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    Clinton in perspective

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    Rejected Democrat candidate Bernie Sanders would have done nicely. He is passionate about the agendas of equality, sustainability and accountability. On equality: “The issue of wealth and income inequality is the great moral, economic and political issue of our time”. On Climate: “Climate change is the single greatest threat facing our planet. On accountability: “Are we prepared to take on the enormous economic and political power of the billionaire class, or do we continue to slide into oligarchy?”. Sanders, much more than Corbyn in Britain, more than the anti-property-tax, anti-water-charge Radical Left in Ireland, gets it. However, in his absence we are left with two conservative candidates: one sober and clever, the other bombastic, mendacious, fascistic and intolerant. Clinton is strong on the environment and climate but doesn’t buy the rhetoric or the meat on equality, and her record on accountability is tainted. Trump never mentions equality, doesn’t believe in climate change and can’t stop lying and reversing his positions. It would be better to like Hillary Clinton but she’s just too boring, just too insincere, just too compromised and above all just too conservative for this magazine. Since every word she has said since Bill became Governor in Arkansas in 1978, when she was 30 has been parsed and often shredded, she has not really been alive to exciting new ideas. Her intellectual curiosity seems to have peaked as an academic in Yale when she had radical views on children. Her political life has been a history of triangulation, of compromise, of expediency with, for America, a vaguely liberal, Democrat- just-left-of-centre gloss. This is a woman who until three years ago was not even in favour of gay marriage. In 2005 she said “I believe marriage is not just a bond but a sacred bond between a man and a woman”. She does not have the instincts of secular European liberals: “Bill and I went into our bedroom, closed the door and prayed together for God’s help as he took on this awesome honor and responsibility”, Clinton wrote of her husband winning the 1992 election. She grew up in a Methodist household, taught Sunday school like her mother and is a member of a Senate prayer group. Hillary has had a difficult time in the public eye but coped with some dignity, for example, with a husband who had a nastily roaming eye. Unfortunately for this otherwise gilded couple: for many the rosy picture they paint of undaunted mutual support rings false. This is something Trump was always liable to exploit. She is not an empathetic candidate. She is a shocking orator, shouts at public meetings and weirdly emphasises the wrong parts of words and sentences. More substantively, Hillary was never far from nancial wrangles when Bill was in the White House: there was Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, and a cattle-futures controversy. Anomalously and disturbingly for someone whose earnings ow almost exclusively from her public life, she now has an estimated worth of $45m. For the fifteen months ending in March 2015, Clinton earned over $11m from speeches and in 2013 she was paid $225,000 to speak at a Goldman Sachs’ conference on ‘Builders and Innovators’. When the Clintons’ indulgence of a revolving door of their policy-makers into and out of top positions in delinquent banks is taken into account, it leaves an unpleasant odour. Inevitably with such a long record in public life Clinton has left a legacy of controversy. Her failure to get healthcare reform through Congress during her husband’s Presidency has been attributed to arrogance. Her political life has been a history of triangulation, of compromise, of expediency with, for America, a vaguely liberal, Democrat-just-left-of-centre gloss steady and wonkish but generated a number of controversies. When in 2012 members of the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, were killed, Clinton was forced to take responsibility for security lapses. In 2015, it was revealed by the State Department’s inspector general that Clinton had always used personal email accounts on a private server instead of a federal server, during her tenure as secretary of state. In July the FBI concluded an investigation. The FBI said: “It is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal email account”. Although Clinton or her colleagues were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information”, the FBI recommended no charges. Clinton has tended to exaggerate the extent of the FBI’s exoneration of her. On many issues, the positions of Clinton and Trump align with that of their parties – Clinton wants to raise taxes on high-income households while Trump wants to cut taxes for all income brackets Clinton is pro-choice, Trump is pro-life; Clinton supports the DREAM Act and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, while Trump wants to deport all undocumented immigrants, build a wall on the Mexican border and be nasty to China; Clinton wants to expand gun control legislation, Trump does not;. Clinton is for LGBT rights; Trump says he sees himself as a “traditional guy” on the issue. On other issues, the lines are more blurry. Ironically, for example, alleged billionaire Trump claims to be for the small voter. Clinton has served as Secretary of State in the Obama administration, where she was responsible for orchestrating US foreign policy. She is perceived as more interventionist than Obama. Trump tends to non-intervention. Unless someone annoys him. Michael Smith

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    ‘A Date for Mad Mary’, into the difficulties of a troubled woman

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    ‘A Date for Mad Mary’ is one of the most heartfelt and immediately loveable films of the year. Based on Yasmine Akram’s play, ’10 dates for Mad Mary’, and directed by first time director Darren Thornton, the film is a compassionate tale of friendship, love and adversity. The film stars relative unknown Seána Kerslake, as the titular character “Mad” Mary McArdle. The plot involves Mary’s recent release from Mountjoy prison, after an apparent assault charge, as well as her subsequent attempt at reintegration into her old way of life, in Drogheda. But, as she soon comes to realise, the life she left, for better or for worse, is not the same as the one awaiting her upon her return. Her best, and only, friend Charlene (Charleigh Bailey) is about to get married. Charlene denies Mary a “plus one” invite to the event, assuming that she would be unable to find a date in time, leading Mary to become determined in disproving her. Struggling to find her place in a world she is completely ostracised from. This relatively unassuming plot summary does nothing to speak of the true richness of this film, which lies in its characters and the quality of its script. Through our protagonist of Mary, we are granted insight into the very down-to-earth life of a young woman who finds herself at constant odds with the world around her, while desperately clinging to a life she once knew, but which has left her behind. Alienated by her friends and family she attempts to both mature as a person, while staying true to herself. Mary is an incredibly well-written and captivating character. Seána Kerslake gives an incredible, nuanced performance of her character’s subtle complexities, especially for such a new face in film. From her gruff, abrasive exterior to her more sensitive and lonely side. Eloquently expressing emotion with little more than a twitch of the lip or a seemingly vacant gaze, achieving a calibre of performance, which even the recent breakout success ‘Sing Street’ could not. Thornton masterfully directs scenes from beginning to end, with a particular highlight being the scene in which Mary comes face to face with the victim of her assault. This wordless encounter manages to say more than any dialogue could about the ways in which Mary’s past haunts her, like an inescapable, ghostly presence, looming over her at all times. His incredible sound work with this scene is enthralling. On one level, ‘A Date for Mad Mary’ is a wonderful, true to life look into the difficulties of a troubled woman transitioning into maturity. But, on another level it is also a sign of the times for Irish cinema, which has seen a recent renaissance of sorts, with modern Irish films such as ‘Calvary’, ‘Frank’, ‘Brooklyn’, ‘Room’ and the previously mentioned ‘Sing Street’ all receiving international, critical acclaim. With two of the aforementioned films receiving nominations for best picture. As well as the country itself being used by larger productions as a frequent filming location, such as ‘Game of Thrones and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. One contributors to the current success in Irish cinema was made possible by the re-establishment of the Irish Film Board in 1993. The Irish Film Board attempts to bring Irish films to international audiences, through their assistance and funding. The fruits of their labour, however, have begun to truly ripen in the past half decade or so, with an increase in recognition for their achievements. The film industry has taken years to get to this point, with over twenty years already spent in the funding of Irish projects. It was a long process for the board to acquire the necessary skills to both identify viable projects and to advise film makers on the production of those projects. Unfortunately the Irish Film Board’s funding is down 40 per cent to €11.2 million from its 2008 peak of €20 million. The challenge now for the Irish film board and the industry is to make a persuasive  case for a re-establishment of funding levels seen prior to 2008. To do this they will need to both persuade the government and the wider film going audience of its merits. Brian Lenihan

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    Ideology Debate

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    Good or bad not right or left What does “left” mean today now that socialism is no longer on offer? By Desmond Fennell My exasperation with the use of language in current political commentary has culminated with a word that is now much-favoured by the commentators, namely, “populist”. The Oxford English Dictionary says that populist means: 1. “A member or adherent of a political party seeking to represent the interests of ordinary people. 2. A person who supports or seeks to appeal to the interests of ordinary people. Origin Latin populus ‘people’”. Political commentary (call it PC) always couples populism with “far right” as in “a populist far-right party”. “Right”, as we all know, means in PC language wrong; “farright” very wrong; an illegitimate intrusion into the democratic process no matter how many citizens it comprises. Clearly this view that politics “representing the interests of ordinary people” is by that very fact wrong is an elitist, anti-democratic view But it does raise the question: why is there is no mention of a left or far-left populism? Is it that simply there is no such thing? True, the Irish Labour Party could not qualify. When Eamon Gilmore, Ruairi Quinn and Pat Rabbitte were ministers they pursued in their respective spheres neo-liberal policies calculated to appeal to Dublin 4. But what of the water politics of Paul Murphy and associated Independents which drew many thousands of “ordinary people” onto the streets? Whatever the explanation, the fact is that – outside perhaps of Village Magazine – PC makes no mention of left-wing populism. I said at the start that my exasperation with PC has culminated with its use of “populist”. That means that other things about it had been building up to that exasperation. Basically, why doesn’t current PC use ordinary contemporary language, with its dictionary meanings, to express what the writer believes about individual politicians or groups or parties: words like ‘good’ or ‘bad’ with explanations of why good or bad, rather than a jargon which does not express in plain words what the writer means to say? Surely such hoary members of the political cast as “left”, “right”, “progressive” and “conservative” have more than had their day? At least in the French National Assembly of more than 200 years ago from which “left” and “right” derive, one knew that they referred to the Assembly’s seating arrangements and to those who sat accordingly. But what does “left” mean today now that socialism is no longer on offer? As for “right” the PC jargon equates it with “authoritarian”; but what is more authoritarian than Communist Russia which PC gave out to be “left”, or Communist China and North Korea today similarly? And take “progressive” meaning “moving forward”, but forward towards what? Is a state moving forward towards war “progressive” and if not why not?As for “conservative”, that is, “preserving something existing”, must such preservation always be objectionable as current PC implies? In short, I look forward to the day when some political commentator takes the present mess of the profession in hand and writes about politics in language that plainly and unmistakably means what it says. Left – egalitarian Good and bad won’t predict how politicians exercise the mandate voters give them By Michael Smith Desmond Fennell is exasperated. In a typically erudite piece (left) it is nevertheless not clear just what his analysis and vision are. The suspicion is that the piece is grounded in an unarticulated conservative right-wing populism, ill at ease with the reality that that is the prevailing international ideology. To start with the beginning of his piece, political commentary doesn’t always – or even predominantly – couple populism with “farright”. It really doesn’t. Venezuela, Brazil, Cuba and much of South America historically represent far-left populism writ large and have been defined as such. Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece have dominated political commentary for the last few years and are far-left populists. People Before Profit and the Anti Austerity Alliance in Ireland are far-left populists, pursuing that agenda through “issues-based” campaigns especially on charges for water and waste and the property tax – campaigns that are chosen for their popularity, not their leftistness. Sinn Féin also pursues the same campaigns from an apparently left base. Right doesn’t mean wrong for political commentators. Right is right for most of the US and British Press, for the emanations of IMN and Denis O’Brien, for the Sunday Business Post, the Sunday Times and, in incarnations like Stephen Collins and Cliff Taylor, for much of the Irish Times.   PC – and there’s sleight of hand here because PC has a very well-established voguish meaning of political correctness even though that’s being glossed over here – uses little but ordinary language with its dictionary meanings. Left, right, progressive and conservative will never have had their terminological day because they describe the basic stances that drive particular politicians in ways that enable voters to predict what stance they’ll take on issues that haven’t arisen yet but on which their vote is delegating the politician to take stances. Most analysts consider politics can be expeditiously considered on lef t-to-right, equality-to-freedom, progressive-toregressive, liberal-to-authoritarian, conservative- to-radical spectra. Wanting commentators to break everything down into what is good and what is bad – as Wilde claimed books are written only well or badly – would be a terrible bind for political scientists and politicians. You need to have pointers. The lesson from Fianna Fáil, from Fine Gael, from the entire history of post-Independence Irish politics, is that without ideology Irish parties fall back on parochialism, on nepotism, on short-termism, on confusion. You need to know what you’re voting for. If you’re seeking votes there is a moral obligation to indicate how you intend to ventilate your mandate. You can’t just say, like De Valera, you’ll simply look into your heart. Because people won’t trust you to. The seating positions afforded left and right in the French National Assembly, like Latin and all its emanations, are

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    When shall we three meet again?

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    This is a saga of sadness, a tragic tale of three ‘whiches’, a fairy ‘which’, a whichsoever ‘which’ and a wicked ‘which’. In initiating each of three referendums, David Cameron said, “You have a choice, ‘this’ or ‘that’, which do you want?”. So all three ballots were binary, and while the first two delivered what he wanted, the last one was, in effect, political suicide. All three outcomes were inaccurate reflections of ‘the will of the people’. Let’s have a look, and then let’s consider a better methodology. 2011 Referendum on the Electoral System After the 2010 general election, the UK had a coalition government: Cameron’s Conservative Party (Tories) and the Liberal-Democrats. And he probably thought to himself, “How can I rid myself of the Lib-Dems’ persistent pursuit of proportional representation, PR?” Hence the first ‘which’, so to silence any further debate on electoral reform. Some people liked single-seat constituencies, either the UK’s first-past-the-post, FPTP, a plurality vote; or France’s two-round system, trs, a plurality vote followed by a majority vote; both are single preference systems; or again, there is the Australian alternative vote, av, a preference vote which is like a knock-out competition – in a series of plurality votes, the least popular is eliminated after each round and his/her votes are transferred to the voters’ second or subsequent preference… until a candidate gets 50%. Meanwhile, many wanted PR in multi-member constituencies. There is the German half FPTP and half PR-list system called multi-member proportional, mmp. There is PR-list – in Israel, you vote for a party; in the Netherlands, for a candidate of one party; in Belgium, for one or more candidates of one party; and in Switzerland, for those of more than one party. Or there’s the Irish PR-single transferable vote, PR-STV, where voters can vote cross-party in order of preference; STV is like AV except that success depends on (not a majority but) just a quota of votes. Overall, then, the choice was huge. But Cameron’s 1st preference was FPTP and his 2nd av. So that was the 2011 referendum, the first ‘which’: “FPTP or AV, which do you want?” For countless (and uncounted) supporters of pr, this was like asking vegetarians, ‘Beef or lamb?’. Now maybe FPTP was the most popular but, based on data from just a two-option poll, impossible to say. For Cameron, however, it was a dream: he chose the question, and the question determined the answer, just as any fairy godmother would have wished: a massive 67.9 to 32.1%. Magic. Furthermore, the Electoral Commission said the question was fair. Amazing. The Ombudsman agreed. Incredible. And many thought this was all democratic. So that was the end of that argument. So why not a second fantasia, another referendum? Scotland 2014 “Double, double, toil and trouble”, said the witches in Macbeth. The Scottish Nationalist Party, (SNP), always on about independence. How can I rid myself of these skittish Scots? This was Cameron’s second problem, and so, as if on a broomstick from the darkest recesses of Westminster, the second ‘which’ enters the political stage. There were three options: (a) the status quo, (b) maximum devolution or ‘devo-max’ as it was called, and (c) independence. Thinking that (a) would easily beat (c) in a two-option contest, just as FPTP had wiped out av, Cameron waved his wizard’s wand and demanded a binary ballot. So the second ‘which’ was again dichotomous: “(a) or (c), which do you want?” In the campaign itself, however, the gremlins were grumbling, option (c) was gaining ground. Cameron twitched; no – panicked: and so, as if at the witches’ coven, a vow was made – zap! – and option (a) morphed into option (b). On the ballot paper, however, there was no switch, the ‘which’ was still “(a) or (c)?” So the result was a stich-up: 55.3% and 44.7% respectively were highly in ated levels of support for (a) and/or (c). Furthermore, the winner was (b)… but no-one had voted for it! For Cameron, though the potion was fading, the plebiscite was still successful, and that was the (very temporary) end of that argument too. We return to the diviners’ den. The EU Referendum Believing as it does in majority voting, the Tory Party (and many another) is a beast of two wings and no body. Little wonder that this weird creature is often in a ap, especially over Europe. “Those cursed Europhobes”, he might have muttered. And then, stage extreme right, another scary monster, the UK Independence Party, Ukip. “Oh how can I rid myself of these damned devils?” Ah-ha, the third… but this was the wicked ‘which’. The wrong side won. The Electoral Commission’s semantic change from ‘yes-or-no?’ or ‘in-or-out?’ to ‘remain-or-leave?’ did not change the poisonous potent of the poll, its binary bind, its divisive ‘positive-or-negative’ nature. The question – “Which do you want?” – was again adversarial. The campaign was horrible. And the result? 48.1% chose ‘remain’ to 51.9% ‘leave’. But nobody knows what the latter actually want! To suggest, then, that this outcome is ‘the will of the people’ is, again, bunkum. Meanwhile, politically, Cameron is dead, impaled on his own petard; in a word, ‘bewhiched’. Democratic Theory and Practice So what should have happened? Well, consider first a hypothetical example. The average age of the electorate cannot be identified by a majority vote. If such a piece of research were to be attempted, the question would probably be, “Are you young or old?” In which case, no matter what the answer and by what percentage, it would be wrong! If, however, the question were multi-optional, ‘Are you in your twenties, thirties, forties, etc.?’ the answer could be pretty accurate. With average age or collective opinion, as in a German constructive vote of con dence, voters should be positive. No-one should vote ‘no’ or ‘out’ or ‘leave’; instead, everyone should be in favour of something: for the UK to be in the EU, or like Norway in the EEA, or like Switzerland in a looser

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    Irexit

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    Since the Brexit referendum in June I have been rapporteur of a Private Study Group of Irish economists and constitutional lawyers who have been examining what we should do when and if the UK leaves the EU. In August their report was sent to the Taoiseach, his Ministers and the Secretary-Generals of all Government Departments. It has been sent also to the EU embassies in Dublin, to UK Prime Minister Theresa May, her key Ministers and senior civil servants concerned with Brexit, and to a wide range of British Brexiteers whom my colleagues and I have got to know over the years. The report’s basic conclusion is that it is in the interest of the Irish people that Brexit should be accompanied by “Irexit” – Ireland exit. We applied to join the then EEC in 1961 because Britain and Northern Ireland did so. We joined simultaneously with the UK and Denmark in January 1973. Now that Britain and the North are leaving, we should do the same, for three principal reasons. The first is that Ireland is nowadays a loser, not a gainer, from EU membership. In 2014 we became a net contributor to the EU Budget for the first time, paying in €1.69bn and receiving €1.52bn. This means that in future any EU moneys that come to the Republic under the CAP, EU cohesion funds, research grants, support for community groups and the like, will be Irish taxpayers’ money coming back, employing some Brussels bureaucrats on the way. Henceforth the EU will no longer be the ‘cash cow’ most Irish people have regarded it as for decades, and which is the basis of much of our official and unofficial europhilia. A bonus would be that outside the EU Ireland can take back control of its sea-fishing waters. Eurostat’s estimates of the value of fish catches by non-Irish boats in Irish waters since 1973 are a many-times multiple of the EU cash we got over that time. The second reason why Irexit should go along with Brexit is that that is the only way of preventing the North-South border within Ireland becoming an EU external frontier, with new dimensions added to Partition, affecting trade, travel and different EU laws and legal standards as between Dublin and Belfast. For example without the UK as an EU Member alongside it, the Republic would be in a much weaker position to withstand pressure to adopt continental norms in EU crime and justice policy, which differ signi cantly from Anglo-Saxon ones in such areas as trial by jury, the presumption of innocence and habeas corpus. Such divergence would adversely affect good relations within Ireland as a whole and while it would not undermine the Peace Process, it would not help it either. If we stay in the EU while the UK leaves it would mean that for Irish reunification to come about at some future date the people of the North would have to rejoin an EU that Britain had long left, adopt the euro-currency, take on board a share of the €64bn of private bank debt which the ECB insisted that Irish taxpayers nance during the 2008-2010 currency crisis, and implement the further integration measures that are likely to be needed over the coming years if the Eurozone is to be held together. It would give 26 EU Governments in addition to the UK and the Republic a veto on eventual Irish reunification. Such a development should be unacceptable to all Irish nationalists. Another consideration is that if the South remains in the EU while the North leaves along with Britain, future Irish reunification would make the whole of Ireland part of an EU military bloc that is likely to come under greater Franco- German hegemony following Brexit. That potentially could be a security threat to Britain. This will surely change significantly the calculus of British State interest and give Britain a strategic reason for keeping the North inside the UK, an interest it has not got today. The third reason why most Irish people should now reassess their attitude to the EU is that the business case for Ireland remaining an EU member diminishes significantly if the UK leaves. Most foreign investment that comes here is geared to exporting to English-speaking markets, primarily the UK and USA, rather than to continental EU ones. Once the UK leaves the EU two-thirds of Irish exports will be going to countries that are outside it, as they are going today to countries outside the Eurozone, and three-quarters of our imports will be coming from outside. Outside also, Ireland’s 12.5% corporation tax rate would no longer be under EU threat. Of course our relations with the UK and the EU in the Brexit context are complicated by our membership of the Eurozone. Irish policy-makers abolished the national currency and joined the Eurozone in 1999 on the assumption that the UK would do so also and that by going first they would show how communautaire they were. It was an utterly irresponsible action in view of the fact that the Republic does most of its trade with countries that do not use the euro. With the pound sterling falling against the euro as the UK disengages from the EU, Ireland desperately needs an Irish pound that can fall with it, so maintaining its competitiveness in its principal export markets – the UK and America. That is why the Irish State urgently needs to get its own currency back. Economist Chris Johns noted in the Irish Times on 20 August that if the Irish pound existed today it would be worth some 10 percent more than the pound sterling. This was the level it reached in January 1994, when Irish industry was in crisis because of its overvalued exchange rate – explicitly then, implicitly today. That in turn precipitated the major devaluation which inaugurated our ‘Celtic Tiger’ years. Ireland needs to regain the freedom of being able to determine its own exchange rate. There is no legal way to

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    Oxford, Britain

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    North Oxford is a heartland of academia where leafy halls of residence mingle with stately homes and rarefied hostelries. Situated in almost the very centre of Britain a windless calm favours scholarly reflection removed from modernity’s fugue. Even the traffic is orderly with bicycles sensibly preferred. It is one of the most attractive places in the world. Spend an afternoon on the lawns at Christchurch if you doubt it. Oxford is world-class in so many ways: the city and the university. PWC and Demos rated it the best place to live in Britain, in 2012, across a wide range of criteria. Shanghai ratings names Oxford University the seventh best in the world. South Oxfordshire was recently named Britain’s best rural place to live. It is transcendent England. What has this to say about Brexit, the political issue of this generation? The City of Oxford is located on the confluence of the Isis (the idiosyncratic name for the Thames here) and Cherwell rivers. Broadly, it may be divided into three zones with a clear north-south divide: that affluent and mature north Oxford of Jericho and Wolvercote; predominantly twentieth-century suburbs including Cowley to the south; and the historical and commercial centre linked to Botley and Osney Island, built around an Anglo-Saxon settlement of which little remains. This contains renowned colleges such as Christchurch, Balliol and Magdalen. The first sign of incongruity is how close it nestles to the ‘any-town-UK’ commercial centre and its array of gaudy chains. Moving south, there is yet another Oxford as housing gets cheaper and industry is evident. The first industrial revolution passed Oxford by as colleges objected to the contagion of commerce. Only after World War II did significant manufacturing arrive as the city attracted a car industry. By the early 1970s, 20,000 people were employed in the sector and the original Mini Minor was developed here in 1959. Unfortunately, as in much of the country, a significant proportion of heavy industrial jobs have departed. The working class areas now face social problems familiar in many English cities. Living as a jobbing tutor and supply teacher in Oxford for two years I encountered classroom behaviour that made experiences in schools in socially-deprived areas of Dublin seem almost meditative. Oxford is a place of profound educational inequality. Oxford accomodates a great literary tradition: JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Lewis Carroll, Kenneth Graham and Irish Murdoch wrote from Oxford. The number of Prime Ministers that have passed through Oxford University is startling. 28 overall. Only Jim Callaghan and John Major, who revelled in his immersion in the university of life, among English Prime Ministers since Winston Churchill (who finally left office in 1955) did not pass along its quads. Alumna Theresa May (St Hugh’s, 1974) joins a list that includes Labour Prime Ministers Tony Blair (St John’s, 1974), Harold Wilson (Jesus College, 1937) and Clement Atlee (University College, 1904) as well as Tories Anthony Eden (Christchurch College, 1922), Harold MacMillan (Balliol College, 1914) Edward Heath (Balliol College, 1939), Margaret Thatcher (Somerville College, 1947), and David Cameron (Brasenose College, 1988). Oxford indubitably has seeded the post-War UK political establishment. Moreover, numerous Tory politicians maintain an association with the wider shire. Churchill himself was born in the nearby ancestral estate of Blenheim Palace (though he passed some of his early childhood in Dublin’s Phoenix Park). David Cameron, MP for Witney, Oxfordshire, lives in Chipping Norton close to Rebekah Brooks, Jeremy Clarkson and the rest of the well-placed Chippy set. Michael Heseltine (Pembroke College, 1954) dwells in style nearby though one imagines he looks slightly askance at the gobby neighbours. Theresa May grew up in the village of Wheatley a few miles east of Oxford where her father served as vicar. Further east towards London, Boris Johnson (Balliol College, 1987), the new foreign secretary, lives in Henley-on-Thames. Jeremy Paxman, Richard Branson, Kate Moss, Kate Winslet, Rowan Atkinson, Jeremy Irons and Ben Kingsley: celebrities, high-and-low-brow, live in Oxfordshire. Perhaps the county has a quality – an England of the imagination – that grandees of all sorts gravitate towards. It could be the low rural population density, a legacy of the Enclosure Acts (1760-1830) that placed formerly common land in the hands of expanding gentlemen farmers. Today, though located only an hour from some of the most in ated land prices in the world in London, it is possible to drive for long stretches without seeing a single dwelling. The hoi polloi were kept at bay, in Oxford and swathes of its hinterland. As an Irish person living in the city of Oxford I never had a sense that I was unwelcome, or at least any alienation was no different to that felt by the bulk of the population before a converging aristocratic and mercantile elite: unlike the ancient regime in France since the Tudor era, nobility has been open to the highest bidder and an Oxford education provides the polish. One must however acclimatise to the southern English reserve and a sardonic sense of humour. The historian Tony Judt (St Anne’s College 1980- 87), who concededly knew little of Ireland, wrote that the English are perhaps “the only people who can experience schadenfreude at their own misfortunes”. Succumbing to generalisation I regard English friendships as firmer than Irish for all the latter’s sociability. But these societies of companions generate mosaic communities often hostile to one another. Better the devil you know and bugger the rest. In the era of the Internet there is a growing suspicion of the ruling class of politicians. Many do feel “shat on by Tories, shovelled up by Labour” in the words of Uncle Monty in ‘Withnail and I’. They are often seen as a separate cast reflecting the cultural dominance of Oxford and Cambridge Universities (‘Oxbridge’) which extends to the media and business. This trend perhaps explains why maverick and grumpy (though otherwise profoundly different) outsiders such as Jeremy Corbyn, Nigel Farage (and Boris Johnson who went rogue over Brexit) are appealing to a jaded electorate; a state of

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    Galway Sprawlway

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    Around one hundred submissions were received by Galway’s City Council on its Draft Development Plan 2017-23 by the deadline of 5 October. Meanwhile, a number of well-known community and environmental activists in Galway City have come together to form a new alliance to promote a ‘Future Cities’ concept based on “regenerative urban development, ‘green’ living, smart technologies and a sustainable transport. They have a lot on their plate. It’s a planning and transportation mess with no visionary Messiah. In many small cities comparable in size to Galway, people are regenerating and humanising their urban environments by introducing woodlands, gardens, recreational parks and city-wide 24/7 cycling, walking and public bus or train systems. Yet here in Galway City we are now proposing to build the N6 ringroad that will cut through homes, villages, neighbourhoods, farmland, key wildlife habitats, a university campus and sports elds, and lead to further mindless urban sprawl of this, in so many ways, creative city. Then, having spent €700m on a new road, there will be no incentive or money left to introduce the Public Transport improvements being promised “after the road is built”. If Galway City is to have a sustainable future, the authorities should immediately bin a policy based on a discredited ‘predict and provide’ private car-based transportation model and instead should use the available €500-750m to construct a hierarchical transport model based on a ‘new mobility’ prioritising pedestrians, cyclists and users of public transport”. When the IDA first developed its business parks at Parkmore in the early 1970s there were very few businesses initially established out that far. So having only one main entrance avenue wasn’t a problem. In the intervening years the estate has exploded so it now accommodates many of the world’s leading medical device and IT manufacturers. With very little available public transport passing, let alone actually entering the estate: the sheer number of private cars coming in has now reached crisis point. Yet Galway Co Council actually gave permission for a new sub-standard entrance/exit point and junction giving the planning board no choice but to refuse permission. In September An Bord Pleanála duly reversed the permission because “its construction would endanger public safety by reason of traffic hazard”. This decision could, should, force debate about the much larger can of worms around Ireland’s lack of a ‘sustainable’ National Spatial Strategy’. The daily traffic chaos in Parkmore is a symptom of the much wider problem we have in historic spatial planning in Galway, with rapidly increasing numbers of people having to commute from their new homes in County Galway to their workplace in the city, by car. This phenomenon has become overwhelming over the past 40 years. Workers living in the city but working in Parkmore/Ballybrit have been failed by the lack of civic imagination that might have provided an adequate public transport system in the city. For a youthful and fashionable city, capital of ‘craic’, dubbed as progressive, and once crowned ‘the fastest growing city in Europe’ this is anachronistic. In its May 2014 Newsletter, the Western Development Commission – using an IDA case-study, stated that “of the 16,701 rural dwellers commuting to work within the gateway of Galway city, one quarter (25.6% or 4,285) commute to work in the IDA estates”. The first figure refers not just to people heading in to Ballybrit, Parkmore and Galway Technology Parks, but others who commute further still into the heart of Galway city, for work at GMIT, NUIG and UCHG, our largest city-centre employment nodes. As James Wickham said in his book ‘Gridlock’: “Car dependency is an issue for social policy. Car dependency exacerbates social exclusion, for those who do not have a car run the risk of being excluded from normal life. Their access to jobs is restricted, they find it difficult to move around the city, they are not full citizens”. There is a belief that transportation problems result from the antedeluvian planning policies of the 1980s and 1990s, both at local and national level. These intensi ed in Galway from the time Colin Buchanan and Partners published its ‘Galway Transportation and Planning Study’ in September 1999. This report together with its subsequent 2002 ‘Integration Study’ commissioned jointly by Galway City and County Councils, led to a situation in Galway, not dissimilar to that of Dublin, where availability of sufficient reasonably priced housing units in the city failed to keep up with growing public demand. This, combined during the madness of the Celtic Tiger years, with pressure being applied by county councillors and developers turned Galway’s surrounding towns, villages and particularly countryside into worker dormitories: for families that had been priced out of continuing to live in Galway city. The Galway County Development Plan of 2002, which integrated the recommendations from the Buchanan Report, facilitated development in places ringed around the city: Bearna, Moycullen, Claregalway, Tuam, Oran- more and Athenry. And everything in between. Responding to Galway County Council’s then- Draft Development Plan in July 2002, then City Manager John Tierney wrote to Donal O’Donoghue, then County Manager, expressing some concern over proposed policies which would continue to promote a wider spread of settlement, and not the concentration into the 38 towns, villages and proposed development at Ardaun that had been planned. He stated: “The cumulative effect of these policies/objectives all greatly undermines the ‘Galway Transport and Planning Study’ GTPS, any sustainable approach to a settlement structure and consequently any ability to promote a sustainable public transport system. It would exacerbate the current dependence on private vehicular transport and the consequent negative effects of this”. Tierney’s pleas went ignored, and widespread ‘one off’ housing development in County Galway continued unabated, with septic tanks mushrooming leading to water pollution, cryptosporidium, and a culture of lengthy commutes into once homely Galway City. So a long-term strategic policy for planning where people might be sustainably housed was scupperedd, due to the regime, the report and thousands of concomitant individual acts of planning anarchy, cumulatively undermining any regional strategy. The problem is now self-pepetuating and solution-less.

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