We Must Teach Economics as a Core Subject in Schools

Every now and again someone in public life likes to pound the table and declare that the absence of this subject or that subject is a blight on the Irish education system. Some people think the children should be taught how to play a musical instrument. Some think it would be something of a miracle to get the little monsters to read and/or write, to say nothing of asking them to bang out sonatas on the piano. And so the long day wears on.

The latest to enter the lists is Senator Professor John Crown, who got busy on the Twitter machine over the weekend. The Senator is concerned about a certain level of scientific ignorance in the general population, remarking that “high levels of scientific ignorance in a society are very dangerous.” He went on say that “every person should do science in school right up to school leaving age,” on the basis that precise analytical skills will stand to students in their adult lives.

And that’s very laudable, of course. It would be lovely if people were more scientifically minded. Unfortunately, right now the nation cannot afford it. We cannot afford it in terms of money but more importantly, we cannot afford it in terms of time.

If any mathematically based subject should be brought front and centre in Irish education right now it isn’t science. It is economics.

Last week the sovereign Irish nation allowed the state to ratify the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union done at Brussels on the 2nd day of March 2012. All the evidence is that this was a blind vote on the nation’s behalf.

The nation voted on a Treaty that it didn’t understand, and that couldn’t be explained to it in the time frame given. The level of economic literacy needed to understand the arguments about the worth or otherwise of the Treaty doesn’t exist in the general populace.

What’s going on currently in Europe is extremely complex. Because of our history, we are brought up with the notion that states are formed because of nationhood – that no-one can set a boundary on the march of a nation, as Parnell put it.

But states can be formed for economic benefit too, and that is what is currently happening in Europe. A common language and culture is fine in a state, but what really butters the parsnips in a state is a common currency.

One of the reasons that the Euro failed is because it was created without the protections that exist for other, “proper” currencies – a central government and a central bank that regulates the flow of currency. One of the results of the referendum, of the establishment of the EU Stability treaty and the Spanish banks sliding slowly and surely to their doom, is that the European Central Bank is now being built, brick by brick, with the European Government to follow.

What that means in Ireland is referenda a go-go. Matt Cooper outlined this position in the Sunday Times and his article makes for distressing reading. More and more referenda will come down the line and each one will, by definition, trade sovereignty for economic benefit. And each referendum will be more and more fraught, for two reasons. The first is because sovereignty was so hard won in the first place and the second reason is because people genuinely don’t understand the economics of what’s happening.

One of early reactions to the Treaty vote was to identify a clear class division in Ireland, between a pro-austerity middle class and an anti-austerity working class. But is that true? Does the electorate understand how all this works? Are they sufficiently informed to make a judgment? Do the people really understand the full implications of austerity, the alternatives to austerity or the possibility of implementing one of the other?

Chances are they don’t. Economics isn’t taught as a core subject in Irish schools and it really ought to be. Generations have grown up and gone into the world without ever fully understanding just how money makes it go round.

Why is the West richer than the East? The West is richer than the East because the West is better able to generate money through borrowing and lending with banks. The East has a religious object to usury – there is no such problem in the West. Banks create wealth in a capitalist economy.

Why did the British Empire triumph and the Spanish Empire fall? The sinking of the Spanish Armada in 1588 certainly, but also because the British were so much better at trading. All the gold the Spanish looted from South America became worth less and less, because money is a measure of worth, and not actual wealth in and of itself.

That’s how the modern world was created, but most people don’t know it because it’s not taught in school.

It would be lovely if all subjects were taught in school. It would be lovely if the state could produce a population that saw all forms of knowledge as having their own particular merit. But in modern Ireland, the nation is being lost through lack of economic understanding. If it must be a choice between science and economics, the best bet is to follow the money.

Anyone for Leadership?

How craven is the Government’s attitude to the inevitable EU referendum? It’s not quite as craven as the man in the women and children’s lifeboat but goodness gracious, it’s a long step away from the bold Robert Emmet’s speech from the dock in terms of inspiring the nation and giving light in darkness.

It seems clear that the Government will spend from now until the final EU deal is settled praying that God will somehow intervene and save them from having to bring another EU referendum before the people. The Government will not be alone in this; the entire Irish political establishment will be praying every bit as hard.

In a functioning democracy, the referendum would be a matter of course. In a country where there is political talent and will, they could even write a new constitution that would prevent these constant referenda clogging up the path to progress.

But Ireland is not a functioning democracy. It is a state governed by a tiny elite. A tiny elite who have zero interest in leading the people. A tiny elite who have zero interest in explaining what the European Union is and how Ireland has benefited immeasurably from it since 1973.

A tiny elite who prefers treat the sovereign people as mushrooms, explaining the EU only in terms of either a gravy train that hands out free loot (1973-2011) or an oppressor who grind the helpless Irish under a jackboot, in the face of which the sovereign people and their glorious government are equally helpless (2011-present day).

Successive Governments have refused to make it clear to the people just how Ireland integrates in terms of the EU whole, and just how high we are punching above our weight. Instead, the nation is told to eat their sweets and don’t be worrying their little heads.

Ireland has become a sink estate of the EU, living on handouts with not only no interest in bettering its own situation, but with no idea if or how that situation can bettered in the first place.

Which is how the latest mess has come to pass. Now the political elite has to go the electorate and present another referendum to the people. Another referendum that will be impossible to understand, at a moment in time when the people are very far from being receptive.

That was one of the problems with Lisbon. Referenda work best with simple issues that can be clearly expressed. Treaties, or, the Lord save us, “compacts,” can only be properly understood by constitutional lawyers. Joe Citizen hasn’t a chance.

It should never have come to this. The political class should have seen this coming since Maastricht twenty years ago, if not since ascension in 1973. Start as you mean to continue.

But they didn’t see it coming. Not even kinda. The implications of Maastricht didn’t even get a mention in Seán Duignan’s memoir of his time as Government press secretary of the time.

The chief concerns of the Government in June 1992, when Maastricht was passed, was whether they’d have to devalue the punt or what would happen at the Beef Tribunal. The Beef Tribunal!

Maastricht went through the Irish political system painlessly, without raising a single flag. The patient never felt a thing.

John Waters rightly called out Olivia O’Leary when she was doing to post-hoc reasoning on her radio piece for RTÉ’s Drivetime recently. The only people who objected to Maastricht were loopers like the Democratic Left and the late Ray Crotty. Every else just said: “Free loot? Where do I sign?”

When people become adjusted to a continual flow of European wine and honey, you can understand how they might get cranky when that flow is suddenly switched to cod liver oil. And the longer the political elite puts off having a birds and bees conversation with the nation about the nature of the European Union, the harder it’ll be to save the day.

Because the day can still be saved. The Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil officer class understand how Europe works, even if they have been shockingly remiss in bringing the rank and file with them. Labour’s days of opposing Europe are well behind them and besides; a EU referendum would be a good chance for the Minister for Foreign Affairs to show the statesmanship he wittered on about so tiresomely before the election.

The floating joker is Sinn Féin of course. Sinn Féin have been quiet since Friday, as they do their accounting on how the land lies. Good for them.

Sinn Féin have been anti every EU referenda. It will be interesting to see how they could oppose this one – and thus side with David Cameron, leader of the one country in Europe which has been less well served by its leaders about the EU than ourselves.

Kicking Sinn Féin has only recently been replaced by kicking the pope as a Fine Gael favourite pastime. Will even the chance to put Gurry on the hot seat for while tempt the Government to say to hell with it, we’ll have a referendum and live or die by it? Or will they stay hiding under the table, hoping the storm will pass?

Constitutional Reform

An Spailpín Fánach has to confess himself bemused by the opinion pieces popping up in the media about constitutional reform and sovereignty at the moment. The nation can’t pass piffling little referenda without two cracks at it. How many pucks will we need for a whole constitution?

The brief sovereignty spat is very difficult to credit, and Stephen Collins rightly castigated the idea – if “idea” isn’t too strong a word – behind it in the Irish Times on Saturday. Besides; our sovereignty, such as it was, was ceded to Europe long ago and thank the Lord God for that.

Would Ireland be sticking to its current course of fiscal rectitude if there wasn’t some guy called Gunther or Franz to answer to every Friday? The evidence of history tells us: not on your nelly. But the sovereignty debate is interesting because of the questions it raises about how we govern ourselves.

Ireland is in a heap because we put all our eggs in one basket and had no interest in the wide and earthy in acting responsibly. That’s easy to understand. What’s less easy to understand is why the Greeks are in the doghouse and the Irish are not. It defies all logic.

Unless. Unless the Irish are doing something right after all. But what on God’s Earth could it be?

An Spailpín has a crazy guess. For which there is no evidence, but it’s no less wild than thinking we’re capable of an act of statehood like writing a new constitution. What if everything we heard about Ireland in Europe during the different referenda campaigns was true? What if we really do punch above our weight in Europe?

It would certainly explain how we’re still viable, in a way that Greece is not viable. Anne Applebaum listed what the Greeks have to do to put their house in order in the Washington Post last week, and it made for grim reading. The difference between what’s happening in Ireland and what’s happening in Greece and what’s happening in Ireland is the difference between getting caned by a Victorian headmaster of the Wackford Squeers school and doing half an hour's hard time on the naughty step. No comparison.

The European hand on the tiller is what’s keeping the Irish ship afloat. What’s worrying is that this spectacular achievement, staying onside in Europe, won’t count for nuts in the next general election. Europe gets zero coverage in the press here. It never features in general election campaigns. And won’t in the next one either.

If we are to reclaim Irish sovereignty, then maybe the nation should start doing something about it, instead of deluding ourselves that we as individuals bear no responsibility at all for what happened in this sovereign and democratically accountably state. The stories about innocents having their mouths stuffed with gold by evil bankers while all the while shouting “no! no! I like being poor! Take that rotten gold away! I’d hate an apartment in Spain!” get hard to take after a while. If we are to be sovereign over our future, we need to decide on a more positive vision of Ireland than blaming others and booing England at the World Cup.

In the meantime, thank God for the Germans – their scholars did their bit for the language, their engineers built Ardnacrusha and the Kaiser did his bit for Sir Roger. We’re the last people that should be giving out about Germans.




Technorati Tags: Ireland, culture, politics, Europe

Another No Vote is the Real Threat to Irish Sovereignty

An Spailpín Fánach finds the current Lisbon debate exasperating. The issues seem quite simple indeed – either we are capable as a nation of electing governments to govern, or we are not. And if we are not capable of this fundamental aspect of running a democracy, then whether or not we have one, two, or four-and-twenty EU Commissioners is really by the way. It’s the least of our worries.

There are loud voices on the No side talking about Irish sovereignty. It would interesting to find out what exactly they mean by sovereignty. Sovereignty, as An Spailpín understands it, is the ability of the Irish government to treat with other sovereign governments to form international agreements.

There is a ground-up process here – everyone in Ireland who spent long years negotiating the Lisbon treaty in the first place is either elected him or herself or else answers to those who are elected by the people to represent the people. If the Irish nation doesn’t like Lisbon, then it needs to start voting for politicians who feel the same way, and let them negotiate the international treaties instead. That’s how it works.

It’s the only way it can work. The Lisbon treaty is long and complex. Suppose you don’t like one article. Is that enough to shoot it down? Do you think, of the hundreds and hundreds of people that wrote this document, every one of them thinks it’s perfect? At what stage do you find it so objectionable that you consign all those years of work to the dustbin? And are you prepared to accept the consequences of that?

An Spailpín is sadly aware that there are those who are planning to vote No as a protest vote. This is a very misguided attitude to take. Because while that No voter may believe in good conscience that he or she is doing his best by the nation, that is not at all obvious to the exterior world.

A No vote as an anti-government protest vote makes political sense to the exterior world only in the sense of support for anti-Lisbon parties having similar support. This means that there is a credible political philosophy behind the No vote, and once something exists, it can be dealt with. But pro-Lisbon parties dominate the Dáil. Dominate it. If a majority of people keep shooting down a treaty supported by ninety per cent of the politicians they themselves elect, there is a profound and serious disconnect in the entire system.

This dualism is what makes it very difficult for other political cultures to understand how to do business with the Irish. If the Irish can’t be consistent about this, how can they be consistent in international agreements? When Europe deals with the Irish, to whom are they really talking?

To talk of European wrath in response to a second no vote is disingenuous. It would be more a question of indifference that wrath. And this is bad news.

If it were wrath, at least Europe would care. If it’s indifference, the more politically evolved European nations will simply continue along themselves and slide the Irish to the periphery, where it seems they want to be in the first place. As expressed in consecutive referenda. And if the Irish want that, fine. It’s really no skin or Europe’s nose either way.

If your son or daughter is running with a bad crowd after school you experience wrath, because you are concerned for his or her future. If it’s the neighbour’s kid, you simply expect the police to lock the brat up and be done with it. You feel sorry for the parents, of course, but no so much as you’d bother your barney getting involved yourself. That’s all heartache and no reward. Who’d be bothered with that?

Anybody who thinks Ireland can drag these negotiations out indefinitely while we mess around here needs to ask if the rest of Europe sees us as neighbours or family. It’s pints of cop-on all around for the Gael.

The miracle of Europe, the fact that so many nations have found common bonds after spending all of recorded Western history fighting wars against each other, is a little lost on us here in Ireland because we were not involved in those wars ourselves, except as a dominion of another power. And the fact that we are still tied economically in so many ways to Britain, who has not quite cottoned on to the fact she is no longer a world power on her own, creates certain tension here.

One of the reasons for independence from the United Kingdom in the first place was that we, the Irish nation, believed we had no say in the governance of the UK. Irish politicians and diplomats and have punched above their weight in Europe since we joined the EEC in 1973 and we are not viable as an independent island without alliance to greater markets. Ireland gets so much more from Europe than we put in.

Let’s try and act like grown-ups for once in our lives and acknowledge that being democrats has responsibilities as well as rights. In this case, having mandated our government to treat with other governments we should accept what they come back with, rather than simply throwing rattles from prams just because we can. Vote yes.

FOCAL SCÓIR: It is a measure of the way the No campaign has campaigned that when I discovered the poster in this post online I honestly couldn’t immediately tell if it was from Cóir themselves or one of the parodies. I really couldn’t. The People Before Profit Alliance – I think; the comrades change their name more often than Sellafield, you know – have a poster with the clever line that Lisbon is “from the same geniuses that brought you the Recession.” A bit rich from the same geniuses that brought you Tito’s Yugoslavia, Zhivkov’s Bulgaria, Hoxha’s Albania, Mao’s China, Stalin's Russia and Ceauşescu’s Romania, don't you think?





Technorati Tags: Ireland, politics, Lisbon Treaty, Europe

Voting Yes

How odd it was to see Micheál Martin and Enda Kenny go Tango and Cash on Questions and Answers last night. Tango and Cash, as you recall, is the cult 1980s movie about two maverick cops who put aside personal differences to ace the bad guys, and that’s what an increasingly desperate establishment has been doing in the hopes of saving the listing referendum campaign.

How did it come to this? Micheál Martin may have put his finger on it without realising it on Rodney Rice’s Radio show on Saturday. Martin was making the point that the Lisbon Treaty is a triumph of Irish diplomacy, a credit to the Irish presidency of the EU that they were able to rescue the project when all seemed lost after the French and Dutch shot down the original constitution. This then begs they question: why on Earth didn’t they say so before?

Most constitutions are aspirational documents. They suggest things rather than laying them down. The Irish constitution, like the man who wrote it, likes things in black and white. This is why we end up having referenda every couple of years when the plates shift and readjust in Brussels. Any Irish government is generally faced with three questions coming up to one of these referenda on how best to tackle it.

1. Draft a constitutional amendment to say that from here on in changes in Brussels can be effected by act of Parliament without recourse to referendum.


2. Try and sneak the referendum through by flying it under the radar, hoping the core vote will come out and Richard Boyd Barrett is on his holidays. In Cuba, probably.


3. Give the electorate credit for not being complete dummies and have a debate about the European project that will be as informative as it will be mind-numbingly boring.

The first choice is the most sensible of the three, and the least likely to happen. Not least if Lisbon is squeaked through this time around. One of the reasons why referendum is in danger of being lost is that the people feel that the Government has been going for a fast one, and they don’t like that one little bit. They certainly will not sign off on a licence to do that without considerable persuading.

The second option is the one that the Government chose, and it’s clearly blown up in their face. RBB isn’t at the van of this one – although your vigilant quillsman saw him on the news last night, protesting – but there’s a whole other bunch that are, existing without visible means of support. It is a highly mistaken assumption that the electorate are sheep, despite behaving like sheep so regularly in the polling booth. Every now and then these lambs grow fangs, and start biting people on the arse. This is one such instance of that.

The third option was the way to go. If the Government said from the end of the EU presidency that the Lisbon treaty was the greatest act of Irish diplomacy and statesmanship since Frank Aiken was at the UN in the 1960s, that would have been the way to go. They could then repeat the message over the two years or so they had to campaign and that would then deprive Libertas of the opportunity to spout the sort of nonsense that they have been doing. Most of Libertas’ arguments are mischievous at best. Ireland’s sovereign position hasn’t changed since 1973, and won’t. Ireland’s commissioner is going anyway, and this is the best possible compromise. Germany’s voting power doubling in respect to Ireland still leaves Germany at a disadvantage. There for four million Irish, eighty million Germans. For democracy to come into effect Germany would have to increase its voting power by a factor of twenty.

The fact that the Germans themselves are willing to put up with such an arrangement that flies in the face of logic (and what could be more anathema to Germans than something that flies in the face of logic?) is testimony to the remarkable deal Ireland gets in Europe. How is this going to be strengthened by a no vote? If we vote no, it means we do not trust the Government to negotiate these deals at European level – even though we elected them to do just that just a year ago. And if the Government aren’t to negotiate these deals, who does? Declan Ganley?

Eamon Dunphy was rambling on Marian Finucane’s radio show on Sunday about some quote from Valéry Giscard d'Estaing that the Lisbon Treaty contains a clause that is so momentous that it is buried deep in the legal thickets. A clause that is so divisive that if it were only known the treaty would be held in contempt by all right thinking citizens from the Urals to Belmullet.

Eamon did not go on to say what exactly this mystery clause is. Is it the third secret of Fatima? Is it the DaVinci Code? Is it why Cristiano Ronaldo gets so much money when he’s not a great player? Is Valéry Giscard d'Estaing a member of the Illuminati, and wants Europe to be run by the lizards?

Eamon didn’t say, and An Spailpín certainly doesn’t know what it is either. An Spailpín is inclined to suspect, however, that Eamo is simply spoofing, at which activity Eamo would have a bit of previous.

The Government’s attempts to sneak the Lisbon Treaty through under the radar does them no credit, and some mischievous elements have been able to combine the brewing discontent over the plummeting economy, the fact that people don’t like being sold pups and the fact the treaty is unintelligible to the man in the street into a huge groundswell of opposition to the treaty. As far as your Spailpín is concerned, not understanding the treaty is not sufficient reason to vote against it. If you elect a Government to legislate, you’ve got to trust them to that that job, until such time as you elect someone else. When Mr Ganley is elected to something, we’ll know he has a mandate. In the meantime, voting yes is the only sensible option.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, politics, Lisbon Treaty, Europe