THE EU
The European Union has poisoned the Celtic Tiger
April 7, 2009 by sjohnson
Filed under National News
FOR THE past twenty years, the Irish Republic has been regarded by many as the Golden Boy of the European Union.
They were the ultimate “good Europeans”, joining the Euro, converting road signs into kilometres, reducing taxes on profits extracted from its people by foreign multinationals and opening its borders to cheap imported labour.
Brussels beamed benignly on the “Celtic Tiger Economy”, lavishing huge handouts, financed by British and German taxpayers, on massive road and other public works projects - motorways joining nowhere to nowhere else but adorned with huge “built with EU Regional Aid Funds” signs, etc.
Immigrants flooded in, not just from Eastern Europe but from Nigeria, Somalia and other parts of the Third World,raising ethnic minorities from under 1% to over 12% of the population. Ireland was bearing the brunt of Europhile globalisation, with soaring drug abuse, rising divorce rates and an increase in crime.
Across once tranquil and lovely coastlines, the vulgar garishly painted holiday homes of Dublin property developers, financial speculators and derivatives traders sprouted like malignant mushrooms. An ancient rich culture and way of life was swamped by Hollywood Coca-colonisation, making Ireland just like everywhere else in the Americanised West, only wetter.
But now the Euro-binge is over and Ireland is waking up to the shattering hangover.
Unemployment has risen to over 12%, the highest for generations. Household debt has reached twice the country’s Gross National Product making it the highest in the developed world. The property sector, which at its peak accounted for 25% of the national economy as opposed to only 10% even in Britain, has collapsed. House prices have fallen by a third in a year.
Foreign multinationals induced to come with tax cuts are deserting like rats leaving a sinking ship. Computer giant Dell is shutting its Raheen laptop plant, near Limerick, because the Poles have made them a better offer. Ten thousand people have been thrown on the dole and the Irish national GDP shrunk by 4% in one hit. Waterford porcelain, which bought up the once proud Potteries name of Wedgwood, has gone bust itself and Poland is now recruiting plumbers and building workers from Ireland!
The country’s third largest bank, Anglo-Irish, which lent an amount equivalent to twice the Irish National debt, has been nationalised. In desperation to halt any further run on their banks the Irish Government unconditionally guaranteed all savers’ deposits in Irish banks. Despite the fact that meeting this guarantee would take two and a half times the total annual output of Ireland!
But it is Ireland’s membership of the Eurozone which is the worst thing about the disaster now hitting Ireland. Because being in the Eurozone means the Irish Government is powerless to do anything effective as the economy collapses around it.
So thoroughly globalised is the Irish economy that it is dependent on selling abroad four-fifths of what it produces. But the strong Euro is pricing those goods out of their markets.
The answer would be to devalue the currency as Britain has done, by a third against the Euro and the dollar in six months. But they can’t, because it’s not their currency and they have no control over it. Nor can the Irish Government, unlike ours, bring down interest rates. Or even print money.
Germany and France run the Eurozone for their own good, regardless of the pain they inflict on Ireland or any of the other lesser Eurozone members.
All the Irish Government can do is make matters worse by cutting public spending and wages and raising taxes, desperately trying to plug a €20 billion hole in the public purse.
Unemployment in estates around Dublin and other larger Irish towns is soaring past 70% and shops are being reduced to selling single cigarettes and teabags.
120,000 people marched through Dublin recently demanding action and the reversing of public sector wage cuts of 10%. But in Ireland, so far the only prominent European country without a significant genuinely nationalist party, there is no-one willing to take the action needed.
Ireland needs to get out of the Euro and out of the European Union. It needs to provide Irish jobs for Irish workers in an economy run by Irish people for Irish people.
But for the moment that can’t happen. It can only stand and watch the other collapsing economies like those of Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain and the Eastern European members, bring the Eurozone to its knees.
In the meantime, the agony of Ireland is a lesson in what befalls the victims of global free marketeering. If Britain can learn from it and help Ireland recover, then their suffering will not entirely have been in vain.
This article by Steve Johnson appears in the April issue of Freedom which will be on sale this weekend.
April 7, 2009 by sjohnson
Filed under National News
FOR THE past twenty years, the Irish Republic has been regarded by many as the Golden Boy of the European Union.
They were the ultimate “good Europeans”, joining the Euro, converting road signs into kilometres, reducing taxes on profits extracted from its people by foreign multinationals and opening its borders to cheap imported labour.
Brussels beamed benignly on the “Celtic Tiger Economy”, lavishing huge handouts, financed by British and German taxpayers, on massive road and other public works projects - motorways joining nowhere to nowhere else but adorned with huge “built with EU Regional Aid Funds” signs, etc.
Immigrants flooded in, not just from Eastern Europe but from Nigeria, Somalia and other parts of the Third World,raising ethnic minorities from under 1% to over 12% of the population. Ireland was bearing the brunt of Europhile globalisation, with soaring drug abuse, rising divorce rates and an increase in crime.
Across once tranquil and lovely coastlines, the vulgar garishly painted holiday homes of Dublin property developers, financial speculators and derivatives traders sprouted like malignant mushrooms. An ancient rich culture and way of life was swamped by Hollywood Coca-colonisation, making Ireland just like everywhere else in the Americanised West, only wetter.
But now the Euro-binge is over and Ireland is waking up to the shattering hangover.
Unemployment has risen to over 12%, the highest for generations. Household debt has reached twice the country’s Gross National Product making it the highest in the developed world. The property sector, which at its peak accounted for 25% of the national economy as opposed to only 10% even in Britain, has collapsed. House prices have fallen by a third in a year.
Foreign multinationals induced to come with tax cuts are deserting like rats leaving a sinking ship. Computer giant Dell is shutting its Raheen laptop plant, near Limerick, because the Poles have made them a better offer. Ten thousand people have been thrown on the dole and the Irish national GDP shrunk by 4% in one hit. Waterford porcelain, which bought up the once proud Potteries name of Wedgwood, has gone bust itself and Poland is now recruiting plumbers and building workers from Ireland!
The country’s third largest bank, Anglo-Irish, which lent an amount equivalent to twice the Irish National debt, has been nationalised. In desperation to halt any further run on their banks the Irish Government unconditionally guaranteed all savers’ deposits in Irish banks. Despite the fact that meeting this guarantee would take two and a half times the total annual output of Ireland!
But it is Ireland’s membership of the Eurozone which is the worst thing about the disaster now hitting Ireland. Because being in the Eurozone means the Irish Government is powerless to do anything effective as the economy collapses around it.
So thoroughly globalised is the Irish economy that it is dependent on selling abroad four-fifths of what it produces. But the strong Euro is pricing those goods out of their markets.
The answer would be to devalue the currency as Britain has done, by a third against the Euro and the dollar in six months. But they can’t, because it’s not their currency and they have no control over it. Nor can the Irish Government, unlike ours, bring down interest rates. Or even print money.
Germany and France run the Eurozone for their own good, regardless of the pain they inflict on Ireland or any of the other lesser Eurozone members.
All the Irish Government can do is make matters worse by cutting public spending and wages and raising taxes, desperately trying to plug a €20 billion hole in the public purse.
Unemployment in estates around Dublin and other larger Irish towns is soaring past 70% and shops are being reduced to selling single cigarettes and teabags.
120,000 people marched through Dublin recently demanding action and the reversing of public sector wage cuts of 10%. But in Ireland, so far the only prominent European country without a significant genuinely nationalist party, there is no-one willing to take the action needed.
Ireland needs to get out of the Euro and out of the European Union. It needs to provide Irish jobs for Irish workers in an economy run by Irish people for Irish people.
But for the moment that can’t happen. It can only stand and watch the other collapsing economies like those of Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain and the Eastern European members, bring the Eurozone to its knees.
In the meantime, the agony of Ireland is a lesson in what befalls the victims of global free marketeering. If Britain can learn from it and help Ireland recover, then their suffering will not entirely have been in vain.
This article by Steve Johnson appears in the April issue of Freedom which will be on sale this weekend.
posted by erc @ 10:24 pm
