With the GE of 2011 we will finally see the end of a particular plague in Irish politics. The nature of our democratic process always lends itself to a coalition government, and the 2+1 nature of previous governments has had the added affliction of having independents and pseudo-independents all extracting their pound of flesh in order to support the status quo. But it's not as simple as that. The independent gombeen princes can only garner so much in favour and kind but retain their seats on the backbenches. Their power is limited compared to the real princes, who, because of their ability to top the local polls and bring in one or more TD's based on their surplus and preferences, have sought and maintained a ministry role within government and then used their influences at national level to bring favour to their local constituency.
And so since the early 1980's we have had a cyclical scenario in Irish politics where, thanks to the withdrawal of local taxation - which reinforced the reduction in the perceived role of councillors against TD's - we had a situation where people voted on local issues rather than national ones, nothing new I understand, but now a perception grew that by voting for independents and certain politicians, the constituents would gain in terms of employment, access to services, and improvement to those services and infrastructure. And this became self-prophesying. What was the point in voting for a national candidate when a local driven candidate could offer so much more in terms of payback? Thus we have 30 years where the local and parastatal nature of Irish politics and semi-state bodies has only increased their relevence and importance.
In order to bring this to a natural conclusion, we also have to pay attention to the other topic that has ruined our political landscape and that is the nature of legacy politics.
Roughly speaking, and paying little attention to offending sensibilities, legacy politics is literally dying on its feet. The idea of voting for a political party purely for family reasons is an anachronistic trapping from the past. By and large it benefits only two parties, FF and FG. A generalisation and perhaps a truism, is that these voters are both rural and aged. We have already seen how the rural/urban divide is striking in terms of how the respective voters vote. It's FF/FG in the rural areas and Labour/FG in the urban ones. The significance however, is that as this century continues along, populations continue to cluster towards the cities and away from these legacy strongholds. Furthermore, the forthcoming decade of stagnation will further increase the legacy flight by means of emigration to urban and foreign destination.
And so in 2011, we will have a coalition government with a comparative enormous majority over the opposition. FF, Green, SF and Independent TD's will be completely irrelevant in terms of importance in local and indeed national politics, The Irish electorate are no fools in terms of electing self-serving politicians. What is the point in electing these TD's if they are in no position to action on the promises whispered in bars, funerals and houses of their constituents? We will, after a very long time, finally have a government with a full mandate to govern on national issues only, with a sufficient majority to see things through, and a genuine opportunity to bring about genuine political reform.
It is at this point that we reach the unknown. Strategists in Labour and FG will be spending quite a lot if time cogitating on their most important task, and that is, remaining in power and a further reduction in FF's power-base. And therein lies the rub. Unless the forthcoming coalition engenders genuine political reform by doing away with the local parastatal nature of Irish politics, promoting local government to its proper place and installing a list system, we risk the possibility of returning to this awful spectre within 5 years. This cannot happen again. The unbelievable circumstances that have arisen to allow this change occur - and the price we are paying for it - must not be wasted. It is imperative that Labour and FG launch their campaigns on a joint platform of wide-reaching reform. This opportunity can only come about in the best of times and the worst of times.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Water Charges
So, on the way back home in the car and all the talk was about water rates. Mary Wilson was conducting a not-too-brilliant conversation with Joanne Tuffy from the Labour party and Oisin from one of those ecological do goody goody NGO's.
All rather frustrating, I don't see the solution as being particularly taxing so to speak.
In relation to taxes, people are looking for two things. They want fair taxes based on ability to pay, and they want transparency on where those taxes go.
For example the taxes we pay for the roads infrastructure and all the associated costs is a fraction of the revenue the government used to generate through VRT, fuel taxes and road taxes. While there has been a huge improvement in our road structure recently it really only brings us up to a base minimal standard. All the other taxes raised have been used for a variety of other forms of public spending.
So when we tax the public for water charges, we need to show that all the income is used exclusively to do the following:
1. Reduce the amount of water households use. The waste of water in this country is enormous, because rather like a free bar people abuse the privilege. The only way to stop the abuse is to charge people for it. Personally I'd estimate you could reduce water usage by 40% with a direct tax.
2. Improving the infrastructure. So we lose 30% of our water through leaking pipes etc. It'll cost a lot to replace and fix these, and you'll never be able to cure it, but you could cut this water loss in half. Infrastructure also refers to supplying meters to every house and giving discount vouchers for people to purchase water butts.
3. Improving the quality of water. Because of our unique heritage I think we should be aiming to have the best quality water in Europe. Why do people need to buy bottles water if the tap water provided is of a better quality. Remember Dasani?
So how do we implement this tax? Fairly?
You'll need some independent expert to come up with a formulae where you enter in # number in the household and their ages. This will give you a quarterly amount that they should be consuming. Now take 10% off this volume. Every unit that the household goes above this volume realises itself as a direct water tax.
For the poor, pensioners and the like, add 10% to their volume and tax them only if they exceed this inflated amount.
Will this raise enough tax? I don't know, but it's a start one feels. But here's the beauty, once you've paid for the infrastructure and purification you can drastically decrease the taxation on the public, because all you're paying for is the maintenance of your water systems.
But you're still left with all the measures needed to reduce the wastage.
If I was in government I would be talking to the UK to set up a joint water pipeline to pump all our excess water into southern Europe. Because we know that water in the 21st century is going to become a very valuable commodity.
My suggestion would be for our high quality purified water should be sold on a commercial basis to southern EU countries and the proceeds used to deliver heavily subsidised water to Africa using the same pipelines.
What's not to like?
All rather frustrating, I don't see the solution as being particularly taxing so to speak.
In relation to taxes, people are looking for two things. They want fair taxes based on ability to pay, and they want transparency on where those taxes go.
For example the taxes we pay for the roads infrastructure and all the associated costs is a fraction of the revenue the government used to generate through VRT, fuel taxes and road taxes. While there has been a huge improvement in our road structure recently it really only brings us up to a base minimal standard. All the other taxes raised have been used for a variety of other forms of public spending.
So when we tax the public for water charges, we need to show that all the income is used exclusively to do the following:
1. Reduce the amount of water households use. The waste of water in this country is enormous, because rather like a free bar people abuse the privilege. The only way to stop the abuse is to charge people for it. Personally I'd estimate you could reduce water usage by 40% with a direct tax.
2. Improving the infrastructure. So we lose 30% of our water through leaking pipes etc. It'll cost a lot to replace and fix these, and you'll never be able to cure it, but you could cut this water loss in half. Infrastructure also refers to supplying meters to every house and giving discount vouchers for people to purchase water butts.
3. Improving the quality of water. Because of our unique heritage I think we should be aiming to have the best quality water in Europe. Why do people need to buy bottles water if the tap water provided is of a better quality. Remember Dasani?
So how do we implement this tax? Fairly?
You'll need some independent expert to come up with a formulae where you enter in # number in the household and their ages. This will give you a quarterly amount that they should be consuming. Now take 10% off this volume. Every unit that the household goes above this volume realises itself as a direct water tax.
For the poor, pensioners and the like, add 10% to their volume and tax them only if they exceed this inflated amount.
Will this raise enough tax? I don't know, but it's a start one feels. But here's the beauty, once you've paid for the infrastructure and purification you can drastically decrease the taxation on the public, because all you're paying for is the maintenance of your water systems.
But you're still left with all the measures needed to reduce the wastage.
If I was in government I would be talking to the UK to set up a joint water pipeline to pump all our excess water into southern Europe. Because we know that water in the 21st century is going to become a very valuable commodity.
My suggestion would be for our high quality purified water should be sold on a commercial basis to southern EU countries and the proceeds used to deliver heavily subsidised water to Africa using the same pipelines.
What's not to like?
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
The Irish economy
We're in pretty big trouble here. There's so much crap flying around it's difficult to isolate the issues. Broadly speaking there are two main problems, a spin off problem based on the first two, and a solution that resolves one but not both.
Problem #1. The Bank Crisis.
So our banks are the same as everybody else's. While we were not effected by the sub-prime problems in the States nor the kind of corporate greed of credit default swaps, we just had greedy bankers giving away truckloads of borrowed cash to an increasingly heated property market.
You can't blame the government for this with one exception, regulation. Who regulates the regulator? When you consider that outside agencies such as The New York Times were pointing the finger at Ireland's lack of fiscal governance, you'd think someone up high would take an interest in it.
The most damning thing is potentially still out there. From what I can see it appears our ex-financial regulator, civil servants within the Central Bank, and certain Irish banks like IL&P and Anglo-Irish actively colluded together to lie to the Stock exchange, outside investors, and the Irish people.
So either someone in the government was aware of this and should be sacked, or else nobody was aware of it and so were therefore merely stupid and incompetent. As you may be aware, being stupid and incompetent is not a sackable offence in this country, just look at our current Tanaiste, Mary Coughlan.
Problem #2 The balance of payments.
Look guys, what goes up must come down. I don't think any country in the world that has gone through a property boom where prices doubled or tripled hasn't gotten away with the fabled 'soft landing'. The prices will always crash.
For the last 12 years we have had a government with Plan A. Make revenue from property sales. Plan B was when people sold their house and made lots of money they would buy nice new shiny 4X4's and give themselves lots of nice things they really didn't need. So the government had the VAT and VRT revenues lining their pockets.
Plan C was to give most of this money away in tax cuts (so they would get elected) and tax breaks for the wealthy, or at least those of us who could afford accountants.
Plan D was to create lots of jobs in the public sector and pay them whatever they wanted and under any terms and conditions, without any benchmarking on trivial things like skill, ability and value for money.
Because there's no tomorrow is there?
So now we have a situation where the government have to borrow €55m every day just to keep the show going because they, and they alone, have wasted the opportunity to make us into a fiscally responsible country like say Germany.
I've yet to hear anyone from the government apologise for ruining our economy. When you consider that our current Taoiseach was the minister for finance for 4 of the more recent years, the buck has to stop there.
It's said that you get the government you deserve. Are the Irish that bad a people?
Problem #3 The spin off
There are two organisations that give countries and financial institutions credit ratings by their clinical and expert perspectives. One is Moody's and the other is Standard & Poors. As it stands at the moment, they consider us to be the riskiest country in the EU zone to give credit to.
That means we're riskier to lend money to than Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece. No offence to Greeks but your country is a basket case, and apparently we're worse. Being riskier means it costs more money to borrow and the cost of insuring that money is higher too.
Why is this? Well it's a combination of problems #1 & #2. But critically, it's also a commentary on how the government are handling the crisis and how much confidence they have in our banking and regulation system.
Yes, we're that bad. Don't take my word for it, take the word of the market. And as we've seen over the last few months, time and time again the government have been wrong, and the market has been right.
The solution. But only for one
We had a finance minister who some time ago thought it would be a good idea to save a bit of money for a rainy day. His name was Charlie McCreevy. He was exiled from Minister for Finance to EU Commissioner some time ago to be replaced by the wonderfully short sighted Brian Cowan.
Charlie, and I'm not a fan as he's as much to blame as Mr Cowan, decided to put away and invest 1% of GDP every year. This fund was worth (even after a woeful year in investments) about €20 billion at the end of 2008. This, and only this, is keeping our heads above water.
In itself it would be enough to resolve our banking crisis. In itself it would be enough to reduce the chronic tax burden and enormous cuts we are going to experience over the next 4-5 years.
But it can't do both.
It just shows what could and should have been done over the last 12 years.
There's no point saying that we're learning from our mistakes, these kind of errors only happen once a century.
So that's it, we're screwed.
Thanks Fianna Fail.
Problem #1. The Bank Crisis.
So our banks are the same as everybody else's. While we were not effected by the sub-prime problems in the States nor the kind of corporate greed of credit default swaps, we just had greedy bankers giving away truckloads of borrowed cash to an increasingly heated property market.
You can't blame the government for this with one exception, regulation. Who regulates the regulator? When you consider that outside agencies such as The New York Times were pointing the finger at Ireland's lack of fiscal governance, you'd think someone up high would take an interest in it.
The most damning thing is potentially still out there. From what I can see it appears our ex-financial regulator, civil servants within the Central Bank, and certain Irish banks like IL&P and Anglo-Irish actively colluded together to lie to the Stock exchange, outside investors, and the Irish people.
So either someone in the government was aware of this and should be sacked, or else nobody was aware of it and so were therefore merely stupid and incompetent. As you may be aware, being stupid and incompetent is not a sackable offence in this country, just look at our current Tanaiste, Mary Coughlan.
Problem #2 The balance of payments.
Look guys, what goes up must come down. I don't think any country in the world that has gone through a property boom where prices doubled or tripled hasn't gotten away with the fabled 'soft landing'. The prices will always crash.
For the last 12 years we have had a government with Plan A. Make revenue from property sales. Plan B was when people sold their house and made lots of money they would buy nice new shiny 4X4's and give themselves lots of nice things they really didn't need. So the government had the VAT and VRT revenues lining their pockets.
Plan C was to give most of this money away in tax cuts (so they would get elected) and tax breaks for the wealthy, or at least those of us who could afford accountants.
Plan D was to create lots of jobs in the public sector and pay them whatever they wanted and under any terms and conditions, without any benchmarking on trivial things like skill, ability and value for money.
Because there's no tomorrow is there?
So now we have a situation where the government have to borrow €55m every day just to keep the show going because they, and they alone, have wasted the opportunity to make us into a fiscally responsible country like say Germany.
I've yet to hear anyone from the government apologise for ruining our economy. When you consider that our current Taoiseach was the minister for finance for 4 of the more recent years, the buck has to stop there.
It's said that you get the government you deserve. Are the Irish that bad a people?
Problem #3 The spin off
There are two organisations that give countries and financial institutions credit ratings by their clinical and expert perspectives. One is Moody's and the other is Standard & Poors. As it stands at the moment, they consider us to be the riskiest country in the EU zone to give credit to.
That means we're riskier to lend money to than Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece. No offence to Greeks but your country is a basket case, and apparently we're worse. Being riskier means it costs more money to borrow and the cost of insuring that money is higher too.
Why is this? Well it's a combination of problems #1 & #2. But critically, it's also a commentary on how the government are handling the crisis and how much confidence they have in our banking and regulation system.
Yes, we're that bad. Don't take my word for it, take the word of the market. And as we've seen over the last few months, time and time again the government have been wrong, and the market has been right.
The solution. But only for one
We had a finance minister who some time ago thought it would be a good idea to save a bit of money for a rainy day. His name was Charlie McCreevy. He was exiled from Minister for Finance to EU Commissioner some time ago to be replaced by the wonderfully short sighted Brian Cowan.
Charlie, and I'm not a fan as he's as much to blame as Mr Cowan, decided to put away and invest 1% of GDP every year. This fund was worth (even after a woeful year in investments) about €20 billion at the end of 2008. This, and only this, is keeping our heads above water.
In itself it would be enough to resolve our banking crisis. In itself it would be enough to reduce the chronic tax burden and enormous cuts we are going to experience over the next 4-5 years.
But it can't do both.
It just shows what could and should have been done over the last 12 years.
There's no point saying that we're learning from our mistakes, these kind of errors only happen once a century.
So that's it, we're screwed.
Thanks Fianna Fail.
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