Saving the nation

Yesterday I went to get a sandwich in the middle of the newsroom rush. One of the annoying things about working in an industrial estate (lovely and all as Northpoint is) is that you have to drive practically everywhere, so I hopped into my car and zipped up to our local garage.

On the way, I listened to Minister for Education Mary Coughlan and the seemingly decontaminated Richard Bruton fighting about bank bonds, the state of the country (that old chestnut) and importing third-level students for the fees.

I had just finished reading an exceptionally depressing article by David McWilliams, suggesting that the country is turning into an economic wasteland, followed by another, by Dan O’Brien, saying that we are now exporting people at a rate of nine in 1,000.

Queueing to pay for my sandwich in the garage, I felt a stab of panic – then guilt – at handing over €3.99 (not including the accompanying packet of crisps, which probably cost about 50 cent). That’s €3.99 you should be saving! You’re lucky to even have a job!

Then, in a mental swerve that astonished even me, a well-known vacillator, I gave myself an invisible pat on the back for doing as we’ve been told and unselfishly spending my hard-earned cash.

I eyeballed the guy behind the counter, and telepathically communicated to him just how glad he should be that I didn’t have any bread in the house this morning, and my €3.99 was now, almost, in his pocket. Keeping people in jobs, now, I was. What a trooper.

But the bit that really got me thinking was my own reaction to an exchange between the guy behind the counter, and someone I must presume was an American tourist who was paying for petrol.

Hank – for we will call him Hank – was having some difficulty paying for his gas. A little confusion over the Chip & Pin machine and some awkward misunderstandings between Hank and the guy on the till eventually led to smiles all round and a successful transaction.

Commercial affairs concluded, Hank turned to the queue – me, Breakfast Roll Man in front of me, and a few more, all patiently waiting – and smiled widely at us.

“Now, just to remember to stay on the left hand side, haha!”

“Haha”, I trilled back, grinning like… well, grinning like something out of a Bord Fáilte ad. And doing my best to look friendly, and, er, Irish.

Breakfast Roll man was too intent on the two Mars Bars, two cans of Coke he was clutching (both 2 for €2 at the moment, special offer) to say anything. An elderly man behind me looked blank.

Now, I’m naturally friendly, something that has landed me in trouble many, many times.

But it wasn’t my natural charm and politeness coming to the fore.

Oh no. It was his money I was after.

Following the nanoseconds of conscience-wrestling in which I decided I needed to buy that sandwich for the good of the nation, my eyes had alighted on Hank (and my ears on his mellifluous twang), and I’d decided that, heck, my money wasn’t enough.
Hank was going to be the one to save us.
So I simpered and grinned like Darby O’Gill. I’m not happy about it. But I didn’t say anything beginning with ‘begorrah’.

And Hank, if you’re reading this? I hope you had a lovely drive. Begorrah. 

De-energising

This is my editorial from last week's paper. I've noticed similar pieces a couple of places,in yesterday's Agenda magazine and elsewhere, but this was written last Tuesday.




There are a lot of euphemisms about these days, masking unpleasant news. We’re all familiar with downsizing, resizing and – the most recent word from the world of human resources – ‘rightsizing’. De-energising is the latest one. Coined, seemingly, by the ESB, it refers to what the rest of us call ‘disconnecting’.
Last month, the state-owned energy company ‘de-energised’ 900 households for failing to pay their electricity bills. That’s up from 500 last August.
The news also comes in the same week that the Government floated plans to bump up electricity prices by 5 per cent, adding an estimated €30 per year to household bills as part of a new levy.
€30 doesn’t sound like a lot.
But it is when you remember that this is on top of already well-inflated prices. A 17.5 per cent jump in late 2008, just before the start of the coldest winter most of us can remember, and consistent, small, increases both before and after that.
And it is when you remember that many households have taken substantial pay cuts. Pay cuts have been well documented at this stage, and while some in the private sector – usually those who are still working in their pre-bust jobs – have seen their salaries return to ‘normal’ levels, there are still plenty who haven’t. Public sector workers are still at about 85 per cent of their previous salaries. 13.7 per cent of us are unemployed.
The new levy will come on top of an increase in mortgage rates – the increase varies, but for some customers the hike is as much as €40 per month.
It also comes on top of a 9.2 per cent increase in the costs of education (according to the latest Consumer Price Index figures from the CSO, for July), and an increase in transport costs (2.7 per cent).
In her book The Shock Doctrine, sociologist Naomi Klein discusses how private interests so often triumph over public ones in the wake of disasters. ‘The shock doctrine’ is defined as using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy.
And what greater shock has this country had since its foundation than the economic crisis? While the Government discusses selling off essential services like Cork Airport and Bord Gáis, we have taken on the liabilities of some of the country’s most reckless private interests.
While economic theory may not seem relevant to your pocket or mine, take a minute to think about it. Why, with no consultation and no opportunity to protest, will we all soon be paying 5 per cent more for electricity, supplied by a company that we own? Why, when we own the banks, will we be paying one or two per cent more interest on our mortgages, while bank staff play golf at our expense? Why, if we can’t manage our bills as it is, and that five per cent makes paying a bill on time every time unachievable, will we be cut off from a service supposedly run by the Government for our benefit?
Naomi Klein has one term for it – the shock doctrine – but we can thank the marketing department at the ESB for coming up with a new and better one. De-energised is a much better term to describe the state of the nation. We’ve lost the energy to fight back.

Progress

 Image (c) Tony O'Connell Photography














Cork City Manager Joe Gavin this week said goodbye to the city he’s taken charge of for the past ten years.
Mr Gavin leaves with a considerable list of achievements under his belt, for which he was widely applauded at Monday night’s City Council meeting.
A vox-pop of our readers carried out on Facebook and on the streets suggests that the majority of Corkonians recognise these achievements.
The regeneration of St Patrick’s Street and the Grand Parade; the inception of the (some day, hopefully realised) Docklands Development Plan; the Lapps Quay and Opera Lane developments were all mentioned at Monday’s meeting. Councillors spoke at length about the infrastructural developments I’ve mentioned above, as well as others.
Mr Gavin praised developers, including Cork’s own ‘fugitive’ Greg Coughlan, of Howard Holdings, whose vision produced the Lapps Quay and Boardwalk development.
And then he said something else that proved just how little we have learned in the two years – so far - of this recession.
There were five cranes visible on the Cork skyline when he arrived, in 2000. At the ‘peak’ of his tenure, there were 28. This is how he measured his achievements, watching the skyline from his upper-floor office in Cork City Hall.
This statement – from a man who has done so much work for the people of Cork – just proved that we have learned absolutely nothing from the past two years of crashes, revelations and toppling of pedestals.
When will we learn that progress is not about buildings, but about people?
While all of the developments mentioned above are important and welcome, creating jobs and improving the city’s appearance, they are still just buildings.
At Monday night’s City Council meeting, it was also revealed that the number of homeless shelter beds in Cork currently meet demand, for the first time.
That is a wonderful achievement, and hats off to Cork Simon and the other services that continue to fight against homelessness. No matter how badly off we are as a country, one thing we are not short of is houses, so homelessness is a particularly ironic, and unnecessary side effect of this recession.
That, to me, is a major achievement, and I’m sure it is not the only human progress made in Cork since 2000.
Cork City Council has had its share of ups and downs under Mr Gavin; the St Mary’s Road Library move, which has been the cause of some confusion among councillors as to who voted for it, and when, is one negative that will be remembered from this year; the extensive flooding another.
While it will be a long time before Mr Gavin’s legacy can be assessed accurately, and from an objective distance, the legacy of the economic crash should already be teaching us that progress is about people.
Perhaps the next City Manager, Tim Lucey, when he takes over in August, will measure progress differently, while carrying on the good work of his predecessor.

Four Angry Men

I went to see Four Angry Men - Matt Cooper, Shane Ross, Pat Leahy and Fintan O'Toole - in the Cork Opera House last night.

About 1,000 people showed up on a cold, dark, wet evening to hear four men rant (very intelligibly and well, I must say) about the state of the nation, the banks, the governing party, and society.

It was absolutely fantastic.

I am a big admirer of all four men for their intelligence and for their work on various issues as journalists.

After last night I particularly admire Pat Leahy, who earned fewer rounds of applause because of his direct and honest approach to the problems facing the country.

And I was very taken with Fintan O'Toole's idea of "known unknowns" - the things that, in Ireland, we know but we do not know. Things that we are, on some level, aware of, but we refuse to admit to ourselves. Child abuse, domestic abuse, corruption, crime... it's all in there. The culture in this country of being aware of things but not admitting them is the biggest problem facing us and he put it very well.

Their exploration of the corruption and lack of justice in modern Irish society was very interesting, and the format really suited it.

As Shane Ross pointed out, 1000 people had paid to come and see them speak last night. The previous night he spoke in the Seanad, where people are paid to be. One person was there.

The apathy and disconnectedness of the Irish public was dissected well by Pat Leahy, who repeatedly stated what many of us know, but do not know; we did not do the crime but we enabled it. We elected the people who did, and continued electing them in a cycle of greed and stupidity and self-service.

And many people will no doubt continue to vote for the same people, because although they "hate Fianna Fáil", sure "Joe up the road was good to us" and "Paddy is great to fix a streetlight".

These are all things that I knew, but that I had stopped thinking about; falling victim to the 'known unknown' Irish culture that I thought I was above.

The evening was better than I expected because it was thought-provoking. It reminded me of how enraged I was when the bank bailout happened; I'd forgotten.

No room to Budge(t)

Sorry for the terrible pun... but I couldn't resist it.

This week's editorial, written in post-Budget craziness!

Waiting for yesterday’s Budget, one thing was clear. From radio, television, Twitter, Facebook and carrier pigeon the message was coming across loud and clear that people were terrified and angry.
I learned at about 11am that protesters had already assembled outside Leinster House to protest against ‘potential’ cuts to be made in the Budget. While much of the document’s content had been gradually leaked over the past number of weeks, it was clear that whatever Brian Lenihan came up with, there were going to be protests against it.
Fair enough – measures announced yesterday will have a serious impact on a lot of people. But protesting before you even know what you’re protesting against is something else.
The Government press office are masters of spin, and there’s no doubt that this Budget was spun like candy floss, until whatever substance there was in it was hidden in a cloud of speculation and worry.
Over the past couple of weeks, the idea that public sector pay would be cut and a carbon tax would be imposed became pretty certain. But most people were expecting larger cuts to social welfare and a bigger impact on income in the private sector, so understandably breathed a sigh of relief when these did not materialise.
The response, which began before the speech concluded, is a predictable mixture of both justified and unjustified protests, complaints and sectional interests protecting their patch.
While Brian Lenihan was at pains to suggest that this would be the hardest Budget of this recession, it’s almost certain that it won’t be. The country’s structural deficit will be somewhat addressed by cuts to public sector pay, but the drastic restructuring needed did not materialise.
The major step of cutting public sector pay, which has been the most controversial aspect of the financial situation over the past year, has been taken. This is going to create serious unrest. Elsewhere on this page, read about GRA members in Cork who are soon to be ballotted about industrial action. Taking a cut of between five and eight per cent under yesterday’s Budget, there is little doubt that they will vote to strike. And with one SIPTU official calling this “the harshest Budget since the 1930s”, they will not be alone. The public service has been hit hard and will strike back.
But they are not alone – the student maintenance grant, carers’ payments, child benefit and dole payments have all been cut.
Business organisations and many private sector workers have been seeking such cuts, but their introduction may change the minds of many on their relative benefits; how many private sector workers have children in college, elderly parents being cared for, or public sector spouses?
While the Government had no room to budge – whatever they cut would hurt somebody – it will become apparent in the days and weeks ahead whether they have made the right choices.

Arts attack

Over the past number of years, we in Cork have learned to expect the very best. A city of jazz, film and midsummer madness, City of Culture in 2005, and now one of the world’s Top Ten Cities to visit, Cork has never had it so good in many ways. But we learned yesterday that Ireland as a whole must get used to a lower standard of living. According to the OECD, a lower standard of living will become the norm over time due to the huge imbalance in the public finances. Even those who are still in work are finding cutbacks affecting them in small ways – grumpy staff in shops (pay cuts), nobody answering the phone in call centres (lay offs) and longer queues almost everywhere.
On Tuesday night I went to see the classic Ibsen play ‘A Doll’s House’, directed by Alan Stanford (that’s George from Glenroe to most of us) at the Everyman Palace. The play is a literary classic and features on the Leaving Certificate syllabus. The Everyman was, I would estimate, about one-quarter full. The play was fantastic. Beautifully produced and directed, fantastic actors and a thought-provoking storyline. But so few people were there to see it that I wondered how the theatre and company could afford to tour.
We are accustomed now to hearing that practically everything (farming, the public sector, the Catholic Church, schools, newspapers, the health service etc) is ‘in crisis’. And the arts are no different. With cutbacks threatening practically everything, supposedly unprofitable lines of spending like the arts – like ‘A Doll’s House’ - are first in line for the chop.
A new group, the National Campaign for the Arts, is gathering momentum in its campaign to retain funding for key parts of cultural infrastructure such as the Irish Film Institute, which supports about 6,000 film industry jobs, and Culture Ireland, which promotes Irish drama, music, art and writing abroad.
The group held a meeting in Cork recently which was strongly attended, and artists and arts workers across all regions have come out to voice their concerns. While much of their concern is of course for their own employment prospects, part of what understanding art is about is seeing the bigger picture.
The bigger picture is that, while you can’t do a straightforward cost-benefit analysis of our investment in the arts, it sows economic seeds from which the country reaps enormous dividends.
Ireland is known internationally for its writers, theatre, music, poetry and even film, and our reputation abroad as a cultural Mecca is well established. Cork’s stint as European City of Culture 2005 contributed massively to the city’s arts scene, not least by giving a confidence boost, which was noted in the Lonely Planet guide.
Being able to see a literary classic done by a top notch company, at a reasonable cost and just five minutes’ walk from home is just one of the reasons I love living in Cork. Dublin does not offer the same proximity, and none of the other regional cities offer such variety.
And how was I able to do it? Because of the support given by the Arts Council to venues like the Everyman, and to artists like those in Second Age Theatre Company.
Protecting and nurturing our domestic arts scene is the only way that the money-spinning international artists of the future can learn their craft. The arts provide the only international platform on which Ireland is genuinely respected and influential. They bring a huge volume of high-spending tourists here (€5 billion annually), although our cultural exports are more difficult to quantify, with Irish artists having won Grammys, Tonys, Oscars, and the Man Booker.
As the only Irish city in the Top Ten, and the only Irish City of Culture, Cork has an obligation to support what has made it great.
So get online, to www.ncfa.ie, write to your politicians, and make sure that the near-bankruptcy of the public purse does not leave us culturally bankrupt as well.