Eddie Hobbs, back in business!

All of a sudden while watching Mary Lou MacDonald on RTE’s Frontline last night, I started to wonder where Eddie Hobbs is these days? Mary Lou has raided the Hobbs library and is now reheating some of the classic Hobbs line. In 2009 Hobbs called for public service pay cuts and protection for those public sector workers earning incomes of €30,000 or less. Up north Sinn Fein has frozen public service pay for those on over €27K and is setting about public service pension reform in a manner that has Eddie smiling from ear to ear! To that effect there is a public service strike there tomorrow in protest against the DUP/Sinn Fein medicine. With extraordinary hard necks, Sinn Fein are looking their own striking public servants in the eye and saying we back you!

Sinn Fein is proposing a cap on all salaries in the public sector of €100,000 while it has little to say about salaries in the private sector. I’ve no problem with an incomes policy provided it includes all citizens and all incomes. So why shouldn’t investments, property, earnings on property be included? But there aren’t too many public servants earning over €100,000. I don’t for one minute think that the amount of money SF believe is there to be saved can be found, (€265M) Last spring Sinn Fein had an interesting footnote in their manifesto, they opposed the introduction of tax on the family farm. They’ve gone 1 step further in their 2012 pre-budget submission; excluding farmland, business assets and the first 205 of primary value of residences over €1m, retain state funding for minority faith private schools while not forgetting the old Milton Friedman line of making tax credits refundable. Sinn Fein used to stand for an Ireland of Equals, so how can they justify subsidising private minor faith boarding schools while Catholic ones are cut? Earlier this year there was the off the wall suggestion to deal with the cuts all in one go and to return to the bond market in 2012. This would have destroyed the social economy while being extremely attractive to speculators hoping to drive costs rock bottom. Tucked away in the SF 2011 GE manifesto was a nod to this logic with a pledge to return to the bond markets in 2012 providing a bank resolution mechanism was in place.

What scares the hell out of me and most people who rely on the public purse for an income is that most SF TD’s have never worked in the public service and do not seem to understand the ethos of a public service. It’s their type of logic that panders to the anti-public sector feeling that is growing in the country, fanned by right wing economists and opportunist TD’s. Up north while Sinn Fein support this week’s strike the reality is that in the words of their Education minister last September when he announced his plan to rationalise schools “Education is changing from this moment on”. The words and their meaning on the ground are moving in opposite economic tectonic plates in Sinn Fein up north. In the Ireland of equals it won’t be long till the thoughts and actions here match the northern mood music.

I don’t want to work in a public service that resembles New Zealand where less than 2% of the countries workforce are paid by the state. It wasn’t always that way in the country where their first Labour Prime Minister (2^nd generation Irishman) devised the world’s first national health service but right wing governments have dominated New Zealand politics for 40 out of 50 years from 1949 onward with the resulting impact on public servants.

The flip side of what Eddie Hobbs said last year was that he felt confrontation had to happen and that industrial action on a par with the 1984 miners dispute by public sector workers would result. That’s one vision of where the intellectual analysis that is shared by Sinn Fein may well bring workers south of the border. In the meantime in the words of Ed Milliband I understand where the strikers are coming from in the North and in Britain.

Drink! Feck! Arse! Budgets!

It’s a budget that Fr Jack would be proud of. If Carlsberg could do budgets they’d do this one! Drink prices hit the floor, the millionaire’s G&T drop in price as VAT & excise duty are reduced. The bill is picked up by the public servants and those on social welfare.
I debated the budget in South East Radio with Michael Wall (SIPTU), Michael O’Leary (a local financial services expert) & Cllr Michael Sheehan of Fianna Fail just hours after the speech. Dan Walsh did the needful and chaired the debate. Every year South East Radio has a budget debate and this is the second time I’ve done it. It’s an example of public service broadcasting that you don’t often hear in local radio. The response from the listeners was hugely critical of the budget, and I’m not surprised. As a budget, I must say that I’m still in shock. I’m shocked that Fianna Fail could walk all over vast swathes of people to appease the bankers, builders & IBEC so blatantly. If Labour tried a fraction of what FF & the greens pushed through there would be a schism.!

Lets punch through the noise and set Budget 10 in context. All the money saved last year has been channelled into the banks by the back door off balance sheet and not a cent of it was mentioned today. Its not as though we’re through the worse, the worse hasn’t started yet. There’s no stimulus here, SME’s are looking for credit, they won’t get it today and it won’t happen because the CEO of the Bank of Ireland gave away the game when he said that capitalisation will only lead improving the balance sheet of the banks, no mortgage holders or businesses need apply. Employment is the only way out of the slump.

We’ll soon be out of recession but we’ll be in depression then! By then anincreasing number of families relying on social welfare will be paying prescription charges per item, carbon taxes to heat their way out of fuel poverty, struggling to meet mortgages. against a backdrop of the ending of the embargo on repossessions.
How can you expect people who get less to spend more in an economy? The sub-text to the agenda is emigration, cut jobseekers assistance for young people and that will act to drive young people out. The other subtext from FF & the greens is that there is no alternative to cuts and that the rich should keep their heads down and let ordinary people carry the can.
On the way home I must confess I only stopped to fill the tank with petrol At home I saw Eamon Ryan on “Prime Time” tonight. I couldn’t help wonder if he regretted not running in the 2004 presidential election. Surely his chance of the park is now as real as Kenmare Hospital. The Green Party’s endless spin on the green or knowledge economy is running the risk of getting the word knowledge a bad name. The only green jobs created are for green senators counting frogs. That’s why the budget will get through. It won’t revive the economy it’ll knock it out. Once that happens emigration will start. In the end, Craggy Island may well seem more populous than John Bull’s other one

Public Service Strike against pension levy shuts service’s in Wexford

Today’s day of action sees public servants on the picket line in protest against the government decision to impose a pension levy. As can be seen from the picture, Wexford’s government buildings at Anne St were picketed by members of the CPSU today. CPSU members are mostly clerical and administrative grades. Many of the union members are female. As well as in the civil service their members are also in the post office and eircom. Interestingly the members employed in commercial companies are not liable for the pensions levy. The vote in favour of strike action was pretty substantial on a high poll. Anne St provides social welfare, revenue as well as probationary services for Co. Wexford. Elsewhere locally pickets have been placed on the offices of the Department of Social, Family & Community Affairs at Roches Rd and at Johnstown Castle. Many of the workers striking today earn less than €30,000 and one woman explained to me that she's be better off on social welfare rather than working in soical welfare.
The Deputy General Secretary of the union Eoin Ronayne acknowledges the hardship faced by private sector workers and rising unemployment, but says the union must defend its members through industrial action - if necessary. Mr Ronayne said it would not be the union's intention to impact on the public who need its services, but warned that any action would have to be wide ranging and widespread.
Later tonight there’ll be more queues as record shops open at midnight to facilitate those wishing to buy U2’s latest album appropriately named “No line on the horizon”. There certainly is no sign of any horizon for the country or workers on average rates of pay, even less of a sign of Bono turning up to revenue to pay his fair share of tax to the Revenue Commissioners. Bono shifted part of his tax liability to Holland in 2006 the year of Live 8. Surely if you’re going to pontificate on social justice and inequity about the world you should at least be prepared to pay your own way. The Edge is reported today as being happy with his tax arrangements, I wonder why? I understand that there was a picket outside the Department of Finance yesterday in relation to Bono’s tax arrangements. The officials were probably relieved that it wasn’t themselves who were in the firing line on this one. That relief may not last for too much longer, Apparently there’s a press interview on the way where Bono defends the indefensible.