George Osborne 2006:- A GENERATION ago, the very idea that a British politician would go to Ireland to see how to run an economy would have been laughable. The Irish Republic was seen as Britain’s poor and troubled country cousin, a rural backwater on the edge of Europe. Today things are different. Ireland stands as a shining example of the art of the possible in long-term economic policymaking, and that is why I am in Dublin: to listen and to learn.
AFP, Oct 2010: DUBLIN — Ireland suffered a new blow in its banking and national debt crisis on Tuesday when Moody’s rating agency warned it might downgrade Irish bonds, just as the nation braces for ever tougher cutbacks. Moody’s said in a statement that it had placed Ireland’s Aa2 debt rating under review for a potential downgrade, probably by one notch. The warning that Irish government debt might be downgraded to a worse risk ranking is also a worry for the eurozone, scarcely a week after Ireland announced new action to absorb huge debts from its banking crisis.
I am not pointing out he is a chump or makes mistakes, no they are doing this with full knowledge this will further ‘discipline’ the people to accept harsher conditions, lower labour costs and shrink the state’s protection of health and welfare. The plan for devastation to be revealed with wednesday’s Comprehensive Spending Review will be born not be them but by us, even in such demeaning ways as this-
Kelly Jarvis, who is worried she may lose the disability allowance paid to her 11-year-old son with cerebral palsy, is already feeling the pinch in the government’s austerity program. The number of diapers provided for her son has been cut to four from five a day.
In order for finance capital elites to have solid gold gear knobs on their BMW X5′s at their fourth homes Kelly Jarvis’ disabled son has to sit in his own piss and shit more often and that’s even before her dsability allowance is cut. The symbolism of their abusive, pathologically selfish and greedy attitude towards us could not be clearer. Given the corrupt bias the system is having built into it, measures New Labour were also keen on when in power, denial of disability is now routine, in opposition will Labour state they were wrong and that the bigoted defamation seen in the use of the ‘scrounger’ meme to enable wholesale abuse of the sick and disabled is unacceptable hate speech?
What the ConDem flavour of Neoliberalism (We’re turning New Labour’s Neglect into Abuse™) hopes for is the second created crisis will not be so bad (or badly handled, expect threats of cuts to police to be a bargaining chip for their cooperation in repressing protest) that their project fails. That opposition will not create massive upsets to public order and the second downturn will not be so bad as to lead to the coalition breaking up or losing a vote of no confidence (one of the reasons ‘reform’ of parliament is on their agenda to make such removals more difficult). If their project succeeds, millions of people perhaps should look at the conditions of Irish Catholics under the Ascendancy for an idea of their intended subhuman place and for lessons on resistance.
[nb. Osborne is a member of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy 'the Ascendancy' he is heir to the Baronetcy of Ballentaylor, Co. Tipperary. The Ascendancy in modern terms would be considered an apartheid enforcing aristocracy and colonial/partner oppressor.]
