Cassandra Voices

Category: Comment

  • Irish Government Requires Additional Insights

    On April 28th Fintan O’Toole brought a telling revelation to light in an article entitled, ‘Government ditched its own plan during this crisis’. He claimed that ‘Within the nexus of experts engaged in the management of the crisis, there are increasing concerns about the systems part of the operation’

    He then revealed that:

    the Government has a very well thought through system for managing emergencies – but it more or less completely ignores it … There are reasons why the Government missed the huge part of the crisis that was unfolding in nursing homes and residential institutions. One of them is the tunnel-vision that results from a top-down, command-and-control approach that is utterly at odds with what is supposed to be State policy

    O’Toole refers to a 60-page document called ‘Strategic Emergency Management: National Structures and Frameworks’, which specifically envisages ‘the potential widespread spread of a pandemic’.

    When Covid-19 cases began to multiply, however, ‘it was shoved in a drawer.’ ‘Power instead was taken over by the Taoiseach’s department and information was fed into it, primarily by a single body of experts, the National Public Health Emergency Team [NPHET]’, which ‘lacked voices from the nursing home sector.’

    The mistakes that were made at the height of the pandemic in March/April, when sick patients were returned to care homes may be traced to defective leadership structures, but at this stage there is little value in pointing the finger of blame, as we may assume that individuals were acting to the best of their abilities under enormous pressure, as epidemiological assessments were projecting a far worse death toll than was ultimately the case.

    But structural problems remain in the organisation. It is high time we re-examined how the government is being advised to bring the population to the promised land of ‘living with the virus.’ At this stage other forms of advice should be sought. Presumably the government is already receiving significant inputs from the business sector, but other important viewpoints are not part of the conversation.

    Varadkar’s Comments

    In what was a stark reversal of the situtation in late April when Dr Tony Holohan when asked about possible easing of restrictions replied, “I haven’t made up my mind,” the now Tánaiste Leo Varadkar identified a growing cleavage in Irish society between the private and public sectors on Claire Byrne Live. He commented that the pay packets of those on NEPHT (and his own) would not be affected by further restrictions and that cabinet would be the ones making any decisions on imposing further restrictions.

    That such a provocative comment, which perhaps only “Dr” Varadkar – whose background as a doctor was generally perceived as advantageous at the height of the crisis – could have been aimed against the doctor-in-chief in NPHET, which although composed primarily of civil servants, rather than doctors or scientists, nonetheless appears to have a higher standing in the eyes of the public than government Ministers.

    In fact, it might be expected that an expert grouping would see it as their responsibility to put forward a variety of courses of action as opposed to plumping for one, leaving it to the government to weigh the total implications of the various options.

    With case numbers – blunt statistics which have assumed a frightening importance – not reaching the stratospheric levels that some were predicting earlier this week, the government’s gamble to take a less draconian approach, which is more in line with Ireland’s European partners, may just be paying off. Also, Varadkar’s suggestion that the number of hospital admissions, especially requiring ICU, and mortalities, will become the guiding indicators may also signal a change in the way in which State will be contending with the virus in future.

    Varadkar’s comments, along with Fintan O’Toole’s earlier insights, may also highlight a broader problem, as to whether a body with the composition of NPHET can, in coping with an emergency, be prone to an element of ‘groupthink,’ such as we have witnessed in the past in controversial situations in Irish public life, notably the Bank Bailout in 2008.

    Advisory Groups

    HIQA, for its part, established a COVID-19 Expert Advisory Group on September 29th to support an evidence-based response to COVID-19, under the chairmanship of Cillian de Gascun. This includes what appear to be most of the leading scientists in the country, who will have insights on the virus itself.

    There is also an EAG Research Subgroup the members of which are:

    Prof. Colm Bergin (Co-Chair), Consultant Infectious Diseases, St. James’s Hospital and Professor of Medicine, Trinity College Dublin
    Prof.Cliona O’Farrelly (Co-Chair), Professor Comparative Immunology, Biochemistry, Trinity College Dublin
    Dr Teresa Maguire, Head of Research Services and Policy Unit, Department of Health
    Dr Siobhán O’Sullivan, Chief Bioethics Officer, Department of Health
    Dr Mairéad O’Driscoll, Director of Research Strategy and Funding, Health Research Board
    Dr Mark Ferguson, Director General, Science Foundation Ireland
    Prof.Stephen Kinsella, Associate Professor of Economics, University College Limerick
    Prof.Orla Feely Vice President for Research, Innovation and Impact University College Dublin
    Prof.Ivan Perry, Professor of Public Health, University College Cork
    Dr Ana Terres, Head of Research and Development, HSE
    Dr Sarah Gibney Senior Researcher, Research Services and Policy Unit and IGEES, Department of Health (replaced by Peter Doherty, Research Servicesand Policy Unit, Department of Health)

    Again this contains a significant number of civil servant administrators and a single individual from a non-scientific discipline, tellingly perhaps, economics.

    Guiding Philosophy

    It is hardly surprising that the Government has looked to administrators and academic scientists to guide it through this crisis. There must be some concern, however, that apart from economic cleavages between the private and public sector a scientific or technocratic background will not necessarily equip an individual to weigh up choices with profound ethical implications, affecting all strata of an increasingly diverse Irish society.

    In contrast in Sweden, where the effectiveness of government messaging in the absence of draconian measures has been roundly praised – even by those critical of an unwillingness to impose a lockdown – philosophers have been advising the government from the outset. Problematic policy choices and ethical dilemmas are faced and addressed.

    Notably, the National Board of Health and Welfare, one of Sweden’s main agencies for handling the COVID-19 pandemic brought in philosophers to design guidelines for priority-setting in medical care. The work was led by philosopher Lars Sandman, director of the Centre for Healthcare Priority Setting and a professor of healthcare ethics at Linköping University.

    Sandman said:

    In Sweden we are not allowed to take chronological age into account, but biological age—so the main thrust of the guidelines is how to interpret biological age in this situation—and we interpret it as covering both probability to survive the treatment and life-expectancy in terms of years. Hence, we propose that if doctors and other healthcare providers have to choose between helping patients with the same probability to survive but different life-expectancies, they should choose to help the patient with more years left. In relation to the ethical principles in the platform this is a somewhat new interpretation or clarification that has never been explicitly done before.

    These, we may assume, are the kind of ethical choices that NPHET and the medical establishment faced at the height of the pandemic, but behind closed doors. Perhaps a different philosophical approach would be to the fore in Ireland, with greater emphasis on preservation of life as opposed to overall public health. But it would surely have been beneficial for NPHET to have had recourse to the intellectual clarity provided by professional philosophers, and for there to be greater transparency around this decision-making.

    The Aosdána

    Moreover, as we build towards ‘living with the virus’ it is worth considering other forms of expertise. Harking back to Ancient Ireland we might consider a new role for the Aosdána (áes dána, ‘people of the gift’). These were the skilled men of early Irish society, whose hereditary or demonstrated skills were in law, medicine, history, music, masonry, carpentry, metalwork – but primarily in poetic composition. The recovery of public art in Ireland is not an idle concern. Artists may prove to be healers, as we navigate these choppy waters.

    An obvious body to consult already in existence is the Aosdána, an association of artists created in 1981 and supported by the Arts Council of Ireland. The Aosdána could select from its members individuals to represent artistic creation in Ireland, which is essential to nurture during this global crisis.

    There has to be a concern that a body constituted such as NPHET is associated with what Iain McGilchrist might describe as ‘left-brained’ thinking, a tendency which is often associated with those heavily specialized in their chosen fields. Indeed, their very expertise may leave them less resourced to offer a broader wisdom enabling us to answer the hard question: yes, but what are we to do in the here and now?

  • Covid-19: What is in a Name?

    In Plato’s dialogue ‘Cratylus,’ Socrates and his friends Cratylus and Hermogenes discuss the issue of how phenomena are named. At the heart of the discussion lies the question of whether names have a natural relationship with the things they signify; or is this a random exercise, determined by custom, and are these names therefore mutable? So could the name ‘table’ simply be adjusted to ‘elbat’ by government decree?

    Many years ago I listened to the legendary publisher John Calder (of Calder and Boyars) at an afternoon session in Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. By that time he had published approximately fifteen Nobel Prize winning authors, including Samuel Beckett. He mused on how fifteen years had passed since the first of Beckett’s publications and his rise to becoming ‘a household name,’ after winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1969. Ideas are not grasped overnight, they take time, John Calder observed.

    Socrates, Cratylus and Hermogenes might well stand a better chance of grasping the nature of the current pandemic than many contemporaries, as many of the main terms in use are of Greek origin.

    Epidemic: from Greek ἐπί epi ‘upon or above’ and δῆμος demos ‘people.’

    Pandemic: from Greek πᾶν, pan, ‘all’ and δῆμος, demos, ‘people.’

    Equally important terms derive from Latin:

    Virus: from Latin ‘poison, slime, venom.’

    Vaccine: from the Lain ‘vacca,’ meaning cow, a named conferred by Louis Pasteur in honour of Edward Jenner who pioneered the concept by using cowpox to inoculate (mid-15c., ‘implant a bud into a plant,’ from Latin inoculatus, past participle of inoculare ‘graft in, implant a bud or eye of one plant into another,’) against smallpox.

    Exponential: from Latin exponere ‘put forth.’

    At another point in their discussion the philosophers look up at the sky. They point to various planets and speak their names. Then one says: ‘There are things up there which do not have a name.’

    And another adds: ‘There are things down here which do not have a name.’ This brings to mind a disturbing thought, which is that if all things in the universe are related, and some things do not have a name, can the system of naming be relied upon?

    Take the proposition that someone, anyone, may carry the virus but show no symptoms. That, I believe, is a novel idea. One which did not have a specific name, in common parlance anyway.

    At least one eminent virologist has dismissed the claim outright that a ‘healthy-sick’ individual can pass on the virus as a ‘crowning of stupidity,’ when he explained ‘Why Everyone Was Wrong’ in their initial assessment of Covid-19. No doubt other experts hold differing views, but we are clearly in new linguistic territory when ‘asymptomatics’ are suffering from (or is that experiencing?) a disease.

    A few days ago I observed a group of teenagers, aged around twelve or thirteen, pushing, shoving, hugging, flirting, shouting, laughing, jumping, dancing, and even kissing around the Triangle in Ranelagh in Dublin.

    I doubt any of them are as yet familiar with the Classical etymology of important medical terms, or the nomenclature around ‘the virus’ now in circulation. If they knew what the Covid-19 restrictions are at all, they were blatantly flouting them with the enthusiasm of a Republican at a White House garden party.

    Perhaps instinctively they knew they had little or nothing to be concerned about themselves. A report in the Wall Street Journal in May quoted the U.S. Center or Disease Control to the effect that since February only fifteen children under the age of fifteen in the U.S. had died of Covid-19, compared to about two hundred who had died of flu and pneumonia. I just hope their instinct to embrace the fullness of life will not betray any older relatives who might be more susceptible.

    At another point in Plato’s dialogue a row breaks out between Cratylus and Hermogenes. Cratylus tells Hermogenes that ‘Hermogenes’ is not actually his name. This infuriates Hermogenes. It is so his name. His name is Level 3, not level 5! Level 3, Hermogenes! As Leo Varadkar might have said to Tony Holohan.

    Feature Image: The Death of Socrates (1787), by Jacques-Louis David.

  • Game Over: American Democracy in Tatters

    The death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg signals the death knell of the tradition of liberal American judges from William O’ Douglas, to the Irish-American William Brennan, and Harry Blackmun. In recent times we have had Stephens, and perhaps Souter, who went on a  voyage of passage from conservatism to moderate liberalism. Such warning signs ripple across the pond as America sneezes and Britain catches a cold. Or rather all catch Covid-19, and Trump appoints Amy Coney Barrett before the election.

    And it is abortion that at one level is the defining issue or rather the side-tracking defining issue. America has been down this road before when Reagan appointed Sandra Day O’Connor to be the first female Supreme Court judge, as an ardent anti-abortionist, only for her to endorse to a limited degree the fundamental right to procreative autonomy in Planned Parenthood v Casey (1993). I do not think Trump has made the same mistake, much to my chagrin.

    Let us be clear: the appointment of a woman because she is a woman is not a cause for unique celebration. It is a Populist gesture to deflect criticism from her judicial philosophy. She is in fact a deeply conservative alt-right human being, whatever about her personal qualities.

    Populism joins religious fundamentalism with a veneration of unregulated free markets in American. Top it off with a clean cut corporate fascism and you have a signature hemlock cocktail.

    An ardent Catholic with seven children (two adopted), contraception not I suspect being permitted; a supporter of the ownership, possession and use of handguns even for non-violent felons (see Kanter v Barr (2019)), something she has inherited from the recently deceased Supreme Court Judge Anthony J. Scalia. She clerked affectionately for the guy we like to call Tony the Phoney.

    It now gives hardline conservatives an in-built majority of 6-3 to overturn the case of Roe v Wade (1973). Thus the case which established the right to abortion in America is imperilled and a neoconservative appointed to the bench. Harry Blackmun, the author of Roe v. Wade foresaw this calling it in Planned Parenthood (1973) the light flickering at the end of his moving judgment. That light is now soon to be extinguished.

    Of significant concern to Irish and U.K. nationals, even allowing for special relationships, she also voted as a circuit court federal judge for Trump’s hard line legislation on Green Cards and will no doubt also support the expansion in the protection of religious rights, which the Supreme Court has hitherto been agnostic on.

    Gay rights groups have been very troubled by her views. She has gone on record and is appointed to dismantle even the remnants of Obamacare, narrowly endorsed by the Supreme Court in truncated form. Hard right-wing Republicans see health care as an entitlement not a right.

    Trump’s greatest legacy according to the Senate majority leader is the stacking of the Federal courts with 217 hard line conservatives and now three in rapid succession to the Supreme Court. The conservatives understand that the three recent appointments will dictate policy for perhaps forty years and are unlikely to be impeached. So the Thermidorian Reaction has seized control, irrespective of the outcome of the forthcoming Presidential election.

    To understand the ascension of such a person to me is to understand the stranglehold that the alt-right now exerts over U.S. politics. The conservative hard rightist is the new norm. Politics has shifted to the extent that even modest liberalism is equated with the dread spectre of socialism, and Trump in the recent debate with Biden can sanction and endorse alt-right fascism and thuggery without restraint, thus encouraging disparate sympathisers throughout the planet and in the U.K..

    In terms of judicial philosophy, following her mentor Scalia, she is a strict constructionist textualist and an adherent of original intent, thus handgun use, even by felons, is acceptable as if we were still in 1776.

    No doubt she will also be well placed if rushed through quickly by November 5th under unorthodox emergency procedures on a carefully engineered Senatorial confirmation with limited scrutiny to oversee any electoral problems her mentor Trump has; or for that matter if he loses to assist in his probable declaration of a state of national emergency; followed by the Federal invocation of martial law to extinguish American democracy.

    Her appointment signals not just the dying of the light, but, quite frankly, game over for American democracy, and perhaps global democratic values. This is a power grab that will take generations to undo.

  • The Shelbourne’s Moving Statues

    Editor’s Note: On Monday 26th of July the luxury 5-star Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin removed four bronze statues depicting two Nubian princesses from the lower Nile with slave girls holding torches. The statues had stood outside the five-star hotel since 1867. Billy O Hanluain reflects on the decision.

    If the owners of the Shelbourne Hotel were genuinely concerned with slavery and social justice they might consider a tangible gesture addressing its current practices in Ireland and elsewhere rather than tweaking its exterior in an act of ‘woke aesthetics’.

    Imagine if they decided to host a conference on human trafficking and offered reduced rates to the organisers and attendees, perhaps even flanking the exterior with banners promoting the event? Imagine they took a stand on homelessness in Dublin, an issue that is literally on its doorstep? Imagine they took a stand on abolishing zero-hour contracts in their industry?

    These statues do not neatly fit in to the modern narrative of slavery in the Americas, they refer to a period nearly a thousand years ago, depicting Nubian Princesses with their slaves. So, by implication they portray the enslavement of black people by other more privileged black people. The African continent had slavery of its own long before the Atlantic slave trade began in sixteenth century, culminating in the brutal colonization of most of the continent by European states.

    If we are to go back four thousand years and posthumously ‘correct’ the sins of that past, I would fear for many heritage sites around the world tainted by practices and beliefs very much at odds with current ‘enlightened’ standards. In any therapeutic practice, acknowledgment of the past is critical but the difficult work in healing is always how we manage the present, the now, which is after all, the only thing we have.

    Remove the Pyramids?

    An exhausting and myopic focus on the past can become a virtuous smoke screen for not dealing with present injustices. It is so much easy to bicker about past injustices rather than root out their practices in contemporary society.

    Moreover, while we are at: if the hotel is pursuing a ‘woke’ agenda maybe they should consider changing the name of the hotel itself?

    It was named after William Petty, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, Lord Shelbourne (1737-1805), the first Irish-born British Prime Minister (1782-82), responsible for granting the United States its independence at the Treaty of Paris in 1783. This newly independent state became a slave-owning state until Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation in 1862.

    A devotee of laissez faire, Lord Shelbourne did nothing discernible to improve the conditions in Ireland that would lead to rebellion and ultimately the Great Famine.

    Lord Shelbourne

    Correcting the past is an impossibility, the real challenge is dealing with the present. One doesn’t need to spend time on a Buddhist retreat or on a therapist’s couch to know that the only thing we can actually change is the present moment.

    We can seek to understand the present better by having a fuller understanding of the past, but the past remains, unchangeable. A far greater challenge is the existential one of living an ethical life in the present moment rather than attempting the impossible task of rectifying the crimes of the past.

    The removal of statues seems to have been opportunistic. It’s as if the owners are trying to gain kudos in the zeitgeist. But it is far easier to make a cosmetic change to the exterior of a building and lay claim to an enlightened agenda than actually take a political and ethical stance on live issues of social and political justice.

    Imagine the socially sensitive and woke Shelbourne, discretely provided a few rooms for free to the homeless, or to those fleeing domestic violence, or even to refugees? Then it would be putting its money where its mouth is.

  • Covid-19: Young Lives Count Too

    Doctors save lives today. It’s part of their oath and ethics. Unsurprisingly, most doctors faced with the Covid-19 pandemic recommended the drastic measure of mandatory confinement orders, or lockdowns. The main objective was to ‘flatten the curve’ of new infections so that it did not lead to overcrowding in hospitals.

    Ireland had an extremely limited capacity to treat seriously ill Covid-19 patients: 6.0 ICU beds per 100,000 population at an occupancy rate of 88%. This is compared to an average of 11.6 per 100,000 across Europe. In the absence of measures the hospital system would have been quickly overwhelmed through widespread contagion of the disease, and many people would have died, including health workers.

    On the other hand, governments should not only care about the lives of its citizens today, but also be concerned with the longer term health and wellbeing of the nation. To mitigate the next crisis and guide future investment, the government should first consider how many, and which, lives confinement saved, and which it destroyed.

    Which lives did the confinement save?

    For Ireland, we have no estimate of how many lives were saved thanks to confinement. All we know is that, to date, 1,717 people died of Covid-19.

    To get a sense of proportion, it is estimated that in France, a month of lockdown saved up to 60 000 lives*. France is fourteen time the size of Ireland.

    Lives however are never really saved. In any given month, about 2,500 people die in Ireland to the relative indifference of the media. The mortality rate of humans has been and will ever be 100%. Death can only be temporally avoided. This is important as it transforms the notion of ‘saving lives’ into the more accurate calculation of prolonging years of life.

    Life expectancy in Ireland is 82, so dying after that age means living longer than expected. In the case of Covid-19, 90% of people dying from the virus were above the age of 65 at an average age of 82, and a median age of 84. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the number of years of life lost (YLL) due to Covid-19 is relatively small. Consequently, confinement primarily benefited the population that would have otherwise been lethally affected by the virus, i.e. citizens over the age of 65.

    Which lives are and will be affected by the lockdown? 

    While all of us were affected by the confinement, vulnerable children have been the most exposed and the effect of the lockdown on mental health, the education deficit, and domestic abuse has to be accounted for.

    Many adults’ lives are and will be dramatically affected by the economic recession. According to the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), the Irish economy could contract by 17% in 2020; in comparison, the Irish GDP “only” contracted by 7.1% in 2009 and worldwide GDP contracted by 15% between 1929 and 1932.

    Ireland’s Covid-19-adjusted unemployment rate reached a record high of over 28% in April. In the Northern hemisphere, the link between economic shutdown and loss of lives (through suicide for example) is likely, but difficult to demonstrate.

    The relationship between economy and heath/lives is more subtle and sacrificing one for the other does not make sense. The two are intrinsically linked. For example, in 1997, life expectancy in pre-Celtic Tiger Ireland was 76, a full year less than more developed Germany. From the mid-90’s, Ireland’s GDP grew rapidly, allowing governments to gradually increase their health spending from €3.6bn in 1997 to €15.6bn in 2017.

    Ireland now has a longer life expectancy than Germany, standing at 82.35 versus 81.41 for the latter. What this indicates is that governments can prolong the lives of citizens by investing in hospitals, but may only do so thanks to a healthy economy.

    Africa has not been dramatically affected by Covid-19, but lockdowns in advanced economies have created economic chaos. Poverty and malnutrition already kill 9 million people every year. This is set to kill substantially more very soon as the chief of the UN’s food relief agency is now predicting a hunger pandemic of ‘biblical proportions.’

    Hence, there may be a domino effect at play. An extreme scenario – yet likely to occur over the next five to ten years – could look like this: a public health crisis triggering an economic crisis, which triggers financial and monetary crises (avoided for now), triggering a hunger pandemic, triggering mass immigration, triggering a ‘Populist’ far-right reaction, triggering a geopolitical crisis. This is of course speculative. Yet everyone should be in a position to judge whether saving the lives of our parents justified taking such risks for the future of our children.

    Thinking Ahead

    Just as choosing health at the expense of the future of the economy may prove counter-productive, choosing the old economy now over our future health and wellbeing is a lost opportunity. Hence this Irish government or the next should consider the following proactive options.

    The severity and length of the confinement in Ireland can be directly attributed to a lack of ICU capacity. To mitigate public health crises in the future, the government needs to invest massively in public health infrastructure and reduce the gap with our European partners.

    The government should also invest in infrastructure that will directly benefit future generations. Investment in public transport infrastructure and energy efficient housing will not only reboot the economy, but will also offer some long term societal and environmental benefits. Equally, investment in education, which has long been recognised to offer the best return for the welfare of any nation, should also be a top priority. This will help Ireland to sustain its position as a knowledge-based economy.

    Whatever Irish government comes to power should already be considering how to finance these investments. The opportunity is there to revise Ireland’s business model and redefine a more sustainable tax system. This may help Ireland avoid tensions with economic partners, as the current low corporate taxation model may not be tolerated by American and European counterparts for much longer.

    In sum, it is now time for the government to be proactive and invest in the future of our children: Young lives count too.

    *Editor’s Note: other studies have questioned the effectiveness of lockdowns.

  • World Refugee Day: the Importance of Storytelling

    Twenty years ago the UN General Assembly made the 20th of June World Refugee Day in order to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Geneva Convention of 1951, the international treaty giving rights to people to seek asylum from persecution in other countries. Every year around this date myriads articles about refugees and their stories are published all over the world. Most of them are well-intentioned, but they can sometimes still be harmful and damaging for the people in need of international protection.

    For thousands of years of human culture and history, personal and collective stories have been the most influential sources of information that ensured societal changes and development. More recently, people who have had a chance to voice their life histories made real change through familiarising various audiences with their unusual or – on the contrary – trivial, but nevertheless important, narratives. The same is true for the stories of different communities shared under a common umbrella.

    For centuries only certain people could share their stories. They were those occupying positions of power: men, for example, as opposed to women. Feminist methodologies made it very clear that having one’s voice heard is essential to having a societal impact. Since women’s voices were counted, our societies have changed. Following this logic, other communities made their voices heard through various forms of storytelling: they were LGBTQI communities, disabled people, ethnic and racial minorities, working class people and many other groups. Hearing each and every one of these stories has brought our societies closer to real equality.

    This storytelling comes in different forms: from mythological chronicles that depict experiences in starry-eyed fashion (like in the Bible), to fiction that is based on real people’s concerns (as in Joyce’s Ulysses), to video and photo images that talk to their viewers through visual means using new tools provided by technologies and social media. So the mediums of storytelling may vary, but it is the stories themselves that make the difference. Personal stories help audiences to relate their own experiences to those shared in the media landscape. No de-humanised statistical data can do better than storytelling.

    In the current environment, big numbers through the prism of Big Data are taken to signify important societal impact. We tend to see statistical calculations as evidence of interest. However, only qualitative data such as life histories, observations and biographies actually make sense of any calculations. Interpretations of statistical data always depend on understanding people, but understanding is the task of qualitative methodologies in social science. Statistical data comes only as a set of distant numbers that register something that needs qualitative interpretation. This is why storytelling is so important for gaining an appreciation of what is actually going on.

    Stories may also generate quantifiable impact: the number of people exposed to a particular story is visible in the numbers of website visitors where that story is published or the size of an audience of a particular media. Even though these numbers are identifiable, they still speak very little about empathy that viewers and readership may develop in response or about the emotional circulation that results. It is important to learn about such an interest, but the real measure of impact is still located in the hearts of people exposed to storytelling narratives – a quantity that stays invisible, but that is so important for societal solidarity.

    Storytelling is an essential form that drives societal transformations. From the ancient ages when people told their stories in person to our current age when people share their stories via digital mediums, stories have always had an impact. Sometimes one’s face tells a story and makes that impact. The important thing is to find the means of communication to deliver the stories straight to people’s hearts.

    Considering how powerful storytelling is, we cannot pretend that the infrastructure built around it by media and researchers is always ethical and respectful towards those who constitute those stories. As an LGBT person who has been granted international protection in Ireland and a quite visible activist, I have been asked for interviews and other types of storytelling. I tend to agree but it’s getting harder all the time.

    One journalist told me that I was wearing a good shirt and didn’t look like as an asylum seeker. Another asked how much I paid to smugglers to get me out. Quite recently another journalist was looking for someone ‘from Direct Provision’ at a conference. She approached me and started to ask questions. But once she heard that I had already moved out of Direct Provision, she interrupted me and said that she wanted someone who was currently there, otherwise she was not interested. What a devaluation of my life experience.

    In other words, journalists were rude to me, disrespectful and abusive. Using my words or ideas without quotes, giving erroneous interpretations and false promises. Trans and non-binary people, homeless people, other migrants, people of colour, people with disabilities and a lot of others who I shared my concerns with, told me that they often experienced similar treatment from journalists, but also from artists, researchers and other ‘supporters’. It is called ‘cognitive exploitation’, and this is exactly the opposite to the idea of the empowerment of the community through storytelling.

    The problem is that after such an interaction most people retreat into their closet and don’t want to tell their stories anymore, despite those stories being so important to tell, as I pointed out. I want us to keep telling our stories as long we have the energy and courage to do so. I also want to encourage everyone to keep trying to use their own voices, to write using available media to tell the stories so that cynical intermediaries cannot intervene. As for the journalists, they perhaps need to discuss professional ethics regarding dealing with precarious groups.

    Hence, what is really needed is an open critical discussion with the affected people about what we feel as unacceptable when sharing our stories with others. Let new ethical standards be dictated by unwritten concerns around the precariousness and not by outdated rules and norms. These unwritten rules should come about through debate and generate a deeper understanding of people’s experiences. This seems to be another role for comprehensive storytelling.

    Featured Image is of Camp Moria in Lesbos, Greece by Fellipe Lopes.

  • Do Not Resuscitate

    Holy Gawd, we’re back to Charles Darwin and his  interpreters.

    In the mid-19th century Darwin was recognised as a superb recorder of natural history and the inventor of evolutionary theory. He pointed to adaptation as a species’ key to survival. If an animal couldn’t adapt to new circumstances it faced extinction – like the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago, or the elderly to-day.

    Unfortunately Darwin’s innocent findings on adaptation were used to rationalise the superiority of young, thrusting people (early entrepreneurs), and the inferiority of lazy people (the old, the sick, the unemployed and immigrants). Opportunists were bright enough to see gaps in the market and could exploit such arbitrary classification.

    However, Darwin  wasn’t an entirely objective scientist: he thought Tasmanian natives were inferior humans, that is to say, not useful, who could, justifiably, be annihilated. It was, after all, the culmination of the Age of Enlightenment and the Tasmanians were untutored in the philosophies of Smith, Hume, Descartes, Spinoza et alia; nor had the natives the ability to defend themselves.

    The fact that neither they nor the vast majority of European working class and peasants had familiarised themselves with Enlightenment ideas was insignificant. Their ignorance was noticed by the Imperial mindset and  the Tasmanians were duly culled, wiped out. Closer to home that mindset facilitated the Irish famine. The poor, the old, the weak, the lame were a drag on the fast moving herd bosses.

    In these tortured times the same insight is best represented by President Trump’s sociopathology. He illustrates the simple logic of big business: if you can’t adapt to our commercial imperatives (Big Pharma, for instance), you go out of business, i.e you die.

    Thus, if you cannot get on your bike, have not realised there is no such thing as society, not become an entrepreneur, not risen early in the morning, you are disposable.

    The crude American and U.K. analogies of a ‘war’ against the present disease have also proved subliminally useful. Idealistic youth was once considered ‘collateral damage’ in our just wars, million-fold sacrifices to preserve freedom and the status quo, including ours.

    Now apply the concept of a war to the present pandemic. In every conflict, certain leaders weigh the collateral damage against potential victory. How many body bags as against how much ground gained? In this case, political ground. It is a suitable coincidence that anyone over 65 is ‘non-productive’ and less to be cherished. Are they not a proper sacrifice in the ‘war’ against Coronavirus?

    I am biased, an 84-year-old artist, outrageously healthy and still productive but, by actuarial estimates, superfluous. So, with clichéd thoughts and prayers, dispose of  me. Do not resuscitate. All is well and all manner of things will be well. Darwinism rules.

  • Irish Eyes Unsmiling: Have I Got News For You Brexit-Election Special!

    Bob Hope once wisecracked: ‘the choice between Carter and Regan was not so much the choice of the lesser of two evils, as the evil of two lessers.’ In Brexit-land that joke has transmuted into one about the difference between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn.

    The Irish media, as ever, are looking at this election through a narrow prism of self-interest. A hard or soft border; opposition of the DUP to a United Ireland; the noxious brew of tribalism and nationalism.

    The sideshow of whether the North will be within a Customs Union occludes profound questions. A Tory Government minister has announced, in effect, that within fourteen months all E.U. nationals will have to ‘regularise’ their residency status, with a discretionary right to withhold a leave to remain.[i] That is the really serious repercussion of Brexit for hundreds of thousands of Irish citizens living in the U.K..

    Michael Gove – a man for whom the term Machiavellian might have been invented – whose statecraft is overlaid with a pretence of humanity, alongside juvenile humour, murmurs about repatriation of immigrants après la deluge.

    With the extradition of ‘undesirables’ proceeding apace, historic crimes will be used to determine the right to continue to reside – ‘at her majesty’s pleasure.’ I have never taken a word of Gove’s seriously – intellectually that is – though I do have a soft spot for his comedic turn. The phrase an Englishman’s word is his bond, need not necessarily apply to Scottish Tory – et tu Michael.

    Michael Gove, ‘for whom the term Machiavellian might have been invented’

    It is a noticeable in my criminal defence representations that extradition matters which, hitherto, were settled as a matter of course are now revived, particularly where Eastern Europeans are concerned. Spengler’s proto-fascist text The Decline of the West (1918-22) seems a la mode. Across the world, we witness a rise in irredentist racism stigmatising ‘degenerate’ races and lifestyles, the demonization, exclusion and elimination of the ‘other.’ 

    Decisions as to who can stay and who is showed out the door are based, increasingly, on an economic calculus – a cost-benefit analysis of life – meaning a corrupt Russian oligarch is likely to get the nod ahead of a political dissident.

    The fool in King Lear advises: Have more than you show. Speak less than you know, an approach that Boris Johnson has very much taken to heart. After Brexit, in all likelihood, the National Health Service will be on the table – Trumping smokescreen denials aside – no doubt involving the nefarious orc that is Steve Bannon. Soon free medical treatment will be restricted to U.K. nationals, permitting an insidious soft entry, engineered by Big Pharma Americans, before the ultimate coup de grâce of privatisation.

    Johnson’s commitment to the NHS during the election campaign is purely tactical; indeed he once described it as a ‘top down, monopolistic’ system.[ii]

    The lethal trade agreement – T.T.I.P. all over again –  will facilitate Canadian and American corporations to sue the living daylights out of employers who dare to extend pensions, health care and a quality of life. I have no doubt these restrictions will form part of any trade deal.

    What we are seeing is the imminent dismantling of the welfare state, the end of the Bevanite social compact, and abandonment of Keynesian intervention.

    Brexit is, however, a complex conversation, also based on the failure of the European Union to live up to its principles. It has imposed a savage, doctrinaire austerity that has seriously undermined the social structure of Ireland and Greece. So really Remain is just a lesser of two evils, with Germanic autocratic lunatics at the helm.

    British decency misguidedly seeks a degree of moderation, fair play and reason in the European Union. Good luck with that. Brussels is a hotbed of lobbyists and bureaucrats, playing career snakes and ladders.

    Brexit was born of a perception that multiculturalism and mass immigration had failed. It’s a sad irony that the uncritical endorsement of open borders by the left actually contributed to people trafficking, money laundering and a heightened terror threat. Moreover, visceral dislike of Israel has engendered antisemitism on the fringes of the Labour Party, which Corbyn failed to stamp out adequately.

    Neo-liberalism is a false paradigm, voodoo economics issued by the church of scientology. It is not just a European consensus, but a world delusion. At least the U.K. is now debating the issues.

    The Irish ambassador for neo-liberalism is that bland consumerist bon viveur David McWilliams. In recent articles he has hailed the Berlin Wall as a triumph of capitalism for Ireland.[iii] Now he crows in Dublin wine bars to pseudo-sophisticates about corporatism providing jobs for tech workers who pay most of their salary in rents to what remains of the bourgeoisie – his people.

    ‘bland consumerist bon viveur David McWilliams’

    Well David you and your comprador class of charlatans facilitate the siphoning of funds into Canadian and American vulture funds fronted by Goldman Sachs. In Ireland the ‘powers that be’ will keep workers on short term contracts, without access to affordable housing or sustainable futures;  all for the benefit of a shrinking band of lightweight neophytes, who are Masters of an increasingly desolate Universe.

    Like Miriam O’ Callaghan, McWilliams is the perfect parrot of Ryanair-consumerism, a bland presentational non-entity facilitating disempowered and entrenching futility in people’s lives. With preppie awfulness he has the audacity to quote Jonathan Swift, without ever absorbing the contents of his most famous tract on Malthusian Liquidation: ‘A Modest Proposal’, which bitingly satires the Mercantilism of his time that we are returning to.

    By and large, the British are less prone to seduction by false prophets. Though the right to ridicule, so intrinsic to democracy, as Ronald Dworkin noted,[iv] is being eroded by light entertainment, sound bites and bland criticism.

    Johnson is the poster boy for this decline. A debased British culture is now offering a steady stream of safe comedy such as ‘Have I Got News for You,’ where politicians metamorphize into comedians or vice versa. Johnson has ridden the wave of light entertainment, Brit Pop and laddish buffoonery.

    Dazzling but superficial wit and repartee have crafted a kind of telethon effect spring-boarding him into the highest office in the land.

    The endless womanising and boorish behaviour appeal to a ‘Jack the Lad’ Skinner and Badiel constituency. But reminders of Trumpian excess has been turned into an asset for political advancement. Philandering did no harm to Clinton either, who began the rot. The vulgar jocks have won. Bannon and Trump are merely an extension of Bubba, as is Johnson.

    So the horror expressed by Heseltine, Clarke, Major and other more civilised Tory grandees falls on deaf ears.

    Corbyn is the antithesis of a vulgar jock, but wooly thinking on multi-culturalism, nostalgic cloth-cap socialism, and the endorsement of political correctness has handed the Right all the ammunition they crave.

    What we need is a return to the kingdom of the just and the wise, but forget about it. Corbyn is, nonetheless, the lesser of two evils. A controlled Remain and rejection of Brexit alongside an emasculated Corbyn, under supervision by coalition partners, looks to be the best outcome.

    Who knows, perhaps the outcome will even involve – you first read it here – that most accommodating of human beings Mr Gove. Flexibility was always something Machiavelli recommended in his Prince. But however you vote be careful for what you wish for this Christmas.

    [i] Mathew Weaver and Amelia Gentleman, ‘EU nationals lacking settled status could be deported, minister says’, The Guardian, October 10th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/10/eu-nationals-lacking-settled-status-could-be-deported-minister-says

    [ii] Twitter, ‘Tory Fibs’, December 5th, 2019, https://twitter.com/ToryFibs/status/1202566322078584832

    [iii] David McWIlliams, ‘Ireland was the big winner from the fall of the Berlin Wall’, Irish Times, November 9th, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/david-mcwilliams-ireland-was-the-big-winner-from-the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall-1.4075841?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Fdavid-mcwilliams-ireland-was-the-big-winner-from-the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall-1.4075841

    [iv] Ronald Dworkian, ‘The Right to Ridicule’, March 23rd, 2006, New York Review of Books, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2006/03/23/the-right-to-ridicule/

  • UK Election 2019: Why has common sense become a ‘radical’ proposition?

    Last week two young people were stabbed to death at London Bridge while attending a conference organized by the University of Cambridge on rehabilitation of prisoners through education. Boris Johnson and other Conservatives were quick to politicize the tragedy, implying the attack – by a convicted terrorist on day release – signified a failure of the very approaches its victims promoted. But, as one of the victims, Jack Merritt’s father, movingly wrote, his son would be ‘livid’ at the thought of his death being used to fuel an ‘agenda of hate.’[i]

    Merritt’s death was not symptomatic of a failure of rehabilitation as an approach to crime and punishment, but of a government failure to fund it adequately. In fact, they provide for neither rehabilitative nor restorative forms of justice in such a way as to make either approach effective.

    Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones’ deaths were a major international news story, but sadly stabbings of young people in London are all too common: from January to September 2019, there were over 67 homicides by stabbing (of over 110 homicides)[ii][1], and in 2018/19 there were almost 15,000 knife crimes in London overall.

    In the U.K. as a whole,[iii] in the twelve months preceding March 2019, there were over 43,516 knife crimes recorded, representing an 80% rise over five years.[iv] Cuts to police funding, including the number of police officers, have contributed to this astounding rise in violent crime, and the ensuing deaths of young people – as have cuts to prison and probationary services.

    Poverty, lack of access to healthcare (including mental health services), inadequate education and widespread inequalities relating to class and race, all contribute to proliferating violence in our society, whether terrorism, gang or domestic.

    Traditionally Conservatives have been characterized as ‘strong’ on law and order, but ironically their policies often exacerbate the conditions that lead to crime. It is no exaggeration to say that austerity kills people in myriad ways. Besides knife crime, many deaths can be attributed to inadequate health care, homelessness, and even a sense of despair at the power wielded by an increasingly draconian welfare system.

    Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party has been caricatured as crusty Marxists, out-of-touch fantasists, and even crazed Communists, by the neo-liberal radicals who have brought the U.K. to its knees. But all Labour is proposing, in its detailed and costed manifesto, is a level of public spending to bring the U.K. in line with European averages.

    Labour simply proposes to reverse the austerity that has been to the benefit of several rich Tory donors, and the detriment of the rest of us, raising the overall standard of living to a point where business can flourish. It is not fantastical at all: it is common sense.

    The Labour Party is seeking to cancel measures that literally punish people for being poor. For example, under new Universal Credit measures people are sanctioned simply for missing phone calls, with excuses rarely tolerated. They also want to raise the minimum wage, build more affordable accommodation and end homelessness.

    Labour want to restore a standard of decency to the country. Is this really so radical? How have we arrived at a point where improving the lot of the homeless, of vulnerable children and wayward teenagers is characterized as ‘radical’?

    Corbyn’s plans would simply bring the U.K. up to the European average of spending 45% of GDP on public services, in line with France, Italy, Austria, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and others.

    And, in proposing to re-nationalise chaotically run and profiteering private railway companies, it aims to bring the highest commuting fares in Europe in line with the average.[v]

    Moreover, by funding Fire Services appropriately, Labour seeks to do a lot more to prevent scandalous tragedies such as Grenfell. Again: why is this radical? When did our society begin to lose all perspective and with it decency?

    The right-wing, mainstream press that stoke fear of a fictional ‘Communism,’ frame common sense solutions to society’s greatest ills as dangerous pipe-dreams. In so doing they pave the way for a further fragmentation of society – accelerating Margaret Thatcher idea of ‘no such thing as society,’ – and leading to Dickensian suffering.

    At this point in the election cycle, with the fear-mongering rampant, we can only hope that what is clear on the ground – the obvious, unending effects of austerity and inequality – will sway people more than the lies and embellishments of those seeking to profit from social breakdown.

    Dr Christiana Spens is the author of The Portrayal and Punishment of Terrorists in Western Media (Palgrave, 2019) and Shooting Hipsters: Rethinking Dissent in the Age of PR (Repeater Books, 2016). She earned her doctorate at the University of St. Andrews and is now based in Glasgow, where she writes for various publications including Studio International, Art Quarterly and Prospect.

    [i] David Merritt, ‘’Jack would be livid his death has been used to further an agenda of hate’’, The Guardian, December 3rd, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/02/jack-merritt-london-bridge-attack-dave-merritt

    [ii] Aidan Milan, ‘How many deadly stabbings have there been in London so far this year?’, Metro, September 25th, 2019, https://metro.co.uk/2019/09/25/many-deadly-stabbings-london-far-year-10804537/

    [iii] Excluding Greater Manchester, due to recording issues.

    [iv] Statista, ‘Number of knife crimes recorded in London from 2010/11 to 2018/19 (in 1,000s)’  https://www.statista.com/statistics/864736/knife-crime-in-london/

    [v] Reality Check Team, ‘Are UK train fares the highest in Europe?’, BBC, August 14th, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-49346642

  • Reviving the Language of Care in Climate Change Consciousness

    As a child I had recurring dreams of great waves crashing over me. Some would swallow me up, making me lose consciousness. In others I would reach the top of a hill, where I would observe the sea level slowly rising from afar, engulfing the fishing village in which I still live.

    My village is in a protected area in southern Brazil. The place is an idyllic meeting point, where hills, river, white sand dunes and the sea merge into a breath-taking view. The river, called Madre, meaning mother, dances through the wetlands, appearing like a serpent before it reaches the sea. Most days its floodplain lies well away from the houses on the coast line.

    Lately, however, we are observing higher tides and the shrinking of the sandbank. This year winter arrived late and was shorter than usual. We experienced extreme heat alternating with cold days that interfered with the mullet’s reproduction cycle. As a result the fishing season was shorter than usual.

    Climate fluctuation is increasingly evident, affecting the rhythms of nature and impacting on livelihoods.

    For millions of people around the globe, the climate breakdown is a living reality rather than a far off prediction. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 17.2 million[i] people fled their homes in 2018, due to storms, hurricanes, floods, other cataclysmic weather events or environmental shifts. Those living in the Philippines, China and India have been most adversely affected by these phenomena.

    Climate change and forced displacement are the defining challenges of our times.

    In the wake of climate breakdown last month António Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General hosted the 2019 Climate Action Summit in New York, calling for concrete action to meet the global climate predicament.

    In spite of being in the company of many of the world’s most powerful political leaders, the star of the summit was clearly a Swedish teenager who had just crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a zero-carbon sailboat. Greta Thunberg, climate activist and global phenomenon, managed to capture all our attention. In a powerful speech addressed to governments, businesses and civil society, she condemned world leaders for betraying younger generations, and for indolence in response to the climate collapse and its attendant human costs. 

    I was moved and indeed overjoyed to observe Greta calling humanity’s attention to a dimension often excluded from these talks – the human and ecological costs of our destructive economic system and fossil fuel-addicted societies. 

    Visibly emotional, she uttered the now famous words: ‘people are suffering; people are dying; entire ecosystems are collapsing; we are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth.’

    At a stroke Greta had restored the language of care to climate talks, having underpined her arguments with reference to the science.

    In as much as we must address issues related to carbon emissions, build creative and sustainable solutions, and change our economic systems and modes of production, the conversation must include climate justice for those on the frontline of climate change. We will only understand forced displacement in the context of climate breakdown once we revive within ourselves the language of care for others, for all living beings, and for the planet itself.

    Unless we humanise the lived experience of those forced to flee hurricanes, floods and droughts, we will continue to externalise the human cost of climate breakdown, and carry on with business as usual: the “fairy tales of eternal economic growth.” 

    If the images of Cyclone Idai, which hit Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi, and Hurricane Dorian – the strongest storm ever to land in the Bahamas – do not awaken concern and care for the victims of climate breakdown, then humanity seems doomed.

    Often I have a sense of hopelessness. I understand many people share similar responses and feelings. When I feel overwhelmed and insignificant in the face of this global crises I take refuge in silence.        

    As an adult working with communities displaced by wars, poverty and weather events, my childhood dreams now support me. At times, caught up in the here and now, I am immersed in the sea of action; at other points, I pause and step back to reflect, restore and witness the larger picture.

    To my mind, these are complementary movements sustaining an open heart and active hands in a world in crisis. As I delve inwardly I observe my motivations. I connect with my principles and values, I feel the pain of a suffering world. As I emerge outwardly, I align my actions and speech with deeper aspects of myself. They are the in-breath and out-breath of sacred activism, that operate like the seasons of my existence.

    To confront widespread climate breakdown, and the despair this brings, one must connect with the language of deep care for the Earth and all living beings. Then we can respond from a place of transformation and embody a new way of living and relating to the planet.

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    [i] Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, ‘Global Report on Internal Displacement 2019’, http://www.internal-displacement.org/global-report/grid2019/