If you count my two unsuccessful (all cough no high) undergraduate attempts to smoke weed and the later (nominally) more successful fractal bits of gummy I consumed (once) at a wedding reception, you must grant I possessed sufficient knowledge and experience with recreational imbibing to feel I was setting myself up for an evening of hilarity when I decided to get drunk and high (with friends, in case you were staging an intervention) to watch Nicole Kidman’s latest brow-raising toast of Tinseltown, Babygirl. Following an oyster repast and several gin martinis, my desire to witness the infamous milk scene in its original context (I’d seen an endless stream of momfluencers parodying it) became oddly irrepressible and very, very funny.
Admittedly, the film and its lengthy press tour—red-hot topics for keen culture-vultures in the run up to Christmas—are slightly old news: Babygirl has been thoroughly ravished, digested, reviewed and psychoanalyzed by critics everywhere, and resultantly a chorus of voices primed a cacophony of conflicting expectations (liberating! brave! fresh! tired! cliché! smutty! dull! THE PERFORMANCE OF NICOLE’S CAREER!) I was eager to interrogate and settle. I’d read enough about the movie to anticipate a slightly intellectualized 50 Shades of Grey filtered through a modern, sex-positive female gaze. In this regard, the film delivers.
“I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius, the more you beat me, I will fawn on you: use me but as your spaniel,” cries love-sick Helena in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Forgive my mildly drug-addled brain for recalling this text—between severe bouts of giggling—and thinking ‘ok, so, same-same, but different’ upon encountering Kidman’s icy boss-bitch (woof) Romy Mathis, a powerful CEO who is so unhappy with her beleaguered conjugal sex life that she fakes *every single orgasm* with husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas) and self-pleasures to BDSM porn afterwards.
We are quickly given to understand that Romy—beautiful, successful, and comfortably past age 50—is the deeply depressed prisoner of sexual repression and malaise. Her obvious adoration for her family (laid on rather too thickly by the writers, who *really* need us to understand women can be simultaneously kinky and family-oriented) and work-place chops do not sufficiently off-set the deficit she feels.
Enter much-younger corporate intern Samuel, (Harris Dickinson) whose mysterious and increasing erotic appeal (situated squarely in classic dominance) ultimately overwhelms Romy, as the two engage in a very risky and protracted entanglement. Claims about Kidman giving the performance of her career are a somewhat doubtful—between Big Little Lies and A Family Affair, I’ve seen enough of her sighing deeply and speaking in breathy, hyper-feminine tones while gazing moodily toward the horizon. Kidman’s acting in this film is basically her classic haunted shtick, plus long, motel-entrenched orgasms.
Speaking of the big o—if I withhold praise for this film’s acting, I mustn’t do the same for its valor. Lauding Babygirl for boldness makes sense. It does not merely permit, but celebrates unreserved expressions of female sexual pleasure in an ostensibly middle-aged woman; the key takeaway for every feminist with eyes and ears.
After the big 4-0, female representation in tv and film is generally reduced to variations of ‘matriarch,’ ‘spinster,’ or ‘embittered housewife’; it has certainly not been the standard in Hollywood to explore (or even acknowledge) the sprawling erotic realities of women from whom the bloom of youth has departed. The film is self-aware enough to showcase Romy herself facing this pressure and subsequent insecurities—despite her high-powered position—and receiving Botox injections. In a moving, intimate nude scene, she is fragile and unable to accept Samuel’s assertion that she is beautiful. We can and ought to credit writer/director/producer Halina Reijn’s vision for liberated, integrated female sexuality defined by the mutual emergence of self-acceptance and at any/every age.
The film attends partially and imperfectly to the psychology of kink, which we experience vicariously in Romy’s need to be told exactly what to do and when to do it, to the tune of the affirmation “good girl.” This is delivered in low, husky tones by Samuel, whose intuitive understanding of challenging dogs ambiguously imparts an intuitive understanding of Romy in the bedroom. The importance of consent gets a cursory dialogue nod, as does the oft-stymying intersection of power dynamics and danger with human sexuality. A savvy (if reductionist) review I read recently was entitled ‘She’s His Boss At Work, He’s Her Boss In Bed.” I was hoping for a deeper, more profound dive into the mental landscapes of Babygirl, but only Romy’s gets serious attention. Samuel’s character verges on lapsing into a one-dimensional tool or supplement to churn up her inner life—even at the end of the movie, we know next to nothing about him.
For a dark erotic thriller, Babygirl delivers something like a fairytale ending. The explosive discovery of Romy’s trysts with Samuel ultimately serves to usher in a new age of sexual understanding and compatibility between Romy and Jacob, who are happily going at it (in a way that finally fulfills Romy’s needs) at the film’s close. The message is almost disappointingly simple—accept yourself and your desire to make rabid eye-contact whilst downing a very tall glass of milk ordered to the purpose on your behalf in three consecutive gulps..or something.
I jest, but Romy’s liberation is achieved (too) quickly and (too) decisively; her guilt at being caught red-handed and abusing her professional position along the way all subsumed in new-found erotic contentment. Babygirl asks good questions, but ventures slightly pre-packaged, inadequate answers on the difficult and ever-evolving topics of sexuality, aging-while-female, and the corrosive nature of power.
The most subversive thread in this film’s tapestry is Romy’s tacit refusal to grovel after an intentional act of enormous selfishness—her illicit liaison with Samuel—paired with the implication that she’s not a bad person—or a bad woman—despite this refusal. Male selfishness is so culturally ingrained and expected it’s become almost acceptable in society—unavoidable, a fact of life we must simply learn to negotiate while we shake our heads resignedly. But the insidious, unforgivable sin of female selfishness (a selfish act committed by a member of the sex universally expected to be demurring and sacrificial) is given a notably fresh turn in Babygirl’s deliberate avoidance of wholesale condemnation. Romy is neither Hester Prynned nor Anna Kareninaed—she retains her status, her relationships and even her composure. What she loses in struggle, conflict and grief is carefully regained in self-acceptance. That’s enough to get a ‘good girl’ from me, and it’s not just the gin martinis talking.
Basque rapper Zekan Askalari’s latest track ‘Erantzun’ is directed by Yaser Akbari, an Afghan asylum-seeker from Iran. It was produced by Leah Rustomjee while volunteering for ReFocus Media Labs an NGO on the Greek island of Lesvos that trains asylum seekers in filmmaking, photography and journalism skills.
‘Erantzun’, is a rap song in the ancient European language of Basque calling on ordinary people to wake up to the injustices and corruption happening around the world.
In the video, Yaser represents a state of being controlled by a dominant neoliberalism through warehouse and product imagery. As the song progresses, we witness the ‘products’ unboxing themselves to reveal individual identities. This is clearly a metaphor for the masks we assume in order to operate in today’s social structures.
Askalari has been Rapping since aged seventeen, in both Spanish and Basque. He has been involved in squat culture and anti-authoritarian movements in Barcelona, having moved there over ten years ago,
That was until he moved to the Greek island of Lesvos as a volunteer withNo Borders Kitchen a non-hierarchical, anti-capitalist and self-organized group of ‘cooking activists’ comprising locals, asylum-seekers and international volunteers. He now organises rap shows on Lesvos, ‘Rap Against Borders’ featuring a mix of rappers from Afghan, Greek and European backgrounds.
Video director Yaser Akbari is a twenty-year old asylum seeker from Afghanistan, who has been living on Lesvos for the past two years, waiting for the Greek authorities to approve his status, which thankfully has just occurred.
He joined ReFocus in 2019 as a student and has since gone on to produce work for BBC, Al Jazeera and National Geographic. He now works for the organisation as a teacher. This video was his first opportunity to produce work apart from the refugee crisis – which he was finding exhausting and boxed in by.
Whilst the number of refugees on the Lesvos has decreased significantly from 18,000 to 2,000 over the past year, with many having been moved inland or are now on their way to Germany, the inhumane conditions inside the camps persist.
Greece has employed Frontex officers, detention sites and undercover police officers to strengthen its pushback regime since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in order to create a hostile environment.
Organisations like No Borders Kitchen and ReFocus exist in Lesvos to allow rare moments like this to happen, which bring together people from different backgrounds to build connections and create together despite the challenges.
Making the video was a community effort; locations were provided by an NGO warehouse; the cast and crew that feature in ‘Erantzun’ were a mix of volunteers, asylum-seekers and local Greeks; and transport and tech support were provided by local NGO’s Maker Space and #LeaveNoONeBehind.
English translation
Sick of the daily lives
the voice: broken, the strength: renewed, we only have one chance left, you have generated our response. After so many scams, so many tricks, so much corrupDon, now it’s our turn, so many scoundrels, so many fascists, Ifinally took the pencil in disgust. Innovative poems against the system, because the losers are always the same. it is clear who shuffles the cards here, But stop that, things are going to change. It’s enough, the years go by and the difference is greater, the rich man laughing and we in chains, While the fucking rich go up the poor go down! Time to change your attitude it is a clear reality, not an opinion. After reflection, yes, action comes, That is why we are clear about it, the answer has begun. ANSWER to their lies, ANSWER to blows and insults ANSWER to the leaders ANSWER how? ANSWER like this! This is going forward; it cannot be stopped. Each of our actions has a purpose. We have afirm intention, listen: bring down your system, crush it, destroy it.
Ready for conflict, rest assured. We are not afraid, we are anxious. We learned from past struggles that we have to give our lives for our dreams, eh! It’stime to hit hard, let them taste the anger of the people. Your comfortable life isfine but after eating the full menu, it’stime to pay. Straight from the streets, different initiatives from each area, we have organized, there will be no ceasefire, win or die, there is no more. ANSWER their lies, RESPOND to blows and insults RESPOND to the leaders ANSWER how? RESPOND like this!
In a recent review, my colleague Ben Pantrey argues Richard Kearney’s Touch is itself out of touch with the ‘maddeningly Baroque … meme-ified soup of internet discourse.’ Given the Boston-based Irish philosopher is from an older generation, a relative lack of insight is perhaps unsurprising, but in dismissing the work in at times caustic terms, the reviewer perhaps missed its central thrust.
Touch provides a compelling narrative on an intimate connection between healing and touch, pointing to a dominant tendency in Western medicine – writ large during the Covid-19 pandemic – to disregard the role of the healer, in favour of what Kearney calls a ‘model of outmanoeuvring and overcoming illness.(p.68)’
That this view now appears risqué – in the face of coercive public health – demonstrates how the argument for the type of healing that Kearney points to is being lost.
The flag of the World Health Organization, with a rod of Asclepius.
Hippocratic v. Asklepion
Kearney identifies two paradigmatic schools of medicine originating in Ancient Greece, one emanating from Chiron who taught his disciple Asclepius ‘the art of healing through touch’; and another from Hippocrates, ‘followed the way of Zeus, Chiron’s brother, who dwelt on Mount Olympus and promoted a method of optocentric supervision. (p.66)’
Following a Hippocratic approach, the patient is viewed from a distance – objectified – before the prescribed remedy, or prophylactic, is applied to an undifferentiated ‘case.’
In contrast:
Chiron comes from the word kheir, meaning hand, or, more precisely, one skilled with the hands. The related term kheirourgos means surgeon. As healer, he accompanied the art of touch – often portrayed as laying on of hands and bodily massage – with medicinal plants from the earth, music, and sleep potions. (p.66)
Asklepion healing is a two-way process that includes: ‘tactile acts of bathing, ritual massage, and the ingestion of curative herbs. (p.68)’ This sounds similar to so-called ‘alternative’ medicinal practices – dismissed as ‘unscientific’ by some doctors – and also encompasses much of the fading role of the general practitioner, where a physical presence before each distinct patient is generally considered important.
This form of healing, however, is severely compromised by exhortations – backed up by unprecedented draconian laws – to ‘socially’ distance – which is surely an oxymoron.
Kearney’s work points to profound damage that occurs when physical contact is lost, heightening a pre-existing epidemic of loneliness, which a report in 2014 found to have even worse effects on our health than obesity. The psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist goes so far as to argue that all medicine should be viewed ‘as a branch of psychiatry, and psychiatry as a branch of philosophy.’[i]
Indeed, recognising a psychological origin to physical symptoms might explain our current impasse: transfixed by the challenge of a particular virus, seemingly to the exclusion of all else. This collective hysteria suggests widespread trauma, which may be the legacy of diminished physical contact in a digitally mediated age, accelerated by what Naomi Klein described as a ‘Screen New Deal,’ rolled out under cover of lockdown.
It begs the question: what happens to society when we shrink in fear from the flesh, blood and microbes of one another? ‘Touch’, Kearney says, ‘serves as the indispensable agency of intercorporality – and by moral extension, empathy. (p.47)’
The School of Athens by Raphael.
Aristotelian Touchstone
According to Kearney, Plato’s Academy held sight to be ‘the highest sense because it was deemed the most distant and mediated.’ In contrast, according to Kearney, Aristotle, ‘makes the startling claim that human perfection is the perfection of touch, (p.35)’ writing in Metaphysics (chapter 10, 105ib, 23-25):
The being to whom logos has been given as his share is a tactile being, endowed with the finest tact.
Kearney argues convincingly that in Western medicine the Aristotlean approach, drawing on Asklepion wisdom, has been drowned out by a Platonic, ‘heroic-Hippocratic model’, which ‘only tells half the story. (p.68-69)’
In support of this thesis, in his history of the origins of the scientific discipline from the late eighteenth century, Richard Holmes has drawn attention to a delusional optimism wherein there emerged, ‘the dazzling idea of the solitary scientific ‘genius’, thirsting and reckless for knowledge, for its own sake and perhaps at any cost.’ This was the idea of a ‘Eureka’ moment: ‘the intuitive inspired instant of invention or discovery, for which no amount of preparation or preliminary analysis can really compare.’[ii]
Arguably, blind faith in dazzling scientific genius distorted public health priorities in the era of COVID-19. Lockdowns were aimed at keeping the population ‘safe’ before the invention of a ‘miraculous’ vaccine. Many seemed to assume this would act as a panacea, allowing us to awaken from the nightmare of ongoing restrictions. But a cycle of anxiety endures with the arrival of each new variant, however mild the symptoms it produces, suggesting an underlying anxiety is itself the problem.
in pursuit of a single-minded, Hippocratic “model of outmanoeuvring and overcoming illness”, morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 was inadequately weighed against the health impacts of lockdowns. According to Ari R. Joffe, the response of Western nations threatens to make ‘and likely has already made, several Sustainable Development Goals for the most vulnerable among us in low-income countries out of reach.’ The same paper also argues the ‘destabilizing effects may lead to chaotic events (e.g., riots, wars, revolutions).’
A van set on fire during the riots in Rotterdam on 26 January 2021.
Merleau-Ponty
Another philosopher Kearney cites is Maurice Merleau-Ponty who ‘took the novel step of applying the phenomenology of touch to the question of healing. (p.49)’ In response to increasing dependence on ‘optocentric’ remote diagnostics, it is worth revisiting passages Kearney quotes.
Merleau-Ponty emphasises the importance of tactility in the treatment of psychiatric illness in particular:
In treating (certain illnesses) psychological medicine does not act on the patient by making him know the origin of his illness: sometimes a touch of the hand puts a stop to the spasms and restores to the patient his speech.
Moreover,
The patient does not accept the meaning of his disturbance as revealed to him without the personal relationship formed with the doctor, or without the confidence and friendship felt towards him, and the change of existence resulting from this friendship. Neither symptom nor cure is worked out at the level of objective or positing consciousness, but below that level.
He concludes with a revolutionary idea in the context of this pandemic, where the patient-doctor relationship is side-lined in favour of generalised prescriptions, addressing one particular disease:
What this implies is that human symptoms cannot be explained by either biochemistry or intellectual volition alone – though both have their role. Ultimate healing involves an existential conversion of one body-subject in tactful communion with another. (p.49)
Moreover, Kearney adds that ‘untimely withdrawal of touch may do worse psychic damage than outright hostility or anger. (p.102)’ He refers to the findings of the Austrian doctor René Spitz in 1945, concerning an orphanage, which prevented contact between children in order to reduce a risk of them being exposed to contagious diseases, while giving them excellent nutrition and medical care. Startling, thirty-seven percent of the infants died before reaching the age of two.
Kearney also draws attention to epigenetic research demonstrating ‘key alterations in our bodies are made not just by toxins and biochemical stimulants but by the way we resonate with our fellow beings. (p.104)’
Image: Daniele Idini (c)
Responding to Covid
Given Kearney completed the book just as the COVID-19 pandemic began, his observations are of a provisional nature.
Nonetheless he makes a far-reaching claim that ‘In the first half of 2020, the virus went viral. Homo sapiens became Homo cybernens. (p.136)’ He assumes, however, an upbeat tone that now seems misplaced, saying ‘what we lost on the roundabout we won the swings’, recalling, how friends had received ‘unexpected messages from old friends and old flames (the “ex-factor”) wishing to “reconnect” at a time when physical travel and tactile contact was suddenly suspended. (p.134)’
Almost two years into the pandemic another philosopher, Byung-Chul Han has a far less rosy assessment. Writing for The Nation he describes what he calls ‘The Tiredness Virus’ in the pandemic’s wake. A triumph of sight over touch has generated what Han describes as ‘Zoom narcissism’ such that a ‘digital mirror’ encourages ‘dysmorphia’ (an exaggerated concern with supposed flaws in one’s physical appearance).
‘Digital communication is a very one-sided, attenuated affair’ Han argues, ‘There is no gaze, no body. It lacks the physical presence of the other.’ Moreover, he fears this this form of communication will become the norm, recalling all that we have lost:
The rituals we have been missing out on during the pandemic also imply physical experience. They represent forms of physical communication that create community and therefore bring happiness. Most of all, they lead us away from our egos … A physical aspect is also inherent in community as such. Digitalization weakens community cohesion insofar as it has a disembodying effect. The virus alienates us from the body.
Prolonging Covid?
Could an enforced absence of touch be linked to outright pathology in the context of COVID-19?
In response, Professor Robert Dingwell criticised ‘this very strong message which has effectively terrorised the population into believing that this is a disease that is going to kill you.’
Is it possible that widespread conviction that a disease “is going to kill you” had unforeseen consequences in terms of adding to the burden of ‘Long Covid,’ or Covid ‘Long Haulers’ as it is referred to in the U.S.?
Long Covid is a condition fitting within the general category of a post-viral syndrome, or post-viral fatigue, which is ‘a sense of tiredness and weakness that lingers after a person has fought off a viral infection.’ which ‘can arise even after common infections, such as the flu.’ Notably, prior to the pandemic there were up to 150,000 who were already affected by ‘extreme and disabling exhaustion,’ with no apparent origin in the U.K.. Yet virtually no attention was given to this condition until the pandemic.
Moreover, in October, 2020 a leading advocates for sufferers, Professor Trish Greenhalgh clarified that Long Covid is only very rarely a long-term affliction: ‘The reviews we’ve done seem to suggest that whilst a tiny minority of people, perhaps one per cent of everyone who gets Covid-19, are still ill six months later, and whilst about a third of people aren’t better at three weeks, most people whose condition drags on are going to get better, slowly but steadily, between three weeks and three months.’
Ordinarily, one would expect public health officials to downplay such a condition, given broad acceptance that psychological stress – including a lack of touch or loneliness – is a factor in the subjective evolution or pathogenesis of most diseases. Instead, Long Covid has been widely highlighted in the media, often as a warning to young people, who might otherwise be insufficiently scared of a virus highly unlikely to kill a person under the age of fifty.
Frequent, graphic accounts, espeically via social media, may have had unintended consequences. Curiously, an informal survey of 450 people by Survivor Corps, a patient advocacy group for people with Long Covid, found that 171 said their condition improved after vaccination. That a vaccine would alleviate a post-viral syndrome is surely grounds for suspicion, hinting at a psychological origin to objective pain and suffering.
Adam Gaffney, an assistant professor in medicine at Harvard Medical School, has argued for a more critical appraisal of Long Covid. Having expressed scepticism around a condition characterised by symptoms such as ‘brain fog’, he recalls being contacted by a journalist who said: ‘I’m asking as much as a person as a journalist because I’m more terrified of this syndrome than I am of death.’
Gaffney acknowledges ‘myriad long-term effects, including physical and cognitive impairments, reduced lung function, mental health problems, and poorer quality of life’ from severe bouts of COVID-19, but cites a survey showing two-thirds of ‘long haulers’ had negative coronavirus antibody tests, and another, organised by self-identifying Long Covid patients indicating around two-thirds of those surveyed who had undergone blood testing reported negative results.
He asserted: ‘it’s highly probable that some or many long-haulers who were never diagnosed using PCR testing in the acute phase and who also have negative antibody tests are “true negatives.” In other words, for many this may be a disease with a psychological origin, which Gaffney attributes to ‘skyrocketing levels of social anguish and mental emotional distress,’ referencing a paper showing that about half of people with depression also had unexplained physical symptoms.
Getting Back in Touch
Recovery from the trauma of the pandemic should lead to a reappraisal of public health priorities. It is apparent by now that no “miracle” cure is available, decisively “outmanoeuvring and overcoming” COVID-19, and that lockdown measures, including pysch-ops instilling fear, have left deep wounds.
Works such as Kearney’s remind us of the importance of healing touch, inspired by Asclepius, which should be accorded equal importance to the Hippocratic inheritance. Now, with an ever-increasing burden of morbidity in society, particularly a veritable epidemic of mental ill-health, a paradigm shift is required.
However, Bessel Van Der Kolk describes in a recent work quoted by Kearney how mainstream medicine ‘is firmly committed to a better life through chemistry, and the fact that we can actually change our own physiology and inner equilibrium by means other than drugs, [that is] by such basic activities as breathing moving and touching … is rarely considered.’[iii]
This issue could become one of the most important political questions of our time, and may lead to political realignments in the wake of a pandemic that has changed our lives.
Featured Image: A member of the Peruvian Army with a police dog enforcing curfew on 31 March 2020.
[i] Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, Yale University Press, New Haven/
[ii] Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (London, 2008) p. xvii
[iii] Bessel Van Der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score, New York, Penguin, 2015, p.38.
It is often said the current Irish housing crisis is mainly the result of a lack of supply of new houses; a supply that slowed down and never really fully recovered following the burst of the property bubble in 2008.
Developers lament a lack of initiative in governments past and present; housing plans replace one another, at least in their facades. The latest example is the Fianna Fail Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien’s Housing for All replacing, or rather refining Rebuilding Ireland introduced under Fine Gael’s Eoghan Murphy – all while multiple cranes never really stopped crowning Dublin’s skyline.
The spin is that this lack of supply, in turn, generates scarcity, which translates into higher prices.
Thus far, the solution we have been served is to create a tax-friendly environment: a de-facto tax haven, to attract reliable (and well-resourced) institutional landlords and investment funds – commonly referred to as Vulture or Cuckoo Funds – to accelerate badly needed developments, besides keeping the Irish banking system afloat.
Apparently, such entities are best placed to pursue ambitious housing schemes, and the management and maintenance of as much of the national housing stock as possible. And supposedly, as in the Housing for All plan, it is the market that is best equipped to understand and deliver the population’s needs, down to every neighbourhood and community.
Unfortunately, however, the nature of this demand, might not be guided by the community’s needs, but the obligation of a certain profit margin for a financial instrument; held in a pension fund – perhaps owned by a kindly grandmother somewhere else in the world – while enriching the asset managers of these private equity juggernauts.
What actually gets built, and at what price, is increasingly under the control of entities that hardly take into account the repercussions for society at large. In some cases they simply up sticks to gnaw on bones elsewhere. The Cuckoos have been here for a long time, locking in the spread between ever increasing rents and the financial costs.
The influence of the banking and financial sector over the delivery of housing has become ever more evident. Thus, the quagmire of basic supply and demand arguments have little or no bearing on how a complex infrastructure such as housing is managed.
It is within the banking sector, and regulations set by the ECB and Irish Central Bank that a substantial proportion of the residential properties of this country are held, packaged and repackaged, and sold in bundles to foreign investment funds in a process called securitization.
For most people, despite the shocking revelations arising out the 2008-09 Crash, the inner workings of those dynamic sytems remain out of reach. We therefore find it necessary to look for guideance from someone who really understands the relationship between the current housing crisis, and the financial markets underpinning this.
Ben Hoey has worked in commercial and investment banking for the past thirty years. After leaving Ireland in the 1980s, he went on to become CFO of Merrill Lynch International:, CFO of Bank of Ireland Capital markets in the wake of the 2008-09 crisis, and managing director of Kennedy Wilson Europe until 2015. Then, as he likes to put it, he failed to retire.
He is now in the process of setting up his own Fintech business, aimed at creating a Rent to Buy structure.
It was while analysing a distressed home loans portfolio on behalf of the Not-for-Profit organisation called Right2Homes, that he awoke to the full scale of banking misconduct, and mis-selling of the mortgages in the first place.
Hoey contends that up to one-hundred-and=fifty-thousand mortgages may have been affected, including some currently in the Courts for repossession hearings, and others that have already been repossessed by banks and Vulture Funds.
He is now taking approximately one hundred test cases of misconduct and mis-selling of mortgages before the Financial Services Ombudsman: and that seems to represent just the tip of the iceberg.
Today, Irish interest rates remain, intentionally, the highest in the EU in order to increase bank profitability. This allows the Vulture Funds to purchase swathes of property and maximise their returns. Nowhere else in Europe offers such attractive rates, and hence Ireland is plagued by the funds, who see us as easy picking. Distressed mortgage holders are simply the low hanging fruit.
How can we explain why an entire generation is paying the highest mortgage rates in the Eurozone, or being forced to rent at at more than double the rate compared to ten years ago? Extreme commodification of residential assets lies at the heart of this.
Ben Hoey: It’s all about cash flow. Property, as an investment, is valued based on its ability to generate cash. Cash is king, and that’s why these Vultures, even the Cuckoo Funds, can access so much low cost leverage. No one has a hope against them. That’s what’s wrong with the world. Capital markets are so cheap now that they can buy anything. And if you think that the current government policies and Central Bank policies is putting free cash into the system, you need to recognise that free cash doesn’t go to you or I. Free cash flows to the banks to make sure they are solvent and healthy. And it’s the banks that make the fortune out of the free cash from quantitative easing.
Cassandra Voices: What would be the average rate that Vulture Funds will buy loans for? Is there an average or is it dependent on the amount of NPLs versus performing loans if it’s a mixed package, for instance?
Ben Hoey: No, it will never be mixed. Even when Nationwide Building Society was sold off, it was broken into different portfolios of loans depending on the ability of the debtor to pay. For simplicity, there was the complete deadwood, ‘haven’t heard from them in years‘; to the guy struggling; missing every couple of months; to the performing ones [the loans that were regularly being paid off]. So even within the Non Performing world, they split them into different categories and then they’re priced accordingly per portfolio.
In 2018/19, the average pricing for Irish bank’s non-performing residential home loans was circa 65 cents on the dollar. And that’s per portfolio. Nothing is ever priced per loan because it’s all priced on the cashflow of the portfolio. Cash flow primarily generates what price they’re prepared to pay for the portfolio in total. Then, once they work out that, they apportion the price back across the portfolio for tax and regulatory reasons. Other factors such as equity in the home, negative equity, etc. do play a role, but they don’t care much about the price per loan, as each loan position will be managed individually and the portfolio will be managed and funded in its entirety; the objective being to maximise the cash flow on every loan.
Cassandra Voices: The narrative supporting the presence of Vultures Fund in Ireland is that their investment is a necessary precondition for a stable banking market, and consequently construction industry. Why are we still seeing massive sell-offs of loan portfolios to Vulture Funds? Are the banks still in a sort of intensive care unit and in need of continuous injections of capital, as in the wake of the Crisis?
Ben Hoey: I don’t think so. The banks are generally a cash cow. But what happened in 2009 is that there was a liquidity crisis as international investors and depositors withdrew their cash from the Irish banking system. NAMA was formed to solve that liquidity crisis in the banks. Most of the developer loans, which were completely dead in the water (with no cash flow), which were extensive relative to the rest of the banking market, were transferred to NAMA and again cheap, very cheap bonds were issued to support the purchase. All of those bonds were issued to the banks that transferred their loans. They effectively swapped their bad developer loans for low cost NAMA bonds which greatly improved their liquidity and capital position, as they could use those bonds to generate cash or liquidity in the market. NAMA was vital to addressing the liquidity issue in Irish Banking at the time.
The interesting thing is that actually they didn’t start getting the residential loans off their books until about 2016, 2017 and 2018. So, there was clearly no rush as the liquidity crisis passed. The main reason that the banks in Ireland started to sell the residential loans was that the European Central Bank said: “guys, we are worried about the next crisis and you’re still living in the current crisis. So get your residential non-performing loans down below a certain percentage of your balance sheet.”
It was typically seven percent on residential NPLs dropping to around five percent. So the Irish banks, faced with severe imposed capital costs, were strongly encouraged to sell their portfolios to hit these ratios. The European Central Bank brought in horrendous capital hits like a 100% reduction of your capital if you didn’t get below that level. So, for example, if you had a €100 million loan portfolio and you had provided say €60 million against it, your exposure to future losses was only 40, the ECB was saying: “if you don’t get below that ratio, then an ever increasing amount will be deducted from your capital, greatly limiting your ability to undertake new business.”
We need a strong banking system which is ready for the next crisis. So after NAMA, there does not appear to have been a liquidity crisis for the Irish banks and, by their very nature, liquidity crises need to be solved immediately, as they are not like property and health service crises, which seemingly can go on for decades.
In 2008-2009 the Irish government stepped in and did the craziest thing ever, which was to guarantee €400 billion of customer deposits, because all the international deposits were leaving the Irish banking system literally by the second. And they actually started to realize that, oh, my God, we have a bank account too that needs to be funded – and, they know, it’s going to run out of cash soon. And that was the problem. Nothing to do with lack of profitability. It was lack of cash or liquidity as it is better known in the industry.
Cassandra Voices: So it was the withdrawal by investors, essentially a withdrawal of money by other banks or investors?
Ben Hoey: By all the deposit base. Ok, not so much the Irish people, because they had access to the deposit guarantee scheme already. There was some stories of customers moving their cash to Switzerland and they all lost their shirts on the exchange rate. But no, in the main, it was the big institutional money that would have always chased the higher yielding banks. So, the Irish banks would have been paying a greater rate because they were less safe, because of country risk, etc. So as soon as those institutions got scared, they just pulled the cash out and the short term money markets closed to the banks. All right. And then that’s when the ECB had to allow Irish banks to start printing bonds. So they printed money. They issued bonds. But it was to save the banking system. Yeah, I think that was the bottom. Remember, you can only have a liquidity crisis over a short, very short, period. The liquidity crisis is a week or two weeks where – I always have to remind people – the truth is hard to establish, as each bank fights for survival and many assumptions have to be made by chief executives. It’s a very, very awkward position to be in.
Cassandra Voices: Isn’t it the job of bankers to project a level of confidence that might exceed the reality of the picture?
Ben Hoey: The chief executive always has to take the optimistic view. Then, you know, you look at the Irish regulator at the time. He looked at that crisis. I don’t know where he got his information from. He came out and said that the Irish banks are well capitalised to weather the storm. So there was a man who wasn’t even a chief executive talking up the banking system in order to give it a chance of survival. I think a month later it was all over. But to have no liquidity is what kills a bank, not lack of profit, as the accounting rules are focused on the long-term profitability of the banking system.
Cassandra Voices: But what happened to Iceland in your view? Did they do the right thing when they more or less let their banks fail.
Ben Hoey: They had no choice. There was no EU there to support them. You know what partially got us into the problem was joining the EU: the euro and cheap money coming into an economy that was used to expensive money. People thought, “I can service a million euros worth of tracker mortgage for six bob a week.” And so when we went into the crisis, the ECB helped us out. We are part of the euro. We couldn’t be brought down. But Iceland had no backstop. They were on their own. It was a common belief that the guarantee by the Irish Government of €400 billion of bank liabilities was stupid, but the markets ignored it. Do I think NAMA was a good thing. Yes, I think it saved the liquidity of the Irish banks.
It’s after that period, after 2010, there was a tremendous opportunity for Irish banks to rebuild and innovate. And they didn’t. They just sank back in and took the cheap money and did the same thing day in and day out. And then they screwed their own customers, beat the shit out of them, treated everyone the same. Talked about moral hazard and how certain members of our community overborrowed and made a mess of it. I hope society never forgives them, but some people move on. So in answer to your previous question, after the liquidity crisis was solved they didn’t need to sell their NPLs, they wanted to sell them. They didn’t need the cash. In fact, the banks were overcapitalised in my view and wanted to repay capital.
Cassandra Voices: So if the banks, after 2010, were not in need of cash, but they were forced by the ECB to sell most of their distressed loans nonetheless, why didn’t they consider more ethical solutions that would have protected family homes for example? Instead of selling to the American, Canadian or other international funds?
Ben Hoey: Two reasons. Execution riskand moral hazard. The moral hazard in this case is: banks say we can’t give a discount to someone even though they might deserve it, or we may have lent them too much cash. We can’t restructure the loan fairly and write off some debt as their neighbours will want a debt write off too. You can argue all day as to whether that’s right or wrong, but that’s the moral hazard argument. So they have to sell to someone who would be seen to be not so fair. And there’s a lot of hassle and maybe a bit of shame. Moral hazard helps to embed that shame in people. So that’s the moral hazard,.
Then there’s execution risk. If you consider, at the end of the day, you have a bank official charged with selling several billion euros worth of loans. So you have a small number of ambitious well paid people who want to continue to be successful. So do they sell to Brian Reilly and his not-for-profit initiative, who’s never done anything like this before, who appears to have the funding, but it’s never been executed? Or do I just give it to Cerberus, who will walk in the door with the cheque immediately?
You know, the head of Lone Star, the richest Irishman in the world, John Grayken, visited some of the Irish banks selling assets, which is akin to Warren Buffett popping in for a chat; that’s powerful messaging to Irish bank officials who need a guaranteed sale. They are big talkers; you tell me the cheque you want and I’ll write it now. That’s execution risk. There’s no executive risks with the likes of Lone Star or Cerberus.
Cassandra Voices: What do they ultimately want out of all of this if, at the end of the day, they’re buying something that’s not performing? The cash flow really isn’t there. Do they want the properties? What do they want out of this?
Ben Hoey: The normal model was they would price the portfolio on the current cash flows and then, after the purchase, they would improve those cashflows or liquidate some loans, i.e. repossess. And, in certain cases, they do deals for guys to walk away. So, say the property was worth €100,000 for simplicity sake, and they gave the guy twenty grand to walk away. God knows what they bought the loan for, but they ask themselves: “is this the maximum cash we can get here?” So €100,000 sale price, minus the 20k that they gave them to walk away. That’s generated €80k today, and the today is very important. That would have fed into the model. So it’s all about maximizing the cash flow.
When they couldn’t maximize the cash flow because the Irish courts didn’t cooperate, they minimized the cash outgoing. So, originally when you buy a non-performing loan book that actually has a bit of cash flow, you don’t use all your own money to buy it. You go to a London bank and they give you what’s called a loan on loan. So they lend you money, and probably at one and a half percent, up to 60 percent loan to value, secured on the loans you bought. So that’s really cheap. But your own equity needs are say, nine percent unlevered.
After a while you think this is not going anywhere. I’ll just put the whole lot into securitization vehicle and then issue triple-A notes up to a high percentage, paying out 80 basis points. So, they drive down their funding costs, which again enhances the cash flow. Net cash flow.
Yeah. It’s all about cash. Show me the cash. The trouble is that they couldn’t do deals with Irish people because there was so few who had any cash and had no access to cash. And the Courts wouldn’t allow them to repossess.
Cassandra Voices: And what has all of this to do with the Housing Crisis? How does this affect supply and demand on the Irish housing market?
Ben Hoey: You said “there’s no supply.” So how do you know that? Supply of what to who? No one has defined how many affordable and social houses our society can afford. We don’t actually know what supply we’re trying to meet. And, you know, like all journeys, if you start in the wrong place, you have no hope of getting to where you want.
The pension fund, the Vultures, are just one mechanism of delivery. But who are we trying to supply to? The family paying a bit of tax, probably earning up to €80,000? They should be able to buy a home or rent it affordably. We’re not trying to supply housing to a German pension fund. They don’t need housing. They need profit.
Cassandra Voices: But a larger section of society in Ireland actually needs housing. And instead, what you are saying is that we are supplying Vulture and Cuckoo Fund profits, through the delivery of housing for their needs, and not the Irish people?
Ben Hoey: Can you imagine if Apple said they were going to build a new phone with special features and they were going to sell it to a German pension fund so they could sell it on to our citizens? That’s exactly what we’re doing here. We’re saying we’re building these houses for German and U.S. pension funds because they’re the only ones that can afford them. We put a profiteer in the middle – a middle man. And that’s what happens when you commodify an infrastructure, a key infrastructure like housing.
Cassandra Voices: Is this by design where we are now in terms of housing?
Ben Hoey: This is inevitable when you make something a tradable commodity. You’ve turned homes into an investment class. There’s no rules anymore. The cheapest money will get the deal. And that’s the fundamental issue.
What would happen if the Vultures took the airport over and were charging everyone €300 a head to get through? It wouldn’t happen because it’s so obviously wrong. But so is just about everything obviously wrong with the family home market. And you can see the effects. You go to Dublin, North Docks and South Docks; There are thousands of beautiful apartments, worth €600,000 to a million sitting empty because the German and U.S. pension funds want that type of housing, as they were told there’s loads of wealthy young people living in the city. How’s that worked out? Again, their money is so cheap that they can leave those apartments empty, and wait for rents to recover.
There’s no crisis for them, even though their flats are empty. We’ve actually allowed a particular type of Vulture investor to dictate the supply of family homes to the Irish market.
Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, we started building stuff all over the country where it wasn’t needed. We’ve learned from our mistakes, but we’re building the wrong sort of property in the right place: and this kills me as a capitalist to say it but… stop treating family homes as a commodity that can be traded. It will make the cost of labour very expensive and the country very unproductive.
Cassandra Voices: Would it be possible to gradually stop treating the residential property market as a tradable commodity?
Ben Hoey: No, I think you have to go back to basics and look at the complete supply chain: who ultimately is the rightful owner? Is it the individual, the government, or is it a commercial operation? And then you’ve got to put the right structure in place. And the funding naturally comes. Everyone looks out to different models such as the Austrian model etc. And they do work, but you can’t just pick and choose bits of them. You’ve got to look at the whole structure, holistically.
Cassandra Voices: Ultimately it comes down to a vision of the society that we want to live in. And in order to define this we need a political environment that is willing to build an economic system that takes into account the needs of the population at large, and as you said is willing to define, in the first place, what those needs actually are. In the case of the Irish housing markets, the problem doesn’t seem to to be about access to financial resources, but again, who has access to it.
Ben Hoey: When I was listening to you there, I was thinking about how we got rid of the British landlords in the past, who took the land with the backing of military power. And we’ve replaced them with, private equity, the Vultures who have employed not military power, but their cheap money. If only you knew the pain they go through before they decide to buy or to build. If you watch that pain, that risk mitigation, you realize how naive we are. The governments says build, build, build. But the clever money agonizes before it decides what to do. The Vultures know exactly what they want. But we don’t. So we end up being picked off.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) was founded by the Reverend Dr. Ian Paisley in 1971. Paisley was an enigmatic figure in Northern Irish politics, offering a heady mixture of fundamentalist Christian values, Unionist rhetoric, and a cult of personality, culminating in a power sharing agreement with his greatest foes.
Paisley was a maverick, non-establishment figure who appealed to biblical scripture and a Unionist siege mentality. His rallying cries – some would say war cries – were: ‘For God and Ulster’ and ‘No Surrender’.
By ‘No Surrender’, he meant no surrender to ‘Papish’ Catholicism, and no dilution of the British identity which Ulster Protestants so obstinately cherish, and of course no diminution in British sovereignty over Northern Ireland. A more accurate description of this ‘No Surrender’ mantra could perhaps be no compromise.
This meant no compromise with Irish nationalism, with Irish Republicanism, with the Catholic Church, the Irish Republican Army, the Irish government or anyone holding an Irish identity in Northern Ireland.
Paisley also represented a branch of the global fundamentalist Christian Protestant Right, and its political voice became the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). He would lead that party for thirty-five years. Never elected, he was nonetheless the supreme leader.
Ultimately, however, he came in from the cold to lead the Northern Ireland Assembly as First Minister. The man who cried ‘No Surrender to the IRA’, eventually joined a power-sharing executive with Sinn Fein, the political faction associated with the IRA, which became the largest Nationalist party.
Towards the end of his political career, Paisley was unceremoniously pushed aside, having lost the confidence of the party he had established. His son Ian Paisley junior seemingly still harbours a grievance about what he sees as a betrayal of his father, and his legacy.
After Paisley senior’s resignation in 2008, the DUP leadership baton was passed on to Peter Robinson, Paisley’s long time protege; then Arlene Foster in 2016, and most recently to Edwin Poots before Jeffrey Donaldson assumed the mantle just three weeks later. Arlene Foster’s demise came about as a direct result of Britain’s exit from the European Union. Brexit had been endorsed by the DUP through its Westminister MPs, but ultimately their interests were ignored.
Brexit has resulted in the Northern Ireland Protocol, which was agreed between the British Government and the European Union in order to preserve the Good Friday Agreement. The Northern Ireland Protocol creates a custom’s border between Northern Ireland and Britain. Thus, Northern Ireland remains within the European Common Market, creating a de facto border between Britain and Northern Ireland.
Sections of Unionism, Loyalism, and the DUP view this border as a dilution of their Britishness. A DUP party fed on a diet of No Surrender of their British identity at any price is again circling the wagons. When Foster was seen as incapable of removing the Northern Ireland Protocol she was dismissed as weak and a sell-out.
Ian Paisley junior is a DUP M.P. in Westminster who continues to represent his father’s old constituency of Antrim North. He seems to have been a driving force behind the coup that ousted Foster as leader.
In a throwback to the leadership of Paisley senior, in its first democratic leadership election the party elected another Christian fundamentalist in Edwin Poots, by the narrowest of margins.
Having been anointed by the ‘No Surrender’ brigade of the DUP Edwin Poots was chosen to resist any ‘surrender’ to the British government, and to continue the struggle over the Northern Ireland Protocol. Like King Canute, he stood against an unstoppable tide of forces beyond his control.
In order for him to nominate a new Joint First Minister to the Northern Ireland Assembly after Foster’s resignation, he needed to have the agreement of Sinn Fein, the other party in government. Sinn Fein price for jointly nominating leaders and preventing the structures of government from collapsing, was the implementation of the Irish Language Act – an Act, which had been previously agreed to by the party, but never implemented.
Poots, and Loyalists aligned to the party, would have no truck with the advancement of the indigenous language. They want no interaction with anything Irish. A settler-colonial identity refuses to contemplate the advancement of indigenous rights. But Poots also wanted to have his man elected as First Minister.
In order to find a way of working around to the Irish Language Act Poots and his Assembly team leader came up with a plan to allow the British parliament to legislate for the Act. Thus, Poots and his designate Paul Girvan signed an agreement with Sinn Fein and the British government, handing Westminster the power and a mandate to approve the Irish Language Act, in some form at least.
Poots and Girvan probably thought this would suffice to appease its base of voters, as the legislation would be the responsibility of the British government, rather than the Northern Executive including the DUP.
Instead, it created a mass revolt in the party, and those who lost the party leadership election to Poots joined with his erstwhile fundamentalist supporters to force him out. Once again, the No Surrender, No Compromise brigade within the party had triumphed.
Arlene Foster couldn’t renegotiate the Northern Ireland Protocol, a Loyalist and Unionist red line, and had to go. Seemingly even Poots had also sold out Unionism by permitting an Irish Language Act, which just goes to show how uncompromising the party has become.
By agreeing to the Irish Languagte Act and nominating Paul Girvan as First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly without his party’s approval Poots had signed his political death sentence.
In a year that sees the centenary of the establishment of Northern Ireland by Britain – when the island of Ireland was partitioned in 1921 – Unionism appears to be in complete disarray.
With the DUP fragmenting, we may also be witnessing the enduring wrath of a scorned political legacy. Those who felt the party had betrayed Paisley senior’s message of ‘No Surrender and No Compromise briefly recaptured the party leadership, seemingly only to surrender it again with Donaldson’s election.
Ian Paisley junior and those around him may be about to destroy the party his father created. Hell hath no greater fury than a political family scorned.
