Cheap-tricks Budget will force coping class to create own party
LIKE many Irish people, I hate the Americanised Halloween, its expensive exploitation of parents and infantilised adult antics.
Last week’s anaemic Budget added to my antipathy with its populist cheap treats that turned out to be cheap tricks.
Last Sunday night, I got a preview of what life is like for the coping class — my coinage and a phrase that conveys a sense of active agency rather than the whiny victim conjured up by “squeezed middle”.
Late in the evening, driving from Skibbereen to Dublin, my 14-year-old SAAB spewed fumes on the M50. I nursed it to the Newbridge exit and some good samaritans pushed it to Brennan’s Maxol filling station at Ballymany.
This proved to be a good choice for what turned out to be a long night. Carol Brennan’s station has fine fast food, a heated seated area and even a shelf of books to help pass the time.
When the AA man arrived, he gave me what proved to be an accurate prognosis: the engine had expired for good.
Because I had a screenwriting session next morning at IADT, I passed on the offer of a hotel bed and a hired car the next day.
Instead, I pressed for a flatbed truck to take the car and myself to Dublin. Eventually, over two days, I found myself in the cab of two flatbeds, both driven by decent guys: Graham who works for Alan Recovery, and Greg, the sole owner and driver of Autolink.
Greg, a cheerful Offalyman, who reminded me of Pat Shortt, is typical of the self-reliant selfemployed who cannot afford to get sick.
A few weeks ago, Greg got pleurisy. The doctor told him he could write him a sick note for two weeks off work. “But who would I give it to?”
Greg got a measly tax rebate of €400 in the Budget. TDs will get €5,000. But the big secret was the boost in public sector pay.
Dan O’Brien was the only financial journalist to focus on that part of the Budget in a powerful piece in the Irish Independent.
O’Brien pointed out that the public pay bill will rise by €850m this year, only €700m below the 2008 peak.
This will give every public sector employee an average increase of €2,500, pushing average pay well above the previous record in 2008.
O’Brien knows that focusing on these figures will not make him popular with politicians or public sector unions.
“Pointing to these facts will rile those who prefer to keep pay matters opaque and under wraps.”
The private sector has no political party to protect its interests. My hunch is that this huge hole in national politics will be filled in the near future. Shane Coleman, writing in the Irish Independent, had the same hunch.
“The suspicion lingers that there is a great swathe of centre-ground voters looking for a home. You won’t see them in Prime Time audiences giving out about their lot; or find them taking part in a march against water charges. And the danger is that because they don’t shout the loudest, that they are being ignored. They certainly were in this Budget.”
Meantime, Greg is carrying the country on his flatbed. Lacking the sick leave of the public sector, we can only hope his health holds up.
A few weeks ago, I criticised the screenwriter of The Siege at Jadotville for caricaturing Conor Cruise O’Brien and failing to portray him in the film as an Irish anti-colonial hero.
But it now transpires that the film-makers were briefed by Dr Michael Kennedy, of the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, author of Ireland, the United Nations and the Congo.
According to the Royal Irish Academy’s website: “Michael helped director Richie Smith build up the characters of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold and Irish diplomat Conor Cruise O’Brien in Jamie Dornan’s latest film The Siege of Jadotville.”
Build up is not the phrase I would choose, nor can I understand why anyone would want credit for that briefing. But the RIA goes on to brag as follows.
“As the only Irish historian to have worked on UN archives for its 1960 to 1964 ONUC mission in Congo, Michael was in an ideal position to assist the film’s makers and got a mention in the closing credits for his help.”
But historians are not recording angels, free of human passions. And Dr Kennedy’s depiction of O’Brien is not always clearly supported by any evidence from the UN archives.
Let me take two examples. He has written: “In the Irish Diplomatic Service, O’Brien often displayed a tendency to bypass normal channels of authority and act on his own initiative.”
Most of us wish public servants would show the same pro-active attitude. Even so, Kennedy provides no proof of his charge.
Far more serious is his claim: “O’Brien settled into Elizabethville easily. He was content and developing the manner of a colonial administrator.”
What is Dr Kennedy’s evidence for this? Simply that O’Brien wrote in a letter that he was “enjoying life in Elizabethville very much indeed, although I have the idea that I am unlikely to win any local popularity contest”.
Later on, Dr Kennedy tells us, referring to O’Brien, that “his mood verged on arrogance”. Again, where is Dr Kennedy’s proof for O’Brien’s alleged arrogance?
Incredibly it seems to boil down to the fact that O’Brien speculated to a UN colleague that “fate may bring you to the Congo while I am here. In that case, we will have a party and eat some Belgians”.
Dr Kennedy misses two nuances here. First, O’Brien was noted for his sense of humour. Second, the British tabloids were smearing the Congolese as cannibals.
In short, O’Brien was simply sending up the yellow press smears about “Congolese cannibals”.
Like many academics, in this instance, Dr Kennedy seems to suffer from a humour deficit, a lethal lack in decoding the irony, wit and sense of fun O’Brien brought to even the most fraught situations.
Someone who does appreciate that aspect of O’Brien’s character is my friend, Dr Joe Skelly, author of Irish Diplomacy at the United Nations, 1945-65, and Ideas Matter: Essays in Honour of Conor Cruise O’Brien.
Dr Skelly has a high regard for Michael Kennedy, with whom he co-edited Irish Foreign Policy, 191966: From Independence to Internationalism.
But in an email to me, he is adamant that O’Brien should not bear the main responsibility for the operation against Katanga.
“The members of the UN Security Council, which authorised ONUC, Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, and the UN High Command, ultimately bear full responsibility for the Katanga campaign, which was one part of a larger operation in the Congo.”
Dr Skelly, who also worked in the UN archives, adds this tribute.
“Conor Cruise O’Brien was one of the leading voices of Ireland’s sophisticated, effective and balanced anti-colonial policy at the United Nations in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a diplomatic strategy that promoted decolonisation in a measured, responsible manner, while also protecting Ireland’s national interests overall.”
That’ll do me.
‘The private sector has no political party to protect its interests’