Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

When the Economist mentions something in several different articles it’s a pretty good bet that the something is in big trouble.

Last week they opened with a potted summary of the emergency support fund being set up by the Euro zone governments in an effort to patch up the radically different speeds which they’re running at. Then there was the leader urging leaders to forget about the option of breaking up the Euro and how dire it would be for a time. Finally, there was the briefing going through how it would be done and how difficult it would be to do.

The problem with the emergency fund being explicitly set up is that everyone knows just how much money is in the kitty. That’s sure to prompt some people to stretch that kitty to the limit whether they be speculators or governments wishing that they could just devalue.

Listing the processes necessary to recreate an old currency is frankly just asking for trouble. As they point out, doing so would cause massive upheaval in the financial markets lasting years and knock-on consequences of the real economy in the country doing it internally and through difficulties in trading with other countries during the change-over period. Unfortunately, those countries are already facing years of upheaval and austerity budgets and moreover their country’s finances will be run by un-elected officials from other countries during that period. Wouldn’t the upheaval in recreating their own currencies be worth it for them? At least they’d be able to have a real say in how their budget was run.

One of the major problems they foresee is the logistics of printing the new currency in secrecy. Unfortunately, there is one Euro zone country that doesn’t need to do that. Ireland’s banks already print sterling notes and one, relatively doable, option would be simply for Ireland to revert to their former linked currency explicitly, at least for a while.

So, will it be Ireland that will pull out first? Whoever it is, they seem unlikely to be the last.

The Daily Star probably summed up most clearly the public opinion of the Irish government in its headline the other day.

However, it’s not the doing of a single government that has driven Ireland to bankruptcy: it has taken years of nonsensical decisions to get them here and it will take years if not decades to get them out of this mess.

For many years now the key skill in Ireland seems to have been to screw as much as possible out of Europe (ie everyone else) to finance a massive growth in the Irish economy. Until recently signs were everywhere announcing that one project or another was 85% financed by one EU fund or another.

That worked well in the case of infrastructure projects like the Dublin to Belfast motorway which replaced a truly naff road from Dublin to the Irish border that existed before. The problem is that it was only those European financed projects that went ahead and at almost every other point on the border you notice that you’ve crossed the border when the quality of the road goes down dramatically. The snag with these projects is that 1) only the capital costs are financed so Ireland now has a whole lot of motorway that it needs to pay to maintain and 2) now that Ireland has been replaced as Region 1 country by all the new eastern bloc countries it is not only not getting finance for its own infrastructure projects but needs to pay for those elsewhere.

Then there was the fiasco of untold numbers of “tax breaks” (ie bribes) for, mainly, American multinationals to establish themselves in Ireland. When the restrictions on those “tax breaks” ran out, Dell relocated almost immediately to Poland. In effect this bribe money (for there is no other way to describe it) was used by those companies to pay the salaries of the employees ie the Irish governments were simply borrowing to pay themselves. Quite why they didn’t realise at the time that this was never going to be a workable long term strategy is beyond me.

And, of course, all the above stoking of the economy meant that salaries rose and so therefore did house prices. Massively. Thus the banks were drawn into this Ponzi scheme. Like all such schemes, it looked like a no-lose situation. Like all such schemes, the money ran out. And like all such schemes, it collapsed in quite a spectacular manner, the full extent of which has yet to be seen. With increasing house prices comes increasing confidence and that surely led to increased personal borrowing in Ireland.

Sadly, this is going to be a very, very hard time for the Irish. Cuts and asset sales will be the order of the day for many years. The banks will probably be the highest profile casualties with the breakup of the non-Irish empires of AIB and Bank of Ireland looking like the first of many sales to come (already Bank of Ireland (UK) has been separated out). Cuts in a range of social security benefits and of civil service salaries are certain as are the inevitable protests against them. Gone too is any semblance of sovereignty over their own affairs. Not only are Europe and the IMF taking control of key aspects of life in Ireland but so too is the British government.

Much as I wouldn’t want to live in a united Ireland, I do feel for our friends in Ireland on this last point and even though Britain is doing it for selfish reasons (no way could it cope with a mass exodus of Irish to the UK), I’m sure that there will be a feeling that depending on Britain is a massive step backwards.

The Connswater greenway is a project which will, over the course of the next two or three years, link up pretty much all of the existing smattering of parks and walkways from the Titanic quarter through to the Castlereagh hills.

Although it’s an area that I’ve been in and around for most of my life their booklet highlights a whole bunch of things that I never knew existed. In fact, it comes across as a much more interesting area than you would expect, picking out as it does interests ranging from George Best’s home and Van Morrison’s home and haunts through to a 400 year old bridge in what it a fairly compact area.

That bridge is the most surprising for me as I went to school right beside it yet never knew of its existence until Wednesday morning! To be fair, it doesn’t look that impressive these days but then ancient footbridges rarely do and this one crosses the river at a point where the flow tends to collect a whole heap of junk ranging from fallen branches through to the Tesco trolley which seem to get everywhere these days.

Whilst the majority of the open spaces exist already, many of them have seen better days and the walkways have generally fallen into disuse over the years. Thus one of the major tasks of the project is to spruce up what’s already there which is no small task given the span of the greenway. This will include re-routing some of the stretches of river to both create a more typical meandering look and to sort out the flooding problem that arises along some sections of the rivers. In addition to all the prettying up the playgrounds scattered along the route will have their numbers increased somewhat and upgrades to those that are already there.

One of the most staggering figures that was quoted in the presentation on Wednesday was that over 50% of the population in the area is “economically inactive” ie there’s a very high level of unemployment. Whilst this project won’t directly change that, it should help to pretty up the area substantially which may in turn attract more businesses to move to what was once an area with close to 100% employment thanks to the shipyard, aircraft factory and all the supporting businesses which they drew in.

The Ulster History Park was created back in 1990 by the local council but sadly never really attracted visitors in the numbers that are necessary to support such a park. Thus even when I went in it’s peak years in the mid 1990s there were very few people around which is as you’d expect for a place receiving around 30,000 visitors which at around 150 per day is a number that’s easily lost in a 35 acre park. The park was closed down for almost eight years and is starting the long process of reopening by way of school visits, special events, etc.

In the early days the emphasis was on the pre-history period ie around 8,000BC to the middle ages. The earlier aspects are still there but sadly the Neolithic houses of yesteryear are are poorly maintained. The stone age dwellings, tombs and stone circles are still there but the emphasis has very much shifted to the plantation era and the more easily maintained stone buildings. That’s very sad as it means that the distinction between the “archie park” and the more well-known Ulster Folk Museum and Ulster-American Folk Museum is much less clear-cut than it used to be.

In some ways the presentation of the older dwellings and tombs is probably more realistic than the very tidy and clean park that I saw in my last visit some 15 years or so ago. Certainly when these things were originally constructed by our ancient ancestors, they definitely didn’t have a well-maintained path leading up to them! What does need work are the various information signs associated with each of the buildings as some are barely readable.

These days most people start in the area of the plantation settlement which is where the historical re-enactment by the company of Northern Period Productions was put on today to introduce us to how people of the time of the plantation lived. Quite a good performance but events like this need to be more regular to attract the audience that the park needs and deserves. This area has around a dozen buildings spanning a plantation era settlement and monastery.

The visitor centre houses a nice presentation of the prehistoric settlement in Ireland along with a video describing events through the plantation era and a small cafe. It’s best to start here as both presentations place the buildings that you’ll see in their historic context and help to direct your tour; that’s particularly important for the prehistoric area of the park these days.

Getting there is just as hit and miss as it always was. Basically you go to Omagh, then take the B48 towards Gortin, staying on that road (which has lots of twists and turns) until you see the park on your left (it’s right on the road).

Worth going to see on the European Heritage weekend (it’s open on both days 11am-6pm) next year which, at present, the only time that the park is open to the public.

Unusually it was a privately owned surveillance system that caught Mary dumping a cat into a wheelie bin but now her moment of madness is visible throughout the internet and she’s under police protection.

Whilst her actions can’t be condoned, I’m not so sure that it’s quite right for the cat owner to effectively create an instant mob by way of Facebook either. As he says in the interview in the Mail, he feels that it should be handled by the proper authorities although given the reactions of some people to her actions I’d say that he wishes that he’d left it to them in the first place.

It’s right that appropriate action should be taken against her, of course, but is it right that an instant mob was created by publishing the video on the net?