Ireland, World Cup opener & seven million people
Brief reflections on Ireland’s opening game at the 2023 Women’s World Cup and the casual partitionism of southern society
Ireland, World Cup opener & seven million people
Cognitive Dissonance and the art of being right wing
We all lie to some degree in an effort to navigate our lives and for the most part our lies are harmless. “I’m 5 minutes away”, when the absence of faster-than-light travel makes this impossible. “I’m waiting for them to call back”, when you forget to place the call in the first place. “It was like that when I got here”, when … well, you get my point.
We lie to save people unnecessary pain, we lie for expediency and to avoid people and conflict. For the most part these lies are innocuous and it is generally understood that life is not black and white, so they help us to shade in the grey.
For politicians, lying is an essential tool. Whether it is a lie of omission, a misremembering, or just a straight up falsehood, we are endlessly lied to by those we choose to govern us. What has been most interesting are the lies they tell about themselves that fly in the face of documented actions.
Gaslighting is a term that gets levelled at politicians time and time again when their actions do not match their public utterances. Parliamentary posturing, decrying your political opposition as one thing or another when even a cursory glimpse of their social media output shows how hollow your words are and how credulous you believe the electorate are.
There are many examples of Irish government TDs posting videos extolling activities to protect your mental health during this crisis. All very positive and well meaning, but at the same time hard to take seriously from this party. Then again, the DIY attitude to mental health is at least in line with the Tory core of Fine Gael – soft on the solutions to mental health crises and soft on the causes of mental health crises. Simon Harris is a deft hand at making you question your reality, in one breath acclaiming Jacinda Arden but in practice lying to cover his own ineptitude or throwing out accusations of populism to smear rivals when his own party bring Trumpian style politics to Ireland.
A cognitive dissonance seems essential for Fine Gael. From their ‘Let’s Keep The Recovery Going’ to ‘A Future To Look Forward To’, reading the lay of the land has never seemed to be a strength. We are not expecting refreshing honesty but to stand over record homelessness then ask the electorate to take your hand and join them in a brighter future takes a certain disconnect.
Of course, politicians lying and projecting a positive spin of their characteristics and achievements is nothing new. What is relatively new is that the population have, through social media, instant access to these disconnects. The earnest heartfelt video telling us we’re all in this together and we need to pull on our green jerseys can very quickly be countered by actions that show we are in fact not.
I am not hopeful of politicians changing the habits of a lifetime any time soon and while the thought of a right wing politician standing up and speaking openly about how and why they operate the way they do might be good for a day of memes, I won’t be holding my breath. By all means hold their duplicitous ways to the light and see if you can make them squirm.
Grassroots and weeds
It takes all sorts, or so I’m told. I was never great for joining clubs or organizations. Disparate people coming together under a common cause, a mobilization of bias with a singular goal sends chills down my spine and pits my socialism against my neurosis. For a friend of mine his involvement in one such club was having people to go to football matches with and guaranteed access to tickets. That was the singular motivation for him to set up and grow the club, if he was being totally honest it also scratched his organizing and ordering his world itch. That is another post in of itself.
For some it was less about the football and more about the membership of something. Watching a vital away qualifier in the pub one night I marveled at how many of the members paid such little attention to the match, huddled outside smoking when it wasn’t even half-time. For others it was about power and control which manifested itself in internal political machinations, bullying and a jaw dropping lack of self awareness.
This is an issue for any movement especially a grassroots political movement. The initial swell of support is required for the movement to gain traction, if your protest numbers are not being misrepresented by the main stream media then you’re doing it wrong. These movements can be prone to attempted hijacking or dilution by less than honest brokers.
Lurking within your number may be a few weeds, those comfortable retweeting anti-Semitic tropes, anti-immigrant sentiments or anti-fluoride propaganda. These will of course be seized upon by the establishment to discredit your efforts and dismiss you as a lunatic fringe so it is important for movements to respond appropriately.
Sinn Féin have grown massively in the most recent election in Ireland and it is interesting to see just how worried the establishment parties are. Right wing online news organization Gript have been digging deep into old tweets of new politicians in an effort to discredit. The accusation that Sinn Féin are not a normal party has been leveled by the outgoing Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. Given his own party’s record in government this may not be the zinger he thought it would be. Fine Gael stood a by-election candidate after emergence of offensive comments about asylum seekers and immigrantsin general while Sinn Féin acted promptly to drop former MMA fighter Paddy Holohan in light of worrying comments made in a podcast.
Apologize for the offence, reiterate how it is inconsistent with your movement and if necessary, do some weeding. Growing pains are to expected and decisive leadership is required to ensure your grassroots aren’t strangled before they get bedded in.
You might not find kindred spirits amongst all the fans on the bus but they’re easily jettisoned as the floodlights emerge on the horizon.
Echoes
Ireland’s politicial establishment should have seen this coming, but they didn’t. They were warned that focus on the economy and Brexit and ignoring the issues around housing, health and the cost of living would leave an open goal for any party that offered an alternative. 2020’s general election is like no other before it and the political establishment are reeling trying to wrap their heads around it. Ireland’s fourth estate whose socioeconomic, educational and familial ties to our political class, and in particular the most recent Fine Gael government engine room, gave them unrivaled access to whatever the government saw fit for public consumption.
It is of course the fault of the “echo chamber” that comfortable, familiar unchallenging environment you build for yourself, most typically online, so as to confirm your world view.
Echo chambers are a useful tool for the establishment, an in a nutshell soundbite to dismiss your point view as unreflective of the ordinary people. As if it is only progressive activists that operate and organise online, who fall into the trap of having their outlook reinforced by a small network of sympathetic comrades. It is this culture of haughty privileged hubris reinforced by a complicit mainstream media that set Fine Gael up for such a fall.
Within their core traditional support Fine Gael were doing a great job. The economy was growing, we have excellent healthcare for those that can afford it and the housing crisis was an opportunity for landlords to make incredible profits. Fine Gael had been strong on Brexit and had at their helm an modern urbane Taoiseach that was gay and the son of an immigrant. He had young dynamic foot soldiers in charge on Finance, Housing and Health. Fine Gael’s echo chamber reinforced this. It seemed obvious to the onlooker that at least two of these men were clearly out of their depth and the other showed no backbone when it was revealed that the bankers were committing large scale fraud. They create their own actors to justify and rationalise their policies but also to chastise you as idealistic and detached from reality. ‘Middle Ireland’, ‘the squeezed middle’, ‘people who get up early in the morning’ and ‘mythical money trees’ all used to squash alternatives to neo liberal orthodoxy and divide the population into doers and takers. It was as if mass non hierarchical grass roots movements hadn’t twice in the last 5 years coalesced to change the Irish constitution in areas so dear to the conservative base of our traditional parties and as if the way we consume and critique news had not moved on.
So entrenched within this echo chamber are it’s inhabitants that they are still bewildered as to where it all went wrong. Prominent radio host Pat Kenny called the electorate childish and stupid. Former government advisors are having full on melt downs on twitter. Incredulous doesn’t even come close to how the establishment are taking this election result. There honestly are not enough comfy blankets and cups of cocoa to go around.
Corbynism may have stumbled out of the traps and it remains to be seen if the Democratic party will tear itself apart trying to stop Sanders but the electorate of Ireland have said enough in enough. The 40 years of neo liberal orthodoxy has left too many behind for the benefit of too few and 100 years of the Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael duopoly has had it’s day. This did not emerge out of echo chamber. Sinn Féin are the most popular party with the electorate under the age of 65. A die has been cast reshaping the Irish political spectrum and one way or another FF/FG will be forced together and Sinn Féin will gain more ground. The Irish electorate has tilted the political axis and the formation and life time of the next government will determine where the battle lines are drawn creating a more ideologically balanced political class.
Brittle
Things came to a head shortly before Christmas when an effort to rekindle a spark nearly razed all before it. A nice meal in a stylish restaurant followed by a night away in a hotel, no toddler, no commitments and a chance to reconnect. The night peaked with the meal. In the end two of the worst cocktails ever committed to glass was followed by an all too familiar displaced rage, one in the chamber ready to be unloaded, in reaction to gentle teasing. A pressure cooker of frustration, self loathing and insecurities that had held a relationship prisoner for more than 2 years and whispered in the ear of your writer for what has felt like an eternity.
The suite had been booked but somehow the room we received had an extra single bed. A ham-fisted attempt to coerce the hotel to upgrade the room fell flat on its face. The staff seem to see through the gambit for what it was a hollow attempt to inject some shenanigans into the experience. It wasn’t even the least bit convincing. The polite insistence from the front desk that no change could be made nor that a complimentary breakfast was forthcoming, unless the manager signed off, was all it took for the veneer to crack. The gentle heat of the blush came first from behind the ears deepening on the cheeks as the bluster gave way to embarrassment and shame as I sulked back to the room awaiting the knock back call from the front desk. My wife had a patient generous smile on her face that hinted at a weary sadness. The past couple of years had seen her faith and confidence in our relationship chipped away with sullen uncommunicative moodiness, outbursts of alcohol fired resentments and petty jealousies. She had become to make her peace with the ending of our lives together and was waiting to see if I the conviction to pull the trigger myself or was taking the cowardly route of forcing her to do the deed.
It was on this single superfluous bed that I woke in the horrors the following morning. I say woke in the horrors but there was a few moments of beautiful obliviousness, like regaining consciousness mid free fall and taking seconds to comprehend the seriousness, before the fear struck and my fragmented mind pieced together a highlight reel.
My mind scrambled and fished around for the policies and procedures for dealing with this very scenario. It wasn’t the first time I’d been here. It wasn’t the first night that I had allowed this to happen. There would be excuses. There would be tears. I would blame the drink. I would search for reasons and triggers but in truth it was get-outs I sorely needed, to stretch back and reapply the bandage. Frayed, worn, curling up and gathering dirt on it’s underside, an accumulation that was slowly inching it’s way to the wound so precariously hid. A wound I wouldn’t treat let alone acknowledge.
It took just that. Acknowledgment. The patience required to draw it out came from an unidentified well which must have been sunk to depths beyond the realm of the mole people. Slowly at first it came with an admittance of unhappiness. In this superheated environment things had been forced. Wild blossoms flowering in a traditionally hibernative time of year, migratory birds returning to find their nests occupied by short term tenants.
“I’m afraid”
“I feel like a fraud”
“I’m angry at my failings and I’ve projected that onto you”
“I don’t know how to fix this”
“I’m depressed”
Vulnerablitiy. A word I had always stumbled over in speech which now seems so on the nose it’s laughable.
Constitutional Convention Fallout
Constitutional change in Ireland is imminent (Image: http://www.constitution.ie)
On April 14th, 2013, the Irish Constitutional Convention concluded their deliberations on the issue of changing the Irish Constitution so as to recognise the rights of all citizens to have their relationships enshrined in marriage with all the rights and benefits that go with it. This, of course, is only the first step of the process and the constitutional change will now be put to the people in a referendum, so this is where the real fight starts. The convention is made up of 100 delegates, 66 randomly chosen citizens and 33 parliamentarians with an independent chairperson. Possible changes to the Irish constitution were discussed and recommendations were made to the Government (more information is available at www.constitution.ie). As a firm believer in the democratic process, yesterday was a real shot in the arm, although where you have winners you have losers and yesterday we had some real sore losers. This post is not about gloating, rather it is to serve as a warning as to the tactics of the ‘No’ camp in the coming months.
It is pretty clear how the No campaign will frame their argument in the coming months and they were quick out of the blocks yesterday. The No campaign will try to present Catholics as a bullied and persecuted section of society who are having their religious freedoms stomped all over by insidious creeping secularism, while comparisons with Soviet Russia will be made with a straight face. Let’s have a quick look at some of the objections that emerged in the aftermath of the constitutional convention.
One of the leading lights for the No campaign will be David Quinn. Mr Quinn is the founder and head of the Iona Institute, a conservative Catholic lobby group, and a regular columnist on religious affairs for the Irish Independent.
BTW, if the delegates were randomly chosen, how did a husband and wife end up on it?
#ccven
Now if David Quinn had a problem with the make-up of delegates perhaps the beginning of the process would have been the time to raise his objection, not when his motion has been defeated. Perhaps he smells a conspiracy?
In social debates the dice are always loaded in favour of the ‘liberal’ point of view. They were even more heavily loaded at
#ccven
So the convention favoured ‘liberal’ points of view; surely Quinn’s participation in the process can be construed as tacit approval of said process. Here we see the No campaign laying the ground-work for the portrayal of those who are against equality of marriage for all as being a persecuted body in Ireland, fighting against an unjust conspiracy which is systemically enshrined. One reason why the process may have appeared loaded in favour of the Yes campaign is because people of a ‘Liberal’ persuasion have been traditionally more open to progress and development of society. Those who are arguing from a Catholic (I am not suggesting that the No side is 100 per cent Catholic, merely that this is David Quinn and Iona Institute’s default position) position are arguing from a comprehensive doctrine, that is to say that they have a version of the truth and of how things should be done that is enshrined in doctrine and not open to debate.
One delegate at the
#ccven spoke to me about the bullying attitude displayed towards her for not favouring marriage redefinition.
Now, I cannot speak as to this delegate’s experience but the time to bring this issue to light is during the process itself. These conventions serve to enrich our democratic process and nobody should feel bullied expressing a view in this forum. People are chosen randomly to best represent the country we live in at this moment. This is not an exercise in propaganda; rather it is an attempt to create a more inclusive and participatory democracy. Any attempt at bullying is the very antithesis of the convention’s intention:
‘The Convention operates in an inclusive and open manner with its documents and deliberations available on-line and formal plenary sessions streamed live on the web.’ (www.constitution.ie)
The previous sentence was taken directly from the convention’s website. Any accusations of bullying or intimidation should be easily cleared up by the very structures of the convention. Offence can be very easily taken with such an emotive issue but that is not necessarily to say offence was intended to be given. The failure to raise this issue during the process once again smacks of the No campaign setting up a narrative to paint themselves as victims in this process.
Press release from The Iona Institute: Refusal of Convention to protect religious freedom of deep concern http://bit.ly/130ko82
#ccven
Here we have it folks: the failure to protect religious freedoms. How anybody can claim religious freedom, in particular Catholic religious freedom, is not protected by the Irish state with a straight face is beyond me. The Irish constitution goes out of its way to protect religious freedom, especially those of the Catholic faith. I would be interested to know where David Quinn and Iona draw the line with religious freedoms. Would he be in favour of say, a Muslim who adheres to Sharia Law and wishes to perform female genital mutilation (FGM) on his daughter therefore exercising his religious freedom within the boundaries of this state? I would hate to put words in his mouth but I can imagine Mr Quinn would not be in favour of that. People should be and are free to practice their religion in Ireland so long as it does not impinge on the rights of Irish citizens regardless of their race, colour, sexual orientation or creed. FGM is horrific as it impinges on the physical integrity of our most helpless of citizens: children. Equality of marriage for homosexuals may be an affront to Catholic sensibilities but it does not stop Catholics from living a full life and despite some of the lies Iona are happy too spread it has no detrimental affect on children of these unions either.
This is sure to be an emotive campaign and what the Yes camp needs to concentrate on is the mobilisation of those sympathetic to their cause. If you are not registered to vote, get registered and encourage as many people as possible to do the same. This is merely the first blow in the fight for equality for marriage.
Who is paying the penalty?
Ireland: where the public and officials only reap short term rewards and ignore long term consequences.
Humility is not a quality that Irish political culture seems to be over burdened with. It could well be argued that humility is one of the first qualities to be jettisoned in the pursuit of a successful political career. One would hope that those pursuing a career in politics do so with their heart full of an altruistic sense of public duty and a desire to fight for the greatest good for the greatest number of people; you would hope that people look beyond the local and the immediate to think nationally and in the long term. Many may well launch themselves steeled by this zeal only to have it stripped away by the reality of our political culture. The truth of the political arena in Ireland is that it has been overpopulated by an incestuous ruling-class and quasi-hereditary seats in the Dail. So as this bloated edifice became beyond parody in the final throes of the Celtic Tiger, we hoped, given Ireland’s fall from grace and the punishment doled out to Fianna Fáil at the ballot box, that the surviving politicians of Ireland would notice the sea change and act accordingly.
This of course has not happened, due mainly to the reason that Ireland had its sovereignty signed away by the last shower, who gave the new Government ready made excuses for their policies. The harshness of our government’s policies is not the focus of my ire on this occasion, rather it is the continued absence of any humility on behalf of our politicians and complacency among the Irish electorate in expecting more from their representatives. There are plenty of bogey men to point the finger at in Government, not least ‘Big’ Phil Hogan, a man blessed with an ego and sense of righteousness which would not seem out of place amongst the cartoonish villains of the WWE. Rather it is the political culture and the lack of its evolution which has brought me to the keyboard today.
On the front page of the Irish Examiner 8/04/2013, former Ceann Comhairle and current Fianna Fáil TD Seamus Kirk said it was as easy as picking up the phone to get rid of penalty points. There is a constitutional clause which exempts TD’s from road offences if they are on their way to take part in a Dáil vote. This was a clause left over from the Civil War and by right should be exorcised from the constitution. However, more telling about the political culture in Ireland is the revelation of the willingness of constituents to ask their TDs to get penalty points squashed for them, this kind of localism and clientalism is one of the objectionable practices we would have hoped would have been left behind after the last election. The Gardaí have since had an internal investigation, where it was found that, while penalty points have been squashed, nothing corrupt has occurred. This is a staggering example of a worrying culture within the Gardaí, our politicians and ourselves. An offence has been committed and there is nothing corrupt about asking the Gardaí to get rid of the punishment. What has set alarm bells ringing is how this seems to have infected some of the newest members of the Dáil.
The last election, lest we forget, is when the Irish people put down the ‘Bolly’, stepped away from artichoke canapé and voted to punish the political culture which we had allowed to flourish by allowing them to dope us up to the gills with cheap money. “Down with that sort of thing!” was what we bellowed from the ballot box. Fine Gael stomped away with a record number of seats but what was more interesting was the emergence of independents who represented, they claimed, the ordinary person on the street and promised to ask the difficult questions.
Archaic parliamentary processes make it difficult for a lone voice to have any affect and so this motley crew banded together despite having ideologies that ranged from Claire Daly on the left and Shane Ross on the right. Included in this group we have Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan, a man who has undergone an interesting evolution; from outsider-agitator sending joints to TDs in an effort to legalise marijuana, to the Mayor of Roscommon and now an independent TD promising to protect turf-cutters in his locality. He is one individual who has recently found himself in trouble for having penalty points squashed. This is an issue that he campaigned against – Gardaí corruption – so I hope the irony hasn’t been lost on him (although judging by the beard he has been sporting, perhaps Ming and irony are not familiar bedfellows).
The issue of the penalty point squashing may appear to be a small fish compared to the problems facing Ireland on a day-to-day basis. The public service is on the verge of a mass walk out over pay and conditions so why do I concern myself with issues that pale in significance in comparison? The reason is that this is a systemic problem, one which permeates through every level of decision making. It is the culture which will force homeowners in unfinished estates across the country to pay the property tax despite the fact they are living in estates that are continuing to degenerate. It is a culture that has, two years on from the general election and five years on from the beginning of the economic collapse, endorsed a government which seems to be incapable of standing up to the banking system in Ireland. We are still no closer to sorting out a deal which takes the proposition of evictions off the table for families across the country. I’m not talking about debt forgiveness here but there are many other options such as equity for debt which are viable.
It seems that the cosy relationship between our political class and the banking sector continues despite the pain and suffering which it has caused in the last five years. Perhaps the margin of their election win has meant that Fine Gael have become complacent in their position as Ireland’s biggest party but it is the very lack of political cultural evolution which they should be wary of. They may well suffer a double whammy of being in charge when there is no money with difficult and unpopular policies to be made (see Cameron’s Conservatives in Britain who are on their way out after one term but are determined to dismantle as much of the state as possible before they leave) and the willingness of the Irish electorate to forgive and forget about Fianna Fail’s ineptitude when they last had their hands on the wheel. One should always be suspicious of mid-term popularity polls but there is the very real prospect of Fianna Fáil making a significant recovery before the next election.
So, are we, in fact, responsible for the lack of development in our political culture? Have politicians, bankers and developers driven us into this quagmire because we have allowed them to? A former History professor of mine, who is of some note, told us that we were ‘face down in the trough for too long’ and that we are all culpable for letting this culture to develop. We were bought off with tax cuts, cheap credit and second homes and we allowed this attitude of arrogance and ‘cuteness’ to fester.
There is an intriguing email exchange between two heavyweights in the theory of Power, Stephen Lukes and Clarrisa Hayward, debating the role of responsibility and agency in power. To try and sum it up would be a fool’s errand but here we go anyway. Lukes’ case is that full responsibility must lie with the actors, whereas Hayward puts forward the case that the social constructs of society influence greatly the actions of actors – essentially that society creates the parameters under which abuses of power are exercised.
What have we done to change this? We elect on local issues and we tolerate abuses of position and power and we solicit abuses to have our own penalty points squashed. Look across the water, to Britain where Chris Hune MP is facing prison time for asking his wife to take his penalty points. I’m not being unrealistic here, I’m not asking for whiter than white politicians who never put a foot out of step and I am aware by continuing to use words such as ‘evolution’ that time is required.
What we should, at a bare minimum, be asking for is transparency and accountability from our politicians, those at least would be steps in the right direction in arresting the decline in the relationships between the people and the officials we put into power. Then when faced with honest and open assessment of their work perhaps we can reassess our own actions and motivations at the ballot box beyond our own selfish desires.
Thatcher
The 8th of April will forever see the addition of the passing of Margaret Thatcher in newspapers around the world. Aged 87 and having suffered from a stroke there have been few public figures from the last 40 years whom have stirred up such strong feelings, to the extent that a classmate of mine from college who was perhaps 21 years old at the time sported a t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan ‘Still Hate Thatcher’ this a full 21 years after she had left power. Glen Greenwald has already written a piece in the Guardian about the culture that has arisen wherein the death of a public figure exempts them from criticism, pointing to the very clear difference between being part of commemorating a private citizen and criticizing a public figure. There is always a rather distasteful element of ‘Ding dong the witch is dead’ that surfaces in these occasions quickly followed by a slew of jokes. It’s unedifying to celebrate the death of a human being but let’s not white wash her role in history.
In this age of social media, I always fear I’ve shed some ‘cool points’ every time I write that phrase, it’s a tough call to complete this whitewash. My Twitter timeline exploded with quotes from the Iron Lady with regards to the friends she kept. It’s all out there she had strong relationships with numerous odious figures such as Pinochet, Saddam Hussein and The Shah of Iran. She went to war over a rocky island of sheep herders on the other side of the world, a stroke which saved her skin at home where her deregulation and privatisation policies saw Britain lurch further into the mire between 1979 and 1981. She supported Apartheid in South Africa, to keep Communism at bay apparently and accused Mandela and the ANC of being terrorists.
At home in Britain she is accused of being responsible for the north/south economic divide, she crushed the unions and broke up as many of the state owned businesses as possible. She dived into deregulation and privatisation breaking up the bloated system which had developed under the Labour government with absolute faith in the stability of Free Market laissez faire economics. She cemented the existence of the City of London as a state onto itself within Britain (a cause taken up with zeal by Tony Blair almost 20 years later). One of her biggest PR strokes was allowing people to buy their council houses. The fetishisation of homeownership that we are currently suffering the worse excesses of right now, can well be traced back to this moment. You can all be home owners and we’ll give you the loans to do it. Thatcher over saw a huge explosion of credit.
On this side of the Irish Sea to say there are mixed feelings would be an understatement. Irish people have a strange habit of respecting people that had no warm feelings for them. One person who sang her praises was Charlie ‘Champagne’ McCreevy. Yes that’s right, the man who was finance minister during the government which left Ireland in the worst economic crisis of its history. Listening to the news today I had to chuckle to myself as Gerry Adams took the moral higher against a woman he accused of ‘collusion’. To say she had a mixed record in the North would also be an understatement. This is the same Margaret Thatcher that gave Dublin its first say (discounting then doomed Sunningdale agreement) in the running of Northern Ireland through the Anglo Irish Agreement.
There is a trite expression that ‘History is written by the winners’; this is, to a degree, true and depending on where you stand on the ideological spectrum will very much colour your views on Thatcher. Whatever you felt about her politics one must admire her ability to rise to the top and stay at the top of one of the most male dominated spheres of public life.
Margaret Thatcher: A feminist icon, just one you mightn’t brake for.
Bad Teacher, Very Bad Teacher!
It’s the overworked teacher’s turn for a kicking again.
Senior Cabinet meeting within Leinster House: Lads we need a sound bite to distract the people from the kicking they got in the budget. Umm … we could give the teachers another kicking I suppose.
Brendan Howlin, Irish Minister for Public Expenditure, has recently come out in the press – not like that stop sniggering – to deliver another kicking to a section of the public service. The objects of his ire on this occasion were teachers, more specifically, bad teachers and the necessity to remove them from their positions. Full disclosure here folks as I am a newly qualified teacher and as such, am fully in support of the removal of ‘bad’ teachers.
I support this on a purely selfish level, as the savage public services cuts have made it almost impossible to get a job in the career I returned to education in my mid-twenties to qualify for and also on a broader professional level. The position of teacher is far too important a position to be left to those who, have either lost whatever love they had for what is a vocation or who got into the job for all the wrong reasons. They are the same reasons which make public servants, teachers in particular, such easy targets for politicians hoping to score points after another savage budget. Job security, five-day work weeks, long holidays and general ignorance about what is required to survive and flourish in the field are the usual suspects that rear their heads when it is the teachers’ turn in the firing line.
I could bore you to death with the same arguments you’ll hear from any teacher defending themselves and their positions. We are in loco parentis for eight hours of the day; we are actors, counsellors and so much more. There are however a couple of elements of Minister Howlin’s statement which particularly grate.
The decision to send one’s children to ‘grinds’ (extra tuition outside of school) in an effort to improve their results falls on parents alone. To blame teachers for students taking grinds is a blatant example of ignoring a huge number of variables just to support your argument. Perhaps Minister Howlin has suddenly had selective amnesia and forgotten the last three budgets. Larger student teacher ratios and the removal of special needs assistants may also have had an effect. Perhaps it was the political culture whose short-term thinking saw them throw money at people instead of introducing the systemic and structural changes when we had the money to pay for them. Minister Howlin expects teachers to do more, for less and in more difficult circumstances. No problem Brendan, is there anything else while we’re at it?
The Teaching Council, to which I a pay a sizeable chunk annually to regulate my profession, has already put in place procedures, which are less than 2 years old, to deal with under performing teachers. This includes more visits to schools and more paperwork, such as detailed lesson plans and schemes of work, which teachers are required to provide at a moments notice to show just how prepared they are to take on the difficult task of educating children. This of course only scratches the surface of what teachers have to face, there are students for whom a full day of attendance in the school can be seen as a major victory. So what is so wrong with these provisions that would require a Minister of State to launch another attack? What exactly is it that he requires from teachers to justify their position?
My fear is that this is going to turn into a race to the bottom. The ‘data management’ style of brass tacks numbers will see teachers being judged on the results their students get. This is one of those things which seems very reasonable on the surface but, once delved deeper into, is the type of policy that ruins the lives of teachers and students alike. As I stated in my opening paragraph I am a newly qualified teacher and as such am in a prime position to impart how teachers are being taught in Ireland. One of the words that popped up with regularity during my training was ‘holistic’. Previously the utterance of this word would have sent my eyes rolling back into my head with a sharp intake of breath. This of course is because the word has been co-opted by individuals who believe in Homeopathy and other such hokum but as my course progressed the word was reclaimed and in the end I ended up defending my use of it to friends when talking about the education system in Ireland. We are being asked to help create well-rounded individuals, to focus of literacy and numeracy, to find ways of making our subjects relevant and interesting, to create an active and inclusive learning environment in an effort to move away from rote learning during which cross curricular links are forged, and all this with one eye on the needs of the economy. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? So a result driven system where judgements are made on a final grade do nobody any good and run directly in the face of how teachers are trained.
One would almost believe that the statement made by Minister Howlin was just an effort to distract the nation from more immediate problems. I am not alone in finding this political culture tiresome and insulting. The statement spurred me to write this piece on the difficult role teachers face, those that can get a job that is (grumble grumble), but perhaps the real issue is the inherent disrespect the government has for teachers and the difficult jobs they do, and indeed for everyone else in society; that they think taking a swipe at easy targets will distract us for a period while they muddle on in corruption and ineptitude serving their real bosses. This is the same political culture which sees people on social welfare squeezed and investigated while corporations pay minimal tax: the same culture which sees outrageous stories regards budget cuts leaked before the budget so when the cuts arrive they don’t seem so bad. I am not expecting miracles from our politicians just not to have our intelligence insulted.
Architects of their Own Downfall: Republicans, Romney and Fox
There are mere days to go before Barack Obama and Mitt Romney go head to head in the first of the US presidential election debates. One would think that the respective campaigns are gearing up to duke it out, stepping out toe to toe as rhetorical pugilists in an effort to secure the kingmakers of the American political system, those undeclared voters in the middle of the American political spectrum. Only 4 years ago, I would stay up to the wee hours to watch presidential debates, swept up by the Obama machine, it was genuinely exciting and interesting. This race though would appear to be as good as over before it really got going.
Obama has recently been dubbed as ‘The luckiest dude in the world’ by the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart and for good reason. Mitt Romney’s campaign has lurched for one disaster to another culminating in a piece of footage being released which would put the best work of Armanndo Iannucci and Chris Morris to shame. In this video the former Governor for Massachusetts successfully alienated even more of the American electorate and joked about how being Latino would have helped his race to the White House. The content of this video has been picked apart in sufficient detail since it surfaced and it is not the purpose of this blog to rehash this material. Let us instead look at how Romney’s campaign had begun to unravel before the video was leaked and the wider reasons underpinning this.
As stated above Romney was the Governor of Massachusetts and in his 4 years in the Governors mansion he presided over a series of policies and political stances which are very much at odds with the policies he is putting forward as the Republican candidate. Perhaps the biggest of these is the universal healthcare bill he introduced and brought to realisation. Since he has entered the presidential race one of the key tenets of his campaign, indeed one of the only concrete things he has said he will do if elected, is to dismantle ‘Obamacare’. Other stances on which Romney has done a 180 are his calls for more gun control, and his policies on abortion.
It would appear that this is a man who will say just about whatever it takes to win and to swing from a socially liberal fiscal conservative to a 100% dyed in the wool conservative Republican. Romney’s campaign is falling apart and Obama is going to be re-elected whilst having the worst unemployment rate of any incumbent president. When you look back at some of the other contenders for the GOP nomination, nutters like Santorum, Perry, Bachman and Cain, you realise that Mitt Romney really was the lesser of several evils. The majority of those nominees came from the loony libertarian right embodied by the Tea Party. It is the Tea Party and Fox News that have morphed Mitt Romney into the flip flopping caricature we see before us today.
The advent 24 hour news coverage means there is an awful lot of time that needs to be filled, 24 hours to be exact. The style, or perhaps brand is a more appropriate word, of news sold by Fox seems to rely on a heady mix of hysterical presenters shouting about red button doomsday topics. The majority of these topics seem to be very close to the heart of the Tea Party movement. The Tea Party itself is a movement, shrouded in thinly veiled racism of the ludicrous ‘birthers’, which is a hotchpotch of conservatism, libertarianism and ‘whoever-can-shout-the-loudestism’. The Fox News Network gave a huge amount of coverage and tacit support to this movement. They made the issues of the Tea Party the issues of Fox viewers. This can be the only reason why the GOP had such a collection of bonkers candidates in the running for their nomination. The candidates were either forced to appeal to the support of the Fox shouty head pundits or run the risk of their campaign dying from a lack of publicity. Romney stood out as the most reasonable candidate up for nomination, which is some feat for a Mormon venture capitalist.
Mitt Romney was right when he stated that there is a chunk of the population that will vote for Obama no matter what; just as there is a chunk of the American public that will vote Republican now matter what. The battle for presidential elections in America has always been a straight out battle for those in the middle who will base their decision on the policies and record of the candidates. Obama has had an incredibly tough 4 years and as stated above the unemployment figures will be the highest of any incumbent President. Romney hasn’t even laid out his policies, instead is relying on the American public to elect him and once he is in the White House he’ll tell them what he’ll do. It would seem that his economic policies are similar to birthday wishes in that if he told us what they were they wouldn’t come true.
The attack dog for the Republican Party, Fox News, is making it impossible for the Republicans to win an election. The agenda set by Fox has forced Romney to flip flop on many issues and ultimately throw away a very winnable election.
hubris 