The Quiet Road

Just a quickie. In my recent post (The next great wave of Irish emigration) about the collapse of the Irish property market and the mountain of debt it has created for us all, I suggested that there’s “an estimated quarter of a million newly built houses and apartments standing empty”. I must apologise as my estimate was somewhere between 20% and 40% out. It turns out, according to the most recent data, that in fact the number is “believed to be between 352,414 and 301,682”.

That’s a whole lot of vacant houses for a nation of 4.4 million.

For about 12 years starting in the mid-90s a bunch of private business concerns decided to buy large tracts of land in Ireland (particularly around Dublin) and “develop” them by building luxury apartments and hotels. Competition was high because every property developer in the country had bought into the same delusion. Somehow they convinced themselves that this was a no-lose proposition. Property values shot up. Greenfield sites in the Dublin commuter belt increased in value by a couple of hundred percent within a few years. And brownfield sites in the city centre rose by even more. It was sheer lunacy.

Which, in itself, wouldn’t have been a problem. No, it became a problem when this small group of developers succeeded in convincing the banks and the government to join their party. And so together, the bankers, speculators and developers — breathlessly urged onwards by politicians tripping over themselves to rezone land and dismantle regulatory frameworks — dragged the nation relentlessly into a deep dark hole. Massive loans were granted based on absurd valuations and overnight a mountain of debt appeared in Dublin’s financial district.

The half-dozen or so sane people left in the country shook their heads ruefully and suggested that there was only one way for this to end… the same way all collective delusions end… with a bone-shaking return to reality and lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Of course nobody listened. We were labelled doom-mongers and pessimists. “Shut up and let me enjoy the party”, they’d say, and we’d wince as they shovelled another gramme of future debt up their nose. It’s gonna be one hell of a come-down, we’d mutter as they gave us dark scowls and dismissive gestures. “Come down?! Don’t be such an arsehole”, they’d yell, “I can keep snorting this stuff forever”.

Sadly, there the drug analogy ends. A hangover or comedown may be managed via the skillful application of hair-of-the-dog. Not the case with a property crash. Especially not one that happens just prior to an energy crisis. The Irish people find themselves slumped, sweating and groaning, on the bathroom floor. The economy flushed to get rid of the stench. All that remains of it is a foul stain on our shirt and a few nasty dried flecks stuck to our hair. Ugly reminders of our willingness to trade our future and that of our children for a few years of hedonism.

You see, as was entirely predictable… indeed inevitable… property prices crashed. And how! The Irish Glass Bottle site in Ringsend, which has become something of a symbol of the insanity that gripped the nation, has seen an 88% drop in valuation since the bubble burst. Purchased for €412 million in 2006, it has recently been repossessed by the bank that provided the loan and is for sale for €50 million. There are no interested buyers.

There are now an estimated quarter of a million newly built houses and apartments standing empty in “ghost developments” around Ireland. This, in a country with a population of four million. Safe to say the prospects for a recovery in the Irish residential property market aren’t good. In fact, probably the only remaining positive aspect of the property boom is the new nomenclature that has sprung up to describe the folly. Ghost developments sounds pretty cool, but even better is ‘Zombie hotels’, which is the phrase being used to describe the dozens of brand new hotels that are slowly choking the life out of established businesses. The massive over-capacity is forcing equally massive rate cuts. Good news, you might think, for the consumer but it’s crippling the entire sector and — as is so often the case — the good news of short-termism often doesn’t stay good for very long.

But hang on a second… rewind a bit to the Irish Glass Bottle site in Ringsend. Did I say “repossessed by the bank”? Let me rephrase that… it has been repossessed by the Irish government who have generously agreed to absorb pretty much all of the hundreds of billions of euro worth of debt injected into the Irish economy by a small number of greedy fools. The people responsible for creating our ghost developments and zombie hotels aren’t — it seems — the people responsible for dealing with the consequences. It’s been suggested that every person currently alive in Ireland will have to pay €2,000 per year for the next 70 years in order to clear the total liability that’s been shouldered by our Fianna Fáil / Green coalition government. And given that not all of us have another 70 years to live, we’ll be bequeathing a massive burden to the next couple of generations.

You’re welcome, kids.

As soon as this all sinks in — and for most, it really hasn’t yet — expect to see the next great wave of Irish emigration.

A few years ago in a longish piece about Nukes in Ireland, I discussed a report commissioned by the Irish Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. Compiled by the advisory body, Forfás, I described it as “the Buzz Aldrin of peak oil studies” as it was the second major government study (in English) of the peak oil situation. The first such study was The Hirsch Report carried out by the US Department of Energy. Both came to very similar conclusions.

In the intervening four years the recommendations of the Forfás report have been roundly ignored by the government that commissioned it. Of course, governments commission a lot of studies and reports and can’t be expected to follow every recommendation in every one. But when presented with strong evidence from your top advisors that the entire country will go down the tubes unless something is done quickly, it takes either a criminally negligent or deeply moronic set of politicians to sweep that evidence under the carpet in the hope that ignoring it will help matters.

The report suggested that the crisis would start to seriously impact Ireland within ten to fifteen years. It suggested that radical measures needed to be taken immediately as it would take at least that long to prepare for peak oil and that even a ten year lead time was cutting it very fine indeed. The Hirsch Report, remember, suggested that twenty years was the bare minimum to implement a mitigation strategy that had any chance of working.

Sadly, the reality is, credible warnings were sounded and it is now simply too late to deal effectively with peak oil without significant damage being done to the fabric of global civilisation.

Which isn’t to say that nothing can be done. But each day we delay we make that damage all the worse. Each day we live in denial and insist that our strategy must be to achieve a “return to growth” rather than a wholesale restructuring of our economy, our systems of production and distribution, is a day closer to complete systemic collapse.

We are here already

For all intents and purposes we have already passed the global peak in oil production. We’ve reached the tipping point. Which is presumably why that title, Tipping Point, was chosen for yet another Irish report into the peak oil problem. Subtitled Near-Term Systemic Implications of a Peak in Global Oil Production: An Outline Review, this time the study has been produced by Feasta (The Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability) and it makes very grim reading indeed. If you don’t fancy downloading the full report, a brief summary can be accessed on their website. As I say though, it’s grim stuff.

The Irish Times today reports the study under the headline: Ireland ‘among most vulnerable’ to peak oil. The point I’d like to make — briefly as it’s getting late — is that although there’s a certain truth in that; it doesn’t tell the whole story.

Ireland’s vulnerability to peak oil stems from the fact that modern Ireland is more dependent upon cheap oil than most places. We are the third highest per capita oil consumers in Europe, thanks largely to our heavy use of oil to generate electricity (Dublin’s primary power station is an oil burner). We have squandered billions in recent years on road-building programmes while our public transport systems remain an embarrassment. The “knowledge economy” our government is so proud of building may have funded a decade-long orgy of consumerism but will ultimately turn out to be a betrayal of the people of Ireland. We allowed our traditional agricultural base to decline while hurtling towards a world where the ability to produce real actual food will be infinitely more valuable than being Google’s European base of operations.

And yet, despite the inevitable upheavals that approach us, Ireland does have a few things going for it. We’ve got a couple of aces up our sleeves. Albeit no thanks to the people who actually run the country.

Firstly is the fact that we are one of the few countries in the developed world that has not exceeded its notional carrying capacity. In other words, should there be a collapse in global trade — as predicted by the Feasta study — Ireland could become self-sufficient in food production. Certainly it would take a huge effort to achieve this, and given the kind of people we’ve tended to put in charge of national policy there’s every chance we’ll screw it up completely. Nonetheless, this island has the ability to produce enough food to prevent widespread hunger. The same cannot be said for many of our neighbours.

Another advantage we possess is our broadly socialist culture. Yes, it’s taken a severe knock in the past twenty years as successive governments sought to emulate the neoliberal travesties that rose briefly to international prominence on the back of an over-abundance of cheap energy. Nonetheless, I genuinely feel that the basic vision of de Valera (the most influential political figure in the early years of the Irish state) is still there. Sure, it’s buried beneath a thick layer of dust. And yes, it was always uncomfortably bound up with the darkness of Irish Catholicism. But de Valera’s basic vision of a socialist-leaning nation built upon agricultural self-sufficiency and a firm rejection of the entrenched power of private capital hasn’t been dead so long that it can’t be revived.

Here on this small wet island we possess the raw materials to keep body and soul together. And terrible though it may be to point it out, this actually puts us in a minority of nations. Whether we actually do keep body and soul together though, remains very much in the balance. But our national culture — the collective psyche of Ireland — shouldn’t be as unreceptive to the steps required to achieve this as might be the case elsewhere.

See, a transition to sustainability will happen. There’s not actually a choice in this. We can no more choose another option than we can legislate gravity away. The only question is how much destruciton and suffering will be involved in that transition. And that will largely be predicated upon how quickly we wake up to the need to act. The more preparation we carry out before the oil supply starts to significantly dwindle, the less damage we’ll suffer as a nation — and as a global civilisation.

Yesterday over in London the New Labour government delivered a “pre-budget report”. This is essentially a way to test the reaction of the electorate to the contents of the budget without going through the hassle of leaking stuff through journalists. And despite the fact that opposition parties are wailing and gnashing their teeth based on claims that they’d make a 5% adjustment here and 4.2% adjustment there, there was ultimately little of note in Chancellor Darling’s speech. Aside from the one-off 50% windfall tax on bank bonuses, there will be little in the next UK budget that can be considered radical in any way (and, being a “one off”, that 50% tax isn’t even all that radical and will probably be avoided by many by deferring their bonus until next year… given that plenty of the recipients can afford to do so).

On the other hand, there was some genuinely tough decisions made here in Ireland yesterday as our own Finance Minister (Brian Lenihan) delivered our third unpopular budget of the year, building upon the tax rises and spending cuts already seen in 2009.

Predictably, the budget has met with a polarised response. Those on the left have roundly condemned it, while those on the right have lauded it (including the British conservatives, whose support always makes me suspicious of a thing). Equally predictably, such blanket condemnation / praise simplifies the issues involved to the point of meaninglessness. The economic mess that Ireland finds itself in right now is serious and it’s complex, and while I’m certainly not going to cut the government any slack — they’ve spent the past decade steering us up this creek after all — there is merit to some of Lenihan’s strategy.

The first thing to point out is that Ireland is a small nation. Our population is roughly the same as Greater Manchester, so our tax base is limited. The second thing to point out is that we are in serious debt. This is a direct result of the policies of the current government who oversaw the greatest period of prosperity in the history of the nation but failed to use it as an opportunity to safeguard the future. When George Osborne, the British Shadow Chancellor, hailed Ireland in 2006 as “as a shining example of the art of the possible in economic policy-making”, it was this short-sighted short-termism he was celebrating. Given that the British appear ready to hand the purse-strings to Osborne early next year, it seems they are unwilling or unable to learn from the mistakes of others. And the third vital point to make is that we are not in charge of our currency.

These three points — small tax base, large debt, no currency control — significantly limit the options for the Irish government in comparison with a nation like Britain. This is why we have little choice but to impose a series of painful budgets on the country. Having spent beyond our means for the past 10 years, it’s time to balance the books.

Incidentally, while membership of the Euro limits our options in certain ways, those who view this as an argument against the single currency are willfully ignoring the fact that our membership of the Euro probably protected the nation from bankruptcy and the banking sector from collapse last year. But that’s a discussion for another day.

Unemployment payments

Back with the budget, yesterday’s 4.1% cut in unemployment benefit effectively reduces the payments to the level they were about a year ago. Taken in tandem with the significant deflation Ireland is experiencing, our unemployed are still paid more than almost any other nation in the world. I’m not suggesting it’s a life of luxury being on the dole in Ireland — and those who claim it is are talking politicised nonsense — but it is a life above the breadline. Which is ultimately what our social welfare system is designed to provide. And I say that as a socialist.

That our nation of four million people, in significant debt, can nonetheless keep almost all of the 12.5% of us who are unemployed fed, housed and warm while still treating their illnesses and educating their children is to be applauded, not lambasted. Cutbacks will have to be made in already tight household budgets, certainly. But that’s what happens when the entire nation goes on a decade-long credit-fueled spending spree. An unemployed single parent in Ballymun may not have been responsible for that spending spree, but nor are they responsible for the creation of the welfare system. And the uncomfortable fact is that the large rises in dole and child benefit payments during the past few years represent a not-insignificant part of that spending spree.

Life is still better for the average unemployed Irish person than for the average unemployed American, Briton, Serb, Russian, Pole, Italian, Spaniard, Rwandan, Mexican or Greek. Yes, unemployed Scandanavians, Canadians and French probably have slightly higher standards of living — but we’re near the top of that particular table and should acknowledge that. Personally I figured that a 7-10% cut in welfare payments would have been possible without anyone going hungry or cold. That it’s been limited to 4.1% is as much political as it is economic (given the size of the unemployed voting bloc these days) and has meant cuts elsewhere that are — arguably — larger than is fair.

Public service pay cuts

And when I talk about unfair cuts, specifically, I’m talking about this. The public sector pay cuts represent the single largest spending cut in the budget and is being imposed upon workers who have already taken large pay cuts this year. It’s being met with satisfaction by the private sector and business leaders who seem to view it as somehow unjust that public sector workers have a modicum of job security. In reality, almost everyone in the public sector traded the opportunity to become wealthy for that job security. Business leaders can start complaining about public sector job security when they accept a government mandated pay cap. Until then, let me just point them towards Article 45 of our Constitution which makes it pretty clear that we’re a socialist nation at heart. I particularly like…

The State shall, in particular, direct its policy towards securing:
… ii. That the ownership and control of the material resources of the community may be so distributed amongst private individuals and the various classes as best to subserve the common good.

Excerpt from Article 45 of The Consitution of Ireland

And if you don’t like it, then I suggest moving to a country where wealth distribution isn’t enshrined in the constitution.

Part of this wealth distribution is our welfare system, our free health (means-tested, admittedly) and education. And part of it is the maintenance of a relatively large public sector in which jobs are secure.

And I’m not suggesting that public service workers should be immune from pay cuts. The money has to be found somewhere after all. But I don’t think it’s right that they should be bearing so much of the burden. Cut the welfare budget by another 4% and raise income tax by another 3%. Put up corporate tax by 2.5% (still giving us an extremely low rate). Whatever’s raised by those means should then be used to reduce the cuts experience by the public sector — who have already been hit hard this year.

The carbon tax

Predictably, I’m all for this one. The Greens may claim it as a victory, but I believe it’s more about Fianna Fáil looking for at least one new revenue stream that they can blame on somebody else. Doesn’t matter though; taxing fossil fuels is necessary and while this tax probably isn’t enough to produce significant reductions in their use, it’s a positive first step.

Transportation fuel prices have already been increased as a result, though home heating fuel is exempt until next spring (which is fair enough, as many low-income households will already have budgeted for their winter fuel, and any hike in home heating in the middle of December would run the risk of some going cold).

I think the car scrappage scheme (getting paid by the government to trade in your old car and buy a new one) is ultimately counter-productive. As an economic stimulus package I think it’s of dubious merit (we have no indigenous car manufacturing) and as a strategy to reduce emissions I think it’s extremely limited. The difference in emissions between an old car and a new one, after factoring in the carbon emitted by the car’s production and importation is unlikely to be worth the money being spent on the scheme. Far better to take that cash and invest it in renewable energy.

What I’d like to see, however, is a scrappage scheme that genuinely reduced carbon emissions. Citizen S proposed such a policy, and I think it would probably work. Essentially the government pays people to scrap their cars, but only if they agree not to buy another one for a given period of time. They’d voluntarily have their driving-licence suspended for (let’s say) two years; though they could return the scrappage fee should their circumstances change and they need to drive again.

The scrapped cars could be melted down and recycled as wind turbines.

Booze and fags and stuff

Strangely enough, the budget included a reduction in the rate of alcohol tax. The rationale behind this was to combat cross-border shopping. Large numbers of Irish people drive up north to buy cheaper booze (just as the British cross the channel for it). While there, they tend to spend money on other stuff as well and Lenihan sees this cross-border shopping as a significant drain on the treasury. I don’t know exactly how big a drain it is, but if — as he suggests — a reduction in alcohol tax will actually increase revenue by reducing cross-border traffic then it may make sense.

Domestic violence and addiction groups have complained that the reduction will have the effect of increasing alcohol consumption, and while that may be true, I suggest it’s probably quite marginal (much of the savings to be made on a pint or a short are being negated by pay cuts and tax increases).

Interestingly, the government decided not to increase the cost of tobacco products, claiming that doing so would be counter-productive as cigarette smuggling is already extremely prevalent and any further price increases would actually lower tax revenues from that source as yet more people sought out an illegal supply. I can’t comment on this as I don’t know how true that may be, but if it’s a fact that increasing cigarette tax would result in a decrease in revenue without substantially affecting the number of people smoking, then such an increase would indeed be silly. I don’t smoke tobacco any more so it’s all rather moot from my perspective.

But tobacco isn’t the only thing that can be smoked. One wonders how bad things would have to be before the Minister for Justice reforms drug policy and Lenihan announces a cannabis tax. Certainly such a move, if done sensitively and carefully, could be a boost to the treasury without creating any serious social problems. But I suspect the government doesn’t possess the sense, the bravery or the imagination to consider this idea.

In conclusion

Overall, I don’t think this budget was the disaster it’s being painted as by the Irish left. The public sector is being asked to bear an unfair proportion of the burden, and frankly that’s problematic. That said, this budget is unlikely to be the last round of belt-tightening that Ireland will face over the next year or so. Assuming the public sector has felt the worst of the cuts aimed at them (and I believe they probably have) then we’ll almost certainly see some kind of balance restored during the next budget. Welfare payments will come down by a smiliar amount to yesterday’s announcement, and taxes for corporations and high earners will surely rise by a few percentage points. The cannabis tax will doubtlessly remain a dream, though the carbon tax will surely rise slightly. We’ll also see a return to tobacco and alcohol increases (despite the rationale used this time round) given that we’re likely to still be in a deflationary situation by then and prices will have come down across the board.

Ultimately, Ireland needs to get back on its feet as soon as possible as I firmly believe we need to be investing heavily in renewable energy over the next ten years or so. And we can’t do that without first balancing the books. This budget, though imperfect and creating justifiable anger in the public sector, goes some way towards achieving that balance.

Hey y’all.

Yeah, I’ve been absent for a while and am just about to head off to sunny Montenegro for two weeks. So I’ll be absent a while longer. Expect a return to semi-regular blogging in September. Summer’s just not the time for it.

I’ve not been writing as much as I’d like, and the two major projects that I’m working on have kind of stalled. But I’ve had quite a lot of ideas for them once I get back up and running — and frankly I’ve been enjoying the downtime. There’s the occasional pang of guilt about not getting stuff done, but it is very occasional… an echo of my long dead work ethic (it nearly killed me, I responded in kind). Summer is for drifting. For enjoying the company of a lovely lady and reminding yourself that it’s OK to live life effortlessly for a while — if you’re lucky enough to be in a position to do so. Neither work nor leisure. Amen to that, brother.

That said, there’s been plenty happening lately that would have drawn remark had I been actively blogging. The fact that the entire economy over here could collapse at any moment has added a certain edge to Irish politics just now… to Irish life in general in fact. Politicians and business leaders are looking increasingly like they’re not getting enough sleep.

The nation is bankrupt though nobody wants to be the first to put it in those terms. The bank guarantees are now the only thing propping up the financial system… but the bank guarantees will bankrupt the country if actually called upon.

There’s a vague hope that if the government can engineer a ‘Yes’ vote in our second Lisbon referendum (far from a foregone conclusion) that the EU might — just might — step in and help bail us out. The EU firmly denies that’s even possible, let alone likely.

But in the corridors of power in Europe the Irish have a single last-gasp ace in the hole. The uneasy thought in the minds of Europe’s bankers that while Ireland has clearly been the architect of its own downfall, it is actually small enough to bail-out. And the cost of that bail-out might well be cheaper than the impact on the single currency and Central Bank of a member state collapsing. Because nobody’s really sure what it means for a member of the Euro to go bankrupt. That’s just got to be an event with all manner of unexpected consequences.

Whatever happens though, one thing is certain, for a very long time we will all be paying for the follies of the last decade. And for the bizarre decisions made by the banking and construction sectors.

Don’t get me wrong. The entire country was possessed by that rampant Celtic Tiger. Every sector was making bizarre decisions. 4 million people embarked upon a decade-long binge. A bonfire of over-consumption with everyone eager to fan the flames. Politicians, retailers, banks, the hospitality sector, the auto industry, the land-developers… just everyone!

But although everyone was possessed by the same madness, it’s the land developers and bankers who created the vast majority of the debt. Approving loans based upon valuations that bear all the hallmarks of having been arrived at after an afternoon of champagne and cocaine. Tens of billions of euros just disappeariing.

Sadly, my own solution isn’t really catching on…

Phase I: Round them all up. Yes, every banker, developer and politician… in fact anyone at all who was a “decision maker” during the past 10 years. They know who they are and frankly should have the decency to step forward.

Phase II: Stick ’em all in one of those ghostly half-full developments that sprung up around Dublin during the boom. Homes built for an imaginary profit not because anyone actually wanted them. Keep them comfortable, well-fed and let them have all the Sky Channels for free. But keep them there.

Phase III: Nationalise everything (starting with every asset currently owned by Shell Oil in this country. Honestly, the gall of that company, selling our gas back to us at a profit!)

Phase IV: Come round to my place and ask me what to do with it all, now it’s been nationalised. I imagine Phases I through III will take a few weeks. I’ll have worked out what to do next by then (hint: it’ll probably involve a combination of private property rights, socialised services and collectivised production… think Cuba via Stockholm with a heavy dash of Deep Ecology).

Anyhoo, enjoy what’s left of the summer.

I’m planning to.

The next couple of weeks will see two sets of elections here in Ireland. There’s much evidence to suggest that the electorate is going to take an opportunity to kick the living crap out of the government. There’s also some evidence that the left might pick up more support than usual. Ireland is traditionally more socialist-leaning than many countries (certainly than the UK or America) and with the spectacular collapse of the Celtic Tiger and sudden return to high unemployment, the drift away from the centre-right is inevitable.

That said, the big winners are still likely to be Fine Gael, the main opposition party. Though politically indistinguishable from the governing party, Fianna Fáil, they will be seen as the best way of bloodying the government’s nose. Because there’s no doubt that the big losers will be the parties of power, including the Greens… having thrown in their lot with the centre right, they are not in a position to capitalise on the fallout from the recent economic anarchy. Labour and Sinn Féin could do very well, especially in the Locals.

[Aside: I will admit to a chuckle when I read about how Sinn Féin MPs at Westminister have been claiming the absolute maximum in expenses despite refusing to participate in parliament (they cite a moral objection to swearing fealty to the Queen which every MP is required to do prior to taking office). Of all the parties involved, they are probably the only one who can legitimately claim to be representing their voters by bringing the British political system into disrepute.]

Anyhoo, Sinn Féin have become the “Will they? Won’t they?” force in Irish politics south of the border. Their policies don’t appear to be quite as unsavoury as some nationalist groups (more Plaid Cymru, less BNP), though the fact they renounced guns more recently than some other Irish parties still puts a lot of people off. A local election during a time of unprecedented public disillusionment with the government could prove to be their springboard towards a larger role in Irish political life however.

All the same, I have a fundamental problem with nationalism, and while many of their policies are attractive I do find the emphasis on “Irishness” to be a little disconcerting. I’m Irish myself, but I’ve spent most of my life as an emigrant and only returned a few years ago. Also, while my partner is an Irish citizen, she is naturalized and didn’t start life that way. So I find some of Sinn Féin’s language a bit exclusionary at times. Again, don’t confuse this with BNP-level stuff; it’s not; but it’s far from ideal.

That said, maybe the leftwards drift will be less pronounced and wash up at the feet of Labour. The Irish labour party didn’t follow Blair’s New Labour in having a complete conversion to free market princples, but nor can they be considered traditional socialists. They have tended to be in favour of the privatisation of public assets of late, though they’ve re-adopted some of the language of the left now that it seems like it might be in vogue again. A fact that generates a somewhat sceptical glance from this direction.

I don’t imagine there’s going to be many big surprises in either the locals or the Europeans. Large loss for Fianna Fáil, smaller loss for the Greens, large gains for Fine Gael and Labour with the chance of Sinn Féin picking up plenty of local council seats as well as one MEP. Also a small increase in the number of socialists and independents gaining council seats.

As for me? Despite being a ‘traditional’ Green voter, the Greens lost my vote by supporting and perpetuating a government that spent the best part of a decade overseeing an orgy of capitalist excess. I gave them my voice and they allowed it to be effectively silenced in return for not much at all. I suspect, therefore, that I’ll try to help an independent socialist on to the local council and see if I can’t do my bit in sending Mary Lou to Brussels. It’s hardly ideal, but I’d be a fool to pass up the opportunity to help give this government a slap.

A couple of follow-ups regarding the farrago of sordid pilfering that is the British MP expenses scandal.

Firstly, it’s well worth pointing out that this kind of corruption isn’t unique to Britain. And you don’t need to look to West Africa or Southeast Asia for other examples. Here in Ireland, it’s not much more than a year since our Taoiseach (that’s Prime Minister to you, Johnny Foreigner) had to step down thanks to his own series of “accountancy mishaps”. Who could have imagined, when the Mahon Tribunal started to investigate petty corruption in local politics, that Bertie Ahern himself would come unstuck?

Secret bank accounts and 50 grand cash “donations” that end up as “loans” to Bertie’s mother-in-law. All presented against the backdrop of his strangely selective memory. And the strangely selective memory of everyone around him. He was absolutely certain he hadn’t accepted 50 thousand pounds sterling in cash from a group of businessmen in Manchester. Until it became clear that he had. Then, suddenly, he recalls the money — but it was a private loan between friends to help him out of a bit of a bad patch financially. If a friend of mine loaned me £50k, I like to think I’d have the good grace to remember it.

More than that, Bertie provided us with our very own “Hazel Blears and the 13 grand cheque” moment during his final days in power. At the very same time he was explaining to the nurses that their demands for a 10% pay increase were unrealistic, he was awarding himself a 14% increase. When a journalist wondered if it wouldn’t be a nice gesture of solidarity for him to forego his additional €38,000 (that’s a pay hike higher than the average national wage) he dismissed the idea as “tokenism”.

When the political classes can dash off cheques for £13k despite not really believing they owe the money in the first place, or can imply that 38 grand is a token sum of money, it might be a hint — and I’m just speculating here — but it might be hint that something is wrong. That far from the public becoming disengaged from politics, that politicians have become disengaged from the public.

Which, when you’re looking at the world from behind a moat, is always going to be a danger.

[Personal note: I paid significant amounts of tax into the British treasury during the 15 years I was based there. I’m not just some foreign agitator commenting from afar… I’m also wondering where Oliver Letwin gets off spending my money on his goddamn tennis court]

Rob makes a good counterpoint over at his place. Isn’t this all a bit of a distraction, he wonders in paraphrase, from the rather more important point that the gap between the richest and poorest in Britain has increased significantly of late? Even during the economic good times, “the real incomes of the poorest 10% of the population fell and those of the wealthiest 10% rose”. Isn’t “puppy-killer” Letwin’s two thousand quid tennis court repair, or Straw’s claim for unpaid taxes, kind of trivial next to that revelation? And shouldn’t we, the media and — gasp! — even the politicians be concentrating on that?

It’s a fair point well made. But I wonder if it really gets to the heart of the issue? Isn’t it just possible that a political class so willing to enrich themselves at the expense of the public might be part of that wider problem? David Cameron is leader of the opposition. He’s a very wealthy man from a very privileged background. His constituency is an hour from London by train… he lives just outside Oxford. So why does he even need “a second home” in London? One that he’s claimed over £80 thousand of public money to help pay for?

Yes, we know it’s “within the rules”. I’m not saying it’s not. But when you set your own rules of conduct, then pretty much everything you do is within the rules, right? Like a mafia boss insisting the murder he committed shouldn’t be punished because it was carried out according to the rules laid down by the Cosa Nostra code.

Cameron claims to believe that the public sector is wasteful. I can only assume he’s basing his opinion on a glance at his own finances. Within the rules or not, if the man had any sort of commitment to his own political beliefs — any kind of personal integrity — then he would have taken a look at that second-home allowance of his a long time ago. He’d have wondered if maybe the taxpayer wouldn’t be better served by him taking the train in from Oxford instead?

In some (rather more transparent) democracies, the state commissions a block of small but functional apartments for MPs to use while parliament is in session. The state maintains the place and the MPs live there rent-free. The politicians are allowed — of course — to buy their own place. Even start their own little property portfolio should they wish. But, like the rest of us, they have to dip into their own pocket for that.