ShareFacebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, Email Print Villager News Miscellany by admin 9 March, 2022, 9:58 pm 0 Comments August/September 20225Crick you brickOne inspiring perspective on politics, relevant to the abortion debate, came from Bernard Crick, a British political theorist who died in 2008. He wrote that politics, is a marketplace where irrec–oncilable interests come to resolve their difer–ences through compromise in order that people can devote their passions to the really important things in life.X, Why?Flashbacks to Ireland’s X case 30 years ago in Ohio which passed a law in 2019 that made abor–tion illegal around six weeks, when a foetal heart–beat can be detected. Hours after the Supreme Court overturned Roe, the Ohio law took efect. A ten-year-old girl, who had been raped, and was six weeks and three days pregnant,was forced to travel across the state line to Indiana to undergo an abortion. Formerly of course the Supreme Court had required all states to provide abortion services on the basis that the right to abortion de–rived from the Constitution.#ElonGateVillager loathes Elon Musk primarily because he seems to feel he is worth listening to when in fact all he is good at it making money, a capacity which in Villager’s mind is not a correlative of per–cipience. And inept quasi-wife-stealing. Anyway Nominative DeterminismWith the demise of Boris Johnson go a genera–tion of politicians with good, English, meaningful names. Mike Freer, resigned as the equalities minister, giving him more time to devote to freedom, the political inverse of equality. Robin Walker, a stalwart of a series of ministe–rial jobs under Johnson, moved on following the scandal raging about Chris Pincher’s pinchings. And Laura Trott…just left. According to Sky News: “Robert Halfon, the MP for Harlow, withdrew his support for Boris Johnson saying he had given the “beneft of the doubt” to Mr Johnson before, but recent events were “un–acceptable”. ‘Irishwoman’ Penny Mordaunt lost the Tories’ leadership election as she needed to daunt more. James Cleverley became education minister for a few minutes and, according to the Sunday Times, Conor Burns, a Mad Dog loyalist, is fuming that he didn’t promote him. Johnson’s former Security Minister James Brokenshire, who died last year, is now the subject of an annual lec–ture on “public service and restoring faith in poli–tics” at the Institute of Government.A crimeWell, Varadkar is not to be prosecuted for his breaches of the Ofcial Secrets Act (OSA) and perhaps the Corruption Act. Time was up for the OSA which has a six-month time-limit when, as it would have been here, it is prosecuted summar–ily. He’s had a hard enough time over the whole afair and he should be let get back to business though ideally with a little less deference to unfet–tered global capitalism, refex anti-environmen–talism and unedifying insistence on attacking those who made the complaints against him at every opportunity on TV3 and Virgin.News MiscellanyVillagerhe’s gratifyingly bungled his purchase of spammy Twitter, for $44bn, though it is now worth more than a quarter less than that. He is trying to extract himself — showing that he certainly is no gentle–man. Villager hopes he’s stuck with the inefable thing, which generates $6 per US user monthly in ad revenue, but has only one seventh the number of users (230,000) and one fourteenth the proft ($3.2bn in 2021) of Facebook, while its share price is roughly what it was when it foated nine years ago. Tik-Tok takeTikTok on the other hand is down with the kids — Twitter for adolescents — and makes creating flms easy. It has done for video-editing what In–stagram (whatever that is) did for photo-editing a decade ago, allowing amateurs to turn wobbly recordings into slick-looking flms.And whereas young audiences are now luke–warm about Facebook, TikTok has them hooked. Some 44% of its American users are under 25, compared with 16% of Facebook’s. According to the Guardian, which implausibly argues that “news fnds us in the best possible way and al–ways has”, it’s where we talk about Love Island. After 25 you’re fnished, Elon.Out of the toilet into the cold houseDavid Trimble, who has just died, was a cold man in the now luke-warm house. On the one hand he walked Vicky, his lesbian daughter, down the Laura TrottOhio goes back to basics, thirty years from 1992 6August/September 2022 aisle and later voted against his party’s line by supporting gay marriage in 2019 in the House of Lords when it was pushed on the North, though he had once opposed it in the Assembly. On the other hand Trimble’s daughter said he had been “taken aback” and “put his head in his hands” when she told him in 2013 that she was gay. “A lot of parents have a much worse reaction to their child coming out”, she noted plaintively. Vicky’s wife Ros said she frst met her future father-in-law while she was wrapped in a duvet and coming out of the bathroom of his London fat, where Vicky was liv–ing at the time. “I came out of the toilet and said to him that I wasn’t expecting anyone and he re–plied: ‘Neither was I’”, she recalled. “He’s always been really lovely and has become a father fgure to me”. Less endearingly, the awkward Lord told peers: “I have found myself taking a particular po–sition with regard to same-sex marriage which was forced upon me when my elder daughter got mar–ried to her girlfriend. I cannot change that, and I cannot now go around saying that I am opposed to it because I acquiesced to it. There we are”. Vicky told theBelfast Telegraph she had been “a little surprised” by her father’s comments. Book FestivalA really convenient short-cut every time the word Dalkey appears in the media is to just substitute the word money and see if that makes things clearer.The Dalkey Book Festival is the Marks and Spencer haberdashery department, the Magill Summer School, the Irish Times, the Kelly’s Hotel, of literary outings.Agog at agriIreland’s 135,000 farms produce 37 per cent of national emissions. The biggest agricultural pol–luters are intensive dairy farms. According to Pro–fessor John Sweeney, Teagasc estimates that the average dairy farm income last year was €94,000 with over two-thirds of all Irish farms being debt-free and about half of farm households having an additional of-farm income source.On the other hand, for transport, approximately 1.4 million Irish households have at least one car. Some 2.2 million vehicles are currently respon–sible for 18 per cent of emissions. Average house–hold income in 2020 was €52,941 and over half of Irish households carry some form of debt.Sweeney inferred in theIrish Times that “on equity considerations”, the bulk of the emissions reductions required by the carbon budget should not fall on the ordinary householder or car owner. Yet this is precisely what is being intended in or–der to protect the “special economic and social role of agriculture”, specifed in the legislation. Yet despite the sectoral carbon allocation of a 50% reduction to transport but only a spineless 22-30% to agriculture, Eamon Ryan seems on the cusp of agreeing a meagre 25%, pushing other sectors into probably unfeasible level of ambi–tion.Brownish GreensThe Greens are the Dalkey Book Festival of politi–cal parties. When was the last time the Greens took what might be described as an ‘ethical’ stance on any–thing. Worse, most of their initiatives, not just agricultural emission targets, simply get knocked back. There’s the Climate Act that was supposed to be, but is not, justiciable, i.e. enforceable (in court). And Malcolm Noonan’s recently aban–doned plan for a dedicated Wildlife Crime Unit to crack down on attacks on nature which has been dropped and replaced with proposals to increase the number of general wildlife rangers instead. There’s the so-called turf ban that allows (mer–curial) cutters to sell everywhere except shops.Then there’s the ‘latte levy’ on cofee cups. The Department of Environment, Climate and Com–munications is reviewing proposed legislation that was due to come into force in December, after lobby groups claimed the Circular Economy Bill could push consumers towards cheap plastic al–ternatives. TheIndo reported that the department “briefed several retail representatives confden–tially that they ‘underestimated the technical challenge’ of implementing the proposed law”.Although Green Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan brought the (€7.16-12.25bn indicative cost) MetroLink Preliminary Business Case to Cabinet in early July, and a planning application on the ‘megaproject’ will be lodged this September and it could be in operation in the early 2030s, roads continue apace. Approximately €600m of exchequer capital funds have been provided for national roads to local authorities in 2022. There’s no news on a resolution of the Cork-Limerick Motorway. In March 2,000 letters were posted to land and property owners along the route with some facing CPO. A decision has not yet been taken on whether the new route will be motorway all the way from Cork to Limerick with a speed limit of 120km/h or whether sections may be Type 1 Dual Carriageway which is broadly simi–lar to motorway but has a 100km/h speed limit.The Coonagh-Knockalisheen road in Limerick, the N24 Waterford-to-Cahir and N4 Mullingar-to-Longford road schemes are currently proceeding to planning after U turns by Minister Ryan. Dishonest AbeShinzo Abe, who has been brutally assassinated by a man who loathed the Moonies, whom Abe had praised, was the longest-serving Prime Min–ister in Japanese history. He was a nationalist and a denier of, for exam–ple, the Japanese government’s coercive role in enslaving comfort women in its invasion of China. His grandad was a war criminal.No ButsNobusuke Kishi, was known for his exploitative rule of Manchuria in the 1930s, and later served in the wartime cabinet of Prime Minister Hideki Tōjō where he co-signed the declaration of war against the US on December 7, 1941. After World War II, Kishi was imprisoned for three years as a suspected Class A war criminal. However, the amoral US did not charge him, and eventually released him as they considered him the best man to lead a post-war Japan in a pro-American direction. They were right. With US sup–port, he went on to consolidate the Japanese con–servative camp against perceived threats from a socialist party in the 1950s. Kishi was instrumen–tal in the formation of the powerful Liberal Demo–cratic Party (LDP) through a merger of smaller conservative parties in 1955. He was prime min–ister himself (1957-60), though he had to resign in disgrace following the mishandled 1960 revi–sion of the US-Japan Security Treaty. His younger brother, Eisaku Satō, also served as Prime Minis–ter (1964-72). And their grandson, Abe.Stewart RestorationAccording to Politico, at the recent Mark Twain Awards show on PBS Steve Colbert, Dave Chappelle and Pete Davidson all raised the prospect of Jon Stewart, former deadpan host of the ‘Daily Show’ and this year’s winner of the Taking time off from fying business class to stand in a parkInternational smugness with a local twist August/September 20227its impact on my health mean that I’ve not worked ever since Due to unforeseen circumstances I need to raise €1,600. Please help: https://pay–pal.me/JonathanSugarman.Blue ChomSky ThinkingNoam Chomsky, whose analysis and assess–ment of the facts is always accurate, even if his brilliant conclusions are not always wise, re–cently told the Kashmir Reader that it “should be clear that the (Rus–sian) invasion of Ukraine has no (moral) justifca–tion”. He compared it to the US invasion of Iraq, seeing it as an exam–ple of “supreme international crime”. With this moral question settled, Chomsky believes that the main “back–ground” of this war, a factor that is missing in mainstream media coverage, is “NATO expansion”.“This is not just my opinion”, said Chomsky, “it is the opinion of every high-level US ofcial in the diplomatic services, “Of course, it was provoked. Otherwise, they wouldn’t refer to it all the time as an unprovoked invasion. By now, censorship in the United States has reached such a level beyond anything in my lifetime. Such a level that you are not permitted to read the Russian position. Liter–ally. Americans are not allowed to know what the Russians are saying. Except, selected things. So, if Putin makes a speech to Russians with all kinds of outlandish claims about Peter the Great and so on, then, you see it on the front pages. If the Rus–sians make an ofer for a negotiation, you can’t fnd it. That’s suppressed. You’re not allowed to know what they are saying. I have never seen a level of censorship like this”.DemockracyIn the constitutionally ruinous UK, two policing bills in quick succession have shockingly aimed to shut down all efective forms of protest. They enable the police to stop almost any demonstra–tion on the basis that it is causing “serious disrup–tion”, a concept drafted so loosely that it could include any kind of noise. They would ban locking on: chaining oneself to railings or other fxtures, that has been a feature of meaningful protest throughout the democratic era. They would ban “interfering” with “key national infrastructure”, which could mean almost anything at all. They greatly expand police stop and search powers, a highly efective deterrent to civic action by black and brown people, who are disproportionately targeted by these powers. And, astonishingly, they can ban named people from engaging in any protest, on grounds that appear entirely arbitrary. These are dictators’ powers.In the US, state legislatures have been under–mining the federal right to protest, empowering the police to use vague, catch-all ofences such as “trespass” or “disrupting the peace” to break up demonstrations and arrest the participants. As–tonishingly, some proposed laws, in states such as Oklahoma and New Hampshire, have sought to grant immunity to drivers who run over protest–ers, or to vigilantes who shoot them. Ireland is on the verge of making the broad–casting of material that gives “ofence” a crime through its Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill. It is already an ofence to broadcast anything “tending to undermine the authority of the State”, whatever, crucially, that means. Taisce, GaisceVillager predicts that it ultimately is a race against time to see which of the State’s magnifcentredress schemes will cost more – mica (est cost €4bn) 0r defective apartments (est cost €3bn). Villager concludes the built legacy of Ireland’s as–cent to riches has been a midden and that anyone who objected to its creation stands vindicated. He glances for a second at a war-depleted An Taisce. Enjoy the HolidaysAs Villagewas going to print, Aer Lingus was deal–ing (or not dealing?) with around 1200 missing bags, its chief executive, Lynne Embleton told the Oireachtas Transport Committee. Whether your fight is one of the tens of thousands cancelled for reasons that essentially remain mysterious, your bags are lost or you are simply incinerated on a climate-ravaged beach, Villager wishes all of our readers the happiest of summer holidays. Twain Prize for American Humor, running for the White House, in their tributes to him at the awards. All did so with a requisite punch line, but in watching it you can’t help but think they know something the rest of us aren’t yet in on. Stewart v Trump would be no contest. Thwarted GrecommendationsThe Council of Europe’s anti-corruption body, GRECO, remains concerned that Ireland’s Judicial Appointments Bill results in the government still receiving a non-prioritised list of candidates for judgeships without any ranking of the nominated candidates, leading to “politicised decisions”. After all that.Tax bads not goodsThe independent Commission on Taxation and Welfare, established last year and chaired by Pro–fessor Niamh Moloney, is very sensible. It has rec–ommended higher and more extensive property taxes, a separate site value tax and imposition of congestion charges on city centre motorists as ways of funding increased spending on public services in the future.In a report to the Department of Finance in ear–ly July, the commission warned the Government that it will need to raise billions of euros in addi–tional revenue, primarily through increased taxa–tion, to fund age-related spending and the shift to a low-carbon economy over the next decade. For Villager increasing the pension age is an equitable way of apologising for the burden this genera–tion has dumped on the next. The shift to electric motoring and the loss of traditional motor tax receipts is expected to leave a €5 billion hole in the public fnances. Villager sees that as a model. Tax bad things until the pips squeak and then tax the next worse thing until its pips squeak. Taxation doesn’t only serve equity, it can steer a range of behaviours. Bail out a Hero not the banksJonathan Sugarman, with Chay Bowes and Mau–rice McCabe, Ireland’s most signifcant whistle–blower in recent times, has been unemployed since he drew attention 15 years ago to how the bank for which he was risk manager, Unicredit, could not meet its capital ratios and so was mis–reporting evidence that the Central Bank would otherwise have found useful in assessing the solvency of the banks, before they all ran into dif–fculties that spawned a bailout that bankrupted the country. Now he’s looking for funding. He re–cently wrote: “Retaliation by ‘Ofcial #Ireland’ & Vindicated: Taisce? ShareFacebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, Email See more Previous article Complex ethical questions face delinquent Wexford County Council CEO and his supporters in the Council. By Michael Smith. Back All Entries Next article Village Editorial: the NI Institutional Abuse apology is meaningless because the extent to which MI5 and others thwarted calls for a judicial tribunal and used Kincora to compromise senior figures who frequented it remains uninvestigated and unacknowledged.
