Public appearances

An objection comes by Email to Redfellow Hovel, from Our American Cousin [the estimable OAC], complaining about recent changes in the public face of Malcolm Redfellow revivus. By the way, OAC's mention of how Labor Day came about is worth the effort, and was previously unknown to Malcolm.

Yes, Malcolm has been messing with the decor: for one who was previously a major purchaser of Dulux Magnolia emulsion, this is not a good sign. The trouble is that, since the ousting of the elves, there has been minimal techno-nous around the Hovel. So, he is trying again.

The Obama delusion (and clean hands)

In passing, Malcolm also noted OAC's rubbishing of the liberal hope lavished on Obama. Malcolm does not want to intrude on a domestic quarrel, but accepts the point. Neither of the Democratic Party front-runners, big-hitters and wallet-clutchers has the making for a radical change in direction. Now, Malcolm is too old in the tooth to expect a popular revolution, or even a Roosevelt-liberalism. It would be nice, though, to see a new President capable and honest enough to break with the cronyism and cartel-politics of the past. Malcolm suspects (hopes, begs, even prays) that the Big Issues of this minute (Iraq, especially) could well be warmed-over pizza by Labor Day, 2008.

The Economist this week (free access this weekend, if one suffers the pop-up ad) takes a rake along the same row of weeds, specifically on the topic of Democrats and health care:

How do you devise a health-care plan that is sensible and centrist, yet also stands out from the rest? That is the question faced by all the Democratic candidates for the presidency. Health care is second only to the war in Iraq among voters' concerns, so everyone with an eye on the White House wants a winning answer.

The three front-runners—Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards—have all promised to control costs and provide coverage for the 47m Americans without health insurance. All three have eschewed radical change. Instead, they are jostling over the centre ground: how to tweak America's predominantly private health-care system.

The Economist evaluation seems to put

• John Edwards first:

Not unlike reforms already under way in Massachusetts and California, Mr Edwards's scheme promises an overhaul of insurance markets, subsidies to help poorer people pay their premiums and a legal requirement that everyone should buy health insurance.

• Hills in second place:

Mrs Clinton offers a litany of well-known, but sensible, savings, such as shifting to electronic records, concentrating more on preventive medicine, improving the management of chronic diseases, and creating a “best practices institute” to set guidelines for optimal care. In all, she claims, $120 billion a year could be wrung out of the health system, money that could be used to pay for broader coverage.

• but Obama playing catch-up:

The Obama path to universal coverage is a paler version of Mr Edwards's. It promises insurance-market reform, including the creation of a National Health Insurance Exchange...

Like Mr Edwards's, the Obama plan would levy a tax on firms that do not provide health cover. It would also demand an infusion of federal cash, to be paid for, yes, by rolling back some of the Bush tax cuts for the rich. Mr Obama's aides claim the price tag would be around $65 billion a year, though other health experts think it would be higher.

The big difference is that Mr Obama, unlike Mr Edwards, would not force people to buy health insurance. Only children would have to be covered. That soft-pedalling may please the unions, some of which dislike the idea of compelling workers to buy insurance. But it makes his plan both less efficient and less effective.

Beyond assuring decent health-care for its citizens (surely a baseline requirement of any democratic government), it ought to be a major campaign issue to clean up government. Which is why Malcolm is wondering whether such a change can come from the Democrats. The main item in this week's Economist American coverage is an appraisal of John McCain. It is, in the main, a negation of McCain's chances of being nominated, but it provides this provocative thought:

Mr McCain's last big problem is his long-standing record as a reformer. The only thing that this pugnacious man likes attacking more than Democratic vested interests is Republican vested interests. Mr McCain has used his prominent position, as a perpetual presidential candidate and chairman of three Senate committees, to savage big chunks of the Republican establishment: conservative influence-peddlers such as the televangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (whom he has labelled evil); Republican interest-groups such as big defence companies; and a campaign-finance system skewed to benefit incumbents, many of them Republicans.

The article points out that McCain was instrumental in the deserved humiliation of Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay.

In short, McCain has been as effective an opposition as anyone. His pro-war politics and conservatism may stick in the craw, but at least on one issue his instincts are commendable. When the mark of a coming saviour is the size of his or her war-chest, can we expect such frankness from the Democrats?

The shortest honeymoon on record?
Martyn Turner illustrates that today's Irish Times has obviously decided its urinary position is not from under canvas. Apart from almost a whole broadsheet page profiling Conor Maguire, the Senior Counsel representing the people's Bertie at the Mahon tribunal (and so spot-lighting that little local difficulty), there is a handful of articles all pouring something onto the Ahern "victory".

Kathy Sheridan gets pride of place on the front of the Review section: "The people have spoken ... but what have they said?" A lot of the froth is derived from Ivan Yates's focus-group politics:

It was Yates who pinpointed Breakfast Roll Man as the election winner, the one who turned to Fianna Fáil when the chips were down. Breakfast Roll Man, according to Yates, is aged 20-45, a blue-collar worker in a factory or a building site, "a self-employed electrician or Del Boy ... and the one thing he has learned is to look after himself. He likes Sky Sports, likes to drink — and now drinks pints and wine at home, likes that his wife/mot/partner can go shopping and not wreck his head if she spends too much. And he wants the kids to do better than him."

The bush has been well and truly beaten about before Sheridan gets to the point, based in part on the Times own exit poll:

Health was by far the dominant issue at 45 per cent, crime next at 25 per cent, and managing the economy at 23 per cent. Bush-fire issues such as the cost-of-living (18 per cent), education (15 per cent), environment (13 per cent) and housing (10 per cent) played second fiddle.

If that's the major premise in this syllogism, the minor is lurking unease, with a surprising synthesis:

Nearly 300,000 people work in the construction sector, about 12 per cent of the workforce. About eight days before polling, says Yates, an independent construction consultant, Jerome Casey, forecast a house price drop of 5 per cent this year and 10 per cent in 2008. Breakfast Roll Man saw it coming with his own eyes...
For the record, Yates is predicting a "landslide" for Fine Gael in 2011 or 2012.

Reinforcement comes from the (non-subscription) front page's lead:

Leading bank says growth will drop to 3%
Rising interest rates and debt cited as factors.

Redundancies are up by 8%, year on year: more are due as Dell (the second largest employer in the Republic, and representing 4% of all exports) slims down, as does Eircom and the food sector.

And the Times hasn't finished there. On the Opinion&Analysis page, Michael Casey, "former chief economist of the Central Bank and board member of the International Monetary Fund" is wheeled out to announce:

When it came to economics and fiscal matters, the electorate was sold a pup.

It was ever thus.

Nor should we neglect the benighted English in this traipsing round the political dung-hill.

And a reptilian crap-merchant

The Tories have not had a good week (heh, heh). The grammar schools thing will not go away (it's not a Clause Four moment, but will it be Cameron's EEC issue?):

senior Conservatives warned that the row was making the party look chaotic and potentially elitist and was damaging relations with activists. Even Mr Cameron's staunchest supporters are baffled by the way an apparently uncontroversial speech on a long-standing Tory policy could spark a 17-day row, infighting and a frontbench resignation.

And now there's a new director of communications (or some similar big-sounding title).

Andy Coulson, the former editor of the News of the World, ... was an appointment which took both Westminster and Fleet Street by surprise. And it was quickly hailed as being an inspired move, or a high-risk appointment, in almost equal measure.

Max Clifford, who has not spoken to Coulson since a much-publicised spat several years ago, said that he would find the move from newspaper journalism to public relations to be an enormous challenge, requiring skills which even the best tabloid editors may not possess. "Winning friends and influencing people is going to be harder than he thinks," predicted Clifford. "Especially as he will be working for Cameron, who is a PR man desperately trying to re-invent himself as a politician."

Lest we forget: Coulson left the News of the World in the wake of the royal-bugger [mobile phone messages, dearie, not what you're thinking] business, in which one journalist was jugged for four months, and all the rest knew nuffin'.

Sphere: Related Content

How beastly the bourgeois is ...

... though D.H. is not really appropriate here, because the utterance originally came from the female of the species, and she was an Essex nimby:

A spokesman for the Stop Stansted Expansion campaign told BBC News: "If Stansted were permitted to expand to maximum use of the existing runway, the local environment would suffer, the national economy would suffer and we would have taken a giant step backwards in the battle to combat climate change."

Carol Barbone, from the campaign group, said the expansion would not help the economy because it was encouraging people to go on holiday abroad.

Malcolm, with his usual perceptiveness, read the sub-text: it's all fine and dandy to have a convenient airport for us business types, but — my goodness! — the lower orders are getting above themselves! Going orf to Spain and Ibiza when they should be quite happy at Cleethorpes or Whitley Bay.

The point is reinforced by the delicate tendresse with which the BBC treats its chosen few:

Protesters lobbied the first session of a public inquiry into expanding Stansted Airport. But the campaigners from nearby towns and villages were far from the stereotype of green activists.

They wore Barbour jackets rather than camouflage gear, and sensible brogues in place of Doc Martens.

Not so much a protest, more a Daily Telegraph fashion parade.

There is, of course, nothing new here. The class system is based upon such things. Wordsworth, recently appointed as Poet Laureate, wrote a letter to Gladstone, the President of the Board of Trade, on October 15th, 1844, asking him to prevent the railway coming to Kendal :

We are in this neighbourhood all in consternation, that is, every man of taste and feeling, at the stir which is made for carrying a branch Railway from Kendal to the head of Windermere.

He could have been as well standing at Stansted in his Barbour and brogues to declaim his accompanying sonnet:

And is no nook of English ground secure
From rash assault? Schemes of retirement sown
In youth, and ‘mid the busy world kept pure
As when their earliest flowers of hope were blown,
Must perish; — how can they this blight endure?
And must he too his old delights disown
Who scorns a false utilitarian lure
‘Mid his paternal fields at random thrown?

Malcolm finds it remarkable, and depressing, that the mind-set, the attitudes, the prejudices and even the vocabulary of English Toryism passes unchanged through generations. So, appropriately, back to Lawrence:

Full of seething, wormy, hollow feelings
rather nasty—
How beastly the bourgeois is!

Standing in their thousands, these appearances, in damp England
what a pity they can’t all be kicked over
like sickening toadstools, and left to melt back, swiftly
into the soil of England.

Sphere: Related Content

The block's wee wood chip

The Ulster sense-of-humour gets to Malcolm (when, eventually, he deciphers it). For example, the son of "Mad Dog" must be "Mad Pup". And there's the one about the bomb in the pet-shop: "You're not giving the tortoise much of a chance". Or the bucket of manure: "We're decorating the wee fella's room: he get's out o' the Kesh next week." Sorry, you've heard them all.

Therefore Malcolm was delighted to see Ian Paisley, Junior, maintaining a long tradition. It must be traumatic to one's self-esteem forever to be son of the "Big Mon", meaning one is doomed to be the "ween". Or, worse still, "Baby Doc". Tough.

So, let us turn to the BBC website:

Mr Paisley is quoted as saying: "I am pretty repulsed by gay and lesbianism. I think it is wrong.

"I think that those people harm themselves and - without caring about it - harm society.

"That doesn't mean to say that I hate them. I mean, I hate what they do."

The proverbial ton of bricks duly arrive, generously lobbed by Sinn Féin ("dangerous homophobia") and SDLP ("extreme personal views") alike.

Junior is a "junior minister" in his father's Office of the First and Deputy First Minister (notice the neat symmetry there). A main function of the Office is promoting equality. This includes a legacy from Direct Rule, delivering the Single Equality Bill:

The legislation aims to harmonise existing anti-discrimination and equality legislation as far as is practicable and will update and extend existing provisions where appropriate.

It's the way you tell them, indeed.

Malcolm wonders whether and, if so, why this outbreak of foot-in-mouth disease was greeted wholly chortle-free in the Peter Robinson and Jeffrey Donaldson households.

Sphere: Related Content

Sinn Féin's election: the dog that didn't bark?

The Irish groan and shout, lads,
Maybe because they're Celts,
They know they're up the spout, lads,
And so is everyone else.
Hurray! Hurray! Hurray!
Trouble is on the way.

Thank you, Noel: don't call us, we'll call you.

At Slugger and elsewhere (politics.ie, and now at Mick Fealty's other home, comment is free, for examples) there is some serious debate going on (provided one tiptoes round the usual exchange of ritual insults) about:

• why Sinn Féin fell so far short of expectations in the Irish General Election

and

• where they go from here.

The general consensus seems to blame the disaffection of the Republic's electorate with all things to do with the Black North, but identify Gerry Adams's performance in the also-rans debate as a special factor. Those pesky dogs, the critics and pundits, are snapping at his heels.

Malcolm feels that this debate has a long way to go.

It wasn't only SF that underperformed: all the radical parties suffered similarly. So that we all know what we're talking about, here's the meat:

FF 78 (-3);
FG 51 (+20, neatly restoring their position in 2002);
Labour 20 (-1, and still going nowhere);
PD 2 (-6, and effectively wiped out, except as an adjunct to FF);
Greens 6 (no change);
SF 4 (-1, after barking big, a very small bone);
and the odds-and-sods 5 (-9).

It isn't quite a two-party system, but it's getting pretty close.

Now, in hindsight, the outcome should not greatly surprise. The electors were asked if they liked prosperity, a housing boom, full employment, and, after a nanosecond of thought, decided "It's the economy, stupid".

Seán O’Faoláin, writing in 1969, noted:

time was when common words on every lip in every Irish pub were partition, the civil war, the republic, the gun. The vocab of the mid fifties and sixties was very different — the common market, planning, growth, rates, strikes, jobs, education opportunities or why this factory failed and that one flourished.

That’s why the RoI moved on, while too many in NI didn’t, and still haven't. Forty years on from O’Faoláin, the “vocab” of SF and anyone else trying to occupy the radical left, north or south, needs to adapt again.

He didn’t recognise it at the time, but Malcolm, sitting in the public gallery of the Dáil of the early ‘60s, might have observed O’Faoláin's change: the old men were still challenging each other about which side they and their fathers had fought in 1922: the younger sparks (and newspaper columnists) were rolling their eyes, and backing the Whitaker Plan.

That produced a step-change in the growth of the Irish economy, directly accountable to successfully attracting foreign investment and dismantling the protection racket that was the Irish economy. Exports, especially to the European market, rose; and the Irish
economy continued to grow throughout the 1970s (and began to free itself from dependency on Britain). Despite two oil crises in 1973 and 1979, high public spending kept the supply side of the economy buoyant, with the GDP growing at 4% a year. The cost was a structural deficit.

By the 1980s, though, the RoI was back in the mire. GDP growth fell back to 1.5% a year. Unemployment soared: by 1987 it reached nearly 17%, and emigration was back. Worse still, this emigration was mainly of the educated and talented. A consensus emerged between government, employers and unions: the new policy was tax-breaks to suck in the investment, expenditure on education and training, and industrial harmony. By 1992, some 37% of US investment into the European market was coming to Ireland. By 2003 unemployment was down to 1.5%, and 65% of the population were working.

So, in 2007, with Ireland one of the top-four burgeoning economies, the last thing on the popular agenda was “change”. But:

… the present pleasure,
By revolution lowering, does become
The opposite of itself.

And what then?

There should be an opportunity for any party which can cobble a convincing programme to cope with after-the-boom, when the appetite for “prosperity” is sated, when the economy turns. At that point, the place to be is outside the tent pissing in. Which party is capable of that posture?

On the other side of the fence, SF, the Greens and the Trots are the only parties who have been left off the roundabout of power all these years (though both SF and the Greens would love to be invited aboard). Therefore they have been the only parties credibly capable of arguing for “change”.

And that is why Malcolm's reading of Adams in the also-rans debate was somewhat different. Adams seemed not to have, or didn’t know, an economic policy. He vainly tried to shift the argument to social policy. (SF’s social policy looks somewhat threadbare too, but Malcolm leaves that thought aside.)

There is a case to be made for a new social programme: social inequality is growing; there is a two-tier health service; Ireland (pace the UN Development Programme) has the highest level of poverty in the Western world, behind only the US; a fifth to a quarter of the population are functionally illiterate; and Ireland is observably becoming a less tolerant society. (Malcolm, generous to a fault, omits corruption from that list.)

The opportunity is going to be there. Malcolm despairs that any party, least of all the factional, and provincial party that is SF, is presently capable of grasping it.

As in 1957, with Lemass, and 1987, when Haughey effectively picked up the policies of Garrett Fitzgerald, reform will probably be left to opportunist politicians. It will come slowly as the mainstream parties apply balm and healing salve, just enough for their own survival, declaring that it is all in "the national interest."

When Truman Capote complained about a bad review, André Gide replied with a proverb (now a cliché) from the Arabic: The dogs bark but the caravan moves on. It presently looks that the SF caravan, at least south of the border, is going nowhere.

Sphere: Related Content

Doublin yer mumper

Just when we all thought the thing was done and dusted, a cloud no bigger than the High Court's hand...

It seems that the hot money is on the Ahern Government continuing with the rump of two Progressive Democrats brought on board by offering Seanad seats to departed brethren. That makes 80 seats. The Independents, who never like short Dails, will tend to support a Fianna Fáil government anyway. Two of those Independents are former FF members: Jackie Healey Rae in Kerry South, and Beverley Flynn of Mayo. Ahern and FF are thus one further seat short of a bare majority. The two Dublin Independents, Finian McGrath in North Central and Tony Gregory in Central, are both making frantic signals that they wish to snuggle up to FF. FF can ease the wheels of democracy further by having a Ceann Comhairle from FG or (more likely?) Labour. So that's fixed.

Except ...

There's a story in today's Sunday Tribune that might disturb this arithmetic:

[Beverley] Flynn sued RTÉ over broadcasts in 1998 reporting that she had assisted tax evasion by setting up bogus non-resident accounts while working for National Irish Bank. She lost the High Court case in 2001 and costs estimated at 1.5m were awarded against her.

According to court documents filed by RTÉ last week, she owes the station 2.84m in taxed costs, including interest, for the longest-running libel case in Irish legal history.

And RTÉ are now filing to have her declared bankrupt. An undischarged bankrupt is not eligible to be a TD. Sphere: Related Content

"Dad: this one's on you"

Malcolm's Yorkshire Dad is presently rumbling round Harrogate Crem.

He spent the last decade of his life in a wheelchair: a double disability for a man for whom sport (football, cricket, and later crown-green bowls) was vital. This was a man for whom the Elysian Fields were Yorkshire Cricket Club's posthumous away game.

Only towards the end of the Old Boy's life did Malcolm discover that Dad (and his mate) had been offered a Yorkshire trial. They turned it down: it would have meant a day off work from the LMS shops at Sheffield Brightside. Instead, they served their time, collected their cards, and went to London. The Met Police needed lads capable of playing a decent game at Inside Right, or bowling consistently at Canterbury Cricket Week.

Then there was the story about turning up at White Hart Lane to play the Army (by then it was wartime: professional football had been suspended; Highbury was, appropriately, a boot camp). At the last moment, Denis Compton turned up, borrowed a pair of boots, to play for the Army. Dad was, in effect, up against an England front five. He never disclosed the score.

But the Headingley Test was always something different. Once, he calculated how far his electric wheelchair could make, but was defeated by the trip home. He would not stir from watching the screen. The Old Boy liked vision from the TV, supplemented by the radio commentary (at maximum volume: the ears had gone, in part a legacy from tending three Packard engines on a war-time MTB up the Aegean).

Today he would have relished. He would have been psyched up by Vaughan's ton yesterday ("The least he could 'a done. He's Lancashire, ye know."). Then, today: Pietersen ("Bloody South African!") playing like the reincarnation of Compton in his pride, Viv Richards in his style (a comparison already made by Graham Gooch). And, for the cherry-on-the-cake (alas: Dad was diabetic), Yorkshire-reject Ryan Sidebottom pitching it up, line-and-length.

At stumps, the Old Boy would have tended his pipe, and muttered something about "Hope to see sumthin' better tomorrow, before rain sets in." We knew that was praise indeed.

Thanks, Kev. Thanks, Arnie. Have a pint on Dad. Sphere: Related Content

How many shades of green?

Malcolm was amused and repelled by the story of the Arklow jobbies. It gets worse. And, bless their little cotton socks, Sinn Féin tried to make it an election issue.

It seems that Dublin City Council (in Malcolm's day, it used to be the "Corporation") export their "human waste" to be spread across the countryside. This practice is illegal in Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. More northern Irish county councils (Cavan, Meath, Offaly and Roscommon) are also forbidding it. So, the muck-merchants move on, and over 8,000 tons were added to the County Wicklow landscape last year.

Here's how to do it: take your crap, add lime (which is supposed to kill the bacteria, but doesn't — e.coli persists at fifteen times the permitted level), mix with liquid leached from landfill (lots of lovely heavy metals), spray over farmland. There are three companies involved in this practice:

• Land Organics of Kilkenny. Last year, this firm was denied permission to build a "waste-recovery facility" for 20,000 tonnes a year of "human sludge" near Portlaoise. The crap of Portlaoise amounts to about a tenth of that. Then, this April, the Galway village of Eyrecourt got the sludge spraying treatment, to considerable local disquiet.
  
• SEDE Ireland, Ltd., of Tallaght. This is part of the Proxiserve Group (based in the southern suburbs of Paris), which in turn is a subsidiary of Veolia Eau, a Paris-based multinational.
  
• Quinns of Baltinglass, a decent family firm which began in seeds and fertiliser (indeed!) and has branched into a pub and a supermarket.
  

Nor can Malcolm neglect Louis Moriarty. Mr Moriarty traded as Dublin Waste, which was a pseudonym for Swalcliffe Ltd (though why a fine and ancient Oxfordshire village should be invoked defies reason):

Louis Moriarty, a staunch Fianna Failer, has been involved in a number of court actions over illegal dumping by his former business, Swalcliffe Ltd, trading as Dublin Waste.

Malcolm will worry at that in a moment. Meanwhile, let's stick with the court action against Swalcliffe for illegal dumping:

Wicklow County Council prosecuted Swalcliffe and the Moriartys last year [2002] to recover the cost of cleaning up a twoacre site at Coolnamadra, Donard, near the Glen of Imaal.

The council found that the Moriarty's company had illegally dumped about 8,000 tonnes of waste, including bloodstained bandages, scalpels and laboratory waste.

The council estimates that it will cost €20 million to clean the site but Swalcliffe's accounts for the year to April 30, 2002 say that "the estimated cost of remediating" the land and associated costs is €1.65 million...

In 2001, Wicklow Co Council discovered two major illegal dumps and commenced investigations along with the Gardai. Court proceedings were also issued against Swalcliffe Ltd.

The company was fined a total of IR£7,500 and ordered to pay IR£8,000 in costs for illegal dumping.
A hearing in Dublin District Court was told there were discrepancies of up to 8,500 tonnes per month between the amount of waste that Dublin Waste said it was disposing of and the amount received from it by two dumps approved by the Environmental Protection Authority.

But Mr Moriarty has friends in high places: it's that "staunch Fianna Failer" thing. While the case against Swalcliffe was in process, Moriarty solicited his T.D. for help with obtaining a waste permit:

The Taoiseach was lobbied three years ago by the businessman with whom he was photographed in Kerry earlier this week.

Louis Moriarty, whose €20 million hotel development in Sneem Bertie Ahern visited on Tuesday, is at the centre of a series of investigations into illegal dumping.

Mr Ahern's constituency office also contacted the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the activities of Mr Moriarty who is a constituent of Mr Ahern and who lives on Griffith Avenue close to Mr Ahern's home.

There is more, much more on this at village.ie, including the rocky road from Griffith Avenue to Sneem.

Moriarty quickly rid himself of Swalcliffe. It was sold to Greenstar for €5M, which apparently went to finance the €20M Sneem hotel in Mr Moriarty's native Kerry, which was later graced by a visit and photo-op by Taoiseach Ahern. Thereby hangs another tale:

Greenstar is 88 per cent owned by National Toll Roads, the multi-million-euro company owned and controlled by Tom Roche and his family.

Ah, yes, sooner or later we get back to the late Tom Roche:

A legendary figure in Irish business ... a Fianna Fail mover and shaker of the Haughey era ... started off making blocks and selling coal from the back of a truck with a £250 investment from his mother. His connections with Charles Haughey enabled him to establish a cement monopoly in the Irish state.

CRH (Cement Roadstone Holdings) control the concession, NTR, which milks the Dublin toll roads and bridges. The money from NTR has financed the move into waste disposal, that is Greenstar, and thereby into electricity generation from waste.

Malcolm pauses to reflect upon the record of CRH:

Two men charged last week with illegal dumping and pollution on Cement Roadstone Holdings (CRH) sites have been described by An Taisce as “fall guys” for the company’s poor environmental record.

John Healy from Blessington and his son Francis were charged with illegal dumping in relation to incidents in January 1997 and December 2001 when they are accused of disposing “lorryloads of waste without a waste licence”. A second charge was brought for dumping “in a manner that caused or was likely to cause pollution”.

Frank Corcoran, chairman of An Taisce, said the decision by James Hamilton, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), not to bring criminal charges against CRH, the owners of the land, is clearly contrary to European Union environmental law...

The two men charged last week are directors of Blessington Plant Hire, which was contracted by CRH to dredge pools used to clean gravel extracted from the Wicklow quarry. They are also directors of Blue Bins, a sewage and refuse disposal company. The plant hire company had unlimited access to CRH sites for several years.

During the course of the investigation, environmental investigators from Wicklow county council discovered eight separate illegal dumping sites by overflying the 600-acre site with thermal-imaging equipment that spots the higher temperatures of decomposing waste. Three of the sites were described as having “substantial” amounts of waste and three more as in need of remediation.

Half the estimated 100,000 tonnes of dumped material found by investigators was domestic and the rest was construction and demolition waste. Wicklow council has ordered CRH to remove the waste, but the Environmental Protection Agency must issue a licence.

Which brings us back to the topic of the day: coalition partners for Fianna Fáil. As "Dewey Finn" said "Read between the lines":

Green Party leader Trevor Sargent, who looks set to head a total of six Green TDs in the Dáil, said that once his party had clarified and focused on the issues in hand, they would "definitely" be discussing with other parties the possibility of forming a stable government.

However, Mr Sargent insisted that Green Party policies needed to be discussed before any such arrangement was reached.

He said banning corporate donations would be high on his party's agenda if it was to enter into a government with Fianna Fáil. His party's decision would depend on how serious other parties were about forming a stable government.

Mind where you tread! Sphere: Related Content

Thanks, Ethical Man!

Malcolm involved himself, again, in the mud-wrestle that is Slugger O'Toole's comments.

This should be regarded as a mistake, because it is as inevitable as an English team losing on penalties that the "discussion" will come down to a slanging match. Usually it is orange versus green, and everybody knows for which side to shout.

One of today's side-dishes (the main course being the Irish General Election: two submissions, a knock-out or a twelfth recount to win) was City of Derry Airport. Much of Malcolm's submission has already appeared here. Later, he found himself defending the City Council's involvement in fostering Eglinton thus:

• Private enterprise has not been much in evidence in the Province in recent decades.
• The notion that the whole of Ulster (yes, Ulster) can be properly served, now and for the future, through Aldergrove and Dublin seems fallacious. That's not in the local, provincial, national or European interest.
• Demand is increasing at at astounding rate, passenger traffic at regional airports doubles every 15 years (at Eglinton that has happened, albeit from a low base-line, in just two years).

Malcolm also knows there are many, and good arguments against airport expansion: they all receive endless publicity. Nevertheless, people, however much they intellectually are convinced by those arguments and publicity, still emotionally want to fly. Malcolm's essential liberalism means he finds distasteful all the Green nay-saying which amounts to arguing that someone, somewhere must stop this Gardarene rush, deny ordinary folk their wish to holiday in Spain, inconvenience them, force them to conform, deny them occasional pleasures.

Malcolm felt just a trifle sweaty maintaining this, knowing the pressures of global warming and the consequent death of his beloved beech tree were somehow involved.

So, hooray for Justin Rowlatt, the BBC's Ethical Man! He writes a delightful (and informative) blog at the Newsnight site:

here’s the good news: when you look at the numbers, modern jet aeroplanes are actually a very efficient form of transport.

Indeed, the jet engine is one of the most effective ways to convert the energy from fuel into thrust. The best jets are 37 per cent efficient. By contrast it seems modern petrol engines are around 25 per cent efficient while a finely tuned diesel will achieve, at best, 32 per cent efficiency...

The average jet plane now uses around 4.8 l/100 km per passenger – just a little worse than a Prius with no passengers. But the manufacturers say that modern jets are much more efficient.

Collooh! Callay! Malcolm chortled in his joy.

Now, of course, that does not mean we should belt around the planet for the sheer hell of it (a couple of hours as hostage of Ryanair would cure that affliction, anyway). Nor does it means we need Heathrow Terminal 19. It does mean that a bit of balance might, just might be reasserting itself. Sphere: Related Content

Going through the motions








Now, here's a story by Olivia Kelly which, for all sorts of reasons — but mainly because of an anal-retentive sense of humour, Malcolm feels should not lurk unnoticed behind the Irish Times need to register:

Outcry over discharge of raw sewage into river

A poster protesting against the discharge of raw sewage into the Avoca river in Arklow, Co Wicklow, and the lack of any sewage facilities for the town, has been placed in the middle of the river.

The poster erected by Independent town councillor Peter Dempsey, shows a cartoon figure sitting on a toilet alongside the words: "Cut the crap, stop the objections, Arklow needs its sewage plant now."

A sewage treatment facility was originally planned for the town 14 years ago, but its development has been held up because of the council's site selection.

An Bord Pleanála finally granted permission for construction of the plant at Seabank, on the coast near Arklow town, in January 2005; however, the decision was appealed to the High Court by Arklow Holidays Ltd, a company that owns a caravan park at Seabank.

The case will come before the court again on July 10th and work cannot commence on the plant unless the court besides against the appellants.

Mr Dempsey said the delays were unacceptable. "While this is being dragged through the courts, turds are running down the river less than 30ft from people's front doors," he said.

The smell from the river was particularly bad during the summer months, he said, in addition to the public health risks posed by raw sewage.

"The stink is absolutely vile. We're going to have a typhoid epidemic on our hands unless something is done about this."

Hark! As Malcolm croons Tom Moore:

Sweet Vale of Avoca! How calm could I rest
In thy bosom of shade, with the friends I love best
Where the storms that we feel in this cold world would cease
And our hearts, like thy waters, be mingled in peace.

Sphere: Related Content

Londonderry Air

It began with a quick check of the news:

The City of Derry Airport is being shut by the flight regulator until further notice because of safety concerns.

The Civil Aviation Authority decided to provisionally suspend its licence following an inspection this week.

Problems found include lack of an effective bird control plan, unsuitable temporary repairs to the area where planes park and poor runway drainage.

So Malcolm considered Eglinton, which has suffered the political equivalent of the Drigg/ Windscale/ Calder Hall/ Sellafield syndrome: successive name-changes for ulterior motives.

Strategy Foyled

Eglinton was one of three airfields (Eglinton, Ballykelly and Maydown) built during the early part of WW2, when this area was on the front line:

On two occasions in it's [sic] history the city of Londonderry has played a pivotal part in the history of Europe. The first was the ‘great siege’ of 1689 when, over 105 days, the constitutional future of the British Isles and of Europe was decided in and around the city. The second occasion was even more important. In June 1940 the city became a naval base and was destined to become the Allies’ most important escort base in the Battle of the Atlantic. Not only did Europe’s future depend on this base but so also did the political shape of the post-war world.

Had the Allies lost the Battle of the Atlantic, the Nazi domination of Europe could not have been broken and Hitler’s dictatorship would have continued. Winning the Battle of the Atlantic allowed the western Allies to invade Europe and led to the final defeat of Nazism. The naval base at Derry – shared by the Royal Navy, the Royal Canadian Navy and the United States Navy – was vital to the protection of convoys in the Atlantic and, at one time, 140 Allied escort ships were based on the Foyle.

The Foyle was the advance base of Western Approaches command, and so 'Derry (stuffed with service personnel) was a prime target. Much of the blame for the neglect of air defence (one of many derelictions) in the Province should rest on the Unionist government in Stormont, and in particular the moribund Craig and the incompetent Andrews:

Due in large part to earlier ministerial neglect and prevarication, local defences were hopelessly inadequate, and the public were physically and psychologically unprepared for the blitz. In September 1940, both Belfast and Londonderry had been provided with a light balloon barrage, which was marginally reinforced six months later. By the spring of 1941, the strength of the anti-aircraft barrage in Northern Ireland had risen to 24 heavy guns and 14 light guns. Twenty-two of these were located in Belfast (6 light and 16 heavy). Four were sited at Londonderry; more were to be transferred from Cardiff, but the Luftwaffe arrived before the guns did.

The Churchill Government in Westminster were not so lax. Since only Operation Barbarossa forestalled an inevitable Blitz of 'Derry, by 1942, there was an over-provision of airfields.

A regional airport

Londonderry County Borough acquired the site in 1978, though for the next twenty years only Loganair operated there. European Regional Development money upgraded the facilities in the early '90s. The newly politically-correct "City of Derry Airport" opened in 1994, but it took until 1999 for Falcon Holidays to begin charter flights and Ryanair to begin a scheduled service. This was not entirely neglect: climate and location suggest that, for all-year operations, aircraft need to have a certain size about them.

Griping

By objective standards, the airport has been something of a success: it is well on the way to half a million passengers a year. This is Northern Ireland, so there has to be controversy. A quick flick to Slugger O'Toole tells us that “Truck loads of money have been thrown at this airport”; and refers to “the squillions squandered”.

Now compare that with the reality:

[1]

“The European Commission has authorised, under EC state aid guidelines, a plan to fund a number of essential infrastructure improvements at the City of Derry Airport. The plan involves joint financing of the infrastructure by the UK and Irish governments together with Derry City Council, the airport’s owner.

“The proposed financing was considered compatible with the European common market as it satisfies the criteria laid down in state aid guidelines; it constitutes essential infrastructure designed to achieve a clearly defined objective of general interest without leading to undue distortion of the market.

“The measure in question concerns the intention of the United Kingdom and Irish governments to provide over £10.4 million (EUR 15.2 million) of financial assistance to Derry City Council to meet 75% of the cost of two capital development projects at the airport. Each government will pay 37.5%, approximately £5.2 million (EUR 7.6 million) of the expenditure, while Derry City Council will contribute the remaining 25%, approximately £3.48 million (EUR 5 million).”

[2]

Mr. Dermot Ahern, T.D., Minister for Foreign Affairs, said: “City of Derry Airport serves the entire North West region. Recognising its strategic importance, the Government has decided to increase its funding to allow the completion of development works at the Airport.”

“The Government will contribute a total of €10.87 million to works at the Airport. The Government’s contribution is matched by the British Government under the co-funding arrangements agreed by the two Governments in March 2005.”

The airport's critics (and they are many) have a couple of common characteristics: they tend to be from the east of the Province (and the mental distance from Belfast to 'Derry can be immense) and they tend to have the usual "Stroke City" sectarian objections. Four main issues seem to arise, and are often confused:

[1] The financing of desirable and necessary upgrades to the airport (a process which, in fact, is open and transparent, necessarily so because of the tripartite involvement of two Governments and the EC).

[2] The smaller (and, sadly, less open and transparent) issue of the subsidy to Ryanair:

The agreement struck in 1999 guaranteed Ryanair £250,000 (€380,000) a year from a consortium of four state-funded authorities on both sides of the Irish border to promote its Derry to London route. A range of other taxpayer-subsidised benefits included free landing, navigation, air control, security, baggage and passenger charges, were also given.

[3] The deficit on operating the airport:

Its operating costs are around £3.5m a year, but revenue is about £2m. The losses are met by the council.

To put this into proportion, it need to be compared with:

• the Derry city budget as a whole (a bit less than £31M);

and expenditure on other local transport, for example

• the announcement from Conor Murphy of £12M extra for roads in Derry City this year.

[4] On the lunatic fringe, the SEA [i.e. Eamonn McCann's eccentric local Trottery] protesting the Donnybrewer Road houses, and attempting to elevate it into an extension of the Land War.

A soft landing

The CAA's inspection (and closure order) seem to be confined to three points:

concerns about the drainage of the runway, the facility for parking planes and its bird control plan.

None of these seems insuperable (and it seems that the CAA took over a week between its inspection and issuing the order, which hardly implies urgency). Drainage can hardly be a recent problem, for it was recognised in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica:

The excessive rainfall and the cold and uncertain climate are unfavourable for agriculture.

The aircraft parking seems to amount to dissatisfaction with recent temporary repairs to the hard standings, and "bird control" invites Malcolm to invoke the Duke of Wellington:

"Try sparrow-hawks, Ma'am."

Sphere: Related Content

Darkening my clear sun

It didn't start with BBC4, but Malcolm was brought up short thereby. The BBC digital station started with ten minutes of Sounds of the Sixties. Malcolm was in time to catch the Kinks and the Moody Blues. Malcolm, who was really looking for Channel 4 News, paused, watched, was entranced by memories of a long, lost past. Since Sounds of the Sixties is recycling stuff off old tapes, Top of the Pops and similar, Malcolm found himself talking 'bout his generation, as they were: the males in their high-buttoned jackets, the females ... well, pert and perky. Sigh.

There is a direct link from there to Malcolm's main theme. The previous evening, for reasons too complex to narrate, Malcolm had been sitting in the same room as ITV2' showing Ten Things I Hate About You. And there the hook was the divine Allison Janney (a.k.a., for ever and for good reason, CJ Cregg) playing "Ms Perky".

Now Ten Things I Hate About You is supposed to be derived from Taming of the Shrew (to which we may return). Ah, yes, Malcolm knew that. To keep the pseudo-cognoscenti happy, there are the superficial references to the original, though (wisely) the script kept those to a minimum, and broke from the precursor as readily as it could. However and alas (those redundant conjunctions that Malcolm's English teacher, all those years ago, tried to suppress), one quotation had Malcolm fazed:

Hates him with the fire of a thousand suns.

To his irritation, Malcolm could not place the reference. Soon, his mind evolved a fuller version:

If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendour of the mighty one ...

Definitely not Shakespeare, closet Catholic or not.

So, let's Google!

And the first citation is ... The Bhagavad Gita? Oh, come on! But wait ...

If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds.

Yes! YES! So, who? WHO?

J Robert Oppenheimer, Quoting "The Bhagavad Gita", Alamogordo, New Mexico, 1945

Of course! Malcolm could now reconstruct his mental process. It was a book, a paperback, a Penguin edition, now out-of-print, and its content long outdated by the fall of the Wall. And so, Malcolm was able to retire to bed, happy with another small mystery solved.

In the small hours, though, the problem recurs:

Out of the darkness,
Brighter than a thousand suns
Bury your morals and bury your dead
Bury your head in the sand
E=MC squared you can't relate,
How we made God
With our hands.

Only with the new day does Malcolm link that to Iron Maiden. Sphere: Related Content

The realities of power

Malcolm has long been intrigued by the curiosity which is First Post. It is worthy enough (if innately conservative, with or without an initial capital); but it suffers from one inexcusable fault — detail and depth are sacrificed to brevity. The desire to have a one-page, no scrolling story makes almost every story trite and trivial. First Post pops into Malcolm's in-box with monotonous and commendable regularity late each morning. It rarely says anything new, but it has an odd stable of columnists.

Most days, Malcolm scans its headlines, and quickly commits it to Trash (since Malcolm is a Mac-man, we have no truck with the "recycling bin" here).

From Bernard...

Today, one story caught Malcolm's attention:

Safe, clean and cheap: the case for nuclear energy.
Nuclear power has a powerful friend in Bernard Ingham, says
Margareta Pagano.

The story does not move the debate forward. It is interesting because it reminds Malcolm that all volcanoes are not extinct, it links names, and makes a useful propaganda point.

The dormant volcano is, of course, Bernard Ingham, Thatcher's press secretary and general arse-kicker, and one-time [1965] Labour candidate. He now enjoys an active retirement, including being secretary of SONE (Supporters of Nuclear Energy).

Malcolm will already be double-damned by the Greenies for even venturing onto such territory. The names associated with SONE admittedly include the usual suspects: McAlpine, Jack Cunningham, Gavin Laird, Dick Taverne and co. But there are some more respectable additions: Dennis MacShane, Fred Holliday, James Lovelock, John Edmonds. For the poor, struggling pursuer of balance, the SONE website is a ready source of information and links.

However, Malcolm commends the First Post piece for this:

Ingham is not anti-green. What he can't abide is the "delusional myth-making and nonsense" talked about alternative energy supplies. "We need the lowest cost and the lowest carbon output consistent with a viable economy," he argues.

While Ingham has grudging respect for Labour's attempts at a grown-up energy policy, he has little time for David Cameron and his policies: "Hugging huskies and misplacing a wind turbine on your roof does not encourage me to think that the Conservatives are closer to reality."

The first of those paragraphs is Ingham's usual bluntness (would that present "spinners" could make the point so effectively), the second his commendable debunking of Tories (he was always harder on the Tory back-sliders than on his nominal opponents).

The punch-line is:

While the UK procrastinates, he warns, the rest of the world is moving ahead. Globally, there are 250 nuclear reactors being built to add to the existing 435 - providing 17 per cent of the world's electricity.

... to Bravefart

Which brings Malcolm to his second topic: the continuing slipperiness of ScotNattery.

The SNP campaigned on an anti-nuke platform. Salmond achieved his enstoolment by breaking bread with the Greens. During the campaign, Salmond and his crew were preaching that Scotland had a third of the wind and wave potential for all Europe: therefore the nuclear power stations could be consigned to history. Once in their Holyrood offices, the SNP masters had to address reality. And reality is that 40% of Scottish electricity is nuclear-produced. So, yesterday, it was officially recognised that Torness could be operating and producing power into the fourth decade of this century. Alistair Darling must have enjoyed his comment:

"There is going to be nuclear power in Scotland for the foreseeable future," said Alistair Darling, the Westminster industry secretary.

"Torness will be around long after Alex Salmond is gone."

Whether the domestic harmony between the SNP and its two tame Green MSPs lasts is less predictable.

Sphere: Related Content

Of wallies and ding-bats

Yesterday the media found time and space to froth about the Howard School in Rainham, Kent:

A secondary school has apologised after a confidential report book which called pupils names like "ding bat" and "wally" was found lying in a street.

The booklet, produced by The Howard School for boys, in Rainham, Kent, carried a specific message on its front page - "Do not leave lying around".

Well, you wouldn't want that "lying around", would you? Mega-embarrassment. Some aggrieved parents looking for (financial) retribution, one expects. Several young souls with instant added playground kudos, one does not doubt.

Yet...

Every school, probably every place of employment and many places of leisure would use similar shorthands. So it's more a case of "bloody loony, as we professionals say". Which, in his decades of teaching, Malcolm frequently did. As did the GP whose annotation "NFN" against his patients indicated "normal for Norfolk", and spawned an industry, a book, a comedy routine, and a film.

At bottom, the use of such devices amounts on one level to professional code, and on another to a mechanism for coping with the pressures of an up-close-and-personal job. It is efficient communication: there are precise distinctions between "drongo" and "dingbat", "dim" and "dozy". A similar, more verbose, code appears in Ofsted's definition of the Howard School:

The Howard has a combined (bilateral) entry: the vast majority of the pupils do not qualify for a grammar school place; about four per cent do. On entry pupils' attainment is about average... About a quarter of its pupils have special educational needs, more than in most schools. Pupils come from areas with lower levels of financial difficulty than most, but with fewer families who have benefited from higher education. Slightly more pupils than usual have a home language that is not English. The school supports a small number of pupils at an early stage of English fluency and also a small number of vulnerable pupils.

Ofsted's clincher, enough to frighten any in-two-minds applicant for a post, is:

The school no longer has serious weaknesses.

Those very journos who ridicule or traduce the Howard School will then happily turn and use similar derogatives for their colleagues, bosses and readers (doubters should try the urbandictionary).

Then there's the Paul Flynn version of the well-known story:

One Tory MP had a dangerous surgery habit.

As an aide memoir he appended brief personal descriptions of the constituents who attended his surgery. The notes were useful in tying in the person to the complaint when replies came weeks later. He could remember ‘tall man with beard’, or ‘slim women with red hair.’

In his absence his secretary drafted an urgent reply that had arrived. She had difficulty deciphering the MPs notes and deciding what the women’s name was.

She was concerned that the note was unclear and the name unusual. But the matter was important urgent and a reply was sent clearly addressed : Dear Mrs Horseface,

Sphere: Related Content

A profitable weekend

Once upon a time Malcolm would have been easily satisfied by the lesser things in life: world peace, or the arrival of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Now, in the autumn of his span, he looks for something more: a decent bottle of wine for a reasonable cost, a good book, a nice surprise. Well, this weekend, two out of three can't be bad.

The book

The book is C.J.Sansom's Winter in Madrid. Obviously Malcolm has taken some eighteen months to get around to this one. That is a function of an antipathy to rave reviews, and lasting disillusion with historical whodunits (Sansom's previous speciality). However, eventually the combination of a Spanish Civil War background and a three-for-two offer at Waterstone's got him. Wowza! There are enough synopses and tasters on the Web for Malcolm to be excused the task of summarising. Nor is it a particularly complex story: it amounts to a series of interlocking emotional triangles. The essential theme is loyalties. Three factors make it different: a disordered time sequence, characters overcoming childhood crises, a superbly-realised and atmospheric background.

It was Chapter 10 when Malcolm came to this:

There was a susurrating murmur from the crowd. At the far end of the hall a door opened and a bevy of flunkeys bowed in a middle-aged couple. Barbara had heard that Franco was a small man but was surprised how tiny, even delicate, he looked. He wore a general’s uniform with a broad red sash around his paunchy middle. He held his arms stiffly at his sides, moving them back and forth as though leading a parade. His balding head gleamed under the lights. Doña Carmen, walking behind, was slightly taller than her husband, a tiara in her jet black hair. Her long haughty face was made for the regal expression it wore. There seemed something posed, though, about the stoniness of the Generalísimo’s face, the little mouth set hard under the wispy moustache, and the surprisingly large eyes staring ahead as he marched past the stage.

The Falangists in the audience sprang to their feet, stretching out their arms in the Fascist salute. ‘¡Jefe!’ they called out. The rest of the audience and the orchestra followed.

[Sansom admits in his end-note:

I have also invented Franco's attendance at the first performance of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, which was actually in Barcelona.

And where else than the Palau de la Música Catalana, on 9th November 1940. The first Madrid performance did not happen until December 11th (which would be too late for Sansom's chronology).]

Sansom's description is, for Malcolm, quite spine-tingling. In terms of skewering the characterisation and the zeitgeist, it is as effective as, say, Dickens doing for the Veneerings. It is also less arch, less baroque, which adds to the noir sinisterness. Malcolm knows that it is essential for the writer of any critique or blurb to stretch for comparators. The Independent's reviewer (Barry Forshaw) invoked Greene (as did Michael Arditti in the Mail) and Hemingway; the Telegraph invoked Julian Mitchell; the Express threw in Sebastian Faulks and Carlos Ruiz Zafón (the latter perhaps simply because of the cover design and the Spanish location). Malcolm has already thrown in Dickens (if only for the complexity of the plotting), but would add Alan Furst (if only for the setting and the mood).

Incidentally, Furst's latest The Foreign Correspondent is out in paperback in the US, but not in the UK until the end of the year. Seems a good way to exploit the exchange rate.

The nice surprise

Malcolm has already mentioned Our American Cousin in these drivellings, and has come to rely on OAC for guidance through the maze of song-writers, particularly those from Texas. OAC severely counselled Malcolm on his ignorance of, among others, the late Townes Van Zandt. Now Malcolm is not entirely ignorant in these matters, but his knowledge of Van Zandt extended little further than his credits on a stack of fine songs and for Dead Flowers on the soundtrack of the final scene of The Great Lebowski. Then there was a worthwhile essay by Anthony Decurtis in Rolling Stone some years ago: the essay had Van Zandt's name in the title, but was mainly about Willie Nelson (which is how Malcolm came to it). RS's last review (or the last one Malcolm can see) of Van Zandt was pretty hot:

with the market flooded with all-too-often mediocre singer-songwriters, it would be very easy to overlook Townes Van Zandt. But it would be a mistake, because Townes is one of the very best... Townes' quiet, unassuming voice and guitar come across like a fresh prairie breeze. And if there were any justice in this world, he'd be a star, not just the property of a tiny band of followers who count his records among their most prized possessions.

So Malcolm put on his frog-suit and went a-courtin', and came back with the inevitable Best of ...

Not quite an instant revelation, but a growing recognition. This culminated by the 13th track: The Ballad of Ira Hayes. In common with anyone else still breathing, Malcolm knew this one mainly from Johnny Cash's version: upfront, quite up-tempo and bristling with anger. Let us equally celebrate that Cash, when asked to sing for Nixon, chose this and What is Truth? as alternatives to the President's choice of Okie from Muskogee.

Van Zandt makes Ira Hayes much more elegaic, more thoughtful, driving the message more subtly. As Michelin would say, "worth a special journey". And the song really belongs to neither Van Zandt nor Cash: it is by Peter La Farge.

So, another strike for Our American Cousin.
___________________________ Sphere: Related Content

Life on a knife-edge majority

It's going to be endless fun and games until:

the first Thursday in May in the fourth calendar year following that in which the previous ordinary general election was held.

Malcolm reckons that to be 5th May, 2011.

And here comes the next wee problem for First Minister Salmond:

Angela Constance, the representative for Livingston, is due to give birth to her first child in October.

Her expected absence will mean the SNP and Labour will have the same number of MSPs. This means that even with support from the Greens and either the Liberal Democrats or the Conservatives, the new government would be one vote short of a majority at Holyrood.

The situation could leave independent MSP Margo Macdonald in a particularly powerful position.

Yesterday, the opposition was cautious not to be seen to criticise Mrs Constance but admitted they would take advantage of the situation.

Malcolm wonders:

• on what possible basis could Ms Constance be criticised?
• on what basis The Scotsman refers to her as "Mrs" Constance? Her husband is a Mr Knox.

Of course, the SNP, with its usual finesse, brought the problem on itself by abandoning the pairing system some time back.

More irony, too: be careful what you wish for: you might get it.

It was back on 28th March, 1979, that the 11 SNP MPs supported a Tory vote of censure on the Callaghan Government. At that point, the Labour majority was one very sick MP, Alfred Broughton, in hospital with five days to live. Because the Tories and other parties called off all pairing arrangements, and because Jim Callaghan refused to bring a dying man two hundred miles to be "nodded through", the Government fell.

Callaghan's decision and Broughton's willingness to travel to London, despite all medical advice, were the about the extent of honourable behaviour in that affair. A special circle of Hell should be reserved for Frank Maguire, the Independent Republican MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, who left his bar for the occasion, and travelled to London to "abstain in person". He, too, got what he wished for -- Margaret Thatcher's Government.

Is anyone taking bets on whether the Salmond administration survives these next 1446 days? Sphere: Related Content