We’re making some changes to our blog, and introducing different styles of posts here at Viewpoint. One of these, is the one I’m going to introduce to you right here, it’s called Fair Or Foul, and it goes like this.
I will post about some of the stories that have caught my attention, either the story, a statement from a company, or a quote from a person, or something similar, and I will rate them on the following scale.
FAIR – The story, quote or statement is fair or seems to be fair.
FOUL – The story, quote or statement is not fair, but it’s not a serious foul, there’s nothing egregious about it.
FOUL, Yellow Card – The story, quote or statement is not fair, and is serious enough to earn a Yellow Card warning for unfairness.
FOUL, Red Card – The story, quote or statement is so unfair, egregiously so, that it would warrant a ‘sending off’.
After each rating, I will explain what about the story, quote or statement has persuaded me to give them that rating.
So, having explained all that, let me give you a few examples so you get how the ‘game’ is played.
BBC News: Young people out of work for more than six months face losing access to jobseeker's allowance (JSA) if the Conservatives win the next election. Fair or Foul?
FOUL, Red Card.
No two ways about it, this is a red card offence. The Conservatives have been trying to force people to work for their dole money for years now, and every time they come out with this idea, it gets so much grief, and rightfully so, that they have to hide it away again until they can find another way to dress it up and try to make it look respectable.
There’s nothing respectable about underpaying for people doing work, especially "community projects", which is Tory code, for menial jobs that they wouldn’t be prepared to do themselves. Good leaders, lead by example, not by forcing people to work for their benefits, and effectively working to criminalise unemployment. This all stems from having the basic attitude of “those who can’t find work are basically workshy and don’t want to work”. That isn’t necessarily the case at all, but because of programmes like Benefits Street, where you encountered people who went around with the attitude of “Oh, the world owes me a living.”, you’ve ended up with the public having a very distorted view of what it means to be unemployed. And the Tories are trying to take advantage of that, to criminalise the unemployed. That will not win you votes, especially from those who ARE unemployed, or who have recently been unemployed, whether they have found a job, or gone the self employed route.
The Tories should just drop this whole idea of criminalising the unemployed, and instead try to find ways to enable easier startup of small businesses, and cut the massive amounts of red tape out of small business startup and self-employment. It will be more beneficial, than criminalising people because they haven’t got a job.
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Emma Watson: “It is time that we all see gender as a spectrum instead of two sets of opposing ideals. We should stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by who we are.” Fair or Foul?
FAIR
Emma Watson on Saturday launched a campaign called HeForShe at the United Nations in New York, which aims to promote gender equality to men, and change the perspective of feminism from being seen as one about hating men, to one about gender equality.
I can honestly say that I have always thought that feminism was about equality, not about man-hating, which is something completely different, despite what misogynists like Rush Limbaugh think and say on the air. Gender equality is something we should all get behind. I have made my commitment, I urge all men to do the same, go to the website, and take a stand for gender equality.
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FOUL
This is just another example of politics as usual that you can find almost anywhere around the world. In this case, the contretemps is over the appointment of prospective Fine Gael senator to the board of the Irish Museum of Modern Art. The thought is that the appointment was done to help his Senatorial candidacy. The accusation is basically cronyism. But we have seen this accusation thrown about so many times, in many different countries, and really, what would a statement in Dail Eireann really do, other than just give Michael Murphy a chance to try to humiliate the Taoiseach, and score more political points, which are ultimately, meaningless?
I’ve said this many times, but politics should be about problem solving, not point scoring. It should be about coming together in the centre, not pulling people to the extremities. Instead of becoming two tribes, we should be coming together as human beings. I’m often reminded of the Frankie Goes To Hollywood song, Two Tribes, from 1984, the video of which featured impersonators of US President Ronald Reagan, and Soviet premier Konstantin Chernenko brawling and wrestling each other in front of a rabid crowd. But one lyric from that song keep coming back to me in these situations.
“When two tribes go to war, a point is all that you can score.”
And political points, are worthless and meaningless.
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The Local: The Spanish government has said Catalonia would not be allowed to hold an independence referendum, shortly after the region's leader set a November 9 date for the vote. Fair or Foul?
FOUL, Yellow Card.
Apparently, the Spanish Government has forgotten what kind of country it is governing. It is a country made up of 19 autonomous regions, two of those are cities. Each autonomous region has their own parliament, can make their own laws, and each is a democracy of its own.
Catalonia is one of a few autonomous regions that has significantly more powers than most other regions, amongst those powers, is for the regional president to dissolve parliament and call elections, and if Catalonia is blocked from holding a referendum on independence, it could well be that Catalonia turns it into an election issue, and make independence the centrepiece of an election campaign, and for the Spanish national government, that would be a much bigger headache, than a mere referendum.
The Spanish government, look like they’re afraid that they are going to lose, and that might be true, but instead of looking like scaredy-cats, and running to the Spanish Constitutional Court to get the vote ruled unconstitutional, which is what they’ll try and do, they should actually let the vote happen, and let things take their course, and if something goes wrong, be ready to welcome them back into the Spanish fold with open arms. This is starting to look like an enforced empire, rather than a collective of people that want to work together. And by extension, it is also making the European Union look like an attempt at empire building, rather than the Community that it was when the UK joined in 1973.
In saying that “…no-one is above the national will of all Spaniards…”, you look like enforcers of something that maybe, the people of Catalonia don’t want anymore, and maybe, other regions of Spain, might not like it either, and might not want to be a part of it. If you cannot respect the will of the Catalonian people, why should other regions want to be part of Spain either? You do yourself no favours by starting to appear dictatorial, rather than democratic.
Hence, the yellow card, as a warning that trying to dictate what can and can’t be done, by a democratic, devolved region of your own country, is likely to lead to the breakup, not just of Spain, but potentially of other countries too, and possibly by extension, the breakup of the European Union, as people decide they don’t want to be a part of any elected government, that decides it can become dictatorial when it likes.
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