Something to keep you off the street...

With Ireland's referendum on the Lisbon treaty just around the corner I hope to soon provide a completely impartial analysis of what the treaty offers Ireland and Europe. In the mean time, I recommend taking a look at the Referendum Commission's booklet which summarises the key changes the treaty would implement. If that isn't enough to keep you occupied, then Jamie Smyth (of the Irish Times) is breaking down various aspects of the treaty each day this week. Enjoy!

Hilary, on mature reflection, will attack Iran

I love the fact that even the most senior of American politicians still grapple with the concept of irony. In the past week, Hilary Clinton made an outrageous statement, saying "If I'm the president, we will attack Iran... we would be able to totally obliterate them".

If making that statement wasn't enough, Hilary provided further justification adding that this would deter "those people who run Iran [] from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic." Yes, whereas obliterating another sovereign state, for whatever reasons, is a calm, collected response in anyone's language. Go Team America!

Gordon, Darling, WAKE UP!

You may have noticed this week that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling are doing very good headless chicken impressions. Many moons ago, Gordon, as chancellor, introduced the 10% tax rate (which really did benefit many low income earners). More to the point, it was a classic Labour-helping-the-poor type of policy. Last year, Gordon decided that this in fact did not help the poor and so ditched that tax rate in favour of a reduction of the higher rate from 22% to 20%. The effect of this was, that anybody earning below about 17K a year would be worse off and anyone earning above this would be slightly better off.

At the time, nobody particularly commented on the inequitable nature of the tax change. Furthermore, Labour MPs had to back the change in order to pass the budget. It seems to have taken those poor, slowminded Labour backbenchers a year to figure out their sums and see that something is not quite right here. Now, following a minor revolt, Gordon and Alistair are backpedalling in order to come up with some way to recompense those most affected by the tax change (primarily young workers and pensioners).

Nick Robinson attempted to get Grodon to clarify what this means for those who pay tax, but one thing that is certainly clear to everyone - Labour has lost its way and is falling deeper into disarray. From Gordon being labelled "pathetic" by David Cameron or considered increasingly "pointless" by Nick Clegg to the growing number of dissenting voices from Labour back and front benches, things do not look good. Expect punishing local election results for Labour!

The New, Disimproved and Less informative BBC

What the hell has happened to the BBC RSS news feeds lately? I regularly use the BBC feeds to get a quick summary of the news and until recently the headlines were enough to give a clear idea of what was going on in the world.

Something like "Mortgage lending hits 16-year low" seems reasonably unambiguous and allows me to make a fair assessment of whether I would want to click through and read the rest of the article. Now, however, somebody has decided that these headlines are just too darn useful and informative. The headlines have been "improved" to become empty, uninformative statements of nothingness such as "After 94 days...", "Too Diplomatic" or "Given the Boot". And they're just from today's listings.

Unless the Beebs are planning on releasing a Telepathy software patch that allows me to mentally peer into the content of these stories without clicking through, the new headline system has got to go! Pleeeease...

Cut, cut, cut...cut, cut, cut...

The US Federal Reserve (or "The Fed" if you're a too-cool politico or city type), cut interest rates again in attempt to stave off recession in the US. Will it work? In short, no. The Fed's reactionary approach of late (I'm not sure Alan Greenspan would be responding in the same fashion), shows a real failure to understand the most basic aspects of human psychology. Apart from the fact that banks worldwide are less willing to lend to each other and to us normals, the real issue is that public confidence in these institutions has taken a massive hit.

You might be thinking, "But isn't the Fed trying to restore confidence in the economy?". Yes, that's exactly what the Fed thinks it's doing. In fact, by making such dramatic rate cuts (about 3% in the last 6 months) the Fed is merely underlining the fact that there are lean times ahead. It's like shouting from the rooftops that we're in big trouble and hoping that it will resolve everything. Unfortunately for the Fed, and probably the rest of us, that shouting is going to fall on deaf ears.

I imagine the rate cut will offer some short term bump in economic performance, but it will take a lot longer for public perceptions to shift and for confidence to grow.

Boring, boring, boring (AKA The Budget)

Was it just me, or was this year's budget the most depressingly boring in years? In a way, I pity Alistair Darling; him being the human face for Gordon Brown's "leadership" on budget day. Poor Alistair hadn't a drug-free-athlete-in-the-Olympics chance of adding colour to Gordon's beige economics. For me, it was the government's failure to introduce the much-discussed plastic-bag tax that summed up Labour under Gordon Brown. Such a simple thing, and yet it could so easily have added a spark to this year's banality and shown that Gordon Brown actually has the capacity to make forward-looking policy decisions. After all, who would the plastic bag tax have adversely affected? Apart from plastic bag manufacturers, no one is really going to find themselves in economic turmoil because of it...if you think about it. It is a tax on laziness ("just didn't bother to bring one") and forgetfulness ("oh, I left it at home again"), and yet this tax would have signalled a government commitment to make real, society-level changes on environmental policy. I'm in agreement with Nick Clegg on this one...this was a "meagre, tinkering budget" with little evidence of leadership, even between the lines.

Gordon Brown still thinks he has adequate time in the chair to make up for Labour's lost ground in the polls. However, if he continues to squander every opportunity to make real decisions, we could be looking at Primeminister Cameron in a couple of years time. Scary!

The Long Road to Lisbon

It was an utterly shocking outcome. It seems that 88% of the British public are in favour of a referendum on the treaty of Lisbon. What makes this result doubly surprising is that the poll was carried out for the completely unbiased "I Want a Referendum" campaign group. Whether the poll itself is flawed or biased is, in fact, irrelevant. Let us instead consider the potentially monumental impact of this poll. Yes, that's right folks, it will have absolutely zero impact on Britain's acceptance or rejection of the treaty. Unfortunately for anti-EU and anti-treaty groups, Britain's brand of constitutional monarchy makes no legal requirement for the holding of a referendum on any matter; it is for parliament to decide.

Aside from these issues, the simple fact is that such a poll will tell us very little about whether the treaty will ultimately be ratified or rejected. Furthermore, considering the Lib Dems are likely to support Labour in the passing of the treaty in parliament, the treaty is practically a shoo in as far as the UK is concerned. In fact, the only country where the treaty will be (by law) ratified by the people is Ireland.

For the Irish people there are many issues to consider in the run up to the referendum - the status of EU commissioners, Ireland's neutrality, and the roll of national governments in the EU, to name just a few. With any luck we'll be looking at those in a more detail as R-Day approaches (the date has yet to be finalised in Ireland). Whatever the outcome, I hope that the European Union will actually respect the decision of the Irish people.