posters, the same tired and desperate sloganeering married to features it would take a mother to love. Women candidates and the occasional man who lacks a ferrety smirk - who actually photographs well, or can at least manage not to look smug or embarrassed or both at once - stand out for their astonishing rarity.

As usual, I'll be voting for the Socialists and the Greens. And possibly the non-incumbant Labour candidate in my constituency - the incumbant having somehow managed to keep his seat through at least the last two elections without ever having done anything good or useful to bring himself to my notice, and having made himself noticeable this election by the possession of a particularly unpleasant smirk. (I should not judge men by their faces, but really? He looks like he's leering.)

I know the Greens are implicated in the shoddy state of the nation, but I've met their candidate. He's as sensible as politicians hereabouts ever get.

---

Tonight, I attended a German jujutsu class. It was intense, and radically different to the hit people and run away ethos of Shotokan karate, which is what I'm used to. (If Shotokan is good for anything, it's for teaching you to hit people so they really know they've been hit. On the other hand, in real life, if you don't hit someone hard enough to kill them, you mostly just make them angry. So it will be good to train in a different style - one that includes grappling.)

Fun, but exhausting. We'll see how long my enthusiasm for getting myself beaten up lasts.

To whom it may concern -

- Actually, I doubt it concerns you much at all. To judge by your behaviour, you seem content to sell this country to the highest bidder and retire on your generous, self-awarded pensions. All the while telling the electorate to shut up and listen to the experts - not, of course, the experts who think your behaviour is unethical, wrong, and out of line with your stated goals, but the experts who say you're always right. You know, the same experts who helped get us into this mess.

It is hard to overstate the gravity of the situation which now confronts the sovereign Irish state. This isn't as bad as the economic downturns of the 1930s, 1950s and 1980s, it's potentially worse than all three combined.

We are now in the extraordinary situation when the leaders of the two major parties do not command the confidence of a majority of their own deputies, let alone the country.

Never mind the fact that the experts have been wrong again, and again and again -- on the bubble, on the bank guarantee, on the effects of deflating the economy.

Government rules out increase in the corporate tax rate.

Uncertainty over the future is accompanied by a widely held belief that changing the Government would make no difference to Ireland’s economic prospects. This lack of confidence in the ability of the Opposition parties to extract the State from the financial morass is echoed by a general unwillingness to believe officials when they say Ireland’s bank liabilities are “manageable”.

---

So it's no use expressing my fury and disappointment to the leaders of this country. As to the people of Ireland -

Why have we let fear and dismay render us impotent? If our voices are ignored, why have we not acted?

Oh, I know why. We believe in due process and democracy. Despite the evidence right in front of everyone's eyes, evidence that democracy in practice means the wealthy and "respectable" are held to far less harsh standards than the rest of us. Despite the contempt which our governing classes are in the main content to display to the electorate to whom they are - theoretically - accountable. But accountability is only ever theoretical when you have influential friends, isn't it?

I am angry and disappointed and terribly afraid for my country. And to a lesser degree, for myself.

The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally

Whatever you might think of the Easter Rising and the Proclamation of the Republic, those are worthy sentiments. We've had nearly a hundred years to try to live up to them. So why do we keep failing so miserably?

It is a fact all but universally acknowledged that the government of Ireland is morally and intellectually bankrupt, and has been for some time.

It is beyond obvious that the future of the citizens of this country is being mortgaged to the interests of a restricted political class which comprises bankers, developers, and politicians. The present fiscal policy of this country is deflationary and irresponsible, designed to reduce necessary services, increase unemployment, and preserve or exacerbate the present set of social inequalities.

I'd rather not attribute to malice what can be laid at the feet of incompetence. Incompetence is the word for what happened during the boom years, when successive Fianna Fáil governments under the soi-disant leadership of Bertie Ahern squandered record surpluses and dragged their feet instead of putting in place much-needed improvements to transport, education, health and community services. This? This is being done with malice aforethought. Alan Dukes is now in charge of Anglo-Irish Bank, for fuck's sake. Richie Boucher is in charge of Bank of Ireland. Brian Cowen, the former Finance Minister who presided over much of the squandering, the Taoiseach who has never lead his party in a general election, is in charge of the country.

This is not democracy. And it's not responsible government, either.

I'd hate to suggest this is all Fianna Fáil's fault. It's not. It's their responsibility - or it would be, if there was any indication that they understood the meaning of the word - but they have been aided by a series of spineless coalition partners; first the Progressive Democrats of unmourned memory, and lately the Greens - who, despite their high-minded talk, seem just as easily swayed as anyone else by the promise of a government car and a ministerial pension. The parties of the opposition, Fine Gael and Labour, are equally devoid of imagination or responsibility. They do not stand for anything. They do not, even, when it matters, stand against. It would be trivially easy to oppose the current Fianna Fáil policies on their merits. To propose a plan of investment in the citizens of this country, rather than the albatrosses around our necks.

Yet the opposition is not alone in failing to oppose. The comfortable echo-chamber of the state broadcaster, RTÉ, has fallen down on its mandate to educate and inform. The airwaves are full of talking heads, but how many of them have the guts to treat the public as though we're capable of understanding what's been done?

We've been sold. Like cattle: our only purpose is to profit in the pockets of our political masters. This is why, instead of investing in our citizenry when the bubble burst, Cowen and Lenihan rushed to shore up the banks and their cosy relationship with the developers, with the money class. This is why, instead of measures to counter unemployment, instead of preservation of the services we so badly need, we have the National Asset Management Agency and billions upon billions of euro pumped into the unsustainable system that brought us here in the first place.

I will allow that banks are necessary. To a degree. But preserving them at any cost? That's folly. Worse, it's the kind of folly that could ruin us for years to come.

For all the talk of the profits of the boom years, many of us - most of us - were just getting by. Sure, maybe we had a new(ish) car and maybe a holiday a year that we'd never been able to afford before, maybe we had a nice house (and a nasty mortgage), but the people keeping a family on 40-60K year weren't making out like bandits. And the people keeping a family on less than that certainly weren't.

In 2008, the average starting salary for a university graduate in Ireland was 27K. I don't have data for the median back then, but today, looking at the jobs advertised on my university's careers website, the range is more like 22-26K. The handful that are located in Ireland and mention salaries, that is. In 2006, the average annual wage or salary for employees in a small business was €32,453. The average salary in larger enterprises was €44,794 per annum. Cite. Of course, in 2006, unemployment was half what it is today. And in real terms, wages haven't increased. With levies and all the rest of the shit that's gone on, they've - at best, for the working and middle class - remained static. In general, they've decreased.

If they haven't, for those who've lost their employment, gone away entirely.

At the same time, mst people's major asset, their house, has depreciated significantly. In some cases they're left with a mortgage worth twice or more what their property is, and with no way short of defaulting out of their present state of negative equity.

In short, if you weren't comfortable wealthy before things went arse over head - sucks to be you. Enjoy your financial insecurity, suckers. And if you were living right on the edge of your moderate means - you're fucked. No, seriously. You're fucked.

For the foreseeable future, things aren't going to get better. The direction the government has taken us in is going to make things worse for us ordinary citizens. And worse could get very bad indeed for the significant proportion of this country - on the order of a sixth of the population - living at or below the poverty line.

This is not the time to blame immigration. This is not the time to turn on our neighbours and our friends. This is not the time to blame the EU, or the international markets. No. This started at home. This started in a culture of political cronyism and corruption that goes all the way back to Jack Lynch and Charlie Haughey, if not further. And I am done with it.

I'm graduating this year - always providing I don't fuck it up at the last minute - from a university than consistently places in the top 200 for research in the world. I'll come out with a good degree and no place to use it. At the same time, the company that employs the parent is attempting to increase its (still very healthy) profit margins by forcing through 'reforms'. In the course of this, there's a significant possibility that the parent will be done out of her job. A necessary job which entails excruciating shiftwork, and which barely covers our overhead as a household.

I love this country. But there's no place in it for me, or for many of my graduating cohort. Those of us who can't scrape together the means to enter a postgrad programme in the hopes that things will look better from the perspective of a higher degree are already making plans to (and I quote) "collect enough unemployment benefit to pay for flights out of the country." Because if we stay, our options are so very, very limited.

I love this country. But there's no place in it for people who believe in justice, transparency, or equality. There is no place in it for people who believe bishops should keep their noses out of legislation, and politicians should keep their hands out of the till. (Saith TD Jim McDaid: "Cutting TDs' salaries will open them up to corruption." Indeed, Jim. For sure, you're all paragons who'd never dream of taking an envelope under the table right now.)

I've been following politics since before I came of age to vote. At least, as much as I could stand to follow. Time and again I've been told how little I - or anyone like me - matter to the people who run our country. Time and again they lie with straight faces, and they don't even bother with plausible lies. The dog ate my homework is not an excuse.

When the political classes so clearly fail to respect the people who elected them, whose interests they are at least supposed to pretend to care about, it becomes very hard - impossible - to respect the political process. This is what political apathy is made of. This, right here. This is what the flip side to apathy, violent protest, is made of. Right here. Because if we cannot change things with our voices, if things continue to deteriorate, there might be a day when people try to speak with more than voice and voting booth.

I really, really hope things get better before that point. But there are already a lot of people in this country with very little to lose. And most of us will leave, if we can. Because there's nothing here for us, and no real hope that there will be.

I don't know how to change the system. But I know it has to be changed. Because if it doesn't change -

If it doesn't change, then tell me. Why did our great-grandparents spend so much blood and passion and godforsaken effort to achieve the right to self-government? Why the fuck do we bother to remember them, if we're content to be governed by bloated parasites who care only for themselves?

Answer me that, if you can.

And if you can't, I'll see you in Sweden in a few years' time. Or Denmark, or Canada. Somewhere that isn't here.

I didn't even know Iran had had an election until Monday. On Tuesday, I started to realise that not only had they had an election, but the results were hotly contested.

Since then I've been following the aggregated links on the subject at this blog, and this Iranian-American group's offical blog. And the BBC.

I don't know jackshit about the Islamic Republic of Iran - or at least I didn't, before this began. But there are people dying because of peaceful protest for fairness - and the appearance of fairness - in their elections, among other things, and I kind of think that might be worth noting.

I hope things work out better than I expect they will.

I have another case of mild sunburn, due to spending most of the day on the beach, wandering around rockpools, terrifying tiny crabs, smashing barnacles off rocks with flint cobbs and looking at their undersides, and occasionally looking at my notes. I'm sure my preparation is inadequate, but fuckit. I enjoyed myself. Too bad the tide was so far out, or I might have been arsed to go swimming, too.

Tomorrow there's the exam in the morning - I need to be on the seven o'clock train - and in the afternoon, I have to vote in the local and European elections. I intend to vote socialist, and in the Europeans, Labour or Independent: I would be voting Green, but the buggers haven't had the guts to wash their hands of Fianna Fáil and go back to the opposition: I don't intend to reward them for their moral cowardice.

(Yes, politics is the art of the compromise. But for fuck's sake, people. Fianna Fáil: the Republican Party are a party of opportunists, chancers, embezzlers, liars, and scum. Their policies are regressive, both socially and economically, and they haven't an ethical spine among them. I realise expecting a politician to stand up and be counted is like expecting a jellyfish to get up and walk, but this is a matter of principle.)

Okay. This is unexpected. I have received a couple of replies to my open letter to the Independent that are not mere 'Thank-you-for-writing-we-will-consider-your-words' (aka fuck off and leave us alone) notes from politicians. Only a couple, but still. I may have to reconsider my opinion on all politicians being useless puffed-up hypocritical bags of wind.

When I opened your paper on November 7, I was taken aback to read the piece by Mr David Quinn, "Like California, we should ban same sex marriages." I am always disappointed to find bigotry in the newspapers, and more so to find it in the Independent, which has always seemed to me reasonably balanced when writing about the issues.

I am sorry to have been mistaken.

( When I realised on Wednesday )

All adult citizens deserve equal rights and protections before the law. And if we deny that to a section of our fellow-citizens, out of unease over the unfamiliar, or self-justifying hypocrisy, then we are not even trying to be a just society, or a moral one.

Human rights is not a zero-sum game. When it comes to human rights, by giving, we do not take away: rather, we all gain.

Thank you for reading.

It is bad enough that Ireland does not treat all of its citizens as entitled to full and equal rights. It is worse when I open a paper to see this editorial, by one David Quinn:

"Like California, we should ban same-sex marriages".

I now have a fury that will not die.

If any of you have sufficient time and inclination on your hands, I hope you will join me in writing to the Irish Independent to educate them regarding the injustice and bigotry of this position. I will be writing myself, to explain to Mr. Quinn quite precisely why his prejudice is unacceptable, and why claiming 'traditional marriage needs to be protected oh noes!' is not an acceptable position to take.

I mean, fuckit. I'm the only child of a single mother. No, correction. The bastard child of a single mother. From where I'm sitting, exalting 'tradition' and 'marriage' is nothing but an excuse for fucking up other people's chances at happiness.

And one hell of a lot of my friends are gay, or otherwise queer, and they damn well deserve the same rights and protections under the law as anyone else.

So please, drop the Independent a line at independent.letters@independent.ie, or at their snailmail address, The Irish Independent, Independent House, 27 – 32 Talbot Street, Dublin 1, Ireland.

Because while I've seen a lot of things from the Indo, this is the first time I've seen blatant bigotry. And I would very much like my country to join the civilised world, as represented by such places as Iceland, Canada, the UK, Spain, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands - hell, in this matter, even South Africa - to name a few.