Here's How ::: Ireland's Political, Social and Current Affairs Podcast William Campbell

Mathew Creighton is associate professor of sociology at UCD.













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I’ve been on a low-information diet.







I suppose I’m someone who is generally pretty well-informed but sometimes that can get a bit too much, so a few months ago I just tuned out, deleted all my news apps, Twitter – while it still had the bird – and all the other social media apps, and I didn’t log in to any news websites. For podcasts, I just hit skip on any that were covering current events.







I suppose I’d say it was for my ‘mental health’ if I was using the fashionable language of the day. I did a couple of other things too, like cycling around more often when I have short trips to make.







I can report back that it works. There is certainly something about the unrelenting negativity that gets to you in a drip-drip way. And, if the news wasn’t bad enough, the hostility and negativity about the news on social media, and in the comments section that almost every news outlet uses to generate more clicks and page impressions is even worse.







I’ve seen it said that the online comments are so much more toxic than what almost anyone would say in real life, not only because of the anonymity that some users take advantage of, but also because even users who don’t hide their identity are not getting the feedback that face-to-face interaction with a human would have given them in every single century of the existence of our species, except the current one.







Even if people are using profiles that bear their name and their face, many of them are often still far more extreme in their language, far harsher in their criticism, and far quicker to assume the worst motives in their opponents. The theory is that they are disinhibited by not having anything to represent the target of their vitriol other than, at most, a name and a tiny avatar.







Without that inhibition, they are willing to say things and behave in a way that they would agree is objectively terrible in any other circumstances.







Well, in almost any other circumstances. There is one other situation that most of us encounter where people seem to be willing to throw out the normal rules of basic respect for strangers that you meet.







If you cycle regularly in any city, you’ll know what I mean. Maybe the isolation of being in a sealed metal box plays the same disinhibiting role as being remote from the other humans you interact with on social media. But it seems to me that a chunk of the driving public, a chunk large enough for it not to be plausible that they are all sociopaths, a chunk of them are willing to treat other human beings with a level hostility and disregard for their safety that any non-sociopath would consider appalling.







One incident made this impression on me was when I was when I was cycling on a two-land street in Dublin a few years back. The street had a cycle lane, if that’s what you want to call it, but it was only painted on, there were no physical barriers. I was cycling at about the same speed as the motor traffic, in the cycle lane, when the driver beside me started to drift into the cycle lane. He wasn’t indicating, there was no junction coming up, so I presume just wasn’t paying attention.







I took evasive action, but the driver kept closing in on me, and with maybe one or two second before I would have been jammed between his car and the footpath, I whacked the passenger-side window to try to alert the driver to my presence. I don’t remember what I yelled, but I’m sure it was something his optician or his paternity. The driver buzzed down the passenger window and started to shout back at me,

Andrew Wright is a fourth generation dairy farmer near Omagh in Co Tyrone, with a big following on Tiktok. We talked about this video he published.













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In the world of what used to be called PR, these days they call themselves other things, information management or whatever. PR has PR’d itself. In the world of what we used to call PR, there is a standard practice of trying to present whatever the news is in as positive a light for whoever the client is.









Our client is delighted with the result of this case, that the jury has seen fit to exonerate him and declare him innocent on the parking fine, and he’s more than confident that the conviction on the murder charge will be overturned on appeal.









That sort of stuff.







So when I saw the ah succinct headline in the Irish Times “Rising number of gardaí convicted shows force’s culture changing, Policing Authority chair says”, I had a bit of a smile.







Before Drew Harris took over as garda commissioner, there were typically about 30 or 40 gardaí suspended per year. in the following years, the number went up to over 120 per year, though it has since dipped below 100.







The number of convictions of gardaí has shot up in parallel.







And the Policing Authority thinks that that increase is a good thing. It’s a sign that what they delicately call the culture of An Garda Síochána is improving. They might have said the quiet bit out loud, but I think that they are probably right.







But whatever PR intern, sorry Junior Reputational Governance associate, wrote that line maybe should have thought it out a bit better. It is a good thing. But the fact that that it is a good thing, is not a good thing.

David Maddox is the political editor of Express Online.













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Kevin and myself always appreciate feedback from listeners, we try to reply when we can, but Aengus Ryan send in a sound file, which is great cos I can include it in the podcast.







I think this is an important question, and I think that some people are thinking about it, but not enough. In particular I’d say that Unionists are not thinking about it, which might be a bit of avoiding thinking about something in the hope it never happens, a bit like whistling past the graveyard.







But we should look at the mote in our own eyes first, because we really aren’t thinking about this, we aren’t preparing. One reason for that is that it might seem like a remote possibility, but that strikes me as making the Brexit mistake, not preparing for a possible outcome that could well happen much faster than we expect, and if that snowball starts rolling, it will be hard to make detailed preparations in the heat of the debate that will bring.







Jim O’Callaghan the Fianna Fáil TD and, I think, leadership hopeful, to be fair to him, has made some proposals. I think the proposals are terrible, such as having the Dáil sit in Dublin and the Seanad in Belfast. But bad as it is, it’s helpful for him to bring this up, because at least people are thinking about practicalities.







But the short answer to Aengus’ question is that this hasn’t really been addressed in any official way since the Good Friday Belfast Agreement.















The terms of that agreement are pretty clear, but not precise. Firstly, calling a border poll is decided by the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, so that basically means the decision rests with the British cabinet of the day. The exact text says:







the Secretary of State shall exercise the power under paragraph 1, [that’s call a border poll], if at any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland.







So that word ‘shall’ there is doing a lot of work. In legal terms it’s a requirement. When someone is given discretion in law, the word used is ‘may’, when they have to do something, it’s ‘shall’. But then in the next clause it says ‘if at any time it appears likely to him’. Is that a get-out-of-jail card? Could Chris Heaton-Harris or his successor ignore a stack of opinion polls, stick his fingers in his ears, and say ‘La la, I’m not listening it doesn’t appear likely to me that the vote would pass’.







Maybe, but not really. Because it’s the Secretary of State who makes the decision, not Chris Heaton-Harris. You might think they are the same person, but not quite. When he’s acting in his ministerial role, there is case law that basically means that his decisions have to be rational, and based on evidence.







That doesn’t mean he has to be right, the bar is higher than that. But there is a bar, and basically if he was claiming that something that was irrational, totally unsustainable given the evidence, it is possible that he could be overruled by a court.







But in the real world if there was enough evidence to take a court case forcing a border poll, then there would be other things going on at the same time. You can be sure that there would be intense campaigning on all sides,

Pádraig Mac Lochlainn is Sinn Féin’s chief whip.













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Mario Rosenstock is a comedian and impressionist, and creator of TodayFM’s Gift Grub.







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Here’s something about the Chinese economy.









China’s ‘investment’ in real estate makes Ireland’s property obsession seem breezy and carefree. Just before our crash, 12 per cent of our economy was house-building.







Even if Chinese GDP figures are true, then their reliance on homebuilding is double our peak. (If their GDP is overstated, it’s worse.)







If China crashes, it will shake the world. China holds trillions in dollar and euro reserves, and US sovereign debt. China is not a democracy, but its leaders are sensitive to public opinion, and deeply paranoid about preventing unrest.







If threatened, the Communist Party is likely to pull investment from anywhere it needs to, to keep their internal economy going, and keep their population working, not protesting. But with ghost cities, and one quarter of the economy building more of them, something has to give. But when?















Maybe now.







Shanghai is China’s largest stock exchange. The Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) Composite has been in freefall for nearly a month. That crash – nearly 30 per cent of the peak – has put the values back a year or so, but it shows no sign of slowing.







No matter how unthinkable, China’s building boom must end sometime, just as ours did. There is no reason to hope that it will be a soft landing. 









I suppose that I’m not the only one talking about the Chinese economy, and its potential to take the rest of the world down with it, if it collapses. But the thing about what I wrote there, is the ‘maybe now’ bit. Because I actually wrote that in July 2015. That’s more than eight years ago.







I remember in about mid–2009, when the property myth in Ireland was still just barely believable, but only for the really gullible, I heard one journalist on the radio, who had been preaching the soft-landing gospel of the time that was becoming untenable, refer to David McWilliams, who had been a lone voice warning of the instability of the property market, they referred to him sarcastically as ‘having predicted all 10 of the previous one property crash’. They were trying to argue that the property crash was not a real thing.







Now, I think that sort of comment was totally disingenuous, but the point is not necessarily wrong. If you keep predicting something that is at least not impossible for long enough, then odds are eventually that you will be proved right, not because you are Mystic Meg, but because most non-impossible things happen sooner or later.







But I think it’s unfair to characterise David McWilliams like that, at that time he was pointing out obvious contradictions, such as the proportion of our economy dependent on building, and the unsustainability of that, as well as of the impossibility high prices of accommodation. He wasn’t so much Mystic Meg as Capitan Logical, pointing out that predictions from others were just physically impossible.







That brings us to the China problem. People have been predicting the end of their long boom for years – including me. Does that mean it can continue forever? Well, no, obviously. One of those supposed Chinese anecdotes fits in well here. I’m not so sure of their cultural appropriateness, or even if it’s pure orientalism, but you’ll see the relevance.







A poor man does a favour for the emperor.
William Campbell

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Here’s How 168 – Mark of Empire
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Ben Habib is one of the deputy leaders of Reform UK, the new name for The Brexit Party founded by Nigel Farage. I misspoke during the interview, I wrongly said that Reginald Dyer, the butcher

Aubrey McCarthy is the founder and chairman of Tiglin, a charity that provides services to homeless people.













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I listen to podcasts quite a bit in arrears. I’m not too worried about being current, I suppose, and I was just listening to a David McWilliams podcast from August, he was talking about the banks, not too surprising. And he touched on a topic that I’m surprised that more people don’t discuss.







David McWilliams didn’t really discuss the topic I’m referring to, but he did kind of arrive at the topic. This goes all the way back to Marx, The Communist Manifesto and all that, and the workers seizing the means of production.







Whatever about my other views, I think this misunderstands how economies work. Firstly, that whole thing about the workers seizing the means of production, whenever it has been put into effect, or even tried to be, it inevitably means the state seizing the means of production, nationalising industries.















This was a cornerstone of left-wing policy up to about the 1970s, but became a bit taboo after that, not least because of how badly nationalised industries performed. When Mary Robinson was running for president in 1990, there were a few desperate Fianna Fáil attempts to throw back at her statements, that she had made in the 1960s, advocating nationalising the banks.







So it was particularly ironic that another 20 years later in 2010, it was Fianna Fáil that ended up effectively nationalising the banks, and the Labour Party was the only party in the Dáil that voted against the bank bailout that led directly to that nationalisation. But history, or at least the observations of a pop economist is proving that … well, I suppose they were both right and wrong, but Fianna Fáil were right first.







The bottom line is that the Irish public are being hosed by Irish banks. But hang on a minute, Irish banks were, and largely still are, nationalised. Haven’t the workers seized the means of production already.







This exposes why the Marxist analysis doesn’t work.







The government – the people – can regulate an industry, or they can own an industry, but they can’t do both. It is a fundamental conflict of interest.







And the reality is that, yes, the state is the collective will of the people, but it is naïve to imagine that doesn’t have an independent existence of itself. Yes, there are people there who have the best interests of the people at heart most of the time, also there are people who only think of their own interests, but also, the state, like any other institution has a collective sense of self-preservation and promoting its own interests.







And if the state owns a huge chunk of the banking sector, it is inevitable that the desire to accrue profits from that ownership comes into conflict with regulating that sector, protecting the consumers, the public, who need its services.







And it’s pretty clear which side is winning in that conflict.







And it isn’t just the savers who are getting ripped off.







So when you hear about the record profits of Irish banks, don’t imagine that it’s some sort of business acumen, some sort of talent at running an enterprise that is making those profits.  They make those profits because they have us over a barrel....