The Grey Blur
7th November 2005, 19:18
Daily Ireland
Attempt to ‘do a McCarthy’ on Shinners over alleged financial policy proposals
Damien Kiberd
In 1969, a new dawn was announced in the politics of the Free State. The Labour Party proclaimed that the “seventies will be socialist”.
The party had attracted to its ranks a series of talented, if somewhat conflicted, individuals. Conor Cruise O Brien, a former diplomat and writer and at one point a key figure in the UN, stood for election in Dublin North-East. The distinguished Trinity College historian David Thornley stood in Dublin West, while TV presenter and agricultural economist Justin Keating stood in West Dublin. A strange mood of optimism pervaded the party’s ranks that year.
The “dawn” was to prove false. A fairly thorough red scare developed with Taoiseach Jack Lynch and his acolytes in Fianna Fail warning about the dangers posed by by what he called “Trinity Pinkoes” and the Church surreptitiously campaigning against “alien Marxist ideas“. The party’s tally of seats at the ensuing elections to Dail Eireann was more or less unchanged. Fianna Fail would hold the reins of power for another four years, until the disastrous FG/Labour government of the mid-1970s, a government remembered for entirely destructive wealth tax and its bizarre addiction to prestige public investment projects that would have been more at home in Soviet Russia (Irish Steel, NET being two case studies)
A somewhat similar approach is now being adopted in relation to Sinn Fein and its economic policies. The McCarthyite attacks are being orchestrated this time by the beat-up ex-Stalinites who control what passes for ideology in the Sunday Independent. Some of these people, who spent a large part of their adult lives in an attempt to turn Ireland into a satellite state of the old Soviet Union, now claim that Sinn Fein policy would create an economic wasteland in the 26 counties.
The latest massive attack by the O’Reilly-owned newspaper relies heavily on a pompous and vapid analysis produced by the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit. Now as anybody who has studied economic forecasting in recent years, almost every forecast made by The Economist newspaper concerning Ireland has been wildly wrong, particularly in relation to the property market and the construction sector. Much of the EIU scaremogering is based on negative political assumptions about the direction being adopted by republicans rather than on any worked-our economic projections of the consequences of Sinn Fein taking part in a future government in Dublin.
RTE has rowed into the McCarthyite campaign with a Prime Time programme calculated to send shivers up the spines of all God-fearing citizens. Dire warnings about Sinn Fein’s antagonism to market force economics were voiced over the past week as TV screens depicted large numbers of shaven headed men carrying tricolours and marching through the streets. As propaganda goes, Senator Joe McCarthy could hardly have surpassed it.
Then, Sinn Fein has set itself up for all of this abuse. Leaked reports of its alleged economic policies will not help the party to win votes at any forthcoming elections in the 26 counties where people want to pay less taxes, and not more.
The party apparently wants to increase the rate of capital gains taxation (CGT) but its (leaked) document is unspecific about the rate it would prefer. The party is apparently ignoring the fact that Charlie McCreevy’s decision to cut the basic rate of CGT from 40 per cent to 20 per cent some years ago triggered a massive surge in asset transfers which generated huge revenues for the state and trebled the aggregate yield from capital taxation, while simultaneously pumping up the yield from stamp duties on property sales to a level equal to about 40 per cent of the total garnered each year by the British exchequer. This is the money that pays for state services.
Full Article http://dailyireland.televisual.co.uk/home....&id=14033&opp=1 (http://dailyireland.televisual.co.uk/home.tvt?_scope=DailyIreland/Content/Comment&id=14033&opp=1)
Attempt to ‘do a McCarthy’ on Shinners over alleged financial policy proposals
Damien Kiberd
In 1969, a new dawn was announced in the politics of the Free State. The Labour Party proclaimed that the “seventies will be socialist”.
The party had attracted to its ranks a series of talented, if somewhat conflicted, individuals. Conor Cruise O Brien, a former diplomat and writer and at one point a key figure in the UN, stood for election in Dublin North-East. The distinguished Trinity College historian David Thornley stood in Dublin West, while TV presenter and agricultural economist Justin Keating stood in West Dublin. A strange mood of optimism pervaded the party’s ranks that year.
The “dawn” was to prove false. A fairly thorough red scare developed with Taoiseach Jack Lynch and his acolytes in Fianna Fail warning about the dangers posed by by what he called “Trinity Pinkoes” and the Church surreptitiously campaigning against “alien Marxist ideas“. The party’s tally of seats at the ensuing elections to Dail Eireann was more or less unchanged. Fianna Fail would hold the reins of power for another four years, until the disastrous FG/Labour government of the mid-1970s, a government remembered for entirely destructive wealth tax and its bizarre addiction to prestige public investment projects that would have been more at home in Soviet Russia (Irish Steel, NET being two case studies)
A somewhat similar approach is now being adopted in relation to Sinn Fein and its economic policies. The McCarthyite attacks are being orchestrated this time by the beat-up ex-Stalinites who control what passes for ideology in the Sunday Independent. Some of these people, who spent a large part of their adult lives in an attempt to turn Ireland into a satellite state of the old Soviet Union, now claim that Sinn Fein policy would create an economic wasteland in the 26 counties.
The latest massive attack by the O’Reilly-owned newspaper relies heavily on a pompous and vapid analysis produced by the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit. Now as anybody who has studied economic forecasting in recent years, almost every forecast made by The Economist newspaper concerning Ireland has been wildly wrong, particularly in relation to the property market and the construction sector. Much of the EIU scaremogering is based on negative political assumptions about the direction being adopted by republicans rather than on any worked-our economic projections of the consequences of Sinn Fein taking part in a future government in Dublin.
RTE has rowed into the McCarthyite campaign with a Prime Time programme calculated to send shivers up the spines of all God-fearing citizens. Dire warnings about Sinn Fein’s antagonism to market force economics were voiced over the past week as TV screens depicted large numbers of shaven headed men carrying tricolours and marching through the streets. As propaganda goes, Senator Joe McCarthy could hardly have surpassed it.
Then, Sinn Fein has set itself up for all of this abuse. Leaked reports of its alleged economic policies will not help the party to win votes at any forthcoming elections in the 26 counties where people want to pay less taxes, and not more.
The party apparently wants to increase the rate of capital gains taxation (CGT) but its (leaked) document is unspecific about the rate it would prefer. The party is apparently ignoring the fact that Charlie McCreevy’s decision to cut the basic rate of CGT from 40 per cent to 20 per cent some years ago triggered a massive surge in asset transfers which generated huge revenues for the state and trebled the aggregate yield from capital taxation, while simultaneously pumping up the yield from stamp duties on property sales to a level equal to about 40 per cent of the total garnered each year by the British exchequer. This is the money that pays for state services.
Full Article http://dailyireland.televisual.co.uk/home....&id=14033&opp=1 (http://dailyireland.televisual.co.uk/home.tvt?_scope=DailyIreland/Content/Comment&id=14033&opp=1)