Jonathan Wyse was the second “student” speaker, though in fact he graduated two years ago and is now an evil banker (boo, hiss).   He reckoned the WS is “a monster, a greedy grasping Leviathan which will not rest until it has consumed all you have”, which sounded pretty rational to me.  As the final speaker of the evening, he then made fun of each of the Opposition speakers in turn, wittily dismantling their various sacred cows.  His two most perspicacious observations were that Finland's utopian WS seemingly discriminates against “Finnish-speaking Swedes” (raised eyebrows from Prof Timonen) and that that Mr Nulty's desired 50% tax rate was, simply, “mental”. 

I was the third speaker in favour of the motion, the fifth overall.  Here's what I said.  It received a noisy response, yet despite the 4:1 defeat a lot of students questioned me afterwards in light of my scaremongering over their (never-to-be-achieved) State pensions.  I told them to save money and make babies instead. 

Mr President, Members of the Council, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Thank you for inviting me here tonight.

Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, was a humanitarian visionary – the original Welfare Statist.  130 years ago he invented the old age pension for septuagenarian Prussians at a time when most died in their 60s.  In 1908 another chancellor, Britain’s Lloyd George, introduced the UK’s first State pension, which included Ireland. 

Who can be opposed to providing an income for the old?  What politician can resist preening at such magnanimity? 

Yet from inception, the State pension contained two seeds of its own, slow, inexorable, inevitable destruction.  One seed was avoidable, the other not. 

The avoidable seed was that both gentlemen considered it fitting that the current generation should pay for the munificence suddenly heaped upon a previous generation.  This ensures that the demand (from the non-payers) will be incessant and expanding, which means the current (ie paying) generation must also be ever-expanding.  It’s understandable that politicians would want to skip deftly round the awkward step of first requiring the receivers to build up a physical kitty, given that hefty contributions would be required for a decade before any benefits could be meted out.  But to promise money that simply wasn’t there was nevertheless pernicious.  And, frankly, immoral. 

The unavoidable seed was what the military often call mission creep.  An activity begins, but then it expands, first slowly like the frog in a saucepan of cold water on a low gas, then ever faster, and by the time the frog realises his water is boiling he is cooked. 

Over time Bismarck’s retirement age dropped, in different countries, from 70 to 65 to 60, 55, 50, and indeed many Ministers in this country and elsewhere pick up State pensions as soon as they are ejected from office regardless of age. 

Meanwhile of course, life expectancy in Europe has soared from Bismarck’s 65 to today’s 80, with retirement generally kicking in at around 63.  So on average, the number of years a pension is paid has ballooned from -5 years under Bismark to +17 today. 

And of course then there is the size of the pension, which, in real terms, creeps relentlessly, over time, in just one direction. Up. 

Oh, and while the cost of unfunded pensions goes stratospheric as these two seeds blossom, there is a third seed that no-one anticipated.  The huge crash in birth rates to below replacement levels since the post-war baby-boomer generation of 1945-64, means that there will be ever fewer citizens – and I am talking to everyone here in this room – to pay the ever-increasing pension bills.  

Ireland’s national debt amounts to €130 billion, but this does not include the Welfare State’s unfunded liabilities – for pensions alone this exceeds €200 billion**, putting all other debts in the shade.  And all because the Welfare State couldn’t be bothered to set up a pension fund and just assumed there would always be some schlub to make the payments.  (Actually, Charlie McCreevy did set up a fund in 2001, but by 2011 various raids had blown all but €5bn.)  Well, there will never be enough schlubs to pay €200 billion, so it is certain that State pensions will collapse like Lehman Brothers. 

**On 18 November 2012, journalist Marc Coleman published €129bn as being Ireland's accrued public pension liability, quoting the Comptroller & Auditor General in 2010. This somewhat smaller figure does not, however, change my central argument.

 On 31 December 2012, the Irish Times wrote “the Comptroller and Auditor General has estimated the cost of meeting pension payments to retired public service staff over the coming 60 years could be about €116 billion”, which is unfunded because it has to come from future tax revenues.  The amount required for State old age pensions is additional to this.   

  On 7th January 2013, the Irish Times wrote “The shortfall in the social insurance fund – used to pay State pension and other welfare payments – reached €1.5 billion in 2011. And the deficit is set to rise in the years ahead. Without policy changes, the accumulated deficits, estimates indicate, could in current money terms reach €324 billion by 2066.”

You are young; so you will be among the victims.  You can be sure there will be no State pension awaiting you in your sixties.  You will be destitute unless you make your own provision for old age throughout your working lives.  Yet still the Welfare State will force you to fund through your taxes the unfunded pensions of the retired baby-boomers. 

Doesn’t that alone make you sick of the Welfare State?

The remainder of the Welfare State is vast, so I’m going to address only health, as a kind of sickness proxy for the rest. 

Unlike pensions, current health liabilities are funded mainly by current taxation, but health too faces an insoluble funding dilemma, on four fronts. 

1. 1 - When people don’t pay for their care, demand grows relentlessly. 

2. 2 - Ever-increasing longevity adds to the demand. 

3. 3 - Technology makes ever more sophisticated – and expensive – drugs and treatments available.  Where fifty years ago someone with a bad knee would be delighted to be sent away with a free walking stick, today he demands a knee-replacement. 

4. 4 - States always run businesses – including hospitals – inefficiently and expensively because their incentives necessarily focus on politics and staff, rather than on customers, profits and competition. 

So health costs, like pensions, also increase exponentially.  In Ireland, typical of the Western world, they’ve gone up from €8 to €14 billion over just the past decade, snaffling more than 7% of GDP. 

This and the rest of the Welfare State therefore demand ever-expanding – and ultimately unsustainable – taxes, which in turn squeeze investment money from the private sector of the economy.  Since the private sector is the only creator** of the nation’s wealth and thus taxes, citizens end up with fewer job opportunities – and thus poorer – than they otherwise would. 

** Note: Patrick Nulty later claimed in his own speech that state-owned businesses, such as the Electricity Supply Board, also create wealth.  To a degree this is true, but they do so only with taxpayers' money and they always create much less wealth and indeed frequently make losses than if privatised, and for the usual reason - the predominant incentives are as mentioned politics and staff welfare.  In effect, therefore, state-owned businesses also destroy wealth.  Aer Lingus before privatisation is a good example. 

And that is not to talk about the insidious effect on the human spirit and creativity of providing cradle-to-grave Welfare.  For as the State’s role in our lives grows, so the autonomy of the individual citizen shrinks as we get addicted to the idea that the State is there to step in, tell us what to do, and solve all our problems so we don’t have to. 

Doesn’t that alone make you sick of the Welfare State?

But there is a better way! 

Sir John Cowperthwaite, one of my personal heroes, whose name may not spring to everyone’s lips, became Hong Kong’s Financial Secretary in 1961.  A tiny, far-flung, impoverished British colony almost devoid of natural resources and land, recovering from brutal Japanese wartime occupation, Hong Kong was also beset by hundreds of thousands of penniless refugees fleeing Mao Tse Tung’s murderous China.   I remember; I was raised in Hong Kong. 

But Cowperthwaite invented a revolutionary economic policy, which elevated Hong Kong in scarcely a decade into an industrial powerhouse with jobs for everyone, richer per capita than even the mother country, and proved an inspiration for both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, though neither had the courage to implement it properly. 

And what was his policy? … TO DO NOTHING! 
NADA! To get the hell out of the way of
private individuals and businesses
and allow them to build the economy.

So successful was this, that huge revenues derived from his derisory 15% flat tax.  So he was able to build massive blocks of rudimentary apartments to rehouse the refugees from their squalid hillside squatter camps, to a degree of comfort and security that was beyond their wildest dreams. 

As for medical care, people made their own private arrangements, yet no needy person was turned away from the government hospitals and dental clinics. 

Rudimentary schools with huge classes appeared, yet standards were undoubtedly high as I discovered when I studied engineering at Hong Kong University and could scarcely keep up with my Chinese colleagues. 

Cowperthwaite famously averred that

“the decisions of individual businessmen in a free economy, even when mistaken, are less harmful than those of a government, and certainly the harm will be counteracted faster.”

Now that’s the kind of low-taxing low-spending Welfare State that does not make me sick. 

That does not impose massive costs on citizens.

That fosters the conditions for economic growth for all. 

That provides hope for the future, based purely on individual self-reliance, energy and honour, without impediments imposed by the State. 

Yet provides a minimum safety net for those in genuine need. 

The more the modern, Western Welfare State can be dismantled and spending slashed, the more you young people just starting out, will have a modicum of hope for your futures. Remember that Ireland’s debt-repayments plus unfunded pensions will be coming out of your pockets more than anyone else’s.

So before you get sick, Ladies and Gentlemen, I urge you to support the motion about being sick.

At the end of the speeches and prior to calling for the voice-vote (as mentioned, the Nayes prevailed), Chairman Robson explained that as an RTE employee he was statutorily forbidden to comment on political issues, on pain of a twenty guinea fine plus five years in jail (or possibly the hangman's noose).  Therefore he rounded off the meeting by making jokes about each speaker, in a vain attempt of offending each of us equally.  He was particularly obsessed by Dr Butler's Italian suppositories innuendos of a sexual nature, as indeed were we all. 

The evening ended agreeably with copious points of Guinness, in honour of Guinness's newly invented and entirely spurious Arthurs Day.  (Indeed the whole of Dublin and other Irish cities seem to have gone mad that night, judging by the alcohol-fuelled patronage of young people at the hospital A&E departments.)

As for my other three appearances at The Phil, this is how I reported on them.

Both For and Against: “This House Would Legalise All Drugs” - 16th October 2008

Against: “This House Believes Civil Partnerships are Sexual Apartheid” - 2nd October 2011

For: “This House Believes Patriarchy Is Inevitable” - 2nd February 2012

Late Note (2nd April)

The Daily Mail blames Welfare State payments for incentivising a non-working foul father on permanent dole, Mick Philpott, to burn down his own (council) house with six of his children inside, all of whom died. 

Guido Fawkes agrees: “The more children you can’t support, the more cash you are paid.”

 

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Why There Is No Peace With Israel - 9th August 2012

Only one side wants it.  Only one side is open to a two-state solution.  The other side wants a one-state, Judenrein solution.

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Apartheid Walls - 24th July 2012

Security walls keep out bad guys in Europe, Saudi Arabia, Morocco. 
So why do people consider only Israel's, which keeps out suicide-bombers,
to be an “apartheid” wall?

We all hear incessantly about the so-called “apartheid wall” that Israel has built, and is still extending, between it and the West Bank, even though for 95% of its length it is a fence not a wall and even though suicide and other attacks decreased 95% after it was built.  Israel's purpose is to protect itself against such attacks, and yes in parts it wanders outside Israel's 1967 demarcation line (which has never been a recognized international border) and into disputed territory (which has never been “Palestinian territory” because Palestinian leaders repeatedly refuse a Palestinian state, most recently in 2000).

Nevertheless, the wall is a manifesto of Israel's policy of apartheid, colonialism, occupation, aggression, and general nastiness towards innocent Palestinian civilians. 

So how come we don't hear about the walls in:

1. India: Has a barrier along its line-of-control with Pakistan stretching a thousand kilometers.  80% of the barrier is on disputed land.
   

2. Saudi Arabia: Unilaterally began construction of a 1,800 km barrier on disputed land after confrontation with Yemeni soldiers and tribesmen.  It is also building an 800 km barrier to protect itself from Iraq.
   

3. Morocco: Built a barrier in the 1980s against Algerian infiltration in the disputed territory of Western Sahara. The barrier stretches 2,700 kilometres. 
   

4. Turkey: Annexed the province of Hatay, populated by Turkish. Syria claims the province, showing Hatay as part of Syria on their maps. In the 80s and 90s Syria supported the Kurdistan Workers Party in their campaign of terror for a Kurdish state in Turkey. Turkey fortified their frontier, constructing a high fence the length of the border and laying over 500 miles of minefields.

5. Cyprus: At the same time the UN was condemning Israel's security barrier, the UN itself was constructing a barrier in Cyprus in order to preserve peace and security.
   

6. Northern Ireland: In 1994 there were 15 barriers; a decade later there were 37 barriers. 
   

7. Germany: In 2007, a twelve kilometre 500-tonne steel fence was constructed for €12m around the the site of a G8 summit in Heiligendamm, incorporating a solid steel underground to prevent tunnelling.
   

8. Spain: An armed double fence completely encircles Ceuta, a city on the south coast of the Mediterranean, which belongs to Spain but is surrounded by Morocco (much as Gibraltar is surrounded by Spain).  Its stated purpose is to stop illegal immigration (into Spain and hence the EU) and smuggling.

 

Now have any of you heard the term Apartheid being applied to India, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Turkey, Cyprus, Germany, Northern Ireland or Spain, for erecting a barrier, just like Israel, for the purpose of security?  I thought not. 

Hattip: I lifted these facts from David Newmark and from Barry Williams on Facebook, and embellished and illustrated them with my own research.  I have reproduced the story here for non-Facebookers and because it is just too valuable to get lost. 

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Quote (14 July): “If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

US one-term president Barack Obama shares wisdom
gleaned in the left-wing lounges of America's academia

Manifesto of a Manager - 14th July 2012 (tenth anniversary)
Alternative Permalink: http://tinyurl.ie/manifesto

The duty of a manager is to support those who work under him/her,
while getting out of the way and letting them get on with it. 
Managers should be measured by the success or otherwise of their subordinates. 

When working overseas as a senior manager of a large department in a major multinational company, I developed certain beliefs and a particular management style.  I shared these regularly with my staff, did my best to adhere to them and found them to help me become effective.  They were in essence a kind of manifesto. 

When I say they were effective, I mean that my staff would deliver the goods - so that I wouldn't have to.  And the credit rightly went to them. 

The manifesto was divided into three elements,

1. 1  Objectives and Roles,

2. 2  Carrots and Sticks and

3. 3  Trust,

Others might find this helpful. 

1  Objectives and Roles

Support of staff is paramount to a successful enterprise

me of my staff, you of yours

We must together set and agree objectives that are :

focused on satisfying customers

measurable wherever possible

My role in adding value is to

agree objectives with you

provide resources (people, training, money)

handle external communications,

ie keep the wider organization off your backs
(though I don't mean your customers)

provide help where you need/ask for it

get out of the way

leave you free to pursue agreed objectives

Your role in adding value is to

agree objectives with me and with your customers

deliver agreed objectives

inform me as well as your customers of progress and issues

tell me where I can help

A couple of clarifications

While my job is to give you as free a hand as possible, you must tell me of any things you judge to be “issues” in a timely and honest manner so I am able to take any appropriate action and to avoid management by surprise

After agreeing something (ie what is to be done and by when), I don't expect to have to chase it up

2  Carrots and Sticks

In trying to get things done, I strongly believe in the efficacy of carrots and the counter-productiveness of sticks ...

Carrots denote an expectation of success, of winning,

and personally I want and expect to be surrounded
by winners and to be a part of those wins

People respond so much better to positive signals :

these engender far more enthusiasm, effort, initiative,
hard work, job satisfaction and fun

Sticks denote an expectation of failure. 

But if I am expecting failure, surely I should take some firm steps
to change that, or else something is seriously wrong.

Sticks and threats make people fearful (that is their purpose), sullen, risk-averse and minimalistic. 

Sticks indicate a lack of trust which in turn engenders reciprocal mistrust.

Mistakes and bad work

Mistakes are OK. 

They are a necessary ingredient to learning and improving. 

Zero failures means that we are not trying hard enough to improve
and to be innovative. 

They mean that we are cautious and costly. 

The one imperative about mistakes is that we must learn from them,

to use them as a vehicle for progression and further efficiency.

Mistakes do not represent bad work

unless we fail to draw the lessons from them.

Nobody works badly on purpose.  Bad work comes only from

inadequate training

demoralisation/attitude

unsuitability for the task

        all of which can be addressed by me (and by you

We must ensure that the human key fits the business-requirement lock.

Note: In the very rare event that bad work is deliberate, in other words a staff-member is purposefully sabotaging the operation (and perhaps endangering life), this becomes a criminal matter to be referred to the civic authorities. 

3  Trust

As your manager, I have to and will TRUST you

Otherwise it means you are in my view wrong for the job

If you are wrong for the job, I must re-train, re-deploy or release you

Mistrusting you will certainly not solve the problem

I ask you to :

trust me as I trust you

be open and honest with me as I will be with you

I am totally on your side (which is that or our joint employer) and have no hidden agenda

 

Alternative Permalink: http://tinyurl.ie/manifesto

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No Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinian Arabs - 14th July 2012 (tenth anniversary)

The Jews or Israel are no ethnic cleansers. 
Rather, hundreds of thousands of them are ethnic cleansees from Arab regimes.

The letter below appeared in the Irish Examiner on 12th July, and encapsulates so clearly the origins of the Palestinian “refugees” that I have transcribed it to this blog.  This is not only to share it with people who might not read the Irish Examiner, but also in order that I can easily find it again at will whenever the question has to be answered, as it arises so often.  I would like to think that the author, Dermot Meleady, is an Irish Gentile rather than an Israeli or a Jew. 

To: The Letters Editor,
Irish Examiner

The accusation that the state of Israel was founded on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs is thrown about with great abandon, most recently in letters from two of your correspondents, Charles Murphy and Kevin Squires** (10th July 2012), despite there being little historical evidence to substantiate it. 
[**Note: Kevin Squires is from the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign]

The displacement of 650,000-700,000 Arabs took place, according to the best historical sources, in four stages.

In the first, the UN General Assembly resolution of Nov 1947 to divide Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state was immediately followed by an upsurge of Arab violence against Jews accompanied by Jewish self-defence and retaliation. In this phase, which lasted until late Mar 1948, the Arab upper and middle classes, numbering about 75,000, fled the country to avoid the violence.

In the second phase, lasting from Apr to Jun 1948, the Jewish armed forces began to win the upper hand over the Arab irregulars and, from May 15 onwards, had to face also the invading armies of five Arab neighbours. About 300,000 of the Arab population fled due to fear and at the urging of the Arab regimes’ radio stations. None were expelled by Jewish forces in either of these phases, nor was there any Zionist policy aimed at doing so.

The third phase took place during the fighting of Jul 1948. About 100,000 of the Arab population fled, of whom about 50,000 were expelled by Israeli forces for military reasons from towns along the fiercely contested Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road. Yet no general expulsion directive was given, and the Israeli military was ordered to treat the Arab population with dignity.

The fourth phase involved the flight of another 200,000 Arabs during the fighting of Oct-Nov 1948, of whom a minority were expelled, the rest as before fleeing to avoid the violence. Large numbers of Arabs stayed on.

The real ethnic cleansing was that of the Jewish civilians driven out of east Jerusalem, where there had been a Jewish majority as far back as 1863. That is not even to mention the 900,000 Jews forced to leave the Arab states from 1948.

Dermot Meleady
Clontarf
Dublin 3

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Let's Roll - Again - 14th July 2012 (tenth anniversary)

Why are Western media virtually ignoring the exemplary courage
of Chinese airline passengers and crew
who attacked and overcame Islamist hijackers of their flight,
in an echo of Flight 93 on Nine-Eleven?

“Let's Roll!”

Who can forget those courageous words of Todd Beamer as he prepared to die a terrible, violent death, while leading strangers to unflinchingly face the same fate, as they all did what they knew was right? 

Todd Beamer, an unassuming family man with a pregnant wife at home, was on a business trip flying on United Airlines Flight 93 from Newark New Jersey to San Francisco on the morning of 11th September 2001, when destiny struck.  Four indescribably depraved Muslim males attempted to hijack the plane, with the intention of crashing it into the White House, as the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon were similarly attacked that sunny morning, all in the name of a mythical malign character they called Allah. 

But Mr Beamer was having none of it.  He rallied fellow passengers, including Mark Bingham and Tom Burnett, all of them strangers to each other, to fight back.  They had heard about the World Trade Centre and knew what was going on.  Self-reliant to the end, on Mr Beamer's command of “Let's Roll!”, they rose up and assailed the hijackers.  We will never know the detail of what transpired, but the end result was that the hijackers' mission was aborted.  The plane crashed-landed in a field in Pennsylvania, killing everyone on board.  The heroism of Mr Beamer and his colleagues had successfully thwarted the mission.

This story is well known, but at each retelling one marvels again at the manly virtues of those individuals. 

Yet how many have heard of the Chinese Todd Beamers, Mark Binghams, Tom Burnetts?  For example:

Turhong Ruzniaz, a 34-year-old off-duty police officer

The air hostess (so far unnamed)

Liu Huijin, deputy director of the Xinjiang Grain Bureau

Fu Huacheng, an education official

Lu Maopeng, another off-duty police officer

If you are following the Western media, you would find it hard to know that in early July six indescribably depraved Muslim males armed with steel bars and conflagration materials attempted to hijack Tianjin Airlines Flight GS7554 flying north from Hotan (“A”) to Urumqui (“B”), in China's northwest.

As the  hijackers, all Uighurs aged 26-30 years, attempted to storm the cockpit ten minutes after take-off, the above passengers and others rose up, attacked them with their fists and managed to overpower them.  It was an air hostess who spotted that the hijackers' walking sticks were in fact offensive steel bars (reminiscent of “The Day of the Jackal”), and she too counterattacked.  The aircraft returned to Hotan where the hijackers were apprehended.  A couple of them were badly injured, so were a number of the valiant passengers who resisted them.  

I picked this story up as the very last news item (p 21, paywall) in the Sunday Times of 8th July.  I have not seen much of it elsewhere in the Western media - a couple of desultory mentions by the BBC and that seems to be more or less it. 

Other than that the Chinese anti-hijackers lived to tell the tale, I cannot see what in essence is the difference between their “Let's Roll!” behaviour and that of Todd Beamer and his colleagues. 

Is there a reluctance to admit that Chinese can be just as heroic and self-sacrificing as white men? 

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Gummy Smile - 14th July 2012 (tenth anniversary)

A historical suggestion for a wedding gift for the blushing bride

Let me share an interesting little dental anecdote that will appear in the second edition of the memoirs of my 97-year-old father Walter, a retired but still spry dental surgeon, ex-RAF. 

It concerns what was a century ago a not uncommon dental practice within the UK (and probably elsewhere).  It had however largely ceased by the time he had qualified in London in 1937.  As such it applied more to the generations of his parents, grandparents and their forebears than to his. 

In those halcyon bygone days it was not unusual for people to go to the dentist to have all their teeth removed at one time.  Several might already have been lost, and others be badly decayed, but it inevitably involved the removal of healthy teeth as well.  The belief was that all the teeth would eventually go rotten anyway, involving pain and cost, so you might as well get rid of them all in one go.  It was nevertheless a step which, in an era of limited (and costly) anaesthesia, required considerable personal courage and left the unfortunate patient with a mouth bleeding heavily from both jaws.  

He or she would leave the surgery with a towel or other cloth clutched to the mouth and stagger home to sit out the pain and the blood.  Afterwards, rudimentary dentures might or might not be inserted, with perhaps ivory teeth in a “palate” carved from wood.  Alternatively, the patient would spend the rest of his or her life restricted to soft food and thick broths, unable to chew properly. 

One of the most extraordinary aspects of this practice related to new brides. 

Often the young woman’s father would, as a wedding present no less, pay to have all her (remaining) teeth extracted before the ceremony, so that her new husband would never be burdened with dental bills.  Again, the girl’s fortitude in facing up to such a horror can scarcely be imagined; yet it was considered to be an act of generosity on the part of her father.  It was rarely heard that the groom would go through a similar ordeal; moreover the toothlessness of his new bride as she sashayed down the aisle with a bright gummy smile did not seem to deter him.  

My dad comments that he was very glad never to have been never asked to carry out such unnecessary butchery. 

Nevertheless, we should not let these treasured old customs just die away; they are part of our rich cultural heritage.  So girls, when your big day approaches, why don't you surprise your family and friends by adding total tooth removal to your wedding gift list?  Or perhaps drop a hint to the old man.  I am sure your gallant fiancé will be delighted with his lifetime avoidance of extortionate dental bills.  And soup after all is such a tasty and nutritious lifetime diet. 

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Issue 221’s Comments to Cyberspace - 14th July 2012 (tenth anniversary)

Constitutional convention [P!]
Letter published in the Irish Times
With the ignominious repeal only last month of Canada’s so-called “Section 13”, its notorious censorship and hate-speech statute which provided for secret courts lacking proper rules of evidence while administering pernicious life-time punishments ...

Jews and Palestinians in Israel
Letter to the Irish Examiner
If Charles Murphy wants to go back in history to before the creation of Israel in 1948 to support his questioning of the Jews right to be there, he should be more complete. Jews have lived there continuously for more than 3,000 years. The Jews got it (via UN Mandate) from the British in 1948,

who took it in 1917 from the Ottomans, who ...

Assorted Online Comments - July 2012
Comments made to seven articles (so far)

Assorted Online Comments - June 2012
Comments made to four articles

A warning to Israel
Online comment to an editorial in The Irish Times
Ooooh! The EU is getting tetchy. Here are another couple of ideas. Ask the Palestinians why they have refused their own state every time they have been offered it - in 1937, 1948, 1967, 2000 ... That's the ONLY reason there is no such thing as “Palestinian land”. Secondly ...

About time Dev Óg was put in his place: Silence is golden [P!]
Letter published in the Sunday Times
I am shocked. Not content with silencing five priests, the Catholic church has now silenced Father Éamon Ó Cuív for daring to speak out against the sacred Fiscal treaty. Should he violate his pledge of silence, Bishop Micheál Martin will throw him out of the Church. Oh wait, ...

Talking Property
Online comment to an Irish Times column talking talk up property prices. 
Effectively, only people with cash are able to buy. Who are they? Generally older people with life savings. What do they buy? Generally smaller properties into which they will retire. And then they ...

Cardinal Brady and Child Rape
Sarcastic letter to the Irish Times (unpublished)
Let's see if I've got this straight. A man becomes aware, in the 1970s, of a vile child molester. Yet he fails to tell the police or take any action that might put a stop to the molester's depraved activities and even tells the child-victim to remain silent. So consequently the molester continues child-raping with impunity for years. That man today holds a senior position of authority ...

Demand for same-sex marriage
Letter to the Irish Times (unpublished)
Tom McElligott blithely asserts that “there is now a body of evidence comparing straight and gay parenting and the results are negligible in terms of psychological and material wellbeing”.  Such an extraordinary and counter-intuitive statement should not be allowed stand without providing links to such evidence, which I challenge him to furnish ...

Parents' wishes count on denominational schools
Online comment to an Irish Times column, however the comment was censored into oblivion
“All necessary information should be disseminated by the department ... Other parties, particularly those with vested interests, should not be encouraged to circulate parents and other members of the community.”   As if this Report of the Forum of Patronage and Pluralism did not itself reek of “vested interests”! Anti-Catholic, pro-atheist, pro-multiculturalism vested interests ...

Why people avoided paying household charge
Online comment on an Irish Times column by a doctoral law student and a law professor
Stop calling it “avoidance”which is perfectly sensible, widespread and wholly lawful. Non payment of the household charge is tax evasion, pure and simple, which is a criminal offence.  If author Dan Hayen doesn't know the difference between ...

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Now, for a little [Light Relief]

“”

won by New Zealand

Gift Idea Cuddly Teddy Bears looking for a home Click for details  “”

Neda Agha Soltan; shot dead in Teheran by Basij militia

Good to report that as at 14th September 2009 he is at least alive. FREED AT LAST, ON 18th OCTOBER 2011, GAUNT BUT OTHERWISE REASONABLY HEALTHY

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What I've recently been reading “The Lemon Tree”, by Sandy Tol (2006), is a delightful novel-style history of modern Israel and Palestine told through the eyes of a thoughtful protagonist from either side, with a household lemon tree as their unifying theme. But it's not entirely honest in its subtle pro-Palestinian bias, and therefore needs to be read in conjunction with an antidote, such as See detailed review +++++ This examines events which led to BP's 2010 Macondo blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.  BP's ambitious CEO John Browne expanded BP through adventurous acquisitions, aggressive offshore exploration, and relentless cost-reduction that trumped everything else, even safety and long-term technical sustainability.   Thus mistakes accumulated, leading to terrifying and deadly accidents in refineries, pipelines and offshore operations, and business disaster in Russia.   The Macondo blowout was but an inevitable outcome of a BP culture that had become poisonous and incompetent.  However the book is gravely compromised by a litany of over 40 technical and stupid errors that display the author's ignorance and carelessness.  It would be better to wait for the second (properly edited) edition before buying.  As for BP, only a wholesale rebuilding of a new, professional, ethical culture will prevent further such tragedies and the eventual destruction of a once mighty corporation with a long and generally honourable history. Note: I wrote my own reports on Macondo in May, June, and July 2010 +++++ A horrific account of: how the death penalty is administered and, er, executed in Singapore, the corruption of Singapore's legal system, and Singapore's enthusiastic embrace of Burma's drug-fuelled military dictatorship More details on my blog here. +++++ This is nonagenarian Alistair Urquhart’s incredible story of survival in the Far East during World War II. After recounting a childhood of convention and simple pleasures in working-class Aberdeen, Mr Urquhart is conscripted within days of Chamberlain declaring war on Germany in 1939. From then until the Japanese are deservedly nuked into surrendering six years later, Mr Urquhart’s tale is one of first discomfort but then following the fall of Singapore of ever-increasing, unmitigated horror.  After a wretched journey Eastward, he finds himself part of Singapore’s big but useless garrison. Taken prisoner when Singapore falls in 1941, he is, successively, part of a death march to Thailand, a slave labourer on the Siam/Burma railway (one man died for every sleeper laid), regularly beaten and tortured, racked by starvation, gaping ulcers and disease including cholera, a slave labourer stevedoring at Singapore’s docks, shipped to Japan in a stinking, closed, airless hold with 900 other sick and dying men, torpedoed by the Americans and left drifting alone for five days before being picked up, a slave-labourer in Nagasaki until blessed liberation thanks to the Americans’ “Fat Boy” atomic bomb. Chronically ill, distraught and traumatised on return to Aberdeen yet disdained by the British Army, he slowly reconstructs a life.  Only in his late 80s is he able finally to recount his dreadful experiences in this unputdownable book. There are very few first-person eye-witness accounts of the the horrors of Japanese brutality during WW2. As such this book is an invaluable historical document. +++++ “Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies” This is a rattling good tale of the web of corruption within which the American president and his cronies operate. It's written by blogger Michele Malkin who, because she's both a woman and half-Asian, is curiously immune to the charges of racism and sexism this book would provoke if written by a typical Republican WASP. With 75 page of notes to back up - in best blogger tradition - every shocking and in most cases money-grubbing allegation, she excoriates one Obama crony after another, starting with the incumbent himself and his equally tricky wife.  Joe Biden, Rahm Emmanuel, Valerie Jarett, Tim Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Steven Rattner, both Clintons, Chris Dodd: they all star as crooks in this venomous but credible book.  ACORN, Mr Obama's favourite community organising outfit, is also exposed for the crooked vote-rigging machine it is. +++++ This much trumpeted sequel to Freakonomics is a bit of disappointment.  It is really just a collation of amusing little tales about surprising human (and occasionally animal) behaviour and situations.  For example: Drunk walking kills more people per kilometer than drunk driving. People aren't really altruistic - they always expect a return of some sort for good deeds. Child seats are a waste of money as they are no safer for children than adult seatbelts. Though doctors have known for centuries they must wash their hands to avoid spreading infection, they still often fail to do so.  Monkeys can be taught to use washers as cash to buy tit-bits - and even sex. The book has no real message other than don't be surprised how humans sometimes behave and try to look for simple rather than complex solutions. And with a final anecdote (monkeys, cash and sex), the book suddenly just stops dead in its tracks.  Weird. ++++++ A remarkable, coherent attempt by Financial Times economist Alan Beattie to understand and explain world history through the prism of economics.  It's chapters are organised around provocative questions such as Why does asparagus come from Peru? Why are pandas so useless? Why are oil and diamonds more trouble than they are worth? Why doesn't Africa grow cocaine? It's central thesis is that economic development continues to be impeded in different countries for different historical reasons, even when the original rationale for those impediments no longer obtains.  For instance: Argentina protects its now largely foreign landowners (eg George Soros) Russia its military-owned businesses, such as counterfeit DVDs The US its cotton industry comprising only 1% of GDP and 2% of its workforce The author writes in a very chatty, light-hearted matter which makes the book easy to digest.  However it would benefit from a few charts to illustrate some of the many quantitative points put forward, as well as sub-chaptering every few pages to provide natural break-points for the reader.  +++++ This is a thrilling book of derring-do behind enemy lines in the jungles of north-east Burma in 1942-44 during the Japanese occupation. The author was a member of Britain's V Force, a forerunner of the SAS. Its remit was to harass Japanese lines of command, patrol their occupied territory, carryout sabotage and provide intelligence, with the overall objective of keeping the enemy out of India.    Irwin is admirably yet brutally frank, in his descriptions of deathly battles with the Japs, his execution of a prisoner, dodging falling bags of rice dropped by the RAF, or collapsing in floods of tears through accumulated stress, fear and loneliness.  He also provides some fascinating insights into the mentality of Japanese soldiery and why it failed against the flexibility and devolved authority of the British.  The book amounts to a  very human and exhilarating tale. Oh, and Irwin describes the death in 1943 of his colleague my uncle, Major PF Brennan. +++++ Other books here

Won by New Zealand

Won by New Zealand

Click for an account of this momentous, high-speed event of March 2009 Won by Wales

Click on the logo to get a table with the Rugby World Cup scores, points and rankings.   After 48 crackling, compelling, captivating games, the new World Champions are, deservedly, SOUTH AFRICA England get the Silver, Argentina the Bronze.  Fourth is host nation France. No-one can argue with the justice of the outcomes Over the competition, the average points per game = 52, tries per game = 6.2, minutes per try = 13

Click on the logo to get a table with the final World Cup scores, points, rankings and goal-statistics