What's in the Sunday Papers ?

[DCon]

Some Brits

[DCon]

The Harris piece:

If Enda Kenny wants to secure the future of Fine Gael, he should cut loose from Labour and go to the country on Croke Park. Fine Gael would be returned with a massive majority. But Kenny lacks that kind of courage. Sadly, the home helps and special-needs assistants must pay for his cowardice.

But it soon became clear that Labour's only policy was to be in power. Far from taking on the fat cats of the public sector, it became the protector of the public-sector unions. To stay in office, it marginalised Nessa Childers to look after Kevin Cardiff and rushed to fill Roisin Shortall's post when she resigned.

Labour now has no discernable political policy. So what is it doing in Government? Logically, we are left with only one reason for its readiness to sacrifice any member of the party to its passion to stay in power.

I believe the reason is money. The leadership of the Labour Party will leave politics with small fortunes in the form of pensions, provided the Government goes full term. So it has a serious financial stake in the stability of this Government.

my short stint in the Seanad shook these benign beliefs to their core. Right in the depths of a recession, my calls for serious cuts in public-sector pay and pensions, starting with the political class, fell on deaf ears.

The hostile reactions of my colleagues to any talk of real reform of public-sector pay, pensions and perks showed me that all the political parties, but particularly Labour, were partisans of the public sector. That was because they were benchmarked into a system which had seen public-sector salaries double over 10 years.

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/co...s-3251468.html

[Baron von Biffo]

The Sindo is whipping up resentment at Social Welfare payments.

http://www.independent.ie/national-n...e-3251564.html

There's an ugliness in the country that wasn't in evidence during the last recession.

[Baron von Biffo]

We want the bailed out banks back in profit so we can get our money back but we don't want them to make the commercial decisions that will bring that about.

http://www.independent.ie/business/p...s-3251571.html

[Baron von Biffo]

Eilis O'Hanlon is moved by the plight of the elderly who face cuts in their home help hours and she's ready to tell us who's to blame. It's all down to the selfishness of the trade unions. Her thinking, if I might be permitted to abuse that word, is that SIPTU is to blame because it has condemned the cuts while it simultaneously wants to protect the livelihoods of its members.

It's selfish of the unions to oppose slashing €75m from allowances, a sum she tells us would pay for the home help cuts nine times over.

But wait a minute, isn't that the same Eilis O'Hanlon who would clamber onto the barricades to oppose property tax? The Household Charge is meant to raise €160m, a sum that would pay for the home help cuts 20 times over so doesn't that make opponents of it twice as selfish as selfish as the unions?

Of course not. You see cutting PS allowances only affects PS workers and Eilis isn't a PS worker. Property tax, on the other hand, would affect Eilis because she's a property owner.

[DCon]

I assume this was in today's/this week's SBP

Let’s briefly examine the four stages of national bankruptcy.

The first phase is rapid: highly leveraged banks go bust alarmingly quickly. This leads to massive state intervention to prevent a bank run, political upheaval and inklings of just how deep the mess might become.

The second stage is a period of unusual calm. The remedial action taken by the State calms things down, banks don’t collapse, there is no run on the banks and the economy settles in to the grinding reality that falling incomes and too much debt don’t mix.

During this period, vested interests, powerful “insiders” in society, move to protect themselves. Supposedly binding agreements are signed. Likewise, the banks do deals with debtors in the hope that they can postpone the day of reckoning.

The second stage leads relentlessly to the third stage, also slow, where gradually the “outsiders” — people with too much debt, traditionally working in the private sector or with small businesses — go bankrupt slowly. In the UK these people have been called the “squeezed middle”. Here they should be called the “squeezed outsiders”, caught in a vicious embrace of falling incomes, rising taxes and negative equity.

In any estate in the suburbs there can be two families which on the surface look identical — same houses, same cars with 2005 registrations, whose children go to the same school — but once the hall door closes a very different reality faces each family.

The “insiders” rest easier, not without worries but without valium. If they are “outsiders” the parents are likely to be awake in the dark. Ultimately, for the outsiders, the more taxes rise, the less they can spend and the more the economy stalls.

The incomes and wealth of “squeezed outsiders” are now being looted to keep the “insiders” — who may live across the road — from paying their share.

Insiders are those with a stake in society, access to state power and the ability to protect themselves, as a sub-group, from the recession.

In our third phase of national bankruptcy we are seeing a struggle between the unprotected “outsiders” and the protected “insiders” for the last slice of the national pie. This is playing out on the streets of our suburbs.

The evidence of the squeezed outsiders is everywhere. We have seen a 200,000 fall in the number of people with private health insurance. Similarly, the number of people able to afford private pension provisions has collapsed.

Ultimately, when the squeezed outsiders have nothing left to give, we will reach the fourth phase, when those “insiders”, who used the period of calm to protect themselves, realise that they can’t escape.

They realise that their lifestyle will also be hammered and this is when, politically, it all kicks off, and the consensus fractures.

http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2012/1...tle-of-suburbs

[DCon]

Definitely worth buying the Sindo for this

john burns ‏@JohnBurnsST

Eoghan Harris writes about dog poop, An Tost Fada, and Vincent Browne's unseemly hectoring of Patricia Callan the other night on his show

[Baron von Biffo]

Definitely worth buying the Sindo for this

john burns ‏@JohnBurnsST

Eoghan Harris writes about dog poop

Spot the superfluous word.

[DCon]

Mammy has a book?

john burns ‏@JohnBurnsST

Meanwhile Sindo buries the exclusive extract from Mary O'Rourke's book on p8 of its Living section. Why? There's absolutely nothing in it

[PaddyJoe]

JB:

Sindo splash: Indebted FAI can't afford to sack Trap. They would need 2m euro, and don't have it. And yep that's the News section, not Sport

Sindo off lead: House prices steady after five years falling. They got daft.ie to analyse the property price register.

Sindo page 3 lead has Pat Kenny and Gay Byrne "breaking their silence" (ha! ha!) on Melanie Verwoerd's book

Pat Kenny says he's deeply saddened that Verwoerd decided to reveal details about Gerry Ryan's private life, including his finances

Pat Kenny also says it's "nonsense" to suggest he and Gerry Ryan weren't best mates. "He often sought me out after his show to have lunch"

Twink says she believes Gerry Ryan would be "disgusted" by Melanie's book, she's heartbroken for him and "mortified" for Morah and the kids

Sindo page 3: Gayle Killilea, their former journo, wants Nama to investigate leaking of her husband's financial records

Sindo p7: @orla_barry, the only journalist to ask Jimmy Savile about child abuse allegations, can't believe more people didn't too

Eoghan Harris writes about dog poop, An Tost Fada, and Vincent Browne's unseemly hectoring of Patricia Callan the other night on his show

Meanwhile Sindo buries the exclusive extract from Mary O'Rourke's book on p8 of its Living section. Why? There's absolutely nothing in it

Given how @LibertiesPress Melanie book has been, ahem, "showcased" by Sindo, I hope they eventually get to make some money on it

Sunday Bizz Post splash: 500m High Court battle over Revenue bid to raised tax assessments against 400 people

Bizz Post have a better off lead: the savings being made from the Croke Park deal are being inflated by the which the govt calculates them

Also on Bizz Post page 1: RTE is to change the rules on giving equal coverage to Yes and No in the children's referendum

Yet another anti-Poolbeg incinerator story on p6 of Bizz Post. Hardly a week has gone by since 2010 without one..

Sunday Times: Atticus reports on copyright infringement by @broadsheet.ie on @gerardcunningham, and why @Paul_Tweed is a media favourite

Sunday Times news: Ireland is in the grip of a climate cycle that could produce eight more years of wet summers, according to climatologist.

Sunday Times news: the behind-the-scenes rows between the Department of Justice and Susan McKay of women's council revealed. Ahem, by me!

Sunday Times news: @colincoyle reveals that a Swedish sportswear company has objected to Paul Galvin's attempts to trademark “Galvinise”

Sunday Times news: @colincoyle reveals Bill Cullen paid Ulster Bank E1.5m, and offered another 1.5m from sale of land, to stave off receiver

Top British military officers caught on film boasting how they break rules to lobby for multi-million pound defence deals.

[DCon]

Any reason to believe retired civil servants/politicians in Ireland don't do this?

Retired military officers have been secretly filmed claiming they can influence arms deals, according to The Sunday Times.

The paper claims the results of a three month investigation have revealed several former military generals are available for hire as lobbyists, despite official rules banning the practice.

http://news.sky.com/story/997377/ex-...-investigation

[Baron von Biffo]

Any reason to believe retired civil servants/politicians in Ireland don't do this?

http://news.sky.com/story/997377/ex-...-investigation

We should certainly jump to that conclusion and anything else/worse that takes our fancy as well.

[C. Flower]

Interesting story in the Sunday Times about how IBRC wrote off €64m for a company associated with Denis O'Brien

....

[PaddyJoe]

....

One for the newsie tomorrow

[Dr. FIVE]

Sindo pulling their 'analysis' off irisheconomy.ie four days later http://www.irisheconomy.ie/index.php...ersus-reality/