Greeks Bearing Rifts

Admin at 10:39 am July 9, 2015

Wolfgang Schäuble (top left) and Yanis Varoufakis; Dan Boyle

Chaos theory.

Casually-dressed politics.

Academics in power.

Please beware.

Warns Dan Boyle

I’m not a man who’s disposed to violence. Whenever I find myself possessed of such thoughts I have to hit myself to make the thought go away. I vicariously live my violence, sometime through daydreams, more often in nightmares.

One of the more unwelcome visitors to my subconscious is the sullen image of Wolfgang Schäuble, the German federal finance minister. The greyness of his features highlighted by thin lips through which the coldest of language comes, creates an urge in me to slap the face of the man.

A Freudian psychiatrist might attribute this to a guilt complex on my part, that on however a peripheral level I was operating from, I didn’t take the opportunity to physically challenge our German economic overlords.

I have long since wondered what those who criticised this softly softly approach actually had in mind. My inner Walter Mitty has me grabbing the lapels of the errant Teuton, confronting him with my finest Elvis sneer while parroting the best James Cagney dialogue from any of his gangster films. Those most trenchant in their belief of the effectiveness of physical force, as a means of persuasion, swear by the success of the baseball bat. That’s never been my sport though.

My vicarious self got a lift with the election of Syriza in Greece. Government in that country badly needed a shake up. Their evil twins of PASOK and New Democracy, like ours of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, had mired the country in nod and winkery, placating most of those whose souls were bought with the promise of an eternal tax free haven where living was easy and many things were free.

The new bosses spoke openly, dressed casually, and much as it disgusted the latent homophobe in me, seemed composed of very good looking men. New and different had to be good. Hadn’t it?

Soon the zeal of the convert began to desert me. My first fears were realised when I discovered the extent to which the new government was made up of academics. Now I have nothing against academics. Some of my best friends are academics. I’ve spent the last number of years, thankfully successfully, trying to acquire a Masters through mine and their efforts. The best learning I achieved through this process is confirmation that political theory and political practice have absolutely nothing in common.

Sorcerer in chief of this new approach to politics, Mr. Varoufakis, was meant to be able to change the entire paradigm by his being an expert in ‘games theory’.

In my own thesis I had struggled with the theory of this theory. The concepts of ‘leverage’ and ‘minimum winning coalitions’ befuddled me. Even more so when I couldn’t recognise where they existed in the Greek situation.

It seems the chosen tool of confrontation was to piss people off. Delay, defer, prevaricate, whatever you do don’t do anything. The strategy seems to have been to traduce Mr. Schäuble to a non-animated version of Wile E. Coyote with steam coming out of his ears.

And then there was the master stroke of the referendum. A brilliant piece of political theatre, it involved asking a complicated though unnecessary question that could be reduced to an essence of ‘Would you vote for more misery?’ The most surprising thing was 40% of those who voted voted yes.

Because I’ve long believed that politics isn’t a game but something that affects people’s lives, Alexis Tsipras has now become my Elmer Gantry (the film character/religious charlatan not to be confused with Bugs Bunny nemesis Elmer Fudd – although that might work as an analogy as well). It’s a pity. We all could have been contenders.

Dan Boyle is former Green Party Senator

(Getty/Cork Independent)

Meanwhile…

Today’s Irish Times.

Romain Petton writes:

It probably would make a decent movie…

Rebel Hell And Back

Aaron McAllorum at 10:27 am July 9, 2015

From boom to bust.

The south did rise again.

Copa 90 writes:

From liquidation to Europe in 5 years – this is the incredible story of how the supporters of Cork City helped save the club and bought them back from the brink of extinction

*slams down Tanora*

Brian Lennox?

COPA 90

So Stilly Greeny At The Heart Of Summer

Admin at 10:01 am July 9, 2015

This morning.

Grand Canal, Dublin.

Thanks Gary Byrne

‘Prove It, Prove It, Prove It’

Admin at 9:52 am July 9, 2015

Marie O’Connor, of Survivors of Symphysiotomy

Marie O’Connor, chairperson of the group Survivors of Symphysiotomy, spoke with Chris O’Donoghue on Newstalk Breakfast this morning about the group’s grievances in relation to the symphysiotomy redress scheme.

Her interview came ahead of the matter being raised in the Dáil later today.

Marie O’Connor: “The scheme is demanding objective evidence of women’s injuries. Apparently they find it difficult to believe women on this subject or believe their families. So in looking for objective evidence, they’re demanding receipts for, for example, incontinence pads or prescriptions for anti-depressants going back 50 and 60 years. Now this is an impossible bar for women to meet and this is reflected in the payouts to date because it’s clear now, from the latest figures, again we see the very same patterns that 60 per cent of women are being denied payment for significant difficulties.”

Chris O’Donoghue: “Sixty per cent denied.”

O’Connor: “Sixty per cent of the payments made to date are for €50,000 which means that none of those women got a payment for significant disability and, in our experience, over 95 per cent of women suffered lifelong disability as a result of this operation of symphysiotomy.”

O’Donoghue: “So what are the women being told, ‘you’re in pain because you’re older anyway, that would, that would have happened anyway’. Is it that flippant?”

O’Connor: “It’s not flippant but it’s really saying, ‘prove it, prove it, prove it’ if you’re claiming €50,000 for disability, that seems to be the attitude and the scheme is demanding a standard of proof that would not be demanded by any High Court and, indeed, refusing to accept reports from independent medical consultants on these injuries because of course, the view is that no reliance can be placed on what these women actually say about these injuries and these doctors are speaking to the women themselves, their reports are being excluded.”

O’Donoghue: “So just so I’m straight on that Marie, that would be contemporaneous doctors, reports from doctors now who are treating the women?”

O’Connor: “Reports for doctors now, yes. Because the trouble with, if you go back 50 years, and you demand, for example, records from GPs, well those GPs are deceased, the records didn’t pass on and there are no records but the scheme is refusing to recognise these realities and is demanding, what they call, objective evidence of injury.”

Later

O’Connor: “I think the fact is this was supposed to be a non-confrontational for claimants and it’s turned out to be quite the opposite. The scheme has conducted itself in a highly adversarial manner and is, in fact, demanding, for example, proof of prior surgery. They’re looking for pathological gaps in the pelvis. Now, in reality what the scheme doesn’t seem to know is that very many women, in very many cases, pelvis fused. So there is no gap to be seen and again, I mean, this is being taken as evidence of injury and yet evidence accepted by the High Court in a recent case, showed that there was no correlation whatsoever between a gap in the pelvis and pelvic pain for example, because the pelvis did fuse.

It bears no relationship to what women are continuing to suffer to this day. So, again, I mean, it’s just an example of where the scheme is actually wrong. And we feel its advisors, and the suitability of those advisors, to be advising the scheme is actually open to question. So for example a radiologist, who specialises in cancer treatment and cardiac imaging. So we would have expected the sub-speciality to be the bone/pelvis obviously in these cases. That is not the case.”

Listen back in full here

Symphysiotomy survivors criticise redress scheme ‘seeking prescriptions dating back 60 years’ (Newstalk)

Mark Stedman/Rollingnews.ie