Marking Time

A pair of seals lounging in Howth Harbour last weekend…

As Fianna Fáil’s FUD strategy descends into bared-faced lies I’m reminded again of Bertie Ahern’s eloquent Dáil statement on ethics in public life:

Deputy Kenny and I have been Members of the House for long enough to know that there is a code of ethics whereby those who have been elected to the House try to remain elected. That is the code of ethics in this House.

Dáil Debate, 09 Dec. 2003

No doubt our “highly sophisticated electorate” will see through such self-serving attitudes and treat them with the contempt they deserve. Based on past experience I wouldn’t be too hopeful.

And there lies the inconsistency. You cannot have a low-tax, capitalistic, business friendly political climate and, at the same time, have a social model that supports good quality health services, education and transport infrastructure, and subsidized access to Irish soccer internationals. Something has to give.

And now is the time it is starting to give. Slowly it is starting to dawn on the people of this country that they have been sold a pup. The good times have come and gone and left most people with few of the benefits and most of the headaches. Sure, wages have increased and more people are in employment but inflation is rampant raising the cost of living to ridiculous heights, hospital wards are being shut down due to lack of funds, road projects are lying unfinished and now we cannot even enjoy the simple pleasures of watching the national team.

And it’s still raining.

Marking Time, Tuesday, July 09, 2002

I wrote this in the aftermath of the last general election when the giant sandcastles of pre-election promises were being washed away in the tide of an economic downturn. Past performance is no guarantee of future blah-blah but signs are that the tide is coming back in. This time the sandcastles are bigger but they’re still made of sand.

Political parties are knocking each other over in their rush to be the first in line to reduce income tax to 18%, eliminate stamp duty, and retain corporate tax at its current low level. The political consensus is that raising taxes is a no-no (Pat Rabbitte, leader of the so-called left-wing Labour party, said it would be folly).

Meanwhile, the principal of a national school in Ballyfermot appears on Show Me the Money, seeking Eddie Hobbs’s help to balance the school finances and pay the gas and electricity bills because the government capitation grant is inadequate.

So Ireland finished last in the Eurovision song contest. Big wow. The first thing to say about this is you can’t be taking something like the Eurovision Song Contest seriously. It’s not a slur on our nation to come last (in fact it’s almost a badge of honour), the contest is just a bit of disposable pop trash culture.

But poor Marty Whelan was like a Lotto winner who lost the winning ticket such was his desperation searching in vain for votes for the Irish song from the Eastern European “block vote conspiracy”. John Waters was “gutted” and RTÉ launched a damage limitation exercise and a major inquiry into how this could have happened.

So why did it happen? Well for a start the song - although it wasn’t the worst - wasn’t all that memorable. It was a little bland and safe, and visually the performance was forgettable. In a crowd of 24 it was easy to overlook it.

Also the fact that the demographic that wrote, performed, produced, and chose the song (most of whom were in their forties at least and who seem to have a ‘pre fall-of-the-wall’ idea of Europe) did not match the demographic that were texting in the votes (predominantly under twenty-fives who could care less about the cold war beyond wanting to forget that it ever happened). John Waters spoke about references in the song to Prague 1968 that he hoped would woo the eastern Europe vote (not patronising at all, oh no) which revealed more about his lack of understanding of where Europe is now than anything else. The cold war is over John and we’re not looking back.

The Irish attitude* to the Eurovision revealed a little about how we see ourselves in Europe and how it contrasts markedly with how Europe sees us (when it sees us at all). We had Marty with his invocations to cancel our foreign holidays to countries that didn’t vote for us (as if we could single-handedly destroy their economies with the might of our credit card discipline), we had others wondering if the Eastern European immigrants to Ireland would influence those back home to vote for us as a mark of gratitude for our charity of letting them come and work and live among us (as if somehow we were the melting pot of Europe with our ‘huge influx’), and we had Linda Martin rambling on in Irish when giving the Irish votes, much to the puzzlement of the hosts and the rest of Europe. The polite thing to do would have been to attempt a few words in Finnish, or failing that, stick to English, a language that most of Europe might have some chance with, rather than an obscure language from a country that most of Europe couldn’t find on a map. In a celebration of a common European vision it was embarrasingly parochial.

It seems we have this notion that Ireland is the darling of Europe and every one knows and loves our cute accents and diddly-eye culture (and of late our economic ‘miracle’). The reality is that we are a peripheral island on the west coast of Europe and we don’t even exist as far as most of Europe is concerned. What we call eastern Europe is in fact the heart of Europe, and countries that we patronisingly regard as lightweights have thriving cultures and historys, and cities with populations bigger than that of the whole of Ireland. We talk about evil conspiracies and block voting but the reality is that countries will naturally vote for countries that are close to them. They relate more to the nearby culture for a start. We gave 7 points to the UK for God’s sake.

There’s nothing wrong with being a small, peripheral country - it suits us nicely for many things - but we should recognise ourselves as we are and not through the distorted mirror of former Eurovision glory.

(* Actually, I generalise too much when I say the Irish attitude. More precisely, it’s the attitude of a segment of the Irish population who believe that Eurovision is important and should be taken seriously, the pre-Celtic Tiger generation who remember a time when winning Eurovision was the sole redeeming achievement of a nation that was going down the toilet in every other way. “We may be on our knees economically but we can beat the best of them with a song and a dance and a smile on our faces”. )

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  (tags: Irish Politics)