Frank finally got a pay increase after the company ran out of excuses for not giving one. They had used the Argentinean collapse, Russian debt crisis, September 11th, Enron, Worldcom and the spectacular bursting of the dot com bubble as a reason for not paying their staff the market rates already. All these events coincidently happened towards the end of the year when salary increases were being decided.
But this particular year the world was quiet. While the mandarins in New York were scrambling around for excuses to cut costs, they were hampered by the CEO telling all who would listen that times had never been better and that the company was awash with cash. Unfortunately for the mandarins, the CEO’s complex bonus arrangement was dependent on a high share price. He pulled $100m the previous year but the board had rather cruelly decided that most of it would be in share options. These were only going to be worth anything if the share price went up and the best way to achieve this was to report massive and entirely fictitious profits. They crept up each quarter so that by year end the company was report ably making more money than the GDP of Belgium. It didn’t con the markets of course who saw right through the numbers game the CEO was playing but it made it harder for the company to pretend to its own staff that times were tough.
Not that this was beyond the hypocrisy of head office who started spinning a yarn about how building costs for the new corporate centre in Dublin were way beyond budget and how this would have an impact on local pay rises. This was ironic considering the company normally said that global results were what mattered. Frank hadn’t been around for long but he was quickly learning not to believe a word the company told him.
He used the extra money in his monthly pay to move out of the student flat in Ranelagh he’d been sharing with three mates from college and found a new place along the river. The housing boom was just kicking off and tax breaks encouraged builders to erect glass cages along the quay in the part of town that people had only ventured to before to buy drugs or to negotiate the re-purchase of their car radio. Frank sub-let the spare room to a young Spanish girl who was part of the initial wave of immigration into Ireland’s fledging economy and she fed him paella while he fed her increasingly lustful stares.
From his living room he watched the new corporate headquarters taking shape across the river, like a glass and steel monument to the new Ireland. He wondered where his desk would be and if it would be river facing. That way he could watch Monica as she wandered around their apartment even when he was at work.
Given his proximity to the new building, Eimear had asked him to represent the team on an early inspection and to report back. It was an afternoon off work, so he jumped at the chance and he joined four others in the first trip across the river and into the heart of the International Financial Services Centre. They were met at the half finished reception area by a girl who introduced herself as an ergonomic engineer, which to Frank sounded like an Engineering job for people who didn’t like Engineering. She showed them round a prototype of what the internal space would eventually look like. To Frank and the others it looked space age, compared to the 1960’s slum that they were currently crammed into. Desks that curved around your body, soft lighting and flat computer screens. Best of all, it had air-conditioning, a concept that was just arriving in Ireland along with hot stone massages and foccacia bread.
Frank reported back enthusiastically and the other staff members hung on his every word as though he was a Columbus who had witnessed the new world. When the move finally happened, he was the unofficial leader, showing people how the chilled water dispenser in the kitchen worked and where the best place was to sit if you wanted to see the skimpedly dressed girls from cash processing descend the stairs.
When they had all moved in, the big boss came over from New York to inspect the newest addition to his empire. He did a tour of each floor like some General inspecting soldiers at the front. Then he called all the staff into the atrium and gave what he thought was a motivating speech. He talked about how Dublin had 50% turnover the previous year and how he was determined to stem this. He said loyalty was the most important thing in business and that together we could make the company great. Frank sniggered and Eimear had to nudge him. She knew the guy from New York was talking bullshit, that he would happily sack them all tomorrow if the need arose. But she also knew that this was a game and you had to nod your head and play along. Pretty soon he’d be in First Class on his way back to New York and they could get back to normal.
The following Monday, everyone turned up at work to find that their new flat screens had disappeared to be replaced by old fashioned deep backed monitors. Suddenly the ergonomically designed desks weren’t so comfortable as the curvature brought your body within 10 centimetres’ of the computer screen. The systems manager was embarrassed. He’d spent all weekend unplugging the new screens and replacing them with these technological dinosaurs. The boss had sent an email from the Delta business lounge in Dublin airport. His traders in New York didn’t have flat screens, so he was damned if a bunch of Micks in the back office of back offices would have them. He wouldn’t listen to arguments that the screens were on a three year lease and it would cost more money to send them back than would be saved by replacing them. Money wasn’t the point; it was all about letting off-shore centres know where they stood in the greater lexicon of the corporate world.
Two weeks later another email arrived. The big boss had left to take up a position with the company’s biggest competitor. Frank read the news on his new but second hand monstrosity of a monitor. He looked up the dictionary and saw that loyalty was “faithful adherence to a leader.” It didn’t say anything about the leader’s loyalty to his staff. It was a lesson that would stay with Frank for as long as the clapped out monitors.
Monday, 27 October 2008
Tuesday, 21 October 2008
The Cure at Troy
Brian taught English at Xavier College for nearly forty years. He retired three years ago but kept in touch with his old buddies through a friendly little group that meets every Friday morning. They have a cup of coffee in Brunetti’s in Carlton and talk about the good old days when boys could be smacked if they couldn’t name the twelve apostles or recite the life history of Ignatius Loyola. Once the coffee and the nostalgia are out of the way, Brian and his fellow retirees head down to East Melbourne for their weekly meeting with John the security guard.
John didn’t go to a posh school like Xavier College. He’s a bit vague on schooling to be honest. His years in the Army beat out any memories of childhood, happy or otherwise and his lived in face and bulbous fists suggests that his education didn’t come from musty old priests and men in tweed jackets. He shuffled from foot to foot as if ready to start a race and stared with weary resignation as Brian and his friends unpacked their placards and assembled a small table on the footpath before him.
Brian has been coming here every Friday morning for the past two years but has never spoken to John. They dance around each other but are destined never to embrace.
The retirees like to be set up by 8am when the first appointments are held in the East Melbourne Day procedure centre. Brian likes to think that they hold a dignified protest and they make a point of not speaking to or physically impeding the frightened and lonely women who are there to avail of the centre’s pregnancy termination services. John is there just in case their dignity deserts them.
I passed at 8am on my way to work and as anyone who knows me will testify, my brain is not exactly in gear at that ungodly hour. I saw a group of old men engaged in a silent protest outside a medical centre and assumed that Australia had followed Ireland’s example and removed free healthcare for pensioners. Or perhaps they were complaining about the delay in receiving a hip replacement. It was only when I got closer that I saw that their protest was more sinister and realised that being undignified can come in other ways than through the spoken word. Brian held a poster that showed a picture of a before and after termination. Subtlety obviously wasn’t the corner stone of their campaign.
I stopped and asked if they were Catholic. “We’re not a Catholic organisation” Brian said. “But most of us are Catholics.” He picked up on my accent and asked if I was also a member of the one true faith.
I said only part of me was these days, but it was my conscience and it told me that these guys should be ashamed of themselves. Brian didn’t even flinch. Countering that argument was taught in Pro-Life class 101. “There is no shame in helping those who can’t help themselves”.
“What would Jesus do?” I said. “What did he do when he found Mary Magdalene being stoned? She had been engaged in the sort of sexual immoralities that you guys get excited about. Did he knock up a couple of posters of her before and after she’d been stoned? Did he tell her about the various departments of hell to which she was condemned? No, he didn’t. He put his arm round her and told her that he loved her. But what did he do when he found the money lenders in the temple? He smashed up their tables and threw them out. Because Jesus realised that Greed is man’s worse sin. So you know what you and your pensioner mates should be doing Brian? You should be outside the Banks down in the CBD protesting about their immorality and leave these poor girls to their own conscience.”
I heard a chuckle from behind and saw that John was taking great merriment from my comments. “These guys act all holier than thou. But there’s an old fellow sleeps in that alleyway every night and none of them would even bring him a cup of tea. They don’t care about real people, only ones who haven’t been born yet.”
Brian ignored him as he had clearly done every Friday for the past two years. I was a reluctant but potential recruit however. “Do you know The Cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney?” he asked.
John didn’t go to a posh school like Xavier College. He’s a bit vague on schooling to be honest. His years in the Army beat out any memories of childhood, happy or otherwise and his lived in face and bulbous fists suggests that his education didn’t come from musty old priests and men in tweed jackets. He shuffled from foot to foot as if ready to start a race and stared with weary resignation as Brian and his friends unpacked their placards and assembled a small table on the footpath before him.
Brian has been coming here every Friday morning for the past two years but has never spoken to John. They dance around each other but are destined never to embrace.
The retirees like to be set up by 8am when the first appointments are held in the East Melbourne Day procedure centre. Brian likes to think that they hold a dignified protest and they make a point of not speaking to or physically impeding the frightened and lonely women who are there to avail of the centre’s pregnancy termination services. John is there just in case their dignity deserts them.
I passed at 8am on my way to work and as anyone who knows me will testify, my brain is not exactly in gear at that ungodly hour. I saw a group of old men engaged in a silent protest outside a medical centre and assumed that Australia had followed Ireland’s example and removed free healthcare for pensioners. Or perhaps they were complaining about the delay in receiving a hip replacement. It was only when I got closer that I saw that their protest was more sinister and realised that being undignified can come in other ways than through the spoken word. Brian held a poster that showed a picture of a before and after termination. Subtlety obviously wasn’t the corner stone of their campaign.
I stopped and asked if they were Catholic. “We’re not a Catholic organisation” Brian said. “But most of us are Catholics.” He picked up on my accent and asked if I was also a member of the one true faith.
I said only part of me was these days, but it was my conscience and it told me that these guys should be ashamed of themselves. Brian didn’t even flinch. Countering that argument was taught in Pro-Life class 101. “There is no shame in helping those who can’t help themselves”.
“What would Jesus do?” I said. “What did he do when he found Mary Magdalene being stoned? She had been engaged in the sort of sexual immoralities that you guys get excited about. Did he knock up a couple of posters of her before and after she’d been stoned? Did he tell her about the various departments of hell to which she was condemned? No, he didn’t. He put his arm round her and told her that he loved her. But what did he do when he found the money lenders in the temple? He smashed up their tables and threw them out. Because Jesus realised that Greed is man’s worse sin. So you know what you and your pensioner mates should be doing Brian? You should be outside the Banks down in the CBD protesting about their immorality and leave these poor girls to their own conscience.”
I heard a chuckle from behind and saw that John was taking great merriment from my comments. “These guys act all holier than thou. But there’s an old fellow sleeps in that alleyway every night and none of them would even bring him a cup of tea. They don’t care about real people, only ones who haven’t been born yet.”
Brian ignored him as he had clearly done every Friday for the past two years. I was a reluctant but potential recruit however. “Do you know The Cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney?” he asked.
And a god speaks from the sky
That means someone is hearing
That means someone is hearing
the outcry and the birth-cry
of new life at its term.
“You’re not trying to convince me with poetry” I asked. “Sure even the devil can quote scripture for his purpose.” Brian smiled. His eyes lit up when I mentioned the devil, as though we were back in his territory. “I taught Heaney for the last twenty years in Xavier. Don’t you think those words are pertinent.”
“I prefer the start of that poem” I said. “Human Beings suffer, they torture one another, they get hurt and get hard… and hope and history rhyme”. Isn’t there lots of pain and suffering in the world that you could devote your energies towards? Why not protest about the real live babies being bombed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq? Or the malnourished children being brought up in poverty in some of Melbourne’s suburbs?”
“These guys haven’t got long left” John said. “They have to ration out their protest. Give it a couple of years and they’ll all be dead and then they can ask God personally if they were right to make my Friday mornings miserable these pass two years.”
Thirty minutes later I was sitting at my money lenders desk in the temple of Capitalism. Doom and gloom filled our computer screens and it seemed as though the second coming was at hand. Jesus, in the form of the global credit crisis was about to smash our tables and chuck our immoral asses into the street.
“You’re not trying to convince me with poetry” I asked. “Sure even the devil can quote scripture for his purpose.” Brian smiled. His eyes lit up when I mentioned the devil, as though we were back in his territory. “I taught Heaney for the last twenty years in Xavier. Don’t you think those words are pertinent.”
“I prefer the start of that poem” I said. “Human Beings suffer, they torture one another, they get hurt and get hard… and hope and history rhyme”. Isn’t there lots of pain and suffering in the world that you could devote your energies towards? Why not protest about the real live babies being bombed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq? Or the malnourished children being brought up in poverty in some of Melbourne’s suburbs?”
“These guys haven’t got long left” John said. “They have to ration out their protest. Give it a couple of years and they’ll all be dead and then they can ask God personally if they were right to make my Friday mornings miserable these pass two years.”
Thirty minutes later I was sitting at my money lenders desk in the temple of Capitalism. Doom and gloom filled our computer screens and it seemed as though the second coming was at hand. Jesus, in the form of the global credit crisis was about to smash our tables and chuck our immoral asses into the street.
Tuesday, 14 October 2008
The Road Home
I was going to write about the global financial crisis this week, but then I realised that I’m an accountant who has worked in the Financial Services industry for twenty years and I haven’t got a bloody clue what’s going on, so how I am expected to explain it to others. Anyway, I don’t know about you but I’m getting a bit bored with the whole thing. When you wake up to the news of another disastrous day on Wall Street for the umpteenth morning in a row, it kind of loses its dramatic impact. Cancer is a disaster, getting a letter from your first girlfriend saying her mother won’t let her see you anymore because of her upcoming exams is a disaster, Man United winning the treble in 1999 was a disaster. But rich people’s investments being worth less than they were yesterday, well that’s not even unfortunate.
Despite my profession, I’ve always had a carefree relationship with money. The truth is, I’ve never had it for long enough to develop an attachment. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate the finer things in life that only money can buy, I’ve just always felt that I should own money and not the other way round. When asked why I stuck with a highly stressful job, I used to say that I had an expensive burger and chip habit to support. And this wasn’t too far from the truth. I ate my way through the Celtic Tiger, fur and all. As a result I stacked on about 15 kilos during my years in Dublin, as my body became a symbol for the bloated excess of modern Ireland. Unlike the Irish economy mine wasn’t looking like it would implode any time soon, so I’ve taken things into my own hands.
I’ve started walking home a couple of times a week, which is helping with the weight loss but also gives me a chance to throw the old Ipod on shuffle and to enjoy the spring evenings through the riverbanks and parks of this beautiful city. I start in Collins St in the central business district or CBD as it’s known. All Australian cities have to have a CBD, even if they have little or no business to transact. It’s downhill from there to the Yarra River which meanders like a brown snake towards the salt water of Port Phillip Bay. Tonight the rowers are out in force, pumping their narrow boats through the still waters in a blur of rippling muscles. I head over the bridge and onto St. Kilda road with its tree lined thoroughfare leading south towards the shore and my house. From here its about 10km home, but I’m emboldened by the memory of being 8 years old when the De La Salle brothers used to make us do 10 mile sponsored walks to raise money for the brothers alcohol and pornography fund. So if I could do that as an 8 year old in the sort of hob nailed boots that my mother used to make me wear, then this little jaunt should be no trouble at all. Of course, as an 8 year old, I wasn’t carrying a wallet, blackberry, mobile phone, Ipod and 15 kilos of excess weight.
The Arts centre comes up on my right with its sophisticated advertisements for upcoming ballets and symphonies. Sydney may have the Opera House, but Melbourne has the culture. When they built the centre, they must have stepped back and thought that it looked like a 1970s communist party headquarters because only that could explain the obvious afterthought that they stuck on top. I think they were going for an Eiffel Tower look, but they’ve ended up with something that I could only describe as a mobile phone mast, if that didn’t do a disservice to the architectural splendour of phone masts.
Down the road I come to the domain and the sweeping parklands that blanket the southern part of town. Directly ahead is the striking war memorial that stands sentry over the City and the rattle of trams passing domain interchange on their way to exotic locations like Toorak and Kooyong. The traffic gets quieter as the road widens and trees become bushier and more frequent and suddenly I can hear the music coming through my headphones. Every now and again the shuffle will throw up a classic from my innocent youth that I haven’t listened to in years and I find myself singing along to Cat Stephens or Gordon Lightfoot. Luckily all the other walkers are wired into their own personal entertainment and are oblivious to my tuneless warbling.
The impressive grounds of Wesley College come up on the left and I think of all my old friends in Wesley Hall in Dublin. I’m sure they will be glad to hear that the Methodists in Melbourne are keeping up the traditions of their Irish cousins. They also charge extortionist fees to educate the sons of the wealthy and privileged and to maintain the social order.
I turn right and head down towards Albert Park. Meatloaf has just started singing to me about how two out of three ain’t bad. My singing amuses a homeless person sitting outside a shelter and momentary embarrassment leads to a shared chuckle. I skirt the lake with its serious runners in lycra and wrap around shades and head for the open fields of the park. Chinese immigrants in counterfeit Arsenal football tops are playing 5 a side with jumpers for goal posts and large ladies in baggy tracksuits are being put through their paces by a sadist with a whistle. In between there are groups of twos and threes engaged in that great and pointless pastime of kicking an Aussie Rules football to each other.
The sight of all that physical exercise makes me tired but I know I’m nearly home. I brave it through Fitzroy St with its tempting take away smells and turn on to the esplanade above St Kilda beach. The sun is melting across the bay in reds and oranges and this spurs me on for the last kilometre. I make it home and head into I Carusi for a celebration Quattro Formaggi pizza. “You’re quiet tonight”, I said. She shrugged and said “global financial crisis, nobody wants to eat out until things settle down”. There’s no escaping it I guess but if you want a temporary respite then put your Ipod on and head out for a walk.
Despite my profession, I’ve always had a carefree relationship with money. The truth is, I’ve never had it for long enough to develop an attachment. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate the finer things in life that only money can buy, I’ve just always felt that I should own money and not the other way round. When asked why I stuck with a highly stressful job, I used to say that I had an expensive burger and chip habit to support. And this wasn’t too far from the truth. I ate my way through the Celtic Tiger, fur and all. As a result I stacked on about 15 kilos during my years in Dublin, as my body became a symbol for the bloated excess of modern Ireland. Unlike the Irish economy mine wasn’t looking like it would implode any time soon, so I’ve taken things into my own hands.
I’ve started walking home a couple of times a week, which is helping with the weight loss but also gives me a chance to throw the old Ipod on shuffle and to enjoy the spring evenings through the riverbanks and parks of this beautiful city. I start in Collins St in the central business district or CBD as it’s known. All Australian cities have to have a CBD, even if they have little or no business to transact. It’s downhill from there to the Yarra River which meanders like a brown snake towards the salt water of Port Phillip Bay. Tonight the rowers are out in force, pumping their narrow boats through the still waters in a blur of rippling muscles. I head over the bridge and onto St. Kilda road with its tree lined thoroughfare leading south towards the shore and my house. From here its about 10km home, but I’m emboldened by the memory of being 8 years old when the De La Salle brothers used to make us do 10 mile sponsored walks to raise money for the brothers alcohol and pornography fund. So if I could do that as an 8 year old in the sort of hob nailed boots that my mother used to make me wear, then this little jaunt should be no trouble at all. Of course, as an 8 year old, I wasn’t carrying a wallet, blackberry, mobile phone, Ipod and 15 kilos of excess weight.
The Arts centre comes up on my right with its sophisticated advertisements for upcoming ballets and symphonies. Sydney may have the Opera House, but Melbourne has the culture. When they built the centre, they must have stepped back and thought that it looked like a 1970s communist party headquarters because only that could explain the obvious afterthought that they stuck on top. I think they were going for an Eiffel Tower look, but they’ve ended up with something that I could only describe as a mobile phone mast, if that didn’t do a disservice to the architectural splendour of phone masts.
Down the road I come to the domain and the sweeping parklands that blanket the southern part of town. Directly ahead is the striking war memorial that stands sentry over the City and the rattle of trams passing domain interchange on their way to exotic locations like Toorak and Kooyong. The traffic gets quieter as the road widens and trees become bushier and more frequent and suddenly I can hear the music coming through my headphones. Every now and again the shuffle will throw up a classic from my innocent youth that I haven’t listened to in years and I find myself singing along to Cat Stephens or Gordon Lightfoot. Luckily all the other walkers are wired into their own personal entertainment and are oblivious to my tuneless warbling.
The impressive grounds of Wesley College come up on the left and I think of all my old friends in Wesley Hall in Dublin. I’m sure they will be glad to hear that the Methodists in Melbourne are keeping up the traditions of their Irish cousins. They also charge extortionist fees to educate the sons of the wealthy and privileged and to maintain the social order.
I turn right and head down towards Albert Park. Meatloaf has just started singing to me about how two out of three ain’t bad. My singing amuses a homeless person sitting outside a shelter and momentary embarrassment leads to a shared chuckle. I skirt the lake with its serious runners in lycra and wrap around shades and head for the open fields of the park. Chinese immigrants in counterfeit Arsenal football tops are playing 5 a side with jumpers for goal posts and large ladies in baggy tracksuits are being put through their paces by a sadist with a whistle. In between there are groups of twos and threes engaged in that great and pointless pastime of kicking an Aussie Rules football to each other.
The sight of all that physical exercise makes me tired but I know I’m nearly home. I brave it through Fitzroy St with its tempting take away smells and turn on to the esplanade above St Kilda beach. The sun is melting across the bay in reds and oranges and this spurs me on for the last kilometre. I make it home and head into I Carusi for a celebration Quattro Formaggi pizza. “You’re quiet tonight”, I said. She shrugged and said “global financial crisis, nobody wants to eat out until things settle down”. There’s no escaping it I guess but if you want a temporary respite then put your Ipod on and head out for a walk.
Tuesday, 7 October 2008
International Banking - My part in it's downfall
The Irish Banks went on strike for three months in 1976 and to be honest I’m not sure anybody noticed. In those days most people were paid in cash and if you were unlucky enough to get a cheque, there were plenty of pubs that would cash it for you and they would then use it to pay their suppliers in an unofficial system of credit. Most people were spared the luxury of savings and so didn’t have to worry about it being locked up in some untouchable vault. What little they had was kept in the post office or the credit union and that’s where you got a car loan or the money to go on holiday. Banks were simply magnificent Georgian buildings in the town square that changed your punts into sterling when you were visiting your sister in Birmingham each summer.
People owned their own house (and usually only one in the days before Irish people owned as many houses as John McCain) or lived in one kindly provided by the local council, so Mortgages were as rare as hen’s teeth. Pensions were paid by your employer or the State and were based on your final salary and not the whims of the stock market.
In short, people had little or no interaction with banks, apart from an obsession with getting their children a job in one. If banks had gone bust then, it would scarcely have bothered the masses as much as the risk of their local pub closing. These days of course it is different. Banks all over the world are tottering on the precipice with only the weak and unsteady hand of government holding them back. And everybody is affected by this whether they like it or not.
In the past thirty years, Governments have abdicated responsibility for running the economy to the International private banking system. On your first day at work HR will give you a form requesting lots of personal (and mainly intrusive but irrelevant) information. This will include your bank account number, so that they may efficiently transfer your hard earned cash into the clutches of a private company. You can try and argue that you want no hand or part in this capitalist conspiracy, but you won’t get very far and you certainly won’t get paid.
Once your money is in the bank, you’re on the slippery slope towards debt and destitution. They will drip feed it back to you in weekly withdrawals from the hole in the wall outside or make you queue for half an hour to get it from a surly clerk who will make you feel guilty for withdrawing your own cash. Over time the bank will encourage you to get a credit card and maybe a loan or two (particularly if they trapped you at a drink fuelled student promotion) and maybe tease you with some tax avoiding off-shore savings account.
Encouraging salaries to be paid directly into banks was the first example of outsourcing society’s needs to these private and profit making institutions. But much worse was to follow and for that we have to look to that arch enemy of Society, Margaret Thatcher. She engineered a seismic cultural change in Britain that most people understood as uncomfortable but went along with anyway. In Ireland, we swallowed our normal anti-English sentiment and embraced Thatcherism with enthusiasm. I was always a rebel against this orthodoxy I should say and I proved this when I refused to pay my poll tax while living in England in the late 1980’s. At the time, I lived across Dulwich Park from Thatcher and she never called in to say hello or to bring round a cake when the three of us Irish lads moved in next to her. We were in the flat one night when Thatcher popped up on the news. Emperor Hirohito had just died and the Iron Lady was making a pompous speech about how she would be shunning the funeral on account of the Japanese making the English build a railway in Burma during world war two when that was clearly a job for Irish navvies. My flatmate Jella chuckled and said “that’s OK; the bitch can pass on her condolences in person when she meets him in hell”. Oh how we laughed.
So you can tell that I don’t have a soft spot for her. But my feelings are complicated by the fact that I have become fat and comfortable from her decisions. I got a job in Financial Services in the UK at precisely the time that Thatcher was de-regulating that industry and handing over the keys to the nation’s housing stock and the administration of ordinary people’s pensions. In a few short years, council housing estates were sold off to banks who then mortgaged them back to the people who had lived in them for generations. Your pension was no longer a guaranteed reward after a life of hard work, but something you had to pay for yourself. It would then go into the coffers of a large financial institution to be gambled on stock markets and in complex financial instruments which were beyond the intellect of even those who administered them.
So unlike 1976, if banks fail now, they will bring your salary, your savings, your house and your pension down with them. We have sold our economic soul to these bastions of profit and risk and if they crash it would be as fundamental as the loss of water, electricity or breathable air. So while it is morally repugnant to have tax payers bail out these bastards, the alternative is such an appalling vista that it can scarcely be contemplated. Our governments took Thatcher’s lead and mortgaged our souls to the banks. The really scary thing is that they also sold water, electricity and the maintenance of clean air to private companies. They are also greedy and speculative and will eventually fail for the same reason the banks have failed. Guess who will have to bail them out?
People owned their own house (and usually only one in the days before Irish people owned as many houses as John McCain) or lived in one kindly provided by the local council, so Mortgages were as rare as hen’s teeth. Pensions were paid by your employer or the State and were based on your final salary and not the whims of the stock market.
In short, people had little or no interaction with banks, apart from an obsession with getting their children a job in one. If banks had gone bust then, it would scarcely have bothered the masses as much as the risk of their local pub closing. These days of course it is different. Banks all over the world are tottering on the precipice with only the weak and unsteady hand of government holding them back. And everybody is affected by this whether they like it or not.
In the past thirty years, Governments have abdicated responsibility for running the economy to the International private banking system. On your first day at work HR will give you a form requesting lots of personal (and mainly intrusive but irrelevant) information. This will include your bank account number, so that they may efficiently transfer your hard earned cash into the clutches of a private company. You can try and argue that you want no hand or part in this capitalist conspiracy, but you won’t get very far and you certainly won’t get paid.
Once your money is in the bank, you’re on the slippery slope towards debt and destitution. They will drip feed it back to you in weekly withdrawals from the hole in the wall outside or make you queue for half an hour to get it from a surly clerk who will make you feel guilty for withdrawing your own cash. Over time the bank will encourage you to get a credit card and maybe a loan or two (particularly if they trapped you at a drink fuelled student promotion) and maybe tease you with some tax avoiding off-shore savings account.
Encouraging salaries to be paid directly into banks was the first example of outsourcing society’s needs to these private and profit making institutions. But much worse was to follow and for that we have to look to that arch enemy of Society, Margaret Thatcher. She engineered a seismic cultural change in Britain that most people understood as uncomfortable but went along with anyway. In Ireland, we swallowed our normal anti-English sentiment and embraced Thatcherism with enthusiasm. I was always a rebel against this orthodoxy I should say and I proved this when I refused to pay my poll tax while living in England in the late 1980’s. At the time, I lived across Dulwich Park from Thatcher and she never called in to say hello or to bring round a cake when the three of us Irish lads moved in next to her. We were in the flat one night when Thatcher popped up on the news. Emperor Hirohito had just died and the Iron Lady was making a pompous speech about how she would be shunning the funeral on account of the Japanese making the English build a railway in Burma during world war two when that was clearly a job for Irish navvies. My flatmate Jella chuckled and said “that’s OK; the bitch can pass on her condolences in person when she meets him in hell”. Oh how we laughed.
So you can tell that I don’t have a soft spot for her. But my feelings are complicated by the fact that I have become fat and comfortable from her decisions. I got a job in Financial Services in the UK at precisely the time that Thatcher was de-regulating that industry and handing over the keys to the nation’s housing stock and the administration of ordinary people’s pensions. In a few short years, council housing estates were sold off to banks who then mortgaged them back to the people who had lived in them for generations. Your pension was no longer a guaranteed reward after a life of hard work, but something you had to pay for yourself. It would then go into the coffers of a large financial institution to be gambled on stock markets and in complex financial instruments which were beyond the intellect of even those who administered them.
So unlike 1976, if banks fail now, they will bring your salary, your savings, your house and your pension down with them. We have sold our economic soul to these bastions of profit and risk and if they crash it would be as fundamental as the loss of water, electricity or breathable air. So while it is morally repugnant to have tax payers bail out these bastards, the alternative is such an appalling vista that it can scarcely be contemplated. Our governments took Thatcher’s lead and mortgaged our souls to the banks. The really scary thing is that they also sold water, electricity and the maintenance of clean air to private companies. They are also greedy and speculative and will eventually fail for the same reason the banks have failed. Guess who will have to bail them out?
Wednesday, 1 October 2008
Ah Sure that was a Grand Final
Memory is a funny thing. What we choose to remember probably says more about us than anything else. I’m useless with names for example which is unfortunate as I’m also useless at bluffing. So I’ve met people in the street that I’ve known for years and can’t for the life of me remember what they are called. But instead of coming up with a story about a bang on my head that has suddenly made me amnesic or how I’m really my twin brother and I believe the person in front of me is my sibling’s friend, I mumble a few words and stumble on.
For reasons I’ll come to, this week I tried to remember a school class from years ago. It was in 1980 I think and the school had reluctantly decided to teach us Civics. I say reluctantly because my school cared only for academic achievement and Civics wasn’t on the State exam system in those days. In hindsight it seems strange that a country so obsessed with its History and national pride should care so little about teaching its kids about modern Irish life. I guess like its people, it prefers to live in the past. In the 1980’s our past was a glamorous place of heroes and princes. Our present was a grey and rain-sodden tale of strikes and emigration boats.
I can remember everything about that first Civics class except the name of the teacher. Maybe I’m just fascinated about what she was talking about or maybe she was the first female I had a crush on. Only Freud will know. The subject that day was national cultural events. Like most teachers, instead of telling us things, she asked questions and tried to tease the answer out of us. This took hours and I often wondered why she didn’t just tell us the answers in the first place.
So for forty minutes we struggled to name Ireland’s annual cultural events. Christmas didn’t count apparently because it wasn’t uniquely Irish. After much huffing and puffing, Snotser McKeown mentioned St Patricks Day. It was the first thing Snotser had said all year, apart from asking for the loan of a tissue (a loan I might point out that nobody ever wanted to be repaid). Those of us in the smart row were upbraided by Snotser beating us to the teacher’s approval, so we argued fiercely that St Patrick’s Day wasn’t uniquely Irish either. Even in those days, it was clearly an event for yanks and other plastic paddies. But she wasn’t having any of it and wrote it on the board were it stood naked and alone for the rest of the class. As the bell was ringing for lunch, she lost her patience and screamed “what about the bloody All-Ireland Final”. We looked at each other with surprise and thought, “Isn’t that just a football match”?
I thought of that class this week because the AFL Grand Final was on in Melbourne and it made me compare it to Ireland’s premier sporting event. And I’m sad to say that in comparison to the Aussie Rule’s final, the All-Ireland final is just a football match. Over here, it’s a week long activity that starts with the semi-finals. That itself comes after two weeks of finals activity which works up the passion of supporters. On the Monday of Grand Final week you have the Brownlow medal ceremony, which is an opportunity for player’s wives and girlfriends to display cleavage and pearly white teeth while supporting a $3,000 dress with the aid of double-sided sticky tape. They also hand out a medal to the player voted best and fairest by the competition’s umpires. Which is a bit like asking the Police to name the country’s best burglar.
The rest of the week is dominated by a carnival at Federation Square, where you can test your marking skills by leaping onto the back of a mannequin dressed as a Collingwood player and propelling yourself towards a hanging ball. Most people just take the opportunity to kick the pretend Collingwood dummy, which is how it should be. All right thinking people hate Collingwood after all.
By Friday, excitement is building up in the City as the media goes into overdrive. The City itself hosts a parade on this day, featuring all the players from both finalists. This being Australia, they are transported along the parade route in the back of Utes. Special chairs are placed in the open back of each vehicle and the players sit in pairs and wave regally to the crowd, like some Indian Viceroy and his wife aboard a ceremonial elephant.
If you’re not part of the lucky 100,000 people to procure a ticket, then the Saturday of the match itself is traditionally spent at a barbeque. Thousands of these were held across Victoria last weekend as the first warm day of spring came to join the party. I ventured into the heart of the Eastern suburbs for mine, to a land of white picket fences, detached bungalows and mighty front and back gardens. This facilitates the barbeque itself but also the obligatory half time kick about. This is a blokes only affair and allows middle aged Australian men to relive some lost childhood. To my amazement, I found that I was able to skilfully kick their odd shaped football, although I think the 6 bottles of beer I’d consumed in the first half helped.
The game itself wasn’t a classic but at least the underdog (Hawthorne) won. Geelong have dominated footy for the last two years but on this occasion they froze like a rabbit in headlights.
On Monday morning, there were a lot of happy and hungover Hawthorne fans at work. And the rest of the staff were just happy that Melbourne finally had a winner in the game it invented after eight barren years. If cultural events are measured by the amount of interest that ordinary men, women and children display, then the Grand Final is up there with the best of them. I couldn’t find one person in Melbourne that had no interest in it. They don’t need Civics lessons here to tell them what to be proud of.
For reasons I’ll come to, this week I tried to remember a school class from years ago. It was in 1980 I think and the school had reluctantly decided to teach us Civics. I say reluctantly because my school cared only for academic achievement and Civics wasn’t on the State exam system in those days. In hindsight it seems strange that a country so obsessed with its History and national pride should care so little about teaching its kids about modern Irish life. I guess like its people, it prefers to live in the past. In the 1980’s our past was a glamorous place of heroes and princes. Our present was a grey and rain-sodden tale of strikes and emigration boats.
I can remember everything about that first Civics class except the name of the teacher. Maybe I’m just fascinated about what she was talking about or maybe she was the first female I had a crush on. Only Freud will know. The subject that day was national cultural events. Like most teachers, instead of telling us things, she asked questions and tried to tease the answer out of us. This took hours and I often wondered why she didn’t just tell us the answers in the first place.
So for forty minutes we struggled to name Ireland’s annual cultural events. Christmas didn’t count apparently because it wasn’t uniquely Irish. After much huffing and puffing, Snotser McKeown mentioned St Patricks Day. It was the first thing Snotser had said all year, apart from asking for the loan of a tissue (a loan I might point out that nobody ever wanted to be repaid). Those of us in the smart row were upbraided by Snotser beating us to the teacher’s approval, so we argued fiercely that St Patrick’s Day wasn’t uniquely Irish either. Even in those days, it was clearly an event for yanks and other plastic paddies. But she wasn’t having any of it and wrote it on the board were it stood naked and alone for the rest of the class. As the bell was ringing for lunch, she lost her patience and screamed “what about the bloody All-Ireland Final”. We looked at each other with surprise and thought, “Isn’t that just a football match”?
I thought of that class this week because the AFL Grand Final was on in Melbourne and it made me compare it to Ireland’s premier sporting event. And I’m sad to say that in comparison to the Aussie Rule’s final, the All-Ireland final is just a football match. Over here, it’s a week long activity that starts with the semi-finals. That itself comes after two weeks of finals activity which works up the passion of supporters. On the Monday of Grand Final week you have the Brownlow medal ceremony, which is an opportunity for player’s wives and girlfriends to display cleavage and pearly white teeth while supporting a $3,000 dress with the aid of double-sided sticky tape. They also hand out a medal to the player voted best and fairest by the competition’s umpires. Which is a bit like asking the Police to name the country’s best burglar.
The rest of the week is dominated by a carnival at Federation Square, where you can test your marking skills by leaping onto the back of a mannequin dressed as a Collingwood player and propelling yourself towards a hanging ball. Most people just take the opportunity to kick the pretend Collingwood dummy, which is how it should be. All right thinking people hate Collingwood after all.
By Friday, excitement is building up in the City as the media goes into overdrive. The City itself hosts a parade on this day, featuring all the players from both finalists. This being Australia, they are transported along the parade route in the back of Utes. Special chairs are placed in the open back of each vehicle and the players sit in pairs and wave regally to the crowd, like some Indian Viceroy and his wife aboard a ceremonial elephant.
If you’re not part of the lucky 100,000 people to procure a ticket, then the Saturday of the match itself is traditionally spent at a barbeque. Thousands of these were held across Victoria last weekend as the first warm day of spring came to join the party. I ventured into the heart of the Eastern suburbs for mine, to a land of white picket fences, detached bungalows and mighty front and back gardens. This facilitates the barbeque itself but also the obligatory half time kick about. This is a blokes only affair and allows middle aged Australian men to relive some lost childhood. To my amazement, I found that I was able to skilfully kick their odd shaped football, although I think the 6 bottles of beer I’d consumed in the first half helped.
The game itself wasn’t a classic but at least the underdog (Hawthorne) won. Geelong have dominated footy for the last two years but on this occasion they froze like a rabbit in headlights.
On Monday morning, there were a lot of happy and hungover Hawthorne fans at work. And the rest of the staff were just happy that Melbourne finally had a winner in the game it invented after eight barren years. If cultural events are measured by the amount of interest that ordinary men, women and children display, then the Grand Final is up there with the best of them. I couldn’t find one person in Melbourne that had no interest in it. They don’t need Civics lessons here to tell them what to be proud of.
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