How a referendum can be anti-democratic

Winston Churchill is quoted as saying that 

“…democracy is the worst form of government - except for all the others that have been tried.”

And democracy can indeed be frustrating. It’s difficult sometimes to understand why the majority cannot see things your way and vote in the candidates that you think will serve us best in parliament. 

Referenda are, or at least should be, the ultimate item in the toolbox for the pursuit of true democracy. The Rolls Royce in the exercise of the right of every adult citizen of a country to have his or her say on the outcome of a proposal that will effect everybody. 

We are facing an important referendum in Ireland on May 31st next, on whether or not we will sign up to the European Union Fiscal Treaty provisions. 

While the idea of a referendum if attractive to anyone who is in favour of democracy, this one, and others in the past, have brought forward at least the suspicion that in practice such plebiscites can fall more than a little short of the democratic ideal. This has been discussed here before: Democracy and a referendum on fiscal union in Ireland. Here it was argued that as, on occasion, less than half the people who are eligible to vote in referenda actually do so, the majority are in fact saying they not want referenda at all and are happy to let others make these decisions. Unfortunately this can open the door for well organised groups that have separate agendas.

I now believe this situation has the potential to get even worse. The coming referendum is shaping up to be positively anti-democratic. This situation will arise because of two things: strong evidence from opinion polls that nearly half the voters are prepared to admit that they do not understand the treaty provisions, and the decision of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions to instruct its members how to vote on the question. The admitted lack of understanding feeds into the idea that people are prepared to let others make the decision on their behalf - if not they would do whatever it takes to gain sufficient knowledge of the issues. The trade union involvement is more insidious. It suggests that, if enough of the people who vote are both trade union members and among those who do not understand the treaty provisions, the outcome could depend on the attitude to the treaty of policy makers in the trade union movement. 

The problem is that these people do not have a mandate from the public at large. They have not put themselves up for election in front of anyone other than their own members. To put it another way - what’s the difference between abrogating, in practice if not in theory, a national decision to the leaders of trade unions on the one hand, and allowing the democratically elected members of Dail Eireann to bring forward a result after a full and transparent debate on the matter in the parliament of the country, on the other? Could the answer have something to do with the subverting of democracy?

Censorship, science and religion

The recent news about the banning, by the Vatican, of commentary and opinion being published by a number of Catholic priests in Ireland initially invoked in your blogger the reaction that it was an internal matter for the Church, with which he wants nothing to do.

A moment’s reflection, of course, determined that the same church still impinges greatly on the lives even of those who would shun it completely, nowhere more than in the matter of the education of one’s children and eventual grandchildren. The Catholic Church still controls and manages over 90% of state funded primary schools in Ireland. Therefore citizens are often constrained to send their children to one of these schools as the only means of them getting a primary education, as was the case with our family when we lived in rural Ireland. You tend to take the view that it will be all right - sure everyone is in the same boat, and this is not exactly the middle ages.

But it wasn’t all right. Our daughter, who dearly loves her father, for all his faults, was made to suffer serious anguish in the belief that he was destined to hell because, as she was aware, he had decided that there was no god. Her mother seems to have eased her mind by getting her to agree that, even though Dad didn’t believe, he was still a good man, so he would avoid hell. The whole episode generates great anger, even now. Thinking about it, it’s lucky she wasn’t in a Lutheran school. Martin Luther taught that good works were not enough. The only way to he ‘saved’, for him, was to believe.

There are other reasons why religion in schools is pernicious. It has the capacity to undermine the teaching of scientific principles, for one. In the words of Richard Dawkins, in his book “The God Delusion”:

“Fundamentalist religion is hell-bent on ruining the scientific education of countless thousands of innocent, well-meaning, eager young minds. Non-fundamentalist, ‘sensible’ religion may not be doing that. But it is making the world safe for fundamentalism by teaching children, from their earliest years, that unquestioning faith is a virtue”.

And how far away is the Catholic Church from fundamentalism when we are hearing that the Vatican has taken steps to curtail freedom of expression on the part of some of its priests? This has to mean that the same culture of repression will pervade the state schools that the Church manages. For someone who sees the ability to criticise and to bring forward new ideas as an essential part of living, this is bad news indeed.

Richard Dawkins’s book is well worth reading, for anyone. However, it is especially relevant to those priests that have been silenced by the Vatican. Dawkins is a world class intellectual. At the very least, priests, such as those who have been victims of Vatican authoritarianism, should be able to address the points he makes. It is available from Amazon.co.uk, here. 

It might be economics, but it's not science

No sooner do I coin a well-received definition of economists, to wit: 

 “…the study of economics is not a science. Note that I did not write “exact science”.It is not a science at all. It is a set of beliefs that are held by individual practitioners and invoked under any and all conditions. Economists are Keynesians, Monetarists or follow the Austrian School in the same way as the devout adhere unquestionably to Mohammed or Christ or L.Ron Hubbard. Economists cannot agree among themselves on the right course of action under any given set of circumstances and they most certainly cannot predict what will happen in the future”. (See "Vincent Browne and the Euro) 

than a group of them comes along and seems to make every effort, in the pages of The Irish Times, to support my thesis.

An article in the paper of record on Friday 6th April and signed by no less than 43 academics, many in economics positions, is entitled “Austerity without growth a guarantee of stagnation”. It points out that a subset of the same group argued, two years ago, against spending cuts and tax rises as a means of dealing with the economic crisis on the grounds that it would kill growth and create high unemployment and debt. The current article seems to be claiming that this prediction has been proved correct, 24 months later. But two years is a mere blip in terms of the time required to create the economic conditions that would come close to being defined as normality.

“The evidence is clear”, they say, “contractionary fiscal policy does indeed restrict economic activity and employment”. This is an example of the kind of wooly thinking that's indulged in by those who have misappropriated scientific terminology. The statement is certainly reasonable, and one could even be persuaded to base policy upon it in certain circumstances. There is however no evidence, never mind clear evidence, in this opinion piece to support it.

The article is unscientific in that it never addresses other, feasible, hypotheses. For example, the proposition that taxes on high income groups actually reduce the tax take because they make it economically viable for the rich to simply remove themselves to another tax jurisdiction. Or that the EU / ECB / IMF solution to current woes - austerity now (but nothing like what the global financial markets would impose on countries like Greece and Ireland if they were to have a disordered sovereign default) to repair and consolidate Euro-zone peripheral economies so that the E-zone as a whole can prosper and grow in the future – might be the correct course of action.

The article could conceivably contain contradiction. At the start it is arguing against tax increases on low and average earners as the means of raising the funds for growth in infrastructure and other labour intensive projects. Less than 800 words later it’s calling for …”taxation targeting high-income groups, property assets, unproductive activity and passive income…”, “…stronger local taxation…”, “…the potential of social insurance and local taxation to broaden the tax base…” and claiming that “…PRSI [another form of taxation] can be expanded and combined with general taxation to provide free (sic) universal healthcare and earnings-related pensions”.  Many hold that all these measures simply trickle down as costs to middle and low earners through market forces.

Definitely not science. The scientific method has no room for ideology, for expediency or for plain, old fashioned, wishful thinking.

A little bit of James Bond nostalgia

Recently, I found a title in a second hand book stall that I first read when I was a teenager: “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”, by Ian Fleming, one of the incomparable James Bond series.

As anyone of a certain age will know, the James Bond books were a phenomenon when they first appeared in about the 1960s. Since then, they’ve been made familiar to countless movie goers through the films that were made of them starring, initially, Sean Connory as Bond, and later such worthies as Roger Moore, George Lazenby and Pierse Brosnan, to name but some. Even David Niven had a go at it at one stage.

But it was the written word in Fleming’s books that did it for me, and many others. Bond was a connoisseur of only the very best, and Fleming dropped brand names like mad. Everything from Hermes bags and other products, Aston Martin cars, Mouton Rothschild ’53 with the most routine of meals and even, on at least one occasion, Waterford Crystal glassware – James came across them all, and many, many more, in the course of his travels.

And there was more than a hint of sulphur about James Bond books. For my part, it was necessary to hide them, often in the garden hedge, as to be found reading them by parents in the early sixties was to invite trouble.

So it was nice to be able to dip into “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”. James is up to all his old tricks, smoking his head off, drinking only the best and gambling for huge stakes at a really stylish casino. By the end of chapter three he has, as expected, partaken of some serious rogering, even before he gets into the adventure proper.

But the quaintest paragraph of all comes in chapter six:

“It was at this moment that the Syncraphone in his trouser pocket began to bleep…The Synchraphone had recently been introduced and was issued to all officers attached to headquarters. It was a light plastic radio receiver about the size of a pocket watch. When an officer was somewhere in London, within a range of ten miles of Headquarters, he could be bleeped on the receiver. When this happened, it was his duty to go at once to the nearest telephone and contact his office. He was urgently needed”.

Whatever would Ian Fleming have done with the Internet?

The swan takeoff - what a pilot

Click on the image for the video

I was walking alongside the Grand Canal in Dublin towards the LUAS tram line bridge at the Charlemont stop, which is also close to the Sixth Lock canal gate on the other side, and I stopped to watch a swan swimming strongly towards me. Hello, I said, this bird is going somewhere. Her speed through the water made a prow wave either side of the swan’s breast and a wash behind. There was a real sense of purpose here.

Then the swan turned in. To feed, I thought. No, it went slightly into reverse, legs maneuvering underwater, and I realized that it was making a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, to face in the direction I was walking. Then, without any further ado, it started to take off. I was right beside it. Wings flapping so that the tips actually beat the surface of the water, it rose slightly. Then the webbed feet gave additional forward thrust by seeming to run along the surface of the water. Slowly, it rose, but was also heading for the LUAS tramway bridge.

It got gradually higher, wings working away, but swans are not pigeons – because of their weight they’re ponderous in the air. In fact, I believe they are the largest bird that can still fly. The ostrich and some penguins are bigger but they’re water or earth bound. Now it was rapidly approaching the bridge and for a second it looked like it might collide with it - and that was even before it had gained enough height to clear the overhead cables that power the tram. But then there was a last, powerful surge from the wings and it was high enough to be above everything in its way. A few seconds later I saw it landing on the other side of the canal lock.

It was a magnificent spectacle. But for me the wonderful part was the obvious confidence the swan had in the distance from the bridge it knew it had to allow so that it could get over it. It seemed to know exactly where to turn after swimming away from the bridge in order to create an adequate runway for itself. Does it make that judgment every time, or has it, through trial and error in the past, established a landmark on the bank? I think the latter, because when I saw it swimming it never once looked behind – it just stopped at a certain point and turned.

I have been able to find videos of swans taking off and there is a link to one above. For me this is one of the many wonders of nature, but most times they have lots of space in which to get airborne. The takeoff I saw was special.

Science, Magic and Religion

The Internet truly is wonderful. Today I’d like to introduce readers to the possibility of viewing a complete undergraduate course at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), entitled “Science, Magic and Religion”, which is presented to us by Professor Courtenay Raia.

One would need to have a deep interest in the subject and/or rather a lot of time at his or her disposal in order to watch the whole course. However, the introduction video is well worth viewing, all by itself.

It is easy to imagine that it is only in relatively recent times that a clear distinction has arisen between the three elements in the title of this course: Isaac Newton, who discovered gravity, who defined mechanics and the laws of motion that bear his name, and who invented the Calculus, was an ordained clergyman who spent a good deal of his time practicing alchemy, the means by which many people of his day believed base metal could be turned into gold. Johann Kepler, who developed the laws that define the motion of the planets in their orbits around the Sun, had a steady sideline in the preparation of astrological charts which were supposed to tell the fortune of the person who commissioned them. In the Middle Ages astrology was taken so seriously that it was made a capital offence for anyone to attempt to tell the fortune of the King of England.

These videos have an added bonus in that Professor Raia is a joy to watch. She’s a supremely confident lecturer who uses her hands, in particular, to beautiful effect.

An Irish honorary consul for the Vatican?

The Irish embassy to the Vatican, Via Giacomo Medici, Rome

The Irish government has decided to close its embassy to the Vatican, ostensibly for reasons of cost. Supporters of the Catholic church claim that it is, instead, a gesture of defiance on the part of the Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister), Eamonn Gilmore, who is on record as being a secularist, and made possible from a political point of view by the wholesale cover up of child sexual abuse by the Catholic church authorities, which had gone on for many years but has only come to light in relatively recent times.

Ireland has another embassy in Rome, to the Italian government. The Vatican has insisted that it should have a separate diplomatic mission on the grounds that it has been recognised by, among others, the United Nations, as a sovereign state. The totality of its territory is, of course, enclosed within the limits of the City of Rome and, to add anomaly to anomaly, the existing Irish embassy to the Vatican has always been situated, not in Vatican City, but in another part of Rome.

Many Roman Catholics in Ireland are not pleased about the closure of the embassy. This is reflected in the belated opposition of a number of Fine Gael back benchers, who are no doubt reflecting the views of their constituents.

Even those of us who have been campaigning for many years for the separation of church and state in Ireland can, of course, appreciate that Catholicism has been a major influence in Irish history and therefore a part of our culture, for better or worse. That cultural link will always be reflected in, for example, the names of certain notable times of the year, such as Christmas. After all, we have no problem in commemorating other, earlier, gods in some of the days of the week, such as Woden (Wednesday) and Thor, (Thursday). Maintaining an embassy to the Vatican for cultural reasons is in a different league, however. There is the cost, which is a duplication of the expense of maintaining that other Irish embassy in Rome. There is the fact that Catholicism is a religion, not actually another country, no matter what it may like to believe itself to be in this regard, and there is the little detail that the Irish embassy was never actually within Vatican City, indicating that all concerned were playing diplomatic games at the time of its inception.

The Vatican (population 860) is not unique in having an existence as a small, semi-autonomous entity in Europe. There are also The Principality of Monaco (population 35,000), The Republic of San Marino (population 32,000), and The Principality of Andorra (population 84,000), as examples. I owe this information to my son, Shane, who has politics in his degree and who works in Public Relations, as I do the fact that, in the case of Monaco, Ireland is represented by an Honorary Consul. We currently have no representation in Andorra or San Marino.

Wouldn’t the Monaco example be an excellent resolution to the current controversy with regard to the Vatican? An honorary consul to the Vatican. As Shane says, one of the cardinals could do it.

Sources:

Irish Department of Foreign Affairs

US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) World Factbook

Shane McKenna BA PRII