Omission, distortion and minimization.
Only one thing on the average Irish person's mind that morning (Mon, Oct 13th) & that was the previous Saturday's 100,000 strong march against the commodification of our commons.
The Times begged to differ and told us instead what we should be thinking about. "Oh Dear, were we all wrong; shouldn't we be thinking about the Universal Social Charge? Isn't that what's important now?
Not a bit of it.
Simply put, there's no feedback loop any more in this so-called democracy.
And two 'serious' broadsheets has always been a farce. You want two editors telling the country what to think?
Give me a break.
Government are reeling on this one and I think its finally dawned on them that the next election could be lost over it - hence all the embarrassed row-backs with talk of price caps, anti-privitisation legislation & the muscling of Irish Water itself to apologise for its multitudinous cock-ups. Up to October 11th, before the second big march was held, the Fine Gael/Labour coalition were haughty at best, contemptuous at worst at the demonstrations.
Sunday's opinion poll (12th Oct) in the Independent sobered them up pretty sharpish (showing a massive surge in support for Independents, Sinn Féin and the Socialists) and all in all I'd say its illustrative of top tier contempt for the struggles of lower income groups who are being whacked disproportionately. The last time the Irish rose in such numbers was to see the Pontiff in the Phoenix park so "people power" is a total novelty for them & they're slowly digesting that reality.
The infrastructural revamp "requiring billions" is more an IMF imposed neoliberal mantra who've always coupled austerity with hocking off state assets. Shoddy pipes, leaks, conservation problems all exist but no-one talked about it in such panicked terms until Anglo black-holed us and debt repayments had to be prioritised.
Metering is mainly optional in other international semi-state partnerships and when installed its usually intended to bring down the base charge (as in England) at customer request - whereas here its presented as a fait accompli and the confusion over pricing structure, allied with the germinal signs of a price-gouging operation on the make (company bonuses, sub-radar rail-roaded Bills) all give sinister overtones to a compulsory metering regime.
Bolivians rose up over a decade ago to overthrow a government who allowed a fully privitised water utility (Bechtel) to re-write state contracts which everyone presumed protected against hiked municipal water rates but the reverse danger here is another stuffed quango leeching the exchequer via under-regulated outsourcing - junket culture and the mentality of prolific public sector wastage being a highly developed skill-set here.
Then its the principle of the thing; its a forced debt repayment commodification (a money-raising gimmick basically, tapping into the veins of those least able to afford it) - of life's most basic ingredient on the heels of (and ultimately because of) a prior "socialised" multi-billion euro bailout for roulette wheel capitalists - the electorate ultimately will decide whether these two issues are unconnected but the line in the sand, and the apparent obviousness of this, is a lot clearer now than its ever been.
People have had enough, end of.
Oh we'll survive, these are first world problems at the end of the day, and at least we don't have cholera outbreaks to top it all off (as yet). Countries with stressed water-tables, not permanent rainfall, are the ones in real long-term difficulty. I heard a World Bank Vice President announce once that if the wars of the 20th century were fought over oil, the wars of the 21st will be fought over water. At the end of the day, on the global front, dwindling freshwater supplies has corporates salivating.
"Under the current model of globalization, everything is for sale. Areas once considered our common heritage are being commodified, commercialized and privatized at an alarming rate. Today, more than ever before, the targets of this assault comprise the building blocs of life as we know it on this planet, including freshwater, the human genome, seeds and plant varieties, the air and atmosphere, the oceans and outer space. The assault on, and defence of, the commons is one of the great ideological and social struggles of our times." - Maude Barlow
No comments:
Post a Comment