Afternoon Blog - 08 December 2010
Criticism, analysis, response: The BudgetJam live blog. Email your comments here or comment below.
23.55 Time for me to hit the hay, thanks to all for reading and engaging with us over the past week. A special shout out also goes to the budgetjammers for keeping the momentum up, we'll all sleep for a week after this...or several hours at least. Tomorrow we'll have reports and photos from the various protests taking place around the country, as well as more budget analysis. Oiche mhaith.
23.30 Siobhan O'Donoghue of the Community Platform is on Tonight with Vincent Browne this evening talking about the inequalities in wealth distribution in Ireland. The Bank of Ireland study on wealth she was referring to can be read here. She also mentioned Tom O'Connor's article on Irish Wealth and a Fairer Society which can be read on Irish Left Review.
23.20 Those of you who caught Alison O'Connor's dire performance on Tonight with Vincent Browne last night will enjoy this comic from Alan Moloney's wheelspinninghamsterdead:
22.50 Full version of Miriam O'Callaghan interviewing Brian Cowen available here.
22.25 Alison here briefly. Great to see students organising themselves outside of the USI (no comment). In Clondalkin yesterday, secondary school pupils from Moyle Park College, Deansrath Community College and Colaiste Brid staged a walkout against the budget and marched on the office of Fianna Fáil TD John Curran.
I've just been alerted to this post about a student rally which took place in Derry yesterday. The aim of the rally was to drum up support for a walkout on Friday against education cuts and to save the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA).
Tomorrow, students at Queen's University Belfast will stage a walkout against fees, while students from NUI Maynooth will march on the office of Fianna Fáil TD Aine Brady. We'll hopefully have reports from all these events in the coming days.
21:37 Well spotted Eadaoin - BudgetJam is trending top on Twitter!! (And certainly not due to the insight of this evening's posts)
21:29 BudgetJammers on Pearse Doherty's response to the budget yesterday:
Eadaoin O'Sullivan (@freemansjournal):
'And what is absolutely disgusting about all of this is when the whole country is demanding political reform this government is relying on the vote of two gombeen politicians who want their own wee pet projects in their own constituencies, and you're willing to sell this budget, to sell the Irish people down the chips for a casino in Tipperary and a nursing home in Kerry. And shame on you, shame on you.'
21:23 Since this afternoon, 3,500 people have signed the Claiming Our Future petition against reducing the minimum wage. You can add your voice by clicking here.
21:16 RTE Nine News reports that people are not especially outraged over budget, that callers to the Today PK show focussed on the favourable conditions of others, not their own hardship.
21:14 Reminder:
DEMONSTRATION TO SAVE THE MINIMUM WAGE
OUTSIDE DÁIL EIREANN
THURSDAY 9 DECEMBER - 1:00pm
A delegation of minimum wage workers will present our petition to TDs asking them to vote against proposals to cut the minimum wage to €7.65. (www.claimingourfuture.ie)
The proposed cut is contained in the Financial Emergency Measures In the Public Interest Bill 2010, due to be voted on in the Dáil on the 9th & 10th December.
Please show your support and join us at the Dáil at 1pm!
21:05 This is worth a mention again... Michael Taft's article that shows how non-wage high earners actually benefit from yesterday's budget. It's a double-win for this group as the ESRI estimates a 29% increase in non-wage earnings next year.
20:49 Great work from Social Justice Ireland yet again. A 24-page response to the budget here: http://www.socialjustice.ie/sites/default/files/file/Budget/Budget%202011/Budget%202011%20SJI%20Final%20Final%20Version.pdf
20.00 From Alison Spillane:
Watching the #budgetjam stream with interest and more than 24 hours later folk are still talking about Pearse Doherty’s speech in the Dáil yesterday. Everyone in the country seems to have seen it...everyone that is except for our elected representatives, 90% of whom cleared out of the chamber as soon as Doherty got to his feet (that’s 90% of those who lasted through Burton’s speech). I’ve never seen a man argue so passionately for a pay cut. It was great to watch.
The only full video of his speech I can find is on RTE:
http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/1207/budget_political_reax.html#video
Text of the speech is here: http://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/19688
19.30 Aside from the cruelty of yesterday's budget, it's clear that government has put no effort into adequately means-testing entitlements. The government chose to exclude child benefit from last year's cuts because it did not have a system in place. And also because the issue was given a platform on RTE's Frontline where Mary Hanafin was berated for mooting its introduction. This year, child benefit was part of the wider discussion on cuts, but (in the programmes I tuned in to) the issue did not get the same hearing as in 2009. In the intervening 12 months, government has failed to introduce a way to test people and provide child benefit in a fair manner, so it chose to cut the payment indiscriminately (€10 per child per month for the first two children; €20 for subsequent children).
Here's the response of OPEN (representing lone parent families) to yesterday's budget:
There are 3 things which have really angered our families.
No comfort to cushion the blow:
58% of lone parents have one child. Those with 1 child who survive on social welfare received cuts yesterday totaling €530 next year. This includes a €10 per month reduction in child benefit which was not compensated to families on weekly social welfare payments as was the case this year. So there was no attempt to soften the blow for the families who will really feel the impact of this cut. 65% of children in poverty in Ireland are growing up in one-parent families – these changes will have a huge and lasting impact on those children.
No comfort from the cold:
The government has made no change to the fuel allowance payment. Last year they promised to provide poor families with a voucher or other payment to compensate them for the carbon levy. There has been no compensation and to make matters worse, as part of the 4 year plan, our government has committed to doubling the levy with no commitment to help those in poverty to cope. Yesterday families who receive Fuel Allowance (€20 per week from September – April) were told they would get a one-off payment of €40 to cover costs associated with the current cold spell – this is actually an insult to these families.
No comfort for their futures:
In spite of repeated promises to protect the poorest, the government in fact confirmed yesterday that these savage cuts will be repeated in the next three budgets. This has caused widespread concern among low income families who have genuine fears about the futures of their already hard-pressed families.
As well as these announced changes, OPEN is really concerned about the proposed €1 cut to the hourly minimum wage. This will drive down the wages of all of those on low incomes and create a climate where the reduction of basic social welfare payments will in future be deemed as vital to ‘make work pay’. It will not create one job. For lone parents who are desperate to become economically independent, this cut will add hugely to their sense of despair. A low minimum wage will halt their progress and a cycle of dependence on state payments and supports will become more vicious and difficult to break. It is an act of economic and social vandalism. We can never trust again empty promises to ‘protect the vulnerable’ if our Dail votes to cut the National Minimum Wage.
19.20 Malachy signing in to the liveblog for the evening. You can send comments, links, responses using the email link above or to @malachybrowne on Twitter. Or comment in the facility below.
18.35 Across the water, they're asking if we're AITT too – here's a good post from Patrick Butler and Shiv Malik writing in the Guardian on how young people are being disproportionately affected by cuts in the UK.
18.25 Breda Ridgway left us the following comment:
Whoever explains the sense of the below to me or provides me with hope gets my vote in February!
Total in cuts (that I am currently aware of!!) that I have received as a lone parent trying to pay mortgage, look after 3 kids and get myself through college is €8 a week on lone parents, €20 a months on child benefit, 4% on grant, losing €3100 on top up grant so on what I know so far I am down a whopping :-
€416
€120
€3100
€124
____
€3760 per annum plus 4 cent per litre on a thirty mile round trip a day!!
= €72 PER WEEK! (not including the petrol)
People on 90k per annum have been cut a lot less than this. My four year plan is in tatters and it doesnt look like I am going to receive a bail out!
What am I supposed to do?
Regards
Breda Ridgway
17.55 The Morning Blog highlighted the ongoing Claiming Our Future petition to save the minimum wage as well as the Poor Can't Pay online lobby campaign asking people to call on their TDs to vote against cuts in welfare and the minimum wage. Here's what a couple of the politicos had to say:
Eoin O'Mahony got the following response from Maureen O'Sullivan:
Dear Eoin, I share your anger and I am particularly angry at the decrease in the disability pension and allowance, carer's allowance, cuts in education and communities. While I welcome the caps at the top end of the scale, I don't think they are enough.
Regards,
Maureen O'Sullivan
I got a blander response from Sean Barrett, but a response nonetheless:
Dear Ms. Spillane,
Thank you for your email regarding Budget 2011. I and my Fine Gael colleagues are voting against the proposed welfare cuts and the reduction in the national minimum wage.
Kind regards.
Yours sincerely
Sean Barrett T.D. Fine Gael Spokesperson on Foreign Affairs
I am eagerly awaiting responses from both Mary Hanafin and Barry Andrews. Did any of the politicians get back to you folks out there?
17.30 OPEN sent us this statement:
December 8, 2011 - it has been almost 24 hours since Budget 2011 was announced.
It is fair to say that since OPEN was founded in 1994 by 8 local lone parent groups, lone parents have never reacted so angrily to a Budget announcement. Online and on radio and television stations, lone parents are frustrated and concerned.
There are 3 things which have really angered our families:
No comfort to cushion the blow:
58% of lone parents have one child. Those with 1 child who survive on social welfare received cuts yesterday totaling €530 next year. This includes a €10 per month reduction in child benefit which was not compensated to families on weekly social welfare payments as was the case this year. So there was no attempt to soften the blow for the families who will really feel the impact of this cut. 65% of children in poverty in Ireland are growing up in one-parent families – these changes will have a huge and lasting impact on those children.
No comfort from the cold:
The government has made no change to the fuel allowance payment. Last year they promised to provide poor families with a voucher or other payment to compensate them for the carbon levy. There has been no compensation and to make matters worse, as part of the 4 year plan, our government has committed to doubling the levy with no commitment to help those in poverty to cope. Yesterday families who receive Fuel Allowance (€20 per week from September – April) were told they would get a one-off payment of €40 to cover costs associated with the current cold spell – this is actually an insult to these families.
No comfort for their futures:
In spite of repeated promises to protect the poorest, the government in fact confirmed yesterday that these savage cuts will be repeated in the next three budgets. This has caused widespread concern among low income families who have genuine fears about the futures of their already hard-pressed families.
As well as these announced changes, OPEN is really concerned about the proposed €1 cut to the hourly minimum wage. This will drive down the wages of all of those on low incomes and create a climate where the reduction of basic social welfare payments will in future be deemed as vital to 'make work pay'. It will not create one job. For lone parents who are desperate to become economically independent, this cut will add hugely to their sense of despair. A low minimum wage will halt their progress and a cycle of dependence on state payments and supports will become more vicious and difficult to break. It is an act of economic and social vandalism. We can never trust again empty promises to 'protect the vulnerable' if our Dail votes to cut the National Minimum Wage.
16.53 An excellent post by Tricia Wood up on BudgetJam now. The closing three paras:
'The EU is in the midst of two divisive internal battles. The first is along the lines of political geography. One of the most politically fragmented regions of the world is seeing its national/cultural differences resurface with a vengeance. This resurgence probably surprises few observers.
The second war cuts across national lines to dissect along class lines. There are profoundly different opinions as to how the EU should negotiate its way out of the economic crisis. Will it be more of the "privatised profits, socialised losses," or a reconsideration of the state's obligations to its citizens?
And so, having said that the Irish budget "does not matter," I would reverse that somewhat and argue that this is where the domestic politics of the Irish budget are much, much more than a local story at the margins of Europe. Will Irish citizens direct their anger at a political party or an entire political economic order? The choices Ireland currently faces are *the* story of the EU and its political economy, and the outcome will likely impact the decisions made by other countries when they arrive at the same electoral fork in the road.'
A recent film by Pat Collins - What We Leave In Our Wake - which I would recommend every single one of you watches if it ever gets a showing in Dublin - includes an interview with Declan Kiberd in which he describes Ireland as a 'test bed of the modern world'. A short transcript:
'I think that Ireland was modern from early on in the 19th century, not just in that it was a place that people conducted experiments as colonial administrators, but the counter-experiments conducted by the people themselves was often about an alternative way of modernising. So for example, the rising of 1916: the rebels included in the army women as soldiers. The Proclamation talks about cherishing the children of the nation equally; it's a document in the early history of social democracy. If they had won, and established a government, Hannah Skeffington would have been the first female government minister anywhere in the world. Joyce took Ireland as a test case of the modern world, as all great Irish writers, like Swift before him had done. He realised, perhaps like the colonial power, that Ireland was a laboratory in which the future of the world was being tried out. Some very positive things, for instance, like a coherent system of national schools in the 1830s or the postal system in the 1840s...some of the things that colonialism brought via the laboratory theory were quite progressive and I think in one way it's the mixture of forwardness and backwardness created by that colonial power that on the one hand it would have these streamlined versions of modernity like the postal system or the education system, on the other hand it was woefully undercapitalised.'
I'm not much of a one for 'national character' in the sense of the plucky little Irish punching above their weight on the world stage in terms of influence, for no other reason but that it's in our nature, but if the above can be used in any kind of argument about the political choices facing us (and we do have choices) then feel free to take it and use it as you will.
I'm signing off now, and apologies if this liveblog wasn't as lively as it could have been - a combination of gremlins and other things sucking at my time kept it laggardly. Malachy will be here shortly to take you through to bedtime.
16.18 Another gremlin attack had the site slow down there; I fed them some Rich Tea though and soothed their troubled souls enough that they threw down their arms and are now quietly watching Doctors on RTÉ 1.
15.35 Carole Craig has just sent in a few pics from last night's protest.
15.10 In a further indication that it's a topsy turvy world we're living in (a world in which a cut to welfare is an incentive to work; a world where evolution quisler and Arnott's mannequin Conor Lenihan gets to be Minister for Science) Carole Craig writes:
Not the deepest analysis, but interesting source...
From Sunday's Sunday Times Magazine (in an article by Kevin Toolis on ghost estates headed 'To Let: Spacious country, in need of some refurbishment')
"...by 2000 many of those high-tech jobs were already flowing away to Delhi and Bangalore in the global hunt for an ever-cheaper workforce.Nobody in the government seemed to notice. Instead, in the late 1990s, the tax system was skewed in favor of property investment. Capital gains tax was reduced from 40% to 20%. Another tax break – the now notorious 1000 Section 23 scheme – allowed buyers to offset construction costs against their taxable income. If you bought two properties you could write off the rental income of the first houses against the cost of the second– a speculator's paradise.
"But the boom was like a gaint Ponzi scheme: the first wave of investors, a cartel of established developers, made huge money from the greed and naivety of smaller investors who came after them...."
While it probably is true that many journalists were as clueless about the likely outcome of our so-called boom as were an equivalent number of those they're supposed to exist to inform...ah bugger, I've just answered the rhetorical question I was going to ask there. Bit late now to be turning round and pointing out the bleedin obvious, lads*.
*I'm being harsh, here, and I do fully understand the constraints journalists work within (Nick Davies's Flat Earth News is an excellent primer on this one). I understand that there's no money for investigative journalism anymore, and that hacks are expected to churn out stories at a rate that has them - journalist and story - turn to butter, so I'll qualify: a commercial media run soley on the profit motive is worse than useless. And I hope some of the work here on BudgetJam has gone some way to showing the many ways in which this is so.
14.55 Just in via Harry Browne:
DEMONSTRATION TO SAVE THE MINIMUM WAGE
OUTSIDE DÁIL EIREANN
THURSDAY 9 DECEMBER - 1:00pm
A delegation of minimum wage workers will present our petition to TDs asking them to vote against proposals to cut the minimum wage to €7.65. (www.claimingourfuture.ie)
The proposed cut is contained in the Financial Emergency Measures In the Public Interest Bill 2010, due to be voted on in the Dáil on the 9th & 10th December.
Please show your support and join us at the Dáil at 1pm!
14.36 I was at the protest outside the Dáil last night, cowbell in hand, and I (simply) can't pass up the chance to say to the Pots n Pans gang that they're doing absolutely brilliant work. Their presence gave the protest not only life, rhythm and soul, it also helped keep it going longer than it probably would have if the night had conformed to the standard march-speech-chant-home template. We were there til well after nine, and as we were leaving a big enough group was still banging away while others chanted. That's no mean achievement when the temperture is below freezing. Watching Vincent Browne later and hearing the clatter going on in the background was quite something. Videos of the protest are starting to go up on YouTube, and we'll be collecting them (along with pictures) in our Protests section. For now, here's two:
You can't see much in this one, but it'll give you an idea of the noise:
14.20 The ever brilliant and eagle-eared Stephanie Rains sent this nugget from the News at One in earlier:
Sean Whelan on RTE 1 news has just informed us that up until this budget, TDs never paid PRSI (and that being now required to pay it is a 'pay cut' for them in real terms). I'm lost for words on both counts.
14.15 A new post by Michael Taft (which you can find here) makes for some chilling reading:
And at the risk of totally creeping you out, the ESRI estimates that there will be no wage-growth next year. However, non-wage income (rents, dividends, interest, and self-employment) will grow by 29 per cent. So those very high non-wage earners can look forward to not only an increase in their incomes, but tax breaks on top of that.
14.00 Afternoon all, Eadaoin here. It's collabo-blog time here on the BudgetJam liveblog. I'll be here curating your comments, observations, tweets and smoke signals for the next couple of hours. So send em on!
Kicking things off, reader whatsthetruth sent us a link to this video this morning:
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