Social Democrats and Atheism

Brian Shanahan

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Privatisation is a huge red herring, politically the level of water charges which would permit that is impossible and IW requires and will require large subsidies from general taxation.

And yet that is the whole idea behind hiving off Irish Water as a separate entity along with the highly profitable Bord Gais. Unless there is a major sea change in political thinking, you'll be buying your water off a private monopoly.

Look at the original way it was being brought in, water in Ireland was being priced way higher than even in England where it has been privatised to monopolistic concerns for a long time, and even at the current prices it is way above the costs of provision given the fact that Ireland is swimming in usable water.

SpaceTime

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

As far as I can remember it was one of the public utilities that they specifically mentioned "needing privatisation". That's the problem with the EU currently, they've gone away from the original ideas of mutual assistance and cooperation to a full fledged neo-liberal "free" market ideological steamroller, and it's making all of Europe the poorer and more dangerous for it.

Something odd about it as its really not where the European electorates default to.
There's actually a big social democratic tradition since WWII with exceptions like Mrs Thatcher.

Brian Shanahan

SpaceTime wrote: »

Something odd about it as its really not where the European electorates default to.
There's actually a big social democratic tradition since WWII with exceptions like Mrs Thatcher.

Not any more, since Maggie the Milk Robber, political parties and governments have increasingly defaulted to the neo-liberal model of "the free market is always right". Look at the European left, at the very best it is simply a socially liberal grouping with a very right-wing economic and social welfare agenda. Most states are rapidly dismantling their social protection systems, privatising their public services and utilities and increasing the power of big business vis a vis everybody else. And all too often it is the parties of the so called left who are the most enthusiastic partakers in this process.

recedite

SpaceTime wrote: »

I have a horrible feeling the Irish water thing came about from intense lobbying of the European Commission.

The EU had been pushing for bin charges, water charges, sewage charges and septic tank inspections for years, culminating with a hefty fine imposed on Ireland for failing to regulate the sewage situation and allowing the groundwater to be polluted. The main impetus for all this was the environmentally friendly "polluter pays" principle, which I agree with.

Then separately, in 2010 the outgoing FF govt. signed a "memorandum of understanding" with the IMF, which committed the country to introducing property tax and water charges over a strict (and short) timeline. That was purely a revenue gathering exercise.

You'll notice that half of the water charge is actually for sewage, but only the water supply aspect has been taken away from the councils and semi-privatised to Irish Water. Nearly all bin collections are already privatised. So that only leaves the urban sewage systems still under local govt. control; I presume that will be the next major change to occur.

There is of course the theory that private companies do a better and more efficient job of these things anyway. Most times you see a contractor working on the roads they are also a private contractor.

robdonn

recedite wrote: »

There is of course the theory that private companies do a better and more efficient job of these things anyway. Most times you see a contractor working on the roads they are also a private contractor.

The problem though is of government contracts hiring the company that do it the cheapest and not that do it the best.

SpaceTime

Well, to be fair it was EU regulations that finally cleaned up our disgusting mess of raw sewage in waterways !

It's not that long ago Cork and Dublin were flushing into their respective rivers.

recedite

I had to laugh at this new party saying they favoured "the Nordic model" and then saying they opposed the water charges. The Nordic model is all about higher taxes but better social services.
Take a nice "seaside" town like Arklow, where all the raw sewage from the town is pumped straight into the Avoca river. The river estuary stinks and the sea is almost as bad. There is nowhere nice to swim. Presumably the water charge payment rate is similar, or less than, the rest of the country; ie less than 50% currently, and zero up to last year.
If that was a nordic country, everybody would be paying for water and sewage. There would be a state of the art sewage plant. And there would be a free public outdoor picnic/swimming area built along the river with diving boards etc..

expectationlost

are there now two threads here discussing soc dems water policy?

robdonn

expectationlost wrote: »

are there now two threads here discussing soc dems water policy?

I originally started this thread to ask if anyone knew about SocDem's policies on school patronage and other secular issues, but a conversation will go the way conversations go.

Hotblack Desiato

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

And the Irish Water system will guarantee that there will be less funding

Charges equals more funding, it will also be able to borrow for much needed capital investment which local/central governments never provided enough of. Water treatment isn't sexy and doesn't win votes which is why it was shamefully neglected so badly for so long

and at a higher cost, than if the whole kit and kaboodle was kept in house.

IW said they were forced by the government to take on 4000 more council employees than are actually needed to run the water system. That's an example of an excess cost that was hidden in the council-run system for decades. But you are saying the balkanised system (badly) run by the councils is more efficient??

The only rationale for the current set up is to soften up the water system for a quick and dirty privatisation. This will in no way fix the water system in the country, only make it worse.

Hmm, is that an unevidenced assertion - a belief?

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

And yet that is the whole idea behind hiving off Irish Water as a separate entity along with the highly profitable Bord Gais. Unless there is a major sea change in political thinking, you'll be buying your water off a private monopoly.

The retail arm of Bord Gais was privatised, the network was not, there is no more likelihood of that being sold off than there is for ESB Networks. No political party wants to be responsible for another Eircom fiasco.

Look at the original way it was being brought in, water in Ireland was being priced way higher than even in England where it has been privatised to monopolistic concerns for a long time, and even at the current prices it is way above the costs of provision given the fact that Ireland is swimming in usable water.

Oh please, not the juvenile 'it rains a lot here so we should get water for free' nonsense.
Even if that were true (which it isn't), what about waste treatment?
Where are the figures to show it is 'way above the cost of provision' even after the charges have been cut and that stupid €100 bribe grant was brought in.
Irish Water isn't charging nearly enough which is why it is going to get ongoing exchequer subvention.

mahoganygas

Some people here may find this link useful.

It is a petition calling for Equal School Access for unbaptised children in Ireland.

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/The_Joint_Oireachtas_SubCommittee_on_Public_Petitions_Equal_school_access_for_unbaptised_children/?cYlwBjb

expectationlost

think it more interesting to see what those who are more likley to be in gov will do, unless you can come up with a local ground up campaign that will have enough power to work

Atheist Ireland newish activities calendar is revealing
http://atheist.ie/what-activities-does-atheist-ireland-do/

Tuesday (16 June)
Meeting with Labour Party advisors on their Manifesto development
Tuesday (30 June)
Meeting with Fine Gael advisors on their Manifesto development

SpaceTime

This Social Democrats crowd have some potential but, the issue is more that they're a blank template at the moment with a very narrow selection of policies.

jank

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

And the problem with decrying the left for their policies as being too far out there is that there are policies that Maggie the Milk Thief balked at for being too nakedly right wing that are now being decried as being dangerously leftist. Look at Syriza, they've been demonised as far left and neo-Marxist for years now but when push came to shove they turned out to be Blairite right wingers with faux concern for the poor. The problem with modern politics are that the parties are almost universally hard right (i.e. kill social protection, give money to the rich, and remove what little brakes there are to bad practise amongst the biggest companies) with no dissenting voices either in the intelligensia, political class or the media. There is no opposition in the hallways of power, despite the fact that in most of Europe the majorty want social democracy in some shape or form.

A number of issues here

A) Can you let us know exactly what left wing policies today would Thatcher 'balked' at previously for being too right wing?

Syriza were indeed a bunch of far leftists and Marxists, however when the reality was dawning on them that the magic money tree from the EU was literally days from stopping and a Grexit was more likely then not, they stepped back from the precipice. Their number of months in power has been a disaster. That is the fundamental flaw with leftist economics, it sounds great on paper but in reality it ends in tears with people poorer.

C) You say that parties are universally hard right, then say that most people want social democracy (are we talking Labour or AAA here?). If people actually want the politics you think they do, then they would vote for them. Classic example would have been the Tory victory in May.

recedite

jank wrote: »

Syriza were indeed a bunch of far leftists and Marxists, however when the reality was dawning on them that the magic money tree from the EU was literally days from stopping and a Grexit was more likely then not, they stepped back from the precipice. Their number of months in power has been a disaster. That is the fundamental flaw with leftist economics, it sounds great on paper but in reality it ends in tears with people poorer.

What happened there is that the brains behind the operation was Yanis Varoufakis, who is universally acknowledged as a brilliant economist and strategist, even by those who disagreed with him. And even though he was never actually a Syriza party member, he became the finance minister. When the people voted by referendum to endorse his policies, the not-so-smart, but power hungry, PM got scared and there was a split.
Varoufakis knew how to set up his own money tree, which is considered a very dangerous idea by those who own the Frankfurt money tree. And now they will try to have him vilified.

Although "marxist" is often used as term of abuse in this part of the world (partly because of Marx's infamous opposition to religion as being like the opium of the people) the same is not necessarily true in Greece. The partisans who resisted the Nazis in WW2 were mostly marxists, and following the defeat of Germany, Varoufakis' own father fought as one of them in a civil war which was won by the British and US backed right wing faction which then took power. Varoufakis continues that proud and defiant family legacy, one that puts social principles above greed and personal ambition.

Hotblack Desiato

If he's the brains behind the operation, perhaps time for a rethink? This man is no doubt intelligent but has also managed to alienate every single government in the EU, including those who would naturally tend to be sympathetic to his position.

Cuddling up to opposition parties in various countries when it was the goverments he needed to convince to give him what was effectively 'free money' at their expense was distinctly less than clever, and displayed a complete naivete as to how normal politics never mind EU politics works.

recedite

The guy has published several books on game theory, so he knew exactly what he was doing. I presume he was playing some kind of good cop/bad cop strategy, with the PM Tsipras playing the good cop.

There were only ever going to be two permanent solutions that could last, both of which he approved of all along;

Solution 1. Re-allocate all outstanding ECB and IMF loans to the ESM where they would be parked for several decades at an interest rate of less than the inflation rate. In this way, the debt would gradually erode itself away without any real repayment. Every citizen of the eurozone would end up paying a little bit via the inflation within the eurozone ie the devaluing of the money in their pocket.

Solution 2. Repudiate the debt, default, then set up an alternative currency. Once a State has the ability to collect taxes in its own currency, it can then create as much money for investment as it needs, without borrowing externally. That's the fiat money system for you; it is a money tree.

By being the bad cop and threatening Solution 2. Varoufakis is forcing the EU to offer Solution 1.
But to save face, they will only offer it to the good cop, after the bad cop has left the room, and after the spotlight is off them.

Unfortunately here in Ireland we had nobody of that calibre to negotiate with them, hence we are stuck with repaying a large debt plus significant interest costs over a relatively short period of time. Much of which was accrued by private banks and developers anyway, before being socialised and allocated to the State.

Hotblack Desiato

I don't buy this "acting so stupid proves how clever he is" sort of analysis.

Syriza's brinkmanship has done signficant and entirely avoidable damage to the Greek economy and it is the Greek people who will suffer more as a result. They have gained nothng that would not have been achieved by cooperative negotiations in good faith similar to how Ireland acted during the bailout.

The previous government had actually got the economy growing again (just) when they left office.

Brian Shanahan

recedite wrote: »

(partly because of Marx's infamous opposition to religion as being like the opium of the people)

Although the "opposition" to religion was very much inflated by the powers that be at the time, because of their inverterate hatred of democratic forms of politics and equitable sharing of wealth.

Read in the proper context, Marx's "opposition" was more of a personal antagonism, whereas his official position was indifference based on his view that with increased equaility and education the proletariat would walk away from religion of their own accord.

Hotblack Desiato

So Marx may have been right about something after all

recedite

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

They have gained nothng that would not have been achieved by cooperative negotiations in good faith similar to how Ireland acted during the bailout.

The Greeks haven't reached the end game stage yet, but I expect Solution 1 above to be offered soon, otherwise the prospect/threat of Solution 2 may be taken back out of its box.

Ireland won't get either. Because we already agreed to take on the ECB bank debt in return for short term loans. And the Frankfurters won't discuss banking "legacy" issues with suckers.

recedite

recedite wrote: »

The Greeks haven't reached the end game stage yet, but I expect Solution 1 above to be offered soon, otherwise the prospect/threat of Solution 2 may be taken back out of its box.

Ireland won't get either. Because we already agreed to take on the ECB bank debt in return for short term loans. And the Frankfurters won't discuss banking "legacy" issues with suckers.

It is utterly unfathomable to even consider that 'Solution 1' could be extended to only a single EZ country...

Consider why on earth Slovakia would choose to pay any national debt servicing costs if 'Solution 1' was enacted.

I believe that 'Solution 1' is close to where we will end up, eventually, however it would require universal buy in. The entire EZ would need to agree to consolidate and mutualise all existing debt, spreading the current servicing costs Euro-wide, whilst acknowledging that doing so means that the ability to take on further debt is drastically diminished.

SpaceTime

We're kinda gone way off the mark here if the Social Democrats are being compared with Syriza!

They seem like a centre / centre left party that just doesn't have the legacy of Labour and a perception (even if not quite true) that they're something to do with public sector trade unions.

SF would be as close to Syriza as we get but even they're strike me as being a lot more pragmatic.

I'm still open minded about this new party. We could do with a dose of ideologically led centre left type policies here.

I find the biggest problem here is because FF and FG are just populists really, you're never sure what their policies are likely to be.

I mean, both parties have actually come from an extremely right wing social policy legacy largely led by church teaching rather than any kind of political philosophy.

They have suddenly realised that the country isn't all that conservative and all of a sudden they're drinking in gay bars and supporting marriage equality.

What worries me is when it comes to a major issue though you never know what they're standing for.

Bertie was calling himself a socialist while implementing policies that were extreme hyper speculation capitalism friendly and priced a lot of people out of the housing market etc etc

Labour have annoyed me a lot on religious freedom issues as I think they've caved in on trying to reform the school system. They have been excellent on LGBT issues though.

I'm still disappointed with the Greens. Allowing that internationally embarrassing blasphemy law to pass which really put me off voting for them ever again. I got rather wishy washy justifications when I emailed them at the time and really I've never been so disappointed in a party as with that lot. All fancy, touchy feely adverts ... No follow through.

I need to know where parties stand on abortion for example before I vote in the general election. I won't be voting for anyone intent on keeping the status quo.

expectationlost

interesting that when Indo went out to find "Ashbourne Annie", Labour's market research created target voter, the first thing a lady of 35 with kids in Ahsbourne said was an issue was the lack of school places http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/ashbourne-annie-does-exist-but-struggling-families-dont-need-labour-to-tell-them-that-31425073.html

robindch

recedite wrote: »

What happened there is that the brains behind the operation was Yanis Varoufakis, who is universally acknowledged as a brilliant economist and strategist, even by those who disagreed with him.

Not me - I disagreed with Varoufakis' and thought he was an appalling economist and even worse strategist. Yes, he's a smart guy - who else amongst the (former) finance ministers of Europe can quote from poets easily and appropriately? But as a finance minister? Nah, he was dreadful, his comments were appalling and I'm happy to see him gone.

The New Yorker did a piece on him last week:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/03/the-greek-warrior

recedite

robindch wrote: »

The New Yorker did a piece on him last week:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/03/the-greek-warrior

A very atmospheric article, padded out with more unverifiable anecdotes than a Mills & Boon novel.
A lot of the substance in it is just plain nonsense though. For example...

Varoufakis, who is fifty-four, had the peace of mind of someone who was certain of an election result and already savoring the satisfactions to follow. His government, the left-wing Syriza party, would lose. The people would vote “yes”—that is, in favor of making more concessions than Varoufakis and Alexis Tsipras, the country’s forty-year-old Prime Minister and the leader of Syriza, had said that they could stomach. Varoufakis would resign as a minister, and would never again have to endure all-day meetings in Brussels and Luxembourg..

What is that supposed to mean? He calls for a referendum, hoping to lose, just so that he can retire and avoid going to those dreary meetings? Its absolute nonsense. He wanted a No vote, recommended it, expected it, and got it.
The interesting bit is why Tsipras then acted after the referendum as if there had been a Yes vote to more bailout loans. But the article just skips past that.
BTW Varoufakis hasn't gone away, he is still MP.

robindch

recedite wrote: »

A very atmospheric article, padded out with more unverifiable anecdotes than a Mills & Boon novel.

Are you suggesting that the New Yorker prints lies?

recedite wrote: »

The interesting bit is why Tsipras then acted after the referendum as if there had been a Yes vote to more bailout loans. But the article just skips past that.

Because the article was a sketch of Varoufakis, not Tspiras.

For myself, if Tsipras had any degree of honesty, he should probably have respected the results of his mini-referendum and ultimately taken Greece out of the Euro. However, he'd probably have been lynched at the next election, if not by the populace beforehand, so instead, he did what most politicians would have done - he fired the guy "responsible" for the failed economic negotiations and referendum, and then did what he should have done to start with.

In any case, I was just replying to your comment that Varoufakis was "universally acknowledged as a brilliant economist and strategist, even by those who disagreed with him". He certainly wasn't.

KomradeBishop

The problem with all new political parties, is it doesn't matter who gets in government, they are all going to be neutered politically, because much of the power has already been ceded to Europe.

So, it matters very little who gets in power now - and new parties are inherently going to have a hard time generating a platform, because they can't credibly make the promise of big changes, when the power to do that, largely resides at a European level now.


What would be good to see though, is a party looking to engage in rooting out and destruction of all forms of corruption - public and private - it largely doesn't even get investigated in this country.
This is something that is, unfortunately, also very tied up with economic issues - the total lack of transparency in how certain aspects of the crisis has been dealt with, leads to a lot of valid concerns, that there may be significant corruption/fraud yet to be revealed from the aftermath of the crisis (not just all that went on before...).

So, blowing up attention to such issues publicly, could potentially end up putting some programs in economic trouble, and the country too, economically - probably one of the reasons we haven't yet already seen, widespread investigation and jailing of people from the financial/banking industry.

Again, achieving that while avoiding those potential problems, requires powers that exist at a European level, not at the national level.


We're pretty much neutered politically/economically, in my view - we've already lost true democratic control of the country, and it's probably going to be decades before the general public start to realize this.

The entire 'Left' seems to be MIA politically (in actual politics, rather than political discussion), when it comes to resolving economic issues - largely because we have no national control over it now - and we're not going to see any resurgence of a true 'Left', until issues of 'economic justice', and the near-complete loss of democracy within the EU, are brought center-stage in their policy.

All parties that acquiesce to EU-led economic policy, even if they portray themselves as 'left', are inherently right-wing economically these days - though they try to dress it up as being on the 'left' edge of this inherently right-wing-economic spectrum.

SpaceTime

There are plenty of issues well outside the remit of any EU policy.

1. Health - most of the problems there are about structures and governance.

2. Crime : largely drugs driven : so try something different to break the addiction cycles and get people off heroine and the situation would improve a lot.

3. Abortion : absolutely needs to be at the very least in line with a normal western country.

4. Schools and equality: lots could be done.

6. Housing : again it's all about policy not overall public spending. I'd rather see someone looking at creating a stable, long term solution for people to rent who can't get into the housing market at all at present. The buy-to-let model is causing misery and social exclusion for a lot of people by creating substandard, badly managed accommodation.

There's an endless list of things that have nothing to do with European Union budget targets.

KomradeBishop

recedite wrote: »

What happened there is that the brains behind the operation was Yanis Varoufakis, who is universally acknowledged as a brilliant economist and strategist, even by those who disagreed with him. And even though he was never actually a Syriza party member, he became the finance minister. When the people voted by referendum to endorse his policies, the not-so-smart, but power hungry, PM got scared and there was a split.
Varoufakis knew how to set up his own money tree, which is considered a very dangerous idea by those who own the Frankfurt money tree. And now they will try to have him vilified.

Although "marxist" is often used as term of abuse in this part of the world (partly because of Marx's infamous opposition to religion as being like the opium of the people) the same is not necessarily true in Greece. The partisans who resisted the Nazis in WW2 were mostly marxists, and following the defeat of Germany, Varoufakis' own father fought as one of them in a civil war which was won by the British and US backed right wing faction which then took power. Varoufakis continues that proud and defiant family legacy, one that puts social principles above greed and personal ambition.

Varoufakis capitulated near-entirely shortly after coming into power, by agreeing in advance that Greece would run a surplus, i.e. engage in austerity - his time as Finance Minister was calamitous, and this is coming from someone who has been a very big fan of Yanis, and who has been reading his writing for years.

Economically, he is an excellent writer and knows perfectly how to resolve the economic problems within Europe - but he never fully grasped that this is impossible politically.

Neither has almost anyone else in the whole of Europe either, really - people still think something along the lines of "it can't be this way forever - we'll muddle along somehow", and just ignore the issues and let things trundle along as they are - there's just a complete neglectful absence/paralysis among people politically.


It's probably going to take popularization of the idea of exiting the Euro, and trying to rejoin the EU after - this is impossible for Greece to survive, but possible for other countries to survive - before we see any political parties that might make an actual positive difference.

This idea is so unpalatable though, that by the time it becomes popularized, things may become so bad that we may not be able to survive such an exit - and may end up like Greece.