Where’s the smear?

No, not a comment on cervical cancer services in Ireland…

Cowen, and by the sound of Morning Ireland, his good buddy Wilfred O’Dea, is a bit miffed about the smears levelled at him by Enda K.

I’ll admit first that I’ve switched off a bit this week, because frankly, who wouldn’t – so if there has been an outright accusation that has been proven to be false by all means correct me here.

But since when is asking a question a smear?

If I ask you, did you murder your neighbour last week, and you fail to answer, so I ask again – is that a smear?

Surely if you didn’t murder your neighbour, then you can just say “No, I didn’t” and the conversation is over.

And if you did, well then it’s not a smear, it’s a question leading to the revelation of fact.

There may be an element of the classic “have you stopped beating your wife?” about the whole thing, but the fact remains that asking a question isn’t an accusation, and the more Cowen plays politics with his answer the more it seems like he’s got something (he’s trying) to hide.

And so it all descends into farce…

Greens

Stupid question maybe, but if the Green Party are against the reintroduction of fees, surely they are in the best possible place to stop it happening?

Not for the first, or thousandth, time, the Green Party are making public statements as though they’re not actually the ones sitting at the cabinet table. I have no idea why. It is very unlikely that we will all suddenly forget what they have allowed past their noses is since getting into government, and turning around at the next election and saying “oh, well we were opposed to that” will count for exactly nothing.

So are they spectacularly naïve, or just really really confused?

Cowen’s Passion

By all accounts, Cowen’s speech to the Dublin Chamber of Commerce last night was off the cuff, incredibly passionate and more than a little (gulp) inspiring.

I’m not entirely surprised – I think he’s more than capable of delivering the speech we need to hear, which is why the absence of that speech is so confusing.

Why is he afraid to give that speech in the Dáil? What’s the worst that could happen?

As it stands he seems to have played it safe, letting himself loose when only those paying for the privilege can hear him, and where the level of reporting is essentially dependent on how good the speech is.

If we now know he’s capable of it – and maybe more importantly, he now know’s he capable of it, can we see a bit more unscripted passion please?

September’s students need to know where they stand

The student march against fees yesterday was pretty impressive, particularly given the kind of weather we’ve been having this week. It was sad to hear Fergal Keane on DriveTime acknowledging that nobody in the Dáil cares what students say because they don’t vote and certainly don’t vote as a block. Mary Wilson’s assertion that their parents do vote may well be the reason FF have avoided bringing fees back sooner.

One thing that really struck me, reading about the march and the likelihood of an announcement coming quite soon about fees for September, is that today is the 5th of February. Four days after the CAO deadline. Students all over the country filled in their forms and the majority probably weren’t thinking about fees when they did.

Fees change everything. Batt is edging towards some sort of loans system from what I can see in the papers, but there’s a basic calculation to be made that students won’t have made last weekend.

At its most basic, that calculation is “do I want to spend four years in college and come out with a huge debt on my back, or would I rather go straight into a job and work my way up the ladder for four years, thus avoiding that debt?”

The question is further complicated by the current absence of jobs, even for those who are graduating from college courses, whatever about everyone else. The notion of people avoiding further education for fear of huge debt is an even bigger issue in the context of our apparent reliance on a knowledge economy.

Another inevitability is that certain courses will cost more than others. Arts courses may be cheaper, but as Arts graduates are supposedly unemployable who will really choose to study Arts? Science courses will be more expensive, but nobody seems to want to study science anyway, and despite the apparent practicality of choosing science, do we really have the jobs to support science graduates? To take another example, physiotherapy is currently a dead end – plenty of students, absolutely no jobs, and in the new system surely at the top end of the price range. The era of studying what you have a real interest in or passion for will surely end. I can’t bring myself to believe that’s a good thing.

The impact on relocating students should also be considered. Students born and raised in Dublin will realise how lucky they are to have the option of staying at home under their parents’ noses while they work in between lectures to pay off their debt. What happens to students from Longford?

I’ve watched students prepare their college applications in both the US and Canada. I’ve listened to students spending their high school years working every summer so they can afford to go to college, and I’ve seen them choosing their course and college based not on their interests or abilities but on convenience and affordability. More than anything I’ve seen the stress this causes 16 year olds. You think the leaving certificate system is bad? Add financial strain and watch what happens.

I’m not going to argue the pros and cons of fees as a concept – I think it comes down to a fairly clear-cut division, similar to the question of whether you believe in high or low taxes and the like. I also think it’s a done deal.

But the transition between where we are now, and where we may be in ten years when the idea of paying huge fees for education has become the norm will be a very difficult one. Ultimately there may be a system of scholarships like the ones so common in North America. Do they really work? Maybe students will go to more classes, make better decisions, stop spending their money on grind schools.  Maybe the pressure on the leaving cert will be transferred to third level. Who knows? There may even be a reasonable grants system, but I’m not holding my breath.

If the announcement is coming, it needs to come sooner rather than later. The 2009 leaving cert class deserve to know what’s ahead of them. Many may feel like they need to defer for a year or two. Many may need to make alternative arrangements because the idea of the debt or the prospect of a huge bill to pay before passing GO is too much.

If nothing else, surely the CAO are going to need to hire a few more staff members to deal with change of mind forms.

MosaicWatch 3

Update on Mosaic shops and the pricing issue.

Yesterday in Oasis on Grafton Street, prices had been actively ‘adjusted’ on everything the shop.

The aforementioned dress priced at £65 in England, which had been at €94 is now marked as €81.

Not sure if the 10% discount is still being applied, but if it is that’s damned close to parity.

Credit where it’s due.

In other news – turns out Mosaic and the “high street” in general may have a bigger problem than angry ripped-off customers…

Brian’s Big Plan

The news these days seems to have taken on a fairly extreme air of surreality.

Far from providing the leadership we need, The Brians seem determined to add fuel to the flames of panic.

Sarah Carey summarises the role of “social partnership” fantastically in today’s Irish Times -

“Begg says there’ll be a revolution if public servants have to pay for their own pensions. He still doesn’t get the fact that there’ll be a revolution if they don’t.”

I firmly believe that “public servants” as a whole have been getting a very unfair level of bashing recently. Let me qualify that before any bites.

There are public servants who earn hundreds of thousands of euro per year and that don’t do enough to earn that money. There are public servants who earn similar amounts of money and who work extremely hard and probably deserve a certain amount of it. There are public servants who earn fairly average wages and don’t do enough to earn that amount either. And there are public servants who earn fairly average wages and who work extremely hard, often doing jobs that, in the literal sense, nobody else would do.

I think there is a huge issue at the moment with the phrase “public servants” being followed by a tirade that may well be justified against some of those people – but the problem is that it’s being aimed at, and heard by, the whole lot.

I’m not saying there aren’t problems with “the public service” as a whole, but I think a bit more care needs to be taken about what we’re talking about.

People who have secure jobs for life, and have a pension waiting for them at the end, should certainly have to bear their share of the burden of the current crisis. Someone on Morning Ireland today pointed out that 57% of private sector workers don’t have a pension plan – which is a very scary statistic. But again, that isn’t strictly speaking the fault of the public sector workers who do. There needs to be a much clearer system for pensions in this country, and people now desperately need reassurance that they won’t pay into a plan for forty years only to watch some dodgy banker make it disappear.

Which leads me to those bankers. The ones who took all the money (or gave all the money?) and in doing so helped get us into this fine mess. Should they all be fired? Or taxed? Or sent to live on an island together? Individuals and institutions who broke laws must be held accountable. Similarly those who acted immorally, ammorally, or unethically should be held accountable. But beyond that I think the sooner we get out of the blame game the better.

The public servants are being blamed for an awful lot. So are (all?) bankers, (all?) estate agents, (all?) solicitors… the list goes on.

The government are blaming the opposition – for not opposing them enough?

And here we are. Everyone has someone to blame – is it really getting us anywhere?

Anyone listening to, or watching, or reading, the news at this stage has an idea, however accurate, of how we got here. What we need is to know how to get out.

Yesterday at 4pm Brian Cowen stood up to give us the closest we seem to be getting to a plan. I’m open to suggestions as to how it could be interpreted as a plan.

I heard that we’re facing an unprecedented crisis. A global crash. An unforseeable burst of the proverbial bubble.

That’ll be the blame bit.

I heard about wage cuts, capital spending cuts, and cuts to overseas development aid and childcare allowances.

I didn’t hear what we can do to get out. I missed the call to arms. I didn’t even here the call to patriotic duty this time.

I missed the desperately needed reassurance.

It was a vacuum, as speeches go.

Brian Cowen needs a fire lit under his Dáil seat. He needs to come out fighting. Not roaring, not shouting, not sounding like a spoilt child. He’s a smart man. He may be stumbling, he may be scared. But if he’s going to lead this country out of this mess we need to stop seeing that.

Don’t tell us you’ll do it your way.

Tell us what the hell your way is.

Give us a map!

Show us what our way can be.