One of the most common suggestions has been that the unemployed be made to work, in various ways, for the benefit of the nation. The top two suggestions, last I checked, were variations on this theme. The idea is very much in the air these days, being regularly aired on current affairs and discussion programs as a way of killing two birds with one stone – getting people back to work, and putting all hands to the pump in the cause of saving the nation’s economy. It is so current, that I think it needs to be pointed out that it cannot bear scrutiny for more than a number of seconds without its hopelessly impractical and socially and economically damaging nature becoming apparent.

The notion of forcing people to work for their social welfare payments is not new, and is known as “workfare”. It has been tried in some countries, with limited success. But whereas the old call was for this work to be of a socially useful nature, it is more often suggested now that this be for the good of “the economy”, in other words, that private, for-profit businesses receive the benefit of forced labour, paid for by the state. It was probably inevitable that after years of taking credit for apparently selflessly “creating jobs”, the private sector would come to regard itself as primarily charitable in nature. The proposition is simple: Companies are having a hard time meeting costs, and people are having a hard time finding jobs. Make people work for free and both problems are solved.

The primary obstacle to this is that it is, in all likelihood, illegal under EU law. It is State Aid, the subsidisation by the state of private industry, and contrary to competition laws in that it gives Irish business an unfair advantage over businesses in other member states. But even if it were not illegal, such a scheme would be profoundly damaging to the economy. It cannot, even in the short term, be economically wise to prop up unprofitable companies on such a scale. With “wages” so low, demand for the products and services provided by these business will also be low, at exactly the same time as they go into overproduction due to their extra new staff. The glut of products on the market will drive prices down, furthering the cycle of deflation. Further, prices and wages will stay low, because the entire economy will have been artificially stabilised.

Further again, how long is such a scheme proposed to last? Even if it did succeed in bringing companies back into profitability, at what time is it proposed that the social welfare recipients thus employed will take the step up to full employment? Why, and when, would a company who are getting staff for free suddenly decide to start paying one of them? And if they did, which of their previously unpaid workers would get the real job?

So much for the private sector. Public or community-based work, though not blocked by the same European Law problems as private sector work, is not without it’s drawbacks. Firstly, it is of no direct benefit to the economy. It might be nice, socially and aesthetically, to have litter-free streets, or well pruned hedgerows, but sending the unemployed to do such work has no bearing on the economy. Indeed, in the case of any serious work, it denies the private sector a possible contract, thus putting pressure on companies previously reliant on such work, perhaps ultimately putting them out of business.

As with the private sector version, there arises the question of demand. How much of the work to which people will be put is actually necessary? There’s only so much litter to pick up, so many hedges to trim. In any case, all but the most basic of tasks will require equipment and supervision. Even with free labour, this scheme would constitute a massive increase in public sector spending, at a time when the common view is that a reduction in same is required.

Demand, in fact, is the key here. The economy is not in trouble because labour cost too much. If demand is sufficiently high, it will be worthwhile for businesses to pay whatever the market demands that labour should cost. An artificial reduction (or in fact abolition) of wages does not solve the demand problem, indeed it worsens it. But that is not the real motivation of the scheme. The real motivation is the same as that which was behind the Victorian Poor Law. It is the furious certainty that somewhere out there, people are getting something for nothing. Being on Social Welfare must then be made so unpleasant that recipients finally decide they’d rather work. This, of course, assumes that there are jobs to be had.

There will always be people who are eaten up by the idea that money is being given away for nothing. These are the people who propose stringent and thorough means tests for all state benefits. Tell them that means testing often costs so much to perform that it makes the programs more expensive, and they will reply that a principle is at stake. They would rather cost the state more than give anything to people they consider layabouts.

This is the primary philosophical objection to workfare: it assumes everyone is abusing the system. If the primary purpose of unemployment benefit is to keep people going while they search for work, then workfare is of no use. It deprives people of the time needed to search for employment, and where necessary to retrain.

A few years ago, Ireland was as close to full employment as it is possible to get. At one point, in Dublin, less than 1% were in receipt of Unemployment Benefit. Indeed, we had a labour shortage (demand, you see) that we filled with migrant workers. Now, unemployment is, according to the latest figures, at 12.6%. Perhaps the extra unemployed, previously in gainful employement, all decided to become lazy leeches off state largesse. But it seems like a remarkable coincidence that they did so at exactly the same time as the economy contracted. Maybe, just maybe, they’re not working because the jobs aren’t there.

Finally, (and I leave this point to last, because, though I believe it wholeheartedly, it is the sort of thing that sounds hopelessly quaint these days), there is such a thing as the dignity of work. Many of those unemployed worked in areas in which there is simply no work now. Having them out tending flower beds outside the local parish church, for payment that barely covers the essentials, is detrimental to the morale, the spirit we are repeatedly told is needed to overcome our current economic problems. Camus wrote that “there is dignity in work only if it is work freely accepted”. If it came to it, many would rather tend a bar in Australia by choice than be forced to work against their will in Ireland. If they left, they might think themselves betrayed by their country. They would be right.

Just in case someone would like to run against the grain (and aren’t turned down by their editors when they suggest blaspheming against ‘optimism’) here are some questions;

Who is funding the competition?
Padraig McKeon (Managing Director of Drury Communications and their “go-to’ guy for crisis and issue management”) tweeted

Am on YCYC Steering. It is as @darraghdoyle says; one of 13 contributors, in kind and €, all less than 10% fund #ycyc

Darragh Doyle had filled us in on AIB like so:

they’re one of the contributors, afaik, with Diageo, BOI, Cisco and other big names. Approx 130K each I *THINK*

Really? Is it possible that the two main banks- the main causes of our social and economic woes- are funding this competition (with money paid over from the state to keep them in business) with the stated aim to “help change the way we do things, allow businesses to grow, employment to be created and prosperity to flourish.” Can there be that much cynicism in the world?

Painfully, there is a bit of evidence that AIB, at least, are in the centre of the Your Country Your Call family.

Registrant:

Allied Irish Banks plc
Bankcentre, Ballsbridge
Ballsbridge
Dublin Co. Dublin
4
IE

Domain name: yourcountryyourcall.com

Created on: 2009-09-28
Expires on: 2011-09-28

Administrative contact:
eBusiness
Bankcentre, Ballsbridge
Ballsbridge
Dublin Co. Dublin
4
IE
+353 16600311
+353 16089675
******@AIB.IE

Who owns the Your Country, Your Call ideas?
The Competition’s Terms and Conditions have a section headed Intellectual Property. It is self-contradictory and unclear. Where it isn’t, it would give me pause before pressing the ‘Submit’ button as to what I’m giving away. The Chairman of Arthur Cox Solicitors (who, coincidentally, are advising the government on NAMA) is one of the Directors of Your Country Your Call. I can’t believe that this crucial section has been drafted with anything unintended left in.

Section 7.1
As a Participant, in consideration of entry into the Competition you grant to the Promoter, its representative and agents a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable, unemcumbered, royalty-free, fully paid up, non-exclusive license under all of Participant’s Intellectual Property Rights in the Proposal (as defined below) to:
…
(c) revise, alter, modify, improve or otherwise make derivative works of the Proposal; and

(d) sublicense and authorize the granting of sublicenses by the Promoter of all of the license rights granted to the Promoter in this Section 7.1.

The above licence shall remain in effect for the duration of your participation and involvement in the Competition and shall automatically terminate at the end of your involvement in the Competition.. Notwithstanding the foregoing licence (and other than with respect to the transfer of all Intellectual Property Rights in the winning Proposals by the winning Participants to the Promoter, on the terms described in Clause 7.2 below), you retain ownership of all of your Intellectual Property Rights in your Proposal.

Look, why would you look for a ‘perpetual, irrevocable’ licence and then say it terminated in 63 days?

Section 7.2 is about what happens to the winner. I’ll come back to that in a minute. First, let’s look at Section 7.4, which applies to everyone.

You waive all claims to and shall receive no royalties of any kind, whether now or in the future, from the Promoter, its affiliates, licensees, successors and assignees for use of your Proposal, including, without limitation, intellectual property, public performance, digital sound recording, mechanical, synchronization or master use royalties.

So which is it? You own all your IP? Or you waive all claims to it? Even the steering committee don’t seem to know.

Here’s Padraig McKeown, our ‘go-to guy’ from earlier again via twitter;

Must be read with Sec 7,1 “Retain..all..your..IP” YCYC a charity, not a biz. Can use it for PR etc for no fee; U still own it #ycyc

There’s no sign in the T&Cs that one clause is subordinate to another. So we just have contradictory claims.

And if you win? Then you get the pleasure of Section 7.2

At Promoter’s option, in consideration of entry into the Competition the winning Participants (including, where relevant, all Team members of such Participants) shall irrevocably transfer, convey and assign to the Promoter (or such party that the Promoter may direct) all right, title and interest in and to the winning Proposal and all Intellectual Property Rights therein (excluding moral rights). The winning Participants (including, where relevant, all Team members of such Participants) further agree to waive all moral rights relating thereto and agree to execute all documents and perform all acts deemed necessary by the Promoter to apply for, register, perfect and record such transfer and assignment and/or waivers.

Or, take your €100,000 and drop dead. The About page makes this perfectly clear:

Please note that the prize is for the winning proposers – this is similar to architectural competitions where the winning architect may or may not be involved in the subsequent construction.

So, got an idea for some “truly transformational proposals so big that, when implemented, could secure prosperity and jobs for Ireland. Proposals that could help change the way we do things, allow businesses to grow, employment to be created and prosperity to flourish”?

This is your chance to give them away for €100,000.

Or, if you’re a member of the media, do you think there might be just the slightest issue worth asking questions about here?

That is the current President of Ireland on the front page.

Didn’t we already go though exactly this already? The Ideas Campaign was an almost identical effort run by PR firm AMAS’s Managing Director Aileen O’Toole in March of 2009. (AMAS counts the Department of Finance as one of its clients, along with 28 other public bodies)

That earlier effort to radically change the nation was launched in a blaze of publicity. Editors, journalists and producers, hungry for anything positive to report after months of misery uncritically gave the Idea Campaign space to promote its primary message- If only we could harness [insert noun of your choice] Ireland could rise again- without having to actually confront what had happened to the country. They described it as wanting to “focus on solutions, not problems”.

Radical ideas, it seemed, were required to avoid the pain of change.

Well, as you’ll all have noticed, despite boldly proclaiming on their front page “Ideas Campaign fulfils its goals” Ireland has continued on much as before.

The list of 17 ideas the Government declared it was going to implement are a mix of things already done (“Facilitate career breaks and shorter working week in public sector”) and things so vague as to be meaningless (“Make changes to job seekers’ allowance to incentivise placement of graduates”). This is not because the country has no ideas for improving. It is that there are no ideas that this government could implement, without self destructing.

Fergal has written better than I can on the paroxysm of Magical Thinking which has gripped Ireland for the last year. I hope he might even revisit the subject again.

Only vested interests, boosters and snake-oil salesmen demand we look to the future and not try to revisit (or identify) the mistakes of the past. For the rest of us, ‘Let’s do something to fix Ireland’ is an impossible position to take without defining what is wrong.

Aware of this, the government has enthusiastically embraced the catch-all responsibility avoiding phrase “we are where we are”. The Ideas Campaign and now Your Country, Your Call are a manifestation of the same empty demand. Other magical thinking projects come to nothing because there is no there there. These ‘official’ projects go further.

Nothing will come of them because nothing is meant to come of them. Nothing is exactly the aim.

But that isn’t to say I abandoned the web this year. In fact, I probably have more posts with my name beside them than ever. They just all lived on my primary 2009 project, Liveblog.ie. That site is now 13 months old and I have some thoughts about what I think I’ve learned from it along the way. But, as the nature of Liveblogging is collaborative, I’d invite you to give your own considered observations below and on your own sites. I’ll copy a sample up into the post as you do. This is the first part of a two part extravaganza.

Part One: Why bother?

Firstly, Liveblog.ie was always an experiment. I started it after a few tries on Tuppenceworth. Here’s the first outing- a drifting solitary meander around John Waters. Hardly a liveblog at all- I’m on my own, talking to myself. Or Fergal may have joined in too. ScribbleLive at the time didn’t indicate who’s said what.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed it enough to do it again. There was no appointment to watch yet. I was just typing about whatever was on the television in front of me. As the technology underlying the ScribbleLive platform developed, so did my use of it. A core group developed, some of whom were unlucky enough to be pinned to a table in real life and who listened to me as I wrestled with what this funny new kind of webpost might do. Those people- Suzy, Alexia, Mark Coughlan and Cian, amongst the many others who joined in night after night setting the medium’s tone- shaped and added to my mental image of liveblogging’s potential. I don’t want it to seem as though I’m claiming any part in their work- a liveblog is a collaborative act. Imagining them was likewise.

As a medium, liveblogging is still only a shadow of what it could be. But even still, the faint sketched in lines are becoming clear. And, as usually happens with an internet technology, I think the real impact of liveblogging will be felt in places the inventors didn’t expect.

Since doing the Paper Round with Fergal and Ger, I have been struggling to absorb the meaning of what we found. Newspapers are failing. This is important because they are the primary source of original information for and about Irish society to allow it to understand itself. We regularly read references to the pressures on their business model- how ads are melting away. But Paper Round was done at the peak of a decade long advertising boom. It wasn’t a shortage of money that was killing the newspaper as a socially valuable medium.

They had simply forgotten what they were for.

Press Releases masqueraded as news stories. Property Developers had verbatim PR pufferies about their wives’ dresses printed in multiple newspapers to drown out unwanted actual news from An Bord Pleanala. The readership was forgotten- taken for granted as the dumb swallower of all the paid for placed guff and uncritical relaying of untruths. If advertisers abandon a newspaper, it can tighten its belt. If readers abandon it, it dies. Sooner or later, readers will abandon newspapers full of empty stories.

When I eventually realised that newspapers were going to fall, I was concerned. With them would go the possibility they could improve. The Irish Press waxed and waned in quality and influence, but when it was gone, it was gone. Replacing newspapers as a whole class of information source will be impossible if we simply attempt to recreate what was there before.

You might argue I’m being sentimental. Why worry about dead trees and their inky pulp when we have the bright world of broadcast and online news?

Well, if you think print is dead, you’ve never seen the production office of a radio or television current affairs programme. They are the initial source of almost all the discussions and debate you hear throughout the day over the airwaves. And as any one honest will confirm there is no Irish online only news source with the capacity to replace the entirety of even the weakest of newspapers.

A democracy, and a society, must have a way of reporting on events and their meaning to citizens if they’re to make informed choices about what direction it should take. If you work from the position that newspapers will vanish from Ireland within 6 years you’re immediately confronted with the problem of how to replace them.

So, I started with the intention of seeding, exploring and perhaps helping to nudge into creation something which could, in a basic way, meet some of that need after newspapers. That was a greater success than I’d even hoped for. Check out the coverage of the Party Conferences last Summer, or the Local Election counts to see the ‘mirror ball effect’ at work, reflecting and highlighting hundreds of different points of view at once.

The cash resources required to produce these excellent rolling reports- running live over multiple days and nights in some cases- was negligible. That’s because the medium allowed us to ape Wikipedia’s harnessing of the knowledge (I don’t go quite as far as wisdom) of the crowd. As citizens we weren’t told by a central source what was happening. Instead, with only gentle touch moderation, we told each other what we knew. The broader picture grew out of those individual tales.

When, (or if, should you wish to remain cheery), I am correct and newspapers shut their doors we will have built a safety net.

In Part Two: What Next? I hope to show that as a medium, liveblogging is already showing signs of becoming more than just a replacement for traditional media. It may yet turn out to play a part in refreshing our political system and breathing life into the stale world of Irish television.

As I was recently involved in an Internet campaign to have the Papal Nuncio expelled, during which I debated Ms. O’Brien, the topic caught my attention.

My response to her column, which exceeds the 3000 character limit set by the Irish Times for comments, follows. I have numbered the paragraphs of Ms. O’Brien’s article for ease of reference;

The author states that;

1) She is against censorship in China.

2-3) Someone else (cited) is against Censorship generally.

4) The author poses a question, but does not provide an answer or indicate her own opinion.

5) The author declares her instincts are against censorship and indicates that she does not seek to uninvent the internet. She also without stating it directly, suggests that ethics need to be developed in preparation for currently non-existent technologies. She implies regret that such precognition had not been applied to the internet. She does not address how such magic might be performed.

6-8) The author complains that a news agency decided which parts of Papal statements were of interest to its readers, as opposed to relaying them the bits the Pope wanted attention drawn to.

9) The author then demonstrates that the news agency was correct in this assessment by using the example of an alternative news agency who did report as she, and the Pope, would have preferred. She presents her research to establish this.

10) It is not possible with the tools available to decide what the author was attempting to say or what point of view she was seeking to advance in para 10. Either it is that the Church is not ‘obsessed with sex and homophobic’, which seems contrary to empirical evidence, or that it is, which seems at odds with her being on first name terms with the Pope (see para 22). In either event, as it is not developed or referred to at any further point in the article, we may ascribe it to a difficulty with the MS Word wordcount feature.

11) ‘These kind of examples multiply across the internet’. The reader is now in considerable difficulties. No thesis has yet been advanced for this article. It has so far consisted of a series of discrete, unrelated events strung like pearls on the thin thread of their either relating to, or being referred to on, the internet. We have been given no way of intuiting what they may be examples of. The rest of the paragraph does not assist, being an observation of the political commonplace that a group of like-minded people banding together can hold more steadfastly to a point of view than isolated individuals. It is implied that this communality is to be regretted.

12) The author demonstrates that she owns a mouse and her computer has access to Google.

13-14) Apparently apropos of nothing precedent, the author attempts to paint the Vatican state and its Curia as naive innocents who continue to do things which look unforgivable solely because of a lack of awareness of how to use that self-same Google search engine. Given their millennium of experience in diplomacy, institutional warfare and actual warfare this seems an unhistorical explanation to advance for unpalatable decisions. Alternatively, the author ought to have offered them some lessons by now (see para 12).

15) To the mild distress of any reader who has been attempting synthesis of the preceding paragraphs the author now strikes off in yet another direction. She makes a series of unsupported contentious statements. These statements also lack connection to each other, as she does not specify whether it is the assumption of anonymity or a working internet connection which results in ‘people’ becoming base and abusive. Both are advanced, but neither is chosen.

16) We suffer a short digression on the moderation and publication policies of all newspapers everywhere.

17) “What can be found on other websites is even cruder”. This is an undeniable fact, as anyone who has had to research the Sex Pistols will attest.

18) The author advances the proposition that Atheist Ireland provides an example. Sadly, she still doesn’t choose to tell us what it may be an example of, so we cannot assess the validity of her claim. She then expresses her preference for the new blasphemy law to be challenged by means other than those used by AI. The reader can only await the author’s announcement of her participation or establishment of this currently non-existent campaign.

19) Surprisingly, no such announcement follows. Even more surprisingly, given the foregoing para 18, the author now declares that the comments published by Atheist Ireland were ‘not really the problem’. Rather she expresses her offence that people who object to the existence of a law criminalising blasphemy should blaspheme. The reader, a tolerant sort, is by now slightly concerned. The worry starts to gnaw that there may turn out not to have been any thesis being advanced in this entire article.

20) The author then extracts a quote from a person who does not believe that any good the Catholic religion inspires outweighs its more ignoble institutional representation. The quoted commenter expresses the regrettable, but not uncommon, view that ‘grubby old pederasts’ ought to be ‘wiped from the face of the earth’.

21) The author commits a failure of logic, equating all Catholics with the ‘grubby old pederasts’ the preceding comment suggested the world would be better without. Alternatively, she presents a bleak assessment of the faithful.

22) The author quotes the Pope, referring to him simply as ‘Benedict’. It is good to see informality of this sort in the frequently stuffy pages of the Irish Times. The quote appears to be a complaint that people ‘in certain countries, mainly in the West’ have been guilty of hostility and scorn. The reader may at this point reflect on whether a tradition of freedom of speech in Western countries might have inconvenienced the Pope. And if so, whether his preference, quoted with approval by the author, to be addressed by a different set of citizens to that which actually exists ought to outweigh those freedoms.

23) The author says she had a conversation with a representative of Atheist Ireland. She does not give any account of it so the reader cannot imagine for what purpose it is mentioned. The author commits herself to creating a set of opponents who will choose a form of expression more to the liking of herself and the Pope. She ends by warning the reader against ‘murky’ writings, such as may be found on the Internet.

As a reader, I can only look forward with interest, albeit tinged with trepidation, as to the methods the author intends to deploy in so altering those who do not share her views.

The exhibition details are

Airfield Studio Exhibition of Fine Art Original Prints at Airfield, Dundrum

Exhibition opens at 11am untill 5.30pm
Saturday 12th December.

Some of the artists whose work will be included in the show will be

You’d be foolish to miss it. Also, Airfield House is quite excellent for a visit all by itself. They have excellent new piglets in the Living Crib, which my 2 year old son is looking forward to examining closely.

I’m posting it here so that Non-Facebookers can also read it and, hopefully, take the moment to click the link and send their message to the Minister for Foreign Affairs.

I’ll write more about the experience of this campaign when the dust has settled. But great thanks go to the IrishElection.com folk, who filled the form with every TD’s email in the country.

*****
Hello all,

This has certainly been an extraordinary week in the history of the Irish church and the Irish state.

After a secret meeting between the leading Civil Servant in Foreign Affairs and the Papal Nuncio, we’ve seen the Taoiseach forced to abandon his prepared speech to mount a shameful defence of the Vatican State and the Papal Nuncio in the Dail.

We’ve seen bishops forced to cut announced months of ‘reflection’ short and flee to Rome to resign in the face of public pressure.

But most extraordinarily, we’ve see the power of ordinary citizens to have their voices heard on important matters. It was members of this Facebook Group, emailing, posting letters and speaking out in print and on air who drove the issue of the Papal Nuncio’s expulsion up the agenda.

Now, reversing the Taoisech’s position of only Wednesday, Michael Martin, Minister for Foreign Affairs has announced that he will be calling the Papal Nuncio into Iveagh House to express the Government’s ‘disappointment’ at his, and the Vatican State’s, response.

Your voices have brought things this far. Now we need to take things further. Please visit this handy email form set up by IrishElection to support us and email Min. Micheal Martin to say that disappointment isn’t the message you want to send. Tell him you want the Papal Nuncio to face the consequences of his stonewalling.

http://www.irishelection.com/nuncio/

It was your messages which ensured that the Minister must act. Please take the time to send a message to ensure that action is the right one.

Thanks

Simon McGarr

A lucky break for the nation- a political journalist who’s well placed to understand the internet and explain its political significance to the nation- and to other politicians. We’re not exactly swimming in journalists who give the impression they could bridge those gaps.

Which makes his most recent article “Politicians learn value of chirpy, chirpy Tweet greet” all the more disappointing. It takes an old media view of the significance of Twitter in Irish Politics, seeing it as just a new way for politicians to broadcast out their ‘message’ to voters.

But, in fact Twitter (contrary to my expectations when I signed up to it in 2007 to have a poke and prod at it) has become something very new and very subversive of that centre-out model of communications. Far from being passive receivers of political messages, voters are talking amongst themselves about politicians and with politicians on an equal footing.

This is a difficult experience for some Tweeting members of the Oireachtas who find themselves suddenly able to hear all the comments made about them and find them a bit harsher than what people say to their faces.

Here’s @midnightcourt putting this idea to Senator Dan Boyle;

And here’s Senator Dan Boyle replying;

Which only confirms the point.

But, then, we can hardly be too surprised if Harry missed the shifts in the national conversation which have been brewing in the last few months. Here are his most recent two tweets;

Yes, that second one is dated July 24th.

What was aggravating about Chirpy Chirpy Tweet Greet is that we really do need someone to explain and describe the real meaning of this strange, organic, Twitter-powered alternative to the dead meaningless world of centre-out ‘messages’.

Instead, we ended with Harry approvingly quoting DIT lecturer Ian Kilroy;

he says it should not be oversold. “The message is the same. The platform is alternative but incidental. It’s a new way of conveying the message.”

On the contrary, ‘the platform’ creates a new way of communicating, sharing, learning and deciding. Sure, you could just use it as another place to pump out links to your press releases. But good luck trying to plough on with the same dead message as everything changes around you.

Ask the Home Rule party how that works out.

So spare a moment to sympathise with Taoiseach Brian Cowen. In his recent interview on Prime Time he revealed both how badly he, and Fianna Fail have failed and how they ended up in this mess.

You see it turns out that, contrary to almost every possible measurable indicator, Brian and FF have been working to try to make Ireland ‘fairer’.

Brian Cowen can't say how disappointed in you he is.

At 0:16:20 you can see him wail that

“We’ve been building for the last 20 years a fairer society.”

Now, seeing as they’ve had 20 years to chip away at the thing, you might wonder how they’ve been so spectacularly unsuccessful. The answer comes immediately when Brian gives us the definition of fairness he’s been guided by for the last 20 years.

“We’ve ensured that we had a tax system where people could keep more of their own wages for their own benefit.”

A tragedy. They devoted themselves for twenty years to bringing about “a fairer society.” They just didn’t know what such a thing would look like.

Who amongst us will not now admit that after devoting two decades of their lives to letting rich people keep more of their money so that poor people didn’t have access to public services while trying to bring about fairness, that it is Fianna Fail and Brian Cowen who are the real victims here?

Certainly, his demeanour suggests he feels it is so. He feels our ingratitude like an ache in his soul.

Similarly, I once heard a co-worker explain that she wasn’t a racist, she just didn’t like black people. It was a matter of taste, that was all, “I don’t like Guinness either” (I swear to God, she actually said that.) When we have reached the stage where people can hold and express such views and yet deny being racist, I think it’s fair to say that there is no such thing as a racist.

Certainly, there are very few who will admit to being one, and ultimately, you can’t prove it one way or another. In any case, we very rarely these days attack people for being bigots. Rather, we attack their words or their actions as bigoted ones. To turn around and say “How dare you call me a bigot?” is to change the subject (see Jan Moir for details of the versatility of this gambit). We can’t know if you are a bigot or not, because we can’t look into your heart and mind and discern the contents thereof. But we can quite easily look at your words and actions and call them what they are. The accused can’t defend what he said, so switches the argument to one about his character. Friends and colleagues are trotted forward as witnesses to his not-a-bigot-ness and before you know it, he is the victim. Often, flushed with this success, he decides he is a hero of Free Speech too, but that is over-reaching. But still, you can’t call a person a racist, a sexist, or a homophobe and expect to be allowed to make your argument, so perhaps we should come up with some new language to emphasise the difference between a person’s non-bigoted essence and their bigoted words and deeds.

While we’re at it, it might be no harm to come up with a new synonym for “fascist”. It is almost proverbial that calling someone a fascist is a sure fire way to lose credibility in an argument. This is a real shame, as fascism is not simply a matter of goose-stepping and genocide, and alas did not come to an end in 1945. As with racism, you’ll find nobody who’s not offended to be called one, but plenty of people who hold what are, literally, fascist opinions. To demonstrate this, I need to say a little bit about the origins of fascism. There was a time when it wasn’t an insult, but a mainstream strand of political opinion. It arose in the midst of a huge economic and financial crisis. Politics were radicalized, as left and right wings became more extreme, with their disagreement sometimes being played out in violence on the street. But for every person who had drifted to one of these two wings, there were more who had no great interest in political ideology and just wanted a government to actually be in charge. We now associate fascism with the right wing, but at the time of its emergence, it was something very new, a Third Way between capitalism and socialism. It was not, like traditional conservatism, exclusively focused on the past, but was a forward-looking, consciously modernist movement. Pragmatism, innovation and industry were valued. The innate power and energy of the People was praised. Fascism didn’t over-think things. Fascism got it done. (the title of Triumph of the Will is perhaps the most succinct summation of the fascist ethos). In place of ideology, the flag was inserted. Neither left nor right, but [insert nationality here] was the basic position. Great emphasis was placed on “The People”, who allegedly had no time for the partisan bickering that made up politics. There was less respect for the will of the people as expressed through elections, when they voted for said partisan bickerers. Leadership was all-important. The question of whether the leader knew what he was doing was not so much unimportant as put to one side in case it led to “disunity”. Unity, banding together for the good of the nation was a key element. Just as the socialists, communists and some liberals banded together for the good of the left into a “Popular Front”, patriots of all stripes banded together into a National Front. Put like that, it sounds almost noble.

Of course there was more to it than that. From the very beginning, a powerful element of aggression towards outsiders was involved. Some have argued that in the case of Nazism, it was only ever about the anti-Semitism, and everything else was only the scaffolding for the holocaust which was the movement’s raison d’etre. Certainly, the hatred was always a driving force. But strip away the more garish elements, the salutes and militarism, and you are left with something which is worryingly attractive to a lot of people.

In the past year (also a time of huge economic and financial crisis) I have heard, on many occasions, the need to abandon ideology in favour of pulling together and wearing the green jersey. It is not entirely clear how this abandonment of difference is to be effected. If we’re all pulling together, who exactly decides what principles we’re pulling together behind? Some arguments don’t allow for compromise. This is not simply agreeing to disagree. If these differences are to be put aside it can only be by one side being forced to capitulate to the other. People don’t like to be accused of advocating the crushing of dissent, but there it is.

I have read in newspapers that our Government, who have a majority and can pass any measure they want, are being hampered by the Opposition in their attempts to Get Things Done. If this state of affairs is allowed to continue, respected commentators have written, the very survival of the state is threatened. People think it’s rude to accuse them of advocating the abolition of parliamentary opposition, but I can’t think of any other way of putting it.

I have read in the same papers that a national government (that government-without-opposition idea again) is favorable to holding a general election, even though any such election would represent an overdue adjustment of the make-up of the Dáil to reflect a change in public opinion. People get narky when you point out that they think the people can’t be trusted to exercise their franchise responsibly, but that’s what they’re saying.

I have heard it suggested that “we” should “get rid” of the politicians, who have failed us, and “put” people who can get things done “in charge”. Michael O’Leary is often mentioned as a candidate. What scares me is not the fact that that if O’Leary was in charge of our hospitals the corpses would be piled up in the corridors. It is the notion, so blithely floated, of installing non-elected leaders. Michael O’Leary is too smart to run for office, and wouldn’t get elected anyway. So “putting” him or anyone else “in charge” would in fact be a coup d’etat. People take offense when you accuse them of advocating coups, but go look the word up in a dictionary, that is what it means.

These startling arguments are trickier to counter than one might think, partly because you are fighting with one arm tied behind your back. You can’t express yourself entirely freely, because it sounds over the top to use the f-word. To call these arguments by their terminologically and historically accurate name is to cross a line that we prefer not to cross. Once you’ve called someone a fascist, there’s really no going back. You sound hysterical, and they are personally offended. It might be a good idea then, to find a way to talk about these ideas that doesn’t involve the f-word. We pretty much define a fascist as a racist, jew-obsessed sadist, and by that definition there are thankfully few fascists around. But it sets the bar awfully high and lets a lot of objectionable stuff off the hook.

Fascism didn’t become popular without having a genuine appeal. It spoke to the baser elements of human nature. Those elements, the impatience with the delays, fudges and compromises that are an inevitable by-product of democracy; the frustration at rules that serve abstract principles rather than immediately practical benefits, the wish that someone would “take on” whatever group of people are the current object of your ire, and “just get the job done”, all are still present in humanity. They didn’t disappear in 1945, and they aren’t limited to any one country. The racism, cruelty and mania are what everyone remembers, but they weren’t what made fascism attractive.

The daddy of all these was the Galway 500 festival of 1984, the 500th anniversary of the granting of a town charter in 1484. Cork, of course, couldn’t let this pass, and the following year we were treated to Cork 800. Then silence. But the pride of the capital was undoubtedly stung. It was one thing to let Galway have a bit of a jamboree. But Dublin was damned if Cork was going to be allowed to hog the limelight. And so, in 1988, Dublin went for the Grand. The futuristic-sounding Millennium left behind many artefacts; milk bottles, dust-bins, a 50p piece, but none was as long-lasting or as corrosive to the national spirit as the tradition of the humorous rhyming nickname.

When Eamonn O’Doherty’s (actually quite attractive) sculpture “Anna Livia” was installed in a fountain in O’Connell St. it pleased someone to give her the nickname “the Floozie in the Jacuzzi”. Really, it wasn’t a bad joke. She was entirely unclad, and there was something not-quite-right about the fountain in which she reclined. Upon hearing the nick-name, one suddenly realised what it was: yes, she looked like she was sitting in a Jacuzzi. A small joke, not in the league of Myles’ “Tomb of the unknown gurrier” but not bad. Alas, it was held up to be a jewel of “Dub wit”.

Then, the deluge. Two women sitting on a bench with their shopping? “The hags with the bags”. Molly Malone, wheeling her wheel-barrow, through streets broad and narrow? “The tart with the cart”. A former colleague of mine, a Dubliner of many generation’s standing, would go into a rage when such nicknames were mentioned. Patronising “Dublin Character” nonsense, he’d spit, condescending pseudo-working-class guff from the same sort of people who brought us Ould Mr. Brennan. But worse was to come.

Nothing much happened in the way of Dublin public art for a while. When the money started rolling in, and Dublin Corporation resumed their always-dubious beautification of the city, it was decided by our media (“The hacks with the facts”? No, of course not) that every new work must, must, be given a rhyming nickname, however tenuous or tortured its logic. It often seemed that no sooner was the artist’s impression of a proposed piece made available, than the press were racking their brains and their rhyming dictionaries for a nickname, to be used by themselves and absolutely nobody else. The Millennium Clock? “The Time in the Slime”. Because the Liffey is dirty. And it’s a clock, like. Gas. The Millennium Spire? “The Stiletto in the Ghetto”. Because it’s on the northside, see?

Clearly, taste was no consideration here, or at least not one that ranked above getting a rhyme. Why else would a statue of Oscar Wilde, a genuine genius, a proper, no-messing, actual Great Man, be called “The Fag on the Crag”. “The Fag”: someone decided that he was somehow qualified to dismiss one of the greatest minds the world, let alone Ireland, has ever known as “the Fag”. Not that the nicknames were ever claimed by those using them. Despite never being used by the citizenry, they were always presented as the coinage of the simple but charming Dublin people. Though in fact entirely journalistic creations, the pretense was maintained that our correspondent was only reporting to us what was said by “one wag”, or “a local wit”. A cartoon vision of a jolly, ballad-singing, “Arthur”-swilling rare-oul-timer springs to mind.

The nadir was reached some weeks ago, when Orna Mulcahy (of whom more later) wrote her column about the Dublin Bike scheme. Ms. Mulcahy has an almost autistic-savant talent for parodying her own class, a talent which I suspect she remains unaware of. Having let us know that she decided to start cycling only after she saw it in a Woody Allen film, she sallies forth, with the customary attribution to “one Dublin wit”, with “The Yokes on the Spokes”. Let us remember that we’re not dealing with art here. These are bicycles. We all know what a bike looks like. The potential for a joke about the appearance of an item so familiar to us is close to nil. We know too, that bikes have spokes. But even here, humour may achieved. These bikes, they are the what with the spokes? The yokes? Seriously? Ms. Mulcahy is telling us only that bicycles are things that have spokes and expecting a laugh, just because it rhymes? That is the kind of thing that can get a journalist a nickname*.

*Suggestions for which are gratefully received in the comments