Letter from moi that appeared in todays Tallaght Echo (7th October 2016)

To whom it may concern,

Two things caught my eye this week.

One was the EU ruling that Apple was negligent in  fulfilling it's tax obligations, and deemed it liable to pay the Irish Government €13Billion in back taxes. it accrued on products it sold; The other was the story of a  elderly man in his 80's who needed a CT scan in hospital due to an injury, but was forced to spend hours sitting in a chair, due to a lack of beds. 
One paid less than 1% tax on billions and billions of profits, the other paid more than 50% tax on his wages for most of his working life. 
Yet the Government stresses everything must be done to defend the Multinational conglomerate, whilst the old man, like many others, are an afterthought (if a thought at all).

Some commentators have told us "Sure we wouldn't get €13BN, most of it would go to the US, France etc. .  Also we'll frighten all these foreign companies away and thousands would lose their jobs if we accepted the EU ruling.
  But even €4BN is a massive sum that would help this country enormously. We could refurbish many decrepit schools, make our colleges state of the art and build many badly needed social houses for a small chunk of the money.

But there is something else we could do with the money too, which would have massive benefits to this country. 
There are many people  who were forced to leave this country to find work, and over the years have become leading players in industry, playing key senior roles in some of the world's biggest companies. Our graduates are also highly prized the world over due to the renowned education system we have.  Now imagine the Government brought these people home and got them to oversee the development of new state run companies that, with many Irish people taken off the dole to work with them, and produce products BETTER than the ones their current companies are producing.  Imagine the many jobs this would create, and the massive tax revenues that would accrue, to enable to further develop our social infrastructure, improve our colleges and hospitals etc. 

Gas isn't it,  the government has thundered that we had no choice but to accept Water charges, property taxes, and the bank bailouts that bankrupted this country, because it's EU law, and you can't dismiss an EU directive.  But yet when it comes to the €13BN that would massively improve this country for the better, challenging the EU's the decision (and handing the €13BN back to Apple) is suddenly allowable!

Seán Heffernan,
Dominic's Parish,
Tallaght,

The night David Bowie came to Courtown

I swear to ya on the bible this story is true -
This happened in 1997, when David Bowie was playing in the Point Depot.

Dennis and Gene, husband and wife who lived in the North Strand (Sadly both now deceased) who were friends of my parents used to stay in the Ounavara Hotel in Courtown on the August bank holiday week.
We'd be down in nearbye Ballygarrett residing in a Mobile Home, and my parents would catch up with them in Courtown whilst we were taken to the Carnival there.

Anyways one evening in the Auhust Bank Holiday week, Denis was being volunteer MC in the bar of the hotel for a sing song he had got going.
Half way through this sing song, a big fancy car pulls up outside the hotel, and walked in only David Bowie (And to the best of my knowledge it was Denis Desmond of MCD who was with him).

Bowie sat listening to the people singing in the bar. Dennis MC'ing didn't have a clue who David Bowie was would you believe.
At one stage a lad had finished singing, and when Dennis was turning to the lad who agreed to be next, to tell him it was his turn, David began to sing a song. Dennis turned round to him in a flash scolded him., told him it was someone else's turn to sing, and that he should wait his turn like everyone else.
The lad beside tugged at his trousers and said to him "What the hell are ya doing, that's Bowie! " Dennis replied "Who??" 'It's David Bowie the famous singer' To which Dennis replied "I don't care who or what he is, it wasn't his turn, and he has to wait in line!"

I seem to a short time after a piece in The Evening Herald that said Bowie had gone to Wexford for the night, and as far as I recall stayed in Marfield House that night. So I finally believed the story featuring Bowie Gene had told my Mother and us the afternoon after the night before!!!

Calculators on overdrive.

This Thursday the voters of The United Kingdom will go to the polls to elect their next Government.

The current Conservative Liberal Democrat Coalition is spinning for it's life trying to portray the economy zooming along in 6th gear, but the reality is it's still by and large a banjaxed car with a reconditioned engine that is going great guns for now, but may splutter to a halt in the near future.

The Labour Party, as Right Wing as ever, is engaged in a game of taking very small scale initiatives, and trying to make them out to be huge groundbreaking promises.  This is in order to try and deflect attention from the real issues affecting the Working Class in the UK, so they will not be forced to make any promises that will come back to haunt them, as it has the Labour Party here.  It really is sickening to see their electoral machine in full flow. Labour are merely saying we'll cut as much financially as the Tories will, but we will do it in other areas.  If you look at the backgrounds of many Candidates standing for Labour, they are near identical to their Tory counterparts.  there are very few miners sons standing for Labour this time around. Dennis Skinner is one, but is he the only one? Thankfully, a lot of people are not being fooled by the Labour rhetoric that the country would be a far worse place if the Tories remained in power instead of Labour taking over.  Voters in Scotland now understand (Which they would have not say 20 years ago) that a majority Labour Government, would be as bad as a Tory Government, with more fillups to the rich, be it via tax cuts or privatisations. This is a big part of the reason quite a number of people who voted NO in the Scottish Referendum intend on voting SNP on Thursday.

UKIP's Current Aggregate Poll number has them on 14%.  This is a figure that wildly fluctuates. For example there will be areas in the South East if England were UKIP could get over 20%, but there are many areas in the North of England were they would only get 5-7%. Talking anecdotally to some people from England, there is a sense the media are purposely understating the level of support in the South East of England for UKIP  as they try to push the Tories at all costs, in the forlorn hope Cameron would gain an overall majority. 

The last time around (2010) The Conservatives got 36.1% of the vote and 307 seats. The Labour Party got 258 seats on a vote of 29%, and the Liberal Democrats got 57 seats on a vote of 23%. There were a number of constituencies were Lib Dem Candidates came second, just behind the Labour or Tory candidate. Thus they could have easily ended up with over 70 seats, but it was not to be.   The poll of polls, an amalgam of all the different opinion polls, extracted and crunched to get a cumulative average result, have the Conservatives on 34%, and The Labour Party on 33%, UKIP on 14% and The Liberal Democrats on 8%.  Despite the low result of 8%, commentators say the Lib Dem vote is quite compact, with certain areas were it does really well, and others were it barely registers. Thus some commentators say the Lib Dems could get 20-25 seats.  Yet at the same time some have said UKIP will only get 3 or 4 seats, despite being 14% on the latest poll.  I just don't know how they could make such a disparity between Lib Dem and UKIP chances, unless it was a concerted effort to give  the Conservatives every jockey back it can. I fear that UKIP will get higher than 14%, and could even end up with over 10 MP's.  The last time around the Tories ended up 19 short of a Majority.  Doing the deal with the Liberal Democrats gave them a majority of 38.  Lib Dems and Labour would have still been 11 short of a majority back then. 

The predictions are that the Conservatives would be extremely lucky, when all is factored in, to get over 300 seats. Most say they could and would end up around the 390 mark.  They would badly need to get at the very least the 392 mark to make a Conservative-Lib Dem-DUP coalition reach the magic 326 number - 392 Tory seats, 25 Lib Dem Seats, and DUP retaking East Belfast and getting 9.  It is highly likely the end result will see this triumvirate between them failing to get 326 or more.

Labour got 258 the last time.  If the predictions are right, and the SNP get 50 seats in Scotland (Could be even more) and , assuming the Liberal Democrats hold onto the 2 strongest of the 11 seats it got in 2010, that would put Labour on 17 seats in Scotland, leaving Labour with 234 seats if they got the exact same result as 2010 in England and Wales.  Add the 50 SNP seats to that number, it leaves us with a total of 284. A whopping 42 seats short of a majority.  Thus it looks highly likely, based on the opinion polls, the next government is set to be a minority one. 

How does this affect us in the Republic of Ireland?  The biggest affect will be in the rate that Sterling may go to. It was recently at 70p to €1, and the lower the pence goes vs the cent, the better it is for Irish businesses as it makes our goods more cheaper to UK consumers, and thus they are more likely to buy Irish.  But Sterling has already gone up to almost 74p, and if the result on Thursday is as fractious as the polls and analysts expect, it could push Sterling up even more, and be bad news for our economy, from an export and tourism point of view.  Also if the Markets took a really bad view of the overall situation in the UK, and Sterling climbed up to say 86/87p to €1, we could once more see large tailbacks on the M1 into Newry.

Another outcome, should the numbers stack up as some are predicting, is that proposals for an in/out Referendum on the UK's membership of the EU would not see the light of day, as a Majority of Liberal Democrat, Labour and SNP reject this idea.  So if the Conservatives managed to cobble together a minority Government, and put a bill to Parliament calling on the In/out Referendum to be held, it would be defeated, and the Tories would happily put the issue well and truly to bed.

The third and final issue that concerns us is the DUP. Should they be in a position to be dealmakers, and the Conservatives come on bended knee to them looking for their support, a demand to be allowed reduce Corporation Tax rates in the North would undoubtedly be very high on, if not top of their list. This angers me, as the DUP should instead be calling on the Conservatives agreeing to allow the Stormont Assembly significantly increase the minimum wage, and other state supports, instead of seeking to make profitable foreign companies even more profitable, as many people in Northern Ireland struggle to make ends meet.

I of course hope that a good number of people in the UK vote TUSC or Left Unity, and that we see many councillors elected from both, which could lead to some of those councillors begin elected to Westminster the next time around.

Plenty of Popcorn at the ready for Thursday night!

Where now for Greece?

Where now for Greece?

So the left in Europe is rightly celebrating, with many predicting the first caricature on a radically changed Political Drawing Board has been drawn.  With other Anti Austerity Parties riding high in the polls, you can be sure there was many a double brandy was downed in Davos last week. A lot of hopes have been pinned on Syriza's back, but can they live up to them?

An immediate hurdle is approaching at galloping speed. Two Big instalments are due on Greece's debt in March and June. Will Syriza have the time & wriggle room to try and change this in anyway? If they do not, and the 2 payments went ahead as planned, could this piss off a good chunk of the people who supported Syriza, or will these people take the position of this was the previous governments doing, and give Syriza the full benefit of the doubt? 

A lot of Syriza's programme, from what I've seen of it, is in many areas essentially headlines and no article. This has left us in the dark as to what exactly the new Government will do with regards some of the key issues facing the Greek economy and the working class. Will the bulk of the Greek working class actively engage in moving to ensure Syriza are left no wriggle room, and ensure they fulfiil as many of it's election promises as is feasibly possible, or will they be able to do an Obama and roll back on promises, trying to make out it's not their fault, but due to the EU/IMF, despite their best efforts, they were unable to do X.Y and Z as they had promised.  There was a period in Ireland after Fine Gael and Labour took power, were they got away with a certain amount of things, as a good number of people believed them when they claimed "That wasn't our doing it was Fianna Fails". 

But then there came a time when people had  enough f that excuse, and began to realise there were a number of Austerity measures that had nothing to do with the previous government, but were wholly the creation of the new government. Thus their poll ratings plummeted, as was evidence in the differences between the results of the first Dublin West Bye Election and the second one.  So if a rollback is started by Syriza, how much of a "honeymoon period" would they have before things started to go sour for them? I await the Programme for Government when it's published, and I like many others will no doubt pore over it with hope, that it will indeed be genuinely radical.

Personally I am disappointed with the KKE. They had a chance to try and ensure Syriza was held to account as much as is feasibly possible.  They didn;t have to go into an explicit coalition arrangement with Syriza. They could have agreed a memorandum of understanding that if certain conditions were met and maintained, the KKE would vote with Syriza in Parliament. to me this would be doing it's duty to best represent the Greek working class.  Instead we have Syriza going into bed with an avowedly Right wing party, and pondering what sort of Devillish deal they may have concocted to get their support.  My heart is hoping that Independent Greeks will do a reverse Labour Party, and will capitulate, agreeing to everything Syriza wants, as the whiff of Ministerial office proves too strong an elixir for them.  My head says otherwise. 

There are many Economists/ economic commentators, (even those shrilling and feverishly banging the Pro Austerity drum) who accept the current situation facing Greece is unsustainable and must be changed.  Even with the big writedown Greece got at the last round of negotiations leaves Greece at a wholly unsustainable debt level of 170%.  Putting it in comparison, I remember in 2009-2010 Economic commentators on RTE Radio predicting armageddon if Ireland's Debt rose to 140%.  Thus it is inevitable that a bullet will be bitten and there will be various powerful figures sitting around a table with the Greek Government in either Frankfurt or Brussels, intent on hammering out a deal.  Will what Syriza brings to the table be seismic and final, as the left across Europe is hoping (And some, though most not) praying for? The other tack Syriza might take, which is a concern of Leftists is that what it initially brings to the table would be merely setting a out of a stall, and then watering their offering down quite a bit by the conclusion of negotiations. 

So there will be very interesting times in Greece over the next period. It really has the potential to give another powerful shot in the arm to the Anti Austerity agenda across Europe, with voters across many countries declaring "I'll have what the Greeks are having", and we could see Podemos in Spain, The Left Bloc in Portugal etc taking power either on their own, or as the bigger party in a coalition.  Some have expressed concerns that Syriza could break a lot of it's promises and severely dash the hopes and expectations of many across Europe.  I am really and truly keeping my fingers crossed the latter will not happen, but only time will tell...

How can we unite the Working Class?

This weekend (Saturday May 24th 2014) the left made big gains in the Local Elections.  I congratulate all the genuine left councillors who have been elected, and most importantly the people who helped in their election campaign, putting up posters, dropping leaflets etc. I noticed that for a lot of Left candidates running around the country the numbers of people actually helping was not that big at all. In a lot of cases a small group of people campaigned for endless hours to make it happen.



Then came the actual elections itself. The National overall turnout was around 48%, but in some places the turnout was 40% or lower (In parts of Ballyfermot I'm informed the turnout was about 33% for example).  There is a lot of angry people out there, but there is also a hell of a lot of helpless despondency.  The people are mistakenly believing the ECB and IMF cannot be challenged, they are far too powerful beasts that we have no choice but to bow down to, no matter how much it disgusts us. Also the media's onslaught has helped the Establishments drive to further the reach of the Mé Fein society.  I'm sure ye have all heard the stories from your parents or Aunts and Uncles, who would remaniss about the local festivals and other things the local community got up to in their day, the friendship and help offered by neighbours that you sadly don't see in many places today.  If you were out of Onions, and in the middle of making a stew, no need to dash to The Spar in your car back then, you just knocked into Mr's o'Toole next door, who gave you an extra one more than you had asked for, for luck.  Ads from Alone asking people to go check on their elderly neighbours were not seen back then, there simply was no need for them.  The vast majority of people were simply happy to have a working car to drive to work in, and a TV to watch The Late Late Show on. Most didn't care what year the car was, or how many inches the Television set was. 
Back when I was a kid I could count on my hand the amount of families I knew were both the Husband and Wife worked. Most often it was out of choice and not necessity. Times were hard then too, don't get me wrong, but not hard enough that they couldn't make ends meet on one income with a bit of ingenuity and co-operation between neighbours.  Nowadays it is near impossible for 90% of families to get by on just one income. The media are telling folks to forget about your neighbours, and others, and just focus on your family and yourself. This is purposely done. The less areas that have residents associations, and community link ups, organising events for local kids etc, the less chance there is of these same areas also joining together when something that causes anger happens EG cuts in the local school/Community Centre etc.

So we have a situation were a lot of people refuse to get involved in any sort of active resistance, collectively sighing that there's no point, as the ECB/IMF, and the government are too powerful, and will screw us anyways. I was out canvassing during the elections and was struck by the amount of people who simply did not answer their door when you knocked. They had no interest whatsoever in engaging with you on the pressing issues to find out where you stood, as they had the attitude of "They're all the same every one of them". This is patently not true, but Given the betrayal by Labour and the rotten Trades Union Bureaucracy, this sentiment runs deep, and it will take an enormous effort  to try and convince them otherwise.

The what about those folk who HAVE got active and involved in campaigns over the last period. As is evident if you listen to Liveline or other such shows, there are many peopl who helped canvass and leaflet for Labour Candidates at the 2011 General Election are disgusted at what has happened, and sadly have now said they will never get involved with any kind of political activity in the past. 

Another problem surrounding fresh people getting involved in campaigns is how at times some groups will lead them up the path. Some groups constantly hop from what they sweat IS the next big thing, to, when it does not come to pass, to the next thing that they swear IS it, no really this time this IS going to be bog, and off hopping they go again.  And very often via this in a conscious attempt to get people to work more fervently for the cause than they might otherwise have, they start filling them, often with quite, if not very unrealistic expectations. Thus the people concerned are buoyed up, and in abated expectation they wait for the promised land to arrive. But more often than not it does not, and they come back down with  mighty thump, like a drug addict a few hours after his latest fix.  And this has lead over the years to scores of people, who may have been active in a campaign on this issue for that essentially becoming resolutely demoralised, crashing out of activism, and on many cases never batting so much as an eyelid.  But if the groups concerned were more honest, Defenders of this type of approach from their particular group, oft argue that if they were actually more honest with people, made it clear that there was as much chance of it failing, as it was of succeeding, sure people would automatically think negatively and draw back and drop out. To me this is nonsense. I have talked to people who were involved in the CAHWT but have now pulled back, an were not involved in any election campaigns etc. Most of them were of the opinion that they were led up a hill and essentially dropped from a height. They felt that they were going to meetings to discuss things that were already decided on, and thought they were simply treated like circus animals. If these people are genuinely given a chance to have give an active input, I think more would stick around for the longer term than is currently the case.

The arguments to-ing and fro-ing at the CAHWT  National Steering Committees (NSC's) made independent activists feel like they were being isolated and their voices drowned out. There were times when raging arguments took place at the NSC's that were necessary and vital, as some crucial things had to be pushed through, or in some cases opposed as it would be very detrimental to the cause in hand.  But also a lot of times arguments raged that were completely avoidable and were merely what I call factional point scoring (EG the SWP trying to get one over the SP on some largely irrelevant point, that lead to blazing, but nonsensical arguing that pissed off many sitting and listening in the Teachers Club).  The fact that the two main political parties involved in the CAHWT placed such importance to, and spent quite a bit of time behind closed doors before NSC's discussing who the days chairperson was to be, and how they would have to frame their interventions as a result, is a stark case in point.  The myriad of independent activists present couldn't, and didn't give a fiddlers who chaired it. What they wanted was the various groups to be upfront and honest, and a true reading of the current situation to be given out. This was not always the case.

I will use an Architectural analogy to describe it more - It is pointed out various architects that there is an open space that is ripe for development. Instead of the Architects coming together, standing around a blank canvas and working together to fill in the designs for structure they wish to build, we have 7 or 8 different plans scattered haphazardly over a table. Each of the 7-8 Architects is doggedly arguing their plan is THE best one, and have no intention of listening to, or paying any heed to others plans. Yet there are bits from each one, had they been taken out and merged together would be brilliant. Thus long after the process has started, the space still lies idle with a mass of weeds  growing wild. The members of the Residents Association who were asked to liase with the Architects have grown pissed off, and have walked away from the whole process/

  Regarding the Working Class I've read many an inspiring story from the times of the 1913 Lockout, of the City Sheriff, and a gaggle of Dublin metropolitan Policemen converging on a Tenement to forcibly evict a poor family behind on their rent, who were brutally, and rightly beaten back by a determined force of angry Mothers, willing to sue use whatever force they had to keep a roof over that families head. (Though very often you couldn't even call it a roof, with all the leaks of rain and sewerage, and rats scurrying through holes etc.)   People. if asked to get involved in something want it to be fully and simply explained to them what they are being asked to do, what the aims of the campaign are, and what they are set to gain from their actions.  We can talk all we like about uniting the Left parties, but unless we have the bedrock of upon which we base ourselves, the working class, we haven't a hope of really achieving things. We've seen some great protests against cuts to local hospitals. But these campaigns are localised and in a few cases classed themselves as "Non Political" even though what they were doing, at it's very core, was political. I've heard spokespersons from some of these campaigns on the radio and TV, and horrifically their attitude simply was "Our hospital is far more important one that that one in X, so cut them and not us".  Imagine had these hospitals united in a real and sustained way. when cuts were proposed initially, imagine if Monaghan, Navan, Cavan and Naas had joined alliances, and suddenly then Government TD's saw that there was this big force in 3 counties which had the momentum to cause a lot of trouble for them. Money would have been found to keep many services intact etc.  But back then a lot of these campaigns were merely Labour Party fronts, and they were merely interested in gaining political capital from it, and didn't really care a jot what happened to the hospitals, once they got elected off the back of it. (Wexford and Sligo Hospital campaigns, and to an extent protests around Tallaght Hospital come to mind) this was also the case in other campaigns at the time too. Due to the ongoing fragmentation and sectarianism of the left, the forces in those areas, even if small, had they united on a common platform, and genuinely worked together, could have provided a strong bulwark against the scheming on the Labour Party.  Instead many people who came around those campaigns, joined protests, were rightly angered when the same Labour people later stood back as their local hospital was decimated.  Many of these people have a very negative attitude to politics and parties now, in many cases it is deeply ingrained and won't change anytime soon.

There are growing calls from people on the left for a ULA Mark II.  There should be a process of genuine dialogue amongst the left regarding the possible eventual mass formation and it's composition.  Sadly I feel that any endeavours that will be entered into in the next period, may like the ULA, be mere vehicles used by various left parties to enhance their electoral prospects. And then when the elections over, and they've managed to get more of their people elected via this new umbrella, will once again resort to the usual sectarian one-upmanship factionalism.  There are quite a few independent activists who really bought into the idea of the ULA, who have been badly burnt by what they witnessed and experienced within the ULA.  If a new alliance i to be launched it should not merely be the usual behind closed doors of a few political parties who then announce on Facebook etc that this group has been setup. What should happen is that once the various political parties agree that a new alliance should be setup, meetings should be held in various counties, with left activists invited along to discuss and debate how this new alliance should be shaped, what program it would adopt etc.  Thus individual areas would setup their own branches of the alliance, and send delegates to a formal founding conference, in Dublin, bringing with them motions from their branches with motions on various things etc. There must be NO veto's, and everyone should feel they are truly a piece of the jigsaw that makes up the whole thing, and that they have the power to effect change in the organisation/alliance, and are not left feeling they are merely spouting hot air at meetings, while the biggest political groupings decide and implement things over their heads.

Another measure I would love to see is the setting up of a dedicated and professionally operated Internet Channel. This website could show live streaming video from protests around the country (And internationally) and also stream meetings up and down the country. It could also stream from important meeting around the country.  but vitally and most importantly of all, it would have a de facto news Channel, reporting on the REAL news of the day, with in depth reports shown on it too.  Between the Unions, and political parties, I'm sure the money can be got to produce something of an excellent quality that would receive a massive regular audience, and be a vital counter balance to the propaganda of the mainstream media.

So if a new alliance that had genuine roots, a genuine strong platform,  and managed to get lots more people out voting again, who's to say in 2019 we can't at least double the number of genuine lefts elected to councils in 2019?