News of the World’s star signing’s own goal spin!

I’m not a reader of the News of the World but I’m told that Bertie Ahern has recently been signed up for his exclusive views on sporting matters. As far as I know he’s got no particular expertise in sport. True he attends matches regularly in Croke Park and Old Trafford and I know he’s knowledgeable on Irish soccer because he frequently reminds us of his great interest in League of Ireland soccer on those radio ads, although I’ve never met him coming out of Ferrycarrig Park. No more than myself he’s never achieved any notable success in sport and while I‘ve given up hoping to make the breakthrough I’m delighted to see that the self styled Iar-Taoiseach persists and has taken advantage of the pending closure of the transfer window as seen in today’s Sunday Times to sign for some team who wear red jerseys and play in a stadium that resembles Old Trafford. Ahern has some achievements, most notably the Good Friday Agreement, but at the back of it all, Few think if Michael Collins who knew something about delivering international treaties had lived would he have confined his middle aged years to sharing his views with the nation about the likely destination of Sam Maguire?
To save you the embarrassment of buying the NOTW and wading past the topless pictures I understand that in today’s paper he’s backing Meath to beat Kerry and make it to the All-Ireland Final. Most interesting his endorsement of the Royals is contextualised with a straight face; “I can’t remember the last time I cheered on Meath”. Pity to see his memory is still giving him trouble! I wonder if his enthusiasm for the Meathmen will see him go as far as place a bet on them given the long odds they carry today and his stated experience in successfully picking winners. In previous 2 horse races he always picked the winner, Haughey, McAleese being just 2 of the names that spring to mind.
The relative ease at which Ahern, a man not noted for outstanding intellectualism nor sporting aplomb, could pick up a column in a paper says a lot about the values in Irish media at the moment. Lets face it few actually believe Ahern has neither the time nor the ability to put together this column. Previous holders of the office of Taoiseach would cringe with embarrassment if a paper had offered them a sporting column on retirement rather than accept it as Ahern did. This column is probably ghost written by some unfortunate just out of DCU’s excellent journalism course and then read to him over the phone while he okays it. Ahern brings nothing to the table other than his name. In a country with a huge affinity to brands he realises it’s a brand that can keep him in clover until another nixer comes around. Media is about money and how circulation can be upped or rival papers trumped. The fact Ahern is “writing” is news and generates interest for the paper whether you buy it or not. Advertisers respond to that. In a recession getting an efficient return from your advertising budget ultimately is sound money management.
But media is now about opinion and not about news. When was the last time the headline was the result of an investigation by a media outlet? When did you see the result of a Freedom of Information Request reported ? Instead we get regular columns by cabinet ministers, soft focus on business people and their decisions.

Time was media was about getting to the truth, now it’s about celebrity politicians and celebrity business people. If many of the enthusiastic journalists that are coming out of college had the employer who was so minded to investigate the bubble in the economy in the last 10 years, I wonder would our slump have been so bad? I smile when I see the business editor in the Sunday Independent waving the big stick at speculators when its own parent INM’s shares are on the floor. With all the conflicting demands on the actual newspaper where is the space for the journalist? To be fair there are some journalists who will plough on and ask questions, Vincent Browne, Eamon Keane, Fintan O’Toole, Matt Cooper and sometimes they infuriate me when they persist in what I consider a pointless line. But that’s their job and that’s my tough luck.
If they don’t do it the alternative is a media packed with Ahern and his ilk peddling nonsense with a nipple count. Was it for this that trees were cut down?

Time to Libert-ask the key questions

A year ago Libertas was the creation of a recluse Galway neo con businessman who founded a company that claimed to be a think tank. Only Ireland could produce Declan Ganley. A Galway man with a home counties accent, whose mysterious money created an aura of acceptance. The Irish psyche always has a soft spot for the quare fella with the foreign accent to give him authenticity; Eamon De Valera, Sean McBride or Sean Thornton each dissidents in their day. Declan Ganley became the Mister Pussy of Irish politics, on the surface you see something quiet different to what goes on beneath.
It’s a symptom of how far politics in Ireland has been discredited that someone like Declan Ganley can get so far in a year. His company Libertas employs as members, employees of one of his other interest Rivada. Rivada was awarded substantial contracts in telecommunications in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. Rivada also has been given US defence contracts in communications and boasts ex US military personnel on its board. Ganley who, it seems, uses his dual nationality when it suits him has an equally ambivalent attitude to being Irish, his company Libertas opposes “our political elite” but if he can get a dig out from another nation’s political elite sure what the hell? But Ganley will combine with those who oppose the US military stopover at Shannon and begorrah he’ll forget about his business interests because he knows that when it comes to having a cut at a discredited government, his ultimate interest is in creating in Ireland the circumstances where Ireland exists economically as Europe but citizens are riding second class behind his “elite”. It’s his intention to create an Ireland riding side rear guard on a neo con driven US agenda, at lest it was until Obama got into power. Ganley will transfer Ireland’s European reliance to one on the US. He’ll replace a social model of society with an economic one.

As someone who sees the benefit in the Lisbon Treaty from the point of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and in particular education and how this could benefit pupils in Ireland, I smile when I see this Hertfordshire man’s butler raise the Irish flag over his home from his flagpole overlooking the N17, the road that leads to Shannon Airport. What does the man with the Alaskan board actually understand about the lives of ordinary people?

Let me put my hand up. I’ve voted against Maastricht but for Amsterdam, against Nice but for Lisbon. I’ve always felt that when you look on an EU Treaty you vote because of one key issue. I could not have got through college but for getting a job in Germany during the 80’s. I never got a J1 I always went to Germany because it was new culture. My recollection of the 80’s was that in Europe the left and right had an understanding that mutually assured their dominance. This was why the European Christian Democrats so successfully marginalised Margaret Thatcher in EU negotiations. Her response was to cosy up to Ronald Reagan. The EU worked because of the balances that politically existed. Now with the upsurge in regional parties with an obstructionist agenda such as UKIP the neo cons see their opportunity and strike to bring European progress to a halt.
But my concerns about EU as a military power disappeared when the Berlin wall collapsed. I still have concerns about the EU and it’s because of the democratic deficit that is inherent in the structures. Lisbon was a way to bring in more democracy and accountability into decision making.
And this is where I wonder about Declan Ganley, why is it that he’s big not accountability in Eurioe but won’t disclose to SIPO details of Libertas’ funding, 6 months after he gave the commitment on TV that he would. I wonder about his connections with an Albanian solicitor who was subsequently murdered amidst allegations of financial connections with businessmen. I wonder about how Declan Ganley claimed he was a key government advisor in the 1990’s in a Baltic state. I also wonder how if CJ Haughey & Co hadn’t discredited politics in this country how far Declan Ganley could have ever got if questions when asked were answered? Once on a local radio discussion on CJ Haughey I offered the opinion that the problem with this country is that it takes 15 years to find out what’s going on today. This maxim doesn’t only apply to the affairs of the late Taoiseach but also our dissident Solzhenitsyn from the salt mines in Glenamaddy.

PPP’s are dead in the water

I have always taken a cynical view of PPP projects. Public Private Partnerships was the Thatcherite response to delivering public services. Tony Blair’s New Labour embraced the idea enthusiastically too, as indeed did Sinn Fein in the Northern Executive. Lets be clear, the state has to interact with the private sector to provide infrastructure like roads, schools, hospitals. The private sector has always constructed these and there has rarely been a case that the Comptroller and Auditor General has highlighted as poor value for money from conventional procurement. It’s straight forward if not tediously slow. The need is identified, its designed, constructed and handed over.

However the PPP scheme works as follows; government identifies a need. It advertises the need within the private sector seeking interested contractors. The competition provides a winner. The government then enters negotiations with the successful bidder and signs a contract to pay the contractor over a period of time (say 20 years). The contractor then organises finance, designs, builds and finally operates the project. When 20 years is up the state will take over the service, not before another contract is agreed with the bidder to hand over after renovations are paid for by the state!

The advantage for the politician involved in decision making is to be seen delivering and that any failure to deliver is the responsibility of a private sector firm over which he has no immediate control. The collapse of PPP schemes aimed at affordable and social housing in Dublin is a classic example of politicians sidestepping the responsibility. The advantage for the private company is a steady revenue stream and an asset that they can develop as they see fit.
Public benefits of these projects have been minimal but companies involved in PPP’s often made large contributions to New Labour. PPP’s allow the private sector to dictate where public infrastructure is delivered and how fast. The failure of the Department of Education to build a second level school in Gorey points up the short comings of these schemes. Add in Thornton Hall, cost over runs in PPP schemes in 5 Irish schools and the late arrival of LUAS.

I was quite surprised to hear 2 local FF TD’s singing the praises of PPP schemes given the complexity of the process. New Ross and Enniscorthy are set to get by-passes via PPP projects under the Transport 21 plan. If you believe the 2 lads sure they’ll be along in jig time. Not so, but don’t let the electorate know the reality.
Why I think the 2 TD’s are off the mark is because the finance is to be raised privately and because there is intense pressure in the money market for cash where will they get the money? How expensive will the cash be given that Ireland’s credit rating is deteriorating due to the banks bailout? If the successful bidder can access cash where will the state find the money to pay them back? Both TD’s are inviting the electorate to suspend their knowledge of the market place because we want to believe these roads will be built.

The reality is that it’s not going to happen either next year or the year after that. The credit crunch has done for PPP’s. PPP’s are on life support and given the reality that government borrowing is set to rise beyond the 6% GDP agreed and well above the 3% agreed as part of the single currency criteria, there’s no scope for off balance sheet borrowing. The wind is definitely out of the PPP sails and hopefully the tax payer will not be ripped off by a time wasting competition f or over priced assets.