And now the hour is near, it’s time to face the final curtain. So as Bertie’s days as Taoiseach near their inevitable conclusion his legacy as a staunch promoter of Europea Union comes under scrutiny. The issue is that when we’re done patting ourselves on the back at what good Europeans we are in order to avail of structural funding we must face the difficulties of increased European Union. We are now looking at a worldwide recession despite many economists arguing that things will be different this time. Sure there are asian and russian players in the market. The markets have a more global feel which should lessen the overall economic effect but will it protect a small island in the atlantic? I doubt it. The Celtic Tiger misnomer is a phenomenon primarily of being able to make limited but important choices about our own destiny as a nation. One of these choices is a low corporation tax regime which has been extremely successful in attracting companies to our shores and away from the harmonisation giants such as France and Germany. As we’re seeing the Tiger has been fed on tax revenue from multinationals and also from a rise in Irish consumerism, with pin prick focus on the property sector.
The Irish government so love EU tax harmonisation that they don’t dream of enforcing it unless it really suits. Hence our VRT system which is being made only passably more respectable to the EU with its nod to the Green’s carbon reduction initiatives. Harmonisation of corporation tax is bad for Ireland and your government knows it. However, they fear the EU’s wrath in relation to multiple court cases against us for environmental breaches and the conditions of our structural funding which hang over us like damocles sword. There have been many benefits from our membership of the EU; economic, social and cultural and I’m not sure I’d like to give those up but the ability to set our own tax regime is important as it’s one of the few effective mechanisms of economic differentiation. I don’t think we always get it right, but we’ve effectively used it for better or worse to promote aspects of our economy. (e.g construction via low corp tax and section 23 and 50 reliefs)
Funnily enough those who push for a vote against the Lisbon Treaty on nationalistic grounds are missing a point. Lisbon will provide the only reasonable mechanism for withdrawal from the EU in the future, should we feel it was appropriate….
Another interesting facet of Lisbon is that Ireland is the only state holding a public referendum on the matter. That is deeply unsettling as it calls into question the democratic nature of the EU itself, where it often feels national governments curry favour with the commission by opting for parliamentary ratification as opposed to public referenda.
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University of the South East
Noel Whelan’s article in The Irish TImes on March 22nd provides a fair view of the contents of the Port report on WIT’s section 9 application for redesignation as the University of the South East. There’s nothing in the way bar an ambiguous government policy. We don’t need another report, another review; more time, money and effort wasted. We especially don’t need the government to pander to a glut of me-too applications when groups in the region have been calling for a university SINCE 1969. As Jim Power illustrated so well in his recent Irish Examiner article, the South East is lagging behind economically and the government has to power to change that.
I sincerely hope the government don’t decide they can buy off the 450,000 + citizens of the South East with a cut-price Technical University name change together with a placatory upgrading of any other IoT. Critical mass is needed here and that means 20-25 million euro / year for USE in addition to the redesignation.
If the government pay lip service to regional development, if they insult our intelligence with a derisory gesture, if they cling on to a favourable paragraph in the OECD 2004 report and if they fail the citizens of the South East, I sincerely hope those same citizens remember on voting day.
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El Reg kicks Freetard ass
Some of the articles in the reg are good, some are very good and others fall into the category of historic. Andrew Orlowski’s thorough bashing of freetardedness is definitely in the historic category. The article is notionally about his experiences at a London School of Economics hosted debate on “Music, fans and online copyright” which according to the author degenerated into a farce. It’s certainly believable that such an event would put forward such a one-sided view with little consideration to the rights of artists to profit from their work. It’s funny how artistic effort is devalued by so many people when they have to value it. It’s something I’ve experienced first hand but a desire to have free to amazingly cheap access in perpetuity to various art works (especially music tracks) is not particularly reasonable. There’s a non-sequitur often purported by the comedy of the commons advocates that suggests that because it’s good and enriching to the community to share knowledge (and various other works covered by the term intellectual property) that it’s value should always be accessible. Painters are lucky in the sense that owning an original painting by Pollock, Rothko, Van Gogh etc. is not considered an entitlement by the masses. However, owning an “original” from a recording artist (exactly the same inherent “stuff” as the original anyway) is considered an entitlement, something so self-evident that any peskily intruding law should be circumvented to do so. Maybe I’m just biased but I don’t think that the great popular (or otherwise) recording artists of their day should be denied royalties because technology makes it easy to rip-off their work.
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Manifesto Auction
I’m so excited about our first Important Irish Art Auction in manifesto on 4th April 2008. We have work from over 80 artists committed and it promises to be a great night. To find out more visit manifesto.ie.