O’Conall Street

Here are our top ten Halloween happenings for 2008.

1- Russell Brand wont have to dress down today.
2- John McCain is trick or treating for ‘emergency funds’.
3- There will be no apple-bobbing around the Executive table.
4- Stormont is hosting the annual pin the blame on the donkey (donkey can be: Peter Robinson, Martin McGuinness, Jim Allister, Caitriona Ruane, the Brits or whoever you like).
5- Derry is getting another bridge to accommodate the invading hordes.
6- Teachers call off strike in time for mid term break.
7- The South’s Greens are behaving like zombies.
8- Johnatan Ross is now afraid to say boo to a ghost.
9- Cleric calls for witch trial of Education Minister
10- Ten years ago the PM said:

Tony Blair was under pressure last night to intervene in the crisis over the setting up of an executive of ministers for the new Northern Ireland Assembly.

With tomorrow’s deadline for the establishment of the body set to pass without a breakthrough, efforts are intensifying on all sides to try to find a solution.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams called on Mr Tony Blair to step in to break the stalemate.

In a separate move, it was disclosed that the Irish Prime Minister, Mr Bertie Ahern, was ready to take part in intensive discussions in Belfast next week. First Minister David Trimble held an hour-long private meeting with Mr Adams yesterday - described as “frank and hard-nosed” - but afterwards the gulf between the two parties seemed as wide as ever.

The UUP leader accused the Sinn Fein president of failing to do his duty over weapons decommissioning. “There is no sign of Mr Adams being prepared to seriously engage and to fulfil his obligations under the agreement,” Mr Trimble said.

“It is his failure that is causing us a problem, there are no other problems.”

Mr Adams claimed the First Minister had gone back on the agreement and said he would be contacting Mr Blair as a matter of urgency.

“I feel I have a responsibility to spell out very clearly to the British Prime Minister that he also signed up to this agreement and that the Ulster Unionist Party is preventing the implementation of the agreement which he signed up to,” said Mr Adams.

Under the terms of the Good Friday agreement, an executive of ministers and a north-south council should have been in place by October 31.

However, Mr Trimble has insisted the IRA begin decommissioning its weapons before he will sit down with Sinn Fein in an executive. With no sign of any movement on weapons, the process is stalled.

Mr Ahern, at a meeting of business leaders in Balbriggan, County Dublin, yesterday, emphasised the urgency of getting meaningful structures for cross-border co-operation “up and running as soon as possible”.

The potential for significantly increased trade had been boosted by the Good Friday agreement, he said, and that should be carried through. “Peace is the greatest prosperity builder of all,” he said.

Downing Street said work would continue on trying to drive forward all parts of the Good Friday agreement. “There have been difficulties in the past and they have been overcome,” a spokesman said.

Lets do the time warp again…..

Happy Halloween!!!!

Sunday’s parades and counter-parades could wreck Belfast’s new brand and create and public relations nightmare for the city. If images of conflict and sectarian politics are beamed around the world they will turn off investors and potential visitors.  So far the story has not spilled out of our local media but sure as night follows day if violence erupts as many fear, the news from Northern Ireland will be just the sort the European and US networks love. Good for a headline - disastrous for Belfast.

Just look at last week’s events in Craigavon. One night’s rioting - three days headlines.

I won’t be in Belfast city centre on Sunday either to parade or to protest. Not because I don’t feel strongly about the war, I do and like a hundred thousand others took to the streets of this island to demonstrate against it taking place some years ago. I wont be there because I don’t want to be part of a day which has turned into a cover for those on both sides of our community who have no interest in taking this city forward.

It takes a lot to get the business community mobilised yet today, through an open letter, they are appealing to the major parties to get back to work and get on with their jobs. The people of the North are calling for partnership and progress not parades and counter protests.

Last year I spent several months involved in the development of Belfast’s new brand.  We worked hard to create a proposition which was capable of commanding the support of the city.

In the end we declared, “This is Belfast’s moment” and agreed on a brand proposition which asserted “A unique history and a future full of promise have come together to create a city bursting with energy and optimism.”

Belfast City Council adopted the brand which means the following:

For citizens…
The time is right for us to build a thriving, vibrant city. Bringing together our strong sense of identity, our resilience and enterprise, and our renowned warmth and wit, we are seizing this opportunity with both hands. Proud of our heritage, we embrace the future to build an even better Belfast, providing a warm welcome to visitors, an exciting environment for business and a great place to live.

For visitors…
Here, between the mountains and the sea, is a dynamic city with a big personality. Proud of its heritage Belfast is alive with possibilities and open to change – vibrant, energetic and exciting. The people of Belfast provide a welcome which is not just warm, but genuine and generous, inviting anyone and everyone to join in. Belfast provides a vivid and memorable experience with new things to discover every time you visit.

For investors…
Belfast is a vibrant city full of opportunity. A spirit of optimism and a real sense of purpose fills the air, inspiring enterprise, creativity and change. The people of Belfast – witty, lively, welcoming and determined – are proud of the city’s past, positive about its future, and ready and able to seize the opportunities on offer. Now is the time, and Belfast is the place, where anything is possible.

Was this process a waste of time?

Is the video below redundant?

I certainly hope not.

belfastbrand40

It’s Official. The Maze backs Obama with 50.2% support.

You may have thought the days of ‘Maze politics’ are behind us now that the proposals have been shelved for a national Stadium outside Lisburn but a farmer in the Mid West of the US has another idea.

MSNBC has the story.

Early voting in the United States Presidential Election is beginning to tell its own tale.

Today’s reports from North Carolina suggest 50% of the 2004 total poll have already voted and the vast majority of these are African Americans. Early polling is also brisk in Florida although I have not seen any evidence o0f it being disproportionately pro Obama.

O’Conall Street is willing to predict Obama will break the 310 electoral college votes when the count is complete. Not a victory, a rout! 

Tom Elliott (UUP-Fermanagh & South Tyrone) gets the O’Conall Street award for political buffoonery.

On the 130th day since our Executive last met Mr Elliot is making politics over a message on the Bank of Ireland ATMs in Dungannon, Co Tyrone. Turns out the bank advises customers to contact the Garda if they see anything suspicious. A grave affront to Unionists according to Mr Elliott.

When asked on BBC Radio Ulster This morning whether he had contacted the bank about this matter. Mr Elliott said he was about to do so.

Nothing gives politics a bad name like public representatives who run to the press before getting the answers.

It has been 129 days since the Northern Ireland Executive met.

Floods, recession, record unemployment, a crisis in education and fuel prices through the roof have not been enough to get Sinn Fein to agree to a meeting with fellow ministers. The Assembly is in recess again this week. Guess you can’t blame them for taking a break when they are already pretty redundant thanks to the Executive paralysis.

Meanwhile in the real world an African-American has a foot in the White House and the greatest global state intervention in financial markets is well underway. We considered this issue last week at work and one of my London colleagues drafted the piece below for our weekly newsletter, Knowledge-Shop. Any MLA wanting to debate the article can give me a call of leave a comment

After some thirty years in hiding, the state is back. As Baroness Thatcher scaled down Government involvement in the market place, capitalism began its Icarean rise until, this year, it was burnt by the sun. Now interventionist policies are being implemented around the world to stabilise the global economy. Whoever is to blame – be it avaricious bankers, or head-in-the-sand politicians - this intervention has, quite rightly, been the focus of much media scrutiny over the last few weeks.

Withcostly, dangerous and lengthy wars being waged in both Afghanistan and Iraq, you would be forgiven for assuming that the British Government’s thirst for liberal interventionism has been well and truly slaked for the time being. However, in the face of a global financial ‘meltdown’ (a word used not by a sensationalist journalist, but by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund), Gordon Brown, largely backed by the opposition parties, has executed the greatest economic intervention in decades.

Criticism has been levelled at the banks themselves, for promoting and perpetuating environments with too little fear and too much greed. Half of this criticism has been neatly dealt with: in London and throughout the world few bankers remain who aren’t recovering from feelings of terror, alarm and trepidation. However, it is much easier to create fear then it is to erase greed. The Prime Minister’s intervention in the financial markets was aimed at stabilising the symptoms of the financial crisis; to deal with the causes of the crisis, regulation will follow and will ensure that increased accountability limits the promise of an easy buck.

Brownie points

If Gordon Brown harboured any fears that his sweeping plans would be met with criticism, he has largely been able to breathe a sigh of relief. In fact, as the polls have shown, after a steady slide through unpopularity into ridicule, the country seems to be more supportive of Brown now than at any time over the last year.

High profile praise has come from around the world. This year’s Economics Nobel Prize-winner, Paul Krugman, asked whether Brown’s actions had saved the world financial system, and went on to note that Brown and his Chancellor Alastair Darling’s actions had “defined the character of the worldwide rescue effort, with other wealthy nations playing catch-up”.

Back on this side of the Atlantic, the plaudits were just as strong. Jose Manuel Barroso, the EU Commission President, praised Brown for acting “as an impetus” for the collective European bailout. The French moderate newspaper Le Monde called him a ‘magician’, claiming that he was giving lessons on interventionism to his continental counterparts.

Perhaps less sweet to Krugman’s ears than to Brown’s, Liberation, the former Communist French daily, suggested that the Prime Minister should have received this year’s Nobel Prize for Economics. In Germany, Der Spiegel gave credit to Brown for the actions which were taken in Europe; even in Anglo-Teutonic relations, imitation really is the highest form of flattery. More tongue-in-cheek was a Swedish journalist, who went so far as to ask whether the UK Prime Minister was in fact ‘Flash’ Gordon.

When did interventionism become unpopular?

Over the past thirty years, many premiers and their close advisors have turned their back on interventionism and big government. This has been particularly notable when it has come from individuals whose politics would naturally embrace a greater involvement of the state in the affairs of its citizens.

In 1993, a disastrous military campaign in Somalia forced President Clinton to turn his back on international military intervention. Three years later he demonstrated a similarly low appetite for domestic intervention: “the era of big government is over”. Peter Mandelson, recently restored to Government as Business Secretary, famously claimed in 2002 that “we are all Thatcherites now”. During Australia’s 2007 election campaign, Kevin Rudd, leader of the centre-left Australian Labour Party, and current Prime Minister embraced the fact that he is “an economic conservative”.

In the lead-up to the most important election in the world, US Presidential candidate Barack Obama praised former President Ronald Reagan for “changing the trajectory of the country” and for infusing it with dynamism and entrepreneurship. Obama went on to say: “He put us on a fundamentally different path, because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and Government had grown and grown, but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating.”

Here to stay?

So Gordon Brown’s £500bn bank deal does indeed represent a return to interventionism. And, judging by the reactions of many of the world’s experts in the financial arena, it was a move which will knock granting independence to the Bank of England off the number one spot in the list of Brown’s masterstrokes, even if it is a short list. But is this a one-off return to interventionism, or is the start of a policy paradigm shift towards big government?

Many feel that there is indeed a shift. Jeffrey Sachs, the eminent former Harvard economist, believes that the small government ideology popularised in the Reagan-era is defunct. So too, according to Sachs, is the modest corrective that characterised Bill Clinton’s ‘triangulation’ with the right.

Closer to home, the BBC Business Editor Robert Pestonstates that Brown’s response to the financial crisis represents the “death of Thatcherism, or at least of an important strand of the dominant ideology of the 1980s and 1990s.” Earlier this year, Matthew Parris, the journalist and former Conservative MP, broke from his previous support for free-market capitalists like Friedrich Hayek, Alfred Sherman and Keith Joseph. Parris lists challenges to which he feels anti-statism offers little or no response: the environment, nationally and globally; [presciently] the regulation of banking; fair trade; malaria and HHIV/Aids; immigration.

And despite Barack Obama’s pro-Reagan comments above, he remains the senator with the most interventionist voting record in Congress. If after the November 4th election he finds himself in the White House, Republicans will fear that hopes of small government will be thrust further into the wilderness.

But voters are important too. Acknowledging the belt-tightening straits which the under-regulated financial sector has given us to look forward to, the electorate will perhaps have more of a stomach for a firmer government hand on the tiller. Indeed, the positive reception his actions received will only serve to give Brown the confidence to continue down this road. One thing Brown certainly believes in is the capacity of Government to change people’s lives.

Or is it?

However, the financial crisis was a gift for the Prime Minister, and the fact that it was a global crisis made it all the more sweet. The Chancellor within Brown, his true political role, was able to emerge and, finding himself amongst Treasury officials, bankers and very, very big numbers, he felt once again at home.

Indeed an ICM poll in the Guardian on Monday (20th October) found that 43% of those surveyed trust Brown/Darling more on the economy, compared with 35% who favour Cameron/Osborne. But if Brown has to make interventionist decisions on non-fiscal matters, he will be less able, and he will no doubt inspire less confidence in the electorate.

Those looking for precedents to support the argument that this is the thin end of an interventionist wedge should avoid Sweden. Although the Swedes nationalised their banks in the 1990s, once the rocky financial situation had been stabilised, they sold them.

And if Brown’s move was carried out in the spirit of John Maynard Keynes then it should be noted that Keynesianism was intended to preserve free-market capitalism in difficult times by softening the economic cycle, not to replace it. Extending similar interventions across all policy areas would be unsustainable.

Neither here nor there

Whether or not we find ourselves at the dawn of a new age of interventionism, this single intervention will have repercussions.

For the banks themselves, there are concerns that the Government’s direct involvement on the bank boards could see them turned to political ends. This would be particularly possible for RBS and Lloyds/HBOS: the Government is on course to own 57% of the former and 43.5% of the latter. For instance, the Government has already demanded greater participation in the Prime Minister’s ‘shared equity’ schemes, which aim to get more first-time buyers into home ownership. Furthermore, RBS has been instructed to “increase its investment in Money Sense, which provides free and impartial money guidance to customers”.

The Keynesian model of intervention which Brown has implemented has been out of favour since the early 1970s. This model holds that during recessions, it is governments’ responsibility to borrow money and inject it into the economy – so-called “pump-priming” – which aims to sustain the flow of capital, and combat the threat of unemployment. The Chancellor’s Pre-Budget Report, due next month, will very likely see a “reprioritisation” of the Government’s capital spending programme towards schemes that have collateral benefits in creating jobs.

Brown’s Government is likely to be carrying out major construction projects which otherwise might have waited in a tight public spending round. Construction of those London 2012 Olympic sites waiting for private investment could well be brought forward; the Crossrail link, currently estimated at £16bn, might be accelerated.

As far as defence is concerned, the Chancellor has indicated that the construction of two aircraft carriers and the replacement of the Trident nuclear deterrent (or more accurately the Vanguard submarines that carry it) will create extra jobs. In the education sector, the modernisation of schools through Building Schools for the Future will be pushed ahead. In each of these situations, the Government would benefit from reduced construction costs, as they might represent the only demand in the market.

What now?

Regulation has been lacking for too long from the financial sector, and steps will have to be taken to address this. The pendulum will no doubt swing too far to start with – after such a monumental crisis, few MPs will want to be seen arguing for minimal regulation. But it is encouraging that Lord Turner, Chair of the FSA has said that “there is no doubt the [regulatory] touch will be heavier. We have to make sure it’s intelligent and focussed on where the risks really are.” The secret, to which Lord Turner hints, is to apply smart government, not big government.

As for Gordon Brown’s future, it is not clear whether the hefty improvement he and Labour have shown in all the recent polls marks the start of a slow and steady trudge to a hard-fought fourth victory; or merely a dead cat bounce, a false dawn before the recession completely destroys the electorate’s faith in the Government.

The Minister for Education, Caitriona Ruane, and her party, Sinn Fein (ourselves alone) are at their most isolated today on the issue of academic selection.

The Catholic Grammar Schools have lined out in opposition to the Minister’s politicisation of this issue. This presents a significant problem for Sinn Fein as the party is certain to have been banking on the continued support of this sector. 

The Minister has failed to win political consensus for her plans and has failed to communicate her plans effectively. Many thousands of young children are now paying the price for this.

Question is will Sinn Fein pay a political one?

It is Irish NewsDay O’Conall Street.

THE ECONOMY STUPID

Five weeks into the greatest financial crisis of our time, its impact is now being seen in the political sphere as well as in the financial community.

The crisis has thrown Fianna Fail into a head on collision with many in the Republic. You cannot take medical cards away from the over 70s in a State that already has a less then perfect public healthcare system and expect to emerge unscathed.

In Great Britain the crisis has given Gordon Brown a much needed lifeline in a sea of tumbling polls. Across the Atlantic an African American is now a short step away from the White House because he knows when the chips are down people vote with their pockets. I am only going to say it once – It’s The Economy Stupid!

Obama’s lead in the polls is directly related to his handling of this crisis. He has kept his head when McCain and all around him were loosing theirs. His policies are redistributive aimed and sharing the wealth of America a little more widely and putting healthcare back on the policy agenda, but his relationship with business is strong. You can claim to have the ear of our job creators when Warren Buffet lines up behind you.  

I was always unhappy that Sinn Fein opted against taking an economic ministry when they took over leadership of the nationalist community in the Executive. It seemed strange that they would pass up the opportunity to influence our economic policy when so many of the North’s finest entrepreneurs are Irish and very proud to be so.

Ignoring a significant constituency is never smart in politics. Not only do you risk isolating people you may well need in the future but you also cut off an important source of advice and expertise. It is the absence of this advice, many believe has lead the republican movement into a political cul-de-sac shouldering the blame for crisis in government. 

Last week some 200 business leaders gathered in Queen’s University to debate the economy. This was a very mixed bunch with many younger entrepreneurs in attendance - a true reflection of the new North. You would think this is a group our local politicians would be interested in engaging. As it happens there was not a single one present, and only one turned up for the Northern Ireland Economic Conference, none for the Northern Ireland Anti-Poverty Network’s AGM. Their statements over the past month highlight their lack of interest in economic affairs.

Don’t take my word for it. Have a look at the Sinn Fein website and you will see a collection of press releases condemning the ‘corporate’ behaviour of organisations like Invest Northern Ireland – you would think the body charged with bringing business here should behave corporately like the IDA does in the South – but apparently not.

The gathering in Queen’s took a series of snap polls using some nifty handheld voting devices. Four out of five of those present thought our devolved government is failing the economy. For the record only on MLA attended last months Northern Ireland Economic Conference. That’s one hell of an indictment of the SF-DUP led executive that only a year ago said it was putting the economy at the heart of its Programme for Government.

Bottom line is that business no longer trusts our regional government on the economy and believes the Executive is actively damaging prospects at this crucial time.

It is rumoured that Sinn Fein want an election to push the issue of devolving policing and a justice. Maybe so but like in the aftermath September 11 when the world’s view of terrorism changed, today ordinary people in Northern Ireland and across the globe are looking for politicians who will put jobs and the economy centre stage. That’s why Obama may well end up in the White House and it is why ordinary people are so cheesed of with the SF-DUP coalition.

Time to get back to work lads and do the job we are all paying you to do.

 

This week’s New Statesman has a great supplement called Politics and the Internet Age. You can download it for free here.

Hard to pick one article for mention but I thought Sholto Byrnes piece about this year’s Malaysian elections was relevant and well worthy of reproduction.

In March this year Malaysia’s governing coalition was struck a blow so staggering that it swiftly became universally referred to as “the political tsunami”. The Barisan Nasional (BN) government received its worst ever result in the general election of that month, and the opposition was left in control of five of the country’s 13 states.

Humiliatingly for the BN, they included the economic powerhouse states of Penang and Selangor, and the federal territory around the capital, Kuala Lumpur. The government has been in crisis ever since. Above the allegations of cronyism, corruption, mismanagement and racial and religious issues that are the common currency of politics in
Malaysia, one factor stood out: in the internet age, the government could no longer maintain total control of the media.

Four weeks before the election the Information Minister, Zainuddin Maidin, had declared “blogs don’t worry me”. After he lost his seat, he was just one of many who had time to reflect that the world of cyber communication and text messaging, so intangible compared to that of the print media which the government had kept on a short leash – the mass-market daily newspapers such as the New Straits Times and the Star – had rendered the old strategies useless.

Websites such as malaysiakini and Malaysia Today have largely been able to evade the censorship (or self-censorship) of the print media, as when the country decided to invest in a multimedia super corridor near the capital in the mid-90s, it realised that it would not be internationally competitive if information on the web was seen to be restricted.

Today, around 60 per cent of the country’s population has access to the internet – a degree of penetration that is one of the highest in Asia, and comparable to many Western European states. While the government enjoyed high approval ratings, it could afford to ignore those irritants in the blogosphere whose reporting was less respectful
than their print counterparts. When food and petrol prices shot up, however, tolerance of the lifestyle enjoyed by ministers and their friends quickly decreased. Where was all the country’s wealth going? Did justice come at a price too high for the ordinary people who were suffering?

The approved lines continued to issue forth in the mainstream media. Platitudes about unity and the dangers of discussing certain difficult subjects (anything much to do with race or religion) were lauded by BN-friendly commentators. But it was no longer enough. There was no monopoly on “the truth” any more. Rumours and counter-rumours spread via websites and blogs, text messages and DVDs. And out of it all different “truths”, ones
which persuaded many to look more favourably on the opposition parties, began to be distilled.

Just days before the polls, one senior government politician was still insisting that “elections are about votes, not hits”. The opposition coalition thought otherwise; one component party recruited a popular blogger, Jeff Ooi, to run its ecampaign.

When the results came through, the ruling coalition’s foolishness in ignoring the new media became clear. In power since independence in 1957, the BN is now the weakest it has ever been. Like a mortally-wounded beast, it is thrashing out even as it fails. The outspoken editor of the Malaysia Today news portal, Raja Petra Kamarudin,
has recently been imprisoned for his attacks on the government. That this was done under the Internal Security Act, a remnant of British rule that allows for indefinite detention without trial, has provoked further anger. The outcry over this,and the calls for change, grow ever stronger.

And they grow strongest of all on the new media that the BN failed to understand and which may eventually be seen to have led to its downfall. Malaysia’s political tsunami was nothing less than an internet revolution.

I cannot understand what Sinn Fein hopes to achieve by having a counter protest to the British Army home coming parade in Belfast on November 2nd. Irrespective of your views on whether or not it is a positive thing to have the British Army parade through Belfast City Centre, they are doing so following a debate at city council and by invitation of the council.

At a time when ordinary people are asking very serious questions about SF’s commitment to the power sharing institutions and commentators and directly questioning their ability to govern, many will wonder what their true motivations in holding this event are.

Meanwhile O’Conall Street has been exploring multiculturalism on our island this week with our own multicultural communications guru, Rakhee Vithlani. MCC is a specialist offering within Weber Shandwick and has been pioneering best practice in this emerging field of communications.

The visit triggered a debate in the office about how multiculturalism has been reflected in Irish art. To be honest we failed miserably to get the discussion going - shame on us all.

The Commitments did come up however. Something about the Irish being the blacks of Europe, Dubliners being the blacks of Ireland and the Northsiders being the blacks of Dublin. So be black and be proud.