Post by earl on May 13, 2008 14:52:52 GMT
Breaking down the border is in the North’s own interest
The North needs to examine just what it has to offer its potential foreign investors.
The North has never seen anything like it: some 20 private jets parked at the airports, the cavalcades of yellow corporate coaches ferrying guests between Stormont and the five-star hotels, and finally, on the last night, the sumptuous banquet at Hillsborough.
The Yanks were in town and one Belfast wag compared it to some surreal re-run from World War II when the American troops first arrived in the North, flashing dollar bills and ladies’ nylon stockings at the local population.
The corporate guestlist was a who’s who in anybody’s language with, among others, senior executives from American Express, Accenture, Lehman, Morgan Stanley, Hewlett-Packard and IBM. There was even an announcement that the US global business and financial news provider Bloomberg had opened a bureau in Belfast.
It was the fifth conference since the IRA ceasefire in 1994 that has tried to convince Americans to invest in the North, and there was political muscle everywhere too, with both Gordon Brown and Brian Cowen present, as well as Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness.
But the question is, of course, will it amount to anything? It’s one thing to bring corporate America on a jolly to Belfast; it’s something else to convince them to invest. Nor could the timing be more difficult for the Americans present, given that the US itself is in recession. No wonder, then, that many of the senior executives who were in Belfast didn’t want any publicity.
Beneath this - after all the good wishes and the self-congratulations about the now-peaceful North - lies one crucial question. What does the place have to offer overseas investors that places in Britain don’t? The answer, in fact, is very little. Compared to what the South offers and how it conducts its international business, there is no comparison.
It was not surprising that time and again at the conference, the question of harmonising the corporation tax rates North and South - currently 28 per cent compared to 12.5 per cent - was raised with Gordon Brown. Each time the answer was no. Even a passionate pleading at the conference from Tony O’Reilly that, after 35 years of the troubles, the North deserved special treatment, failed to move Brown on the tax issue.
As the conference ended and the private jets flew away, perhaps a new political and economic reality was beginning to impinge on the North’s traditional unionist perceptions. The North desperately needs work and investment in a society where almost half the workforce is dependent on the public wage-packet, but where will it come from?
Is it not the case that Brown’s refusal to see the North as any different from any other region - or his refusal to recognise that it might have some claim on a special status - must raise new questions about the traditional unionist presumption and assertion that maintaining the link with Britain was central to the North’s economic survival.
Ironically, is it now - three generations on - that the partitionist economic argument itself begins to fall apart. The economic circumstances that exist in 2008 are diametrically different from what existed in the 1920s, and the economic hinterland in which the six counties now finds itself is utterly changed. The island of Ireland now finds itself geographically and economically placed between the European Union and the US; maximising this is the key to its economic progression.
The contrast between how the two parts of Ireland have set about creating employment and wealth in recent years could not be more graphic. The South, by exercising its political sovereignty, has been able to create economic opportunities unique to its political and social circumstances - it has devised appropriate tax rates, worked EU membership for its own benefit in an unrivalled fashion and it has utilised the global Irish diaspora, especially in the US.
By contrast, the North has seen years of indifferent direct rule from Westminster, leaving it lagging most of Britain in terms of employment and wealth creation. It has continued to be the poor relation, far from any access to the real centres of political or economic power. In fact, had lobbying not occurred on the back of the Dublin government’s reach in Whitehall and Washington, the North’s politicians would still be out in the cold.
(For example, not so long ago there was enormous unionist opposition to St Patrick’s Day being a national holiday in the North - now they are to be found trampling over each other to get on the plane to Washington DC every March 17.)
Surely the most important realisation that the peace process must bring - as the smoke slowly clears - is that the island of Ireland is an economic and political unit. The economic and social requirements in, say, Monaghan and Armagh are so historically and culturally interlinked, that the idea that they belong to different political jurisdictions and different currency areas makes less and less sense.
In Belfast this week at the investment conference, and even earlier in the week down on the banks of the River Boyne, everyone was doing their best to lead unionism gently but firmly into the 21st century.
Unionists seem to have at last come to recognise that Dublin has a role to play in the North’s affairs and that it is actually to their benefit. But if they want to enjoy real political and economic independence in order to create a new and vibrant post-war society - like, for example, having the freedom to set their own corporation tax - isn’t it time they took a closer and critical look at some of their more traditional political assumptions. Like, what’s the economic benefit of the British link now, stupid?
Of course, the big subvention from the treasury continues to pick up the bills in the six counties, but as society south of the border showed over the last decade with the Celtic tiger, we are as good as anyone in the world at making money. And if money were the only problem, then that too can be sorted.
The North needs to examine just what it has to offer its potential foreign investors.
The North has never seen anything like it: some 20 private jets parked at the airports, the cavalcades of yellow corporate coaches ferrying guests between Stormont and the five-star hotels, and finally, on the last night, the sumptuous banquet at Hillsborough.
The Yanks were in town and one Belfast wag compared it to some surreal re-run from World War II when the American troops first arrived in the North, flashing dollar bills and ladies’ nylon stockings at the local population.
The corporate guestlist was a who’s who in anybody’s language with, among others, senior executives from American Express, Accenture, Lehman, Morgan Stanley, Hewlett-Packard and IBM. There was even an announcement that the US global business and financial news provider Bloomberg had opened a bureau in Belfast.
It was the fifth conference since the IRA ceasefire in 1994 that has tried to convince Americans to invest in the North, and there was political muscle everywhere too, with both Gordon Brown and Brian Cowen present, as well as Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness.
But the question is, of course, will it amount to anything? It’s one thing to bring corporate America on a jolly to Belfast; it’s something else to convince them to invest. Nor could the timing be more difficult for the Americans present, given that the US itself is in recession. No wonder, then, that many of the senior executives who were in Belfast didn’t want any publicity.
Beneath this - after all the good wishes and the self-congratulations about the now-peaceful North - lies one crucial question. What does the place have to offer overseas investors that places in Britain don’t? The answer, in fact, is very little. Compared to what the South offers and how it conducts its international business, there is no comparison.
It was not surprising that time and again at the conference, the question of harmonising the corporation tax rates North and South - currently 28 per cent compared to 12.5 per cent - was raised with Gordon Brown. Each time the answer was no. Even a passionate pleading at the conference from Tony O’Reilly that, after 35 years of the troubles, the North deserved special treatment, failed to move Brown on the tax issue.
As the conference ended and the private jets flew away, perhaps a new political and economic reality was beginning to impinge on the North’s traditional unionist perceptions. The North desperately needs work and investment in a society where almost half the workforce is dependent on the public wage-packet, but where will it come from?
Is it not the case that Brown’s refusal to see the North as any different from any other region - or his refusal to recognise that it might have some claim on a special status - must raise new questions about the traditional unionist presumption and assertion that maintaining the link with Britain was central to the North’s economic survival.
Ironically, is it now - three generations on - that the partitionist economic argument itself begins to fall apart. The economic circumstances that exist in 2008 are diametrically different from what existed in the 1920s, and the economic hinterland in which the six counties now finds itself is utterly changed. The island of Ireland now finds itself geographically and economically placed between the European Union and the US; maximising this is the key to its economic progression.
The contrast between how the two parts of Ireland have set about creating employment and wealth in recent years could not be more graphic. The South, by exercising its political sovereignty, has been able to create economic opportunities unique to its political and social circumstances - it has devised appropriate tax rates, worked EU membership for its own benefit in an unrivalled fashion and it has utilised the global Irish diaspora, especially in the US.
By contrast, the North has seen years of indifferent direct rule from Westminster, leaving it lagging most of Britain in terms of employment and wealth creation. It has continued to be the poor relation, far from any access to the real centres of political or economic power. In fact, had lobbying not occurred on the back of the Dublin government’s reach in Whitehall and Washington, the North’s politicians would still be out in the cold.
(For example, not so long ago there was enormous unionist opposition to St Patrick’s Day being a national holiday in the North - now they are to be found trampling over each other to get on the plane to Washington DC every March 17.)
Surely the most important realisation that the peace process must bring - as the smoke slowly clears - is that the island of Ireland is an economic and political unit. The economic and social requirements in, say, Monaghan and Armagh are so historically and culturally interlinked, that the idea that they belong to different political jurisdictions and different currency areas makes less and less sense.
In Belfast this week at the investment conference, and even earlier in the week down on the banks of the River Boyne, everyone was doing their best to lead unionism gently but firmly into the 21st century.
Unionists seem to have at last come to recognise that Dublin has a role to play in the North’s affairs and that it is actually to their benefit. But if they want to enjoy real political and economic independence in order to create a new and vibrant post-war society - like, for example, having the freedom to set their own corporation tax - isn’t it time they took a closer and critical look at some of their more traditional political assumptions. Like, what’s the economic benefit of the British link now, stupid?
Of course, the big subvention from the treasury continues to pick up the bills in the six counties, but as society south of the border showed over the last decade with the Celtic tiger, we are as good as anyone in the world at making money. And if money were the only problem, then that too can be sorted.
I think in my case you will already know the answer. Unionism? hmmmmmmmmm I'm a unionist, but I don't think like the unionist polititions, they are the ugly face of unionism. I am almost certain that the vast majority of unionists don't think like them. I don't think the old should always be torn down to make way for the new. I agree with prince Charles, I believe what has happened for instance in Belfast, where everything has been torn down to be rebuilt with what he called boils on the landscape, was wrong. We cater for the yuppies in waterfront apartments costing about a million quid a time. And office blocks that are monstrosities for companies who produce nothing but waste paper by the truckload. We have become a service economy, somewhere sometime that bubble will burst. We need to attract new industries as opposed to what we are attracting which basically is McDonalds on a mamoth scale. To do that we need to reduce corperate rates of tax, and to make land available to build new factories that actually produce something. We need to provide sustainable, reasonably paid jobs for the masses. Another old fashioned idea, but it is my honest belife that here and other large cities around the world the bubble is going to burst. And only those places where there is a strong manufacturing base will be able to ride the storm. Sooner or later the service industries will have no one to service. If anyone is seeking a career here can I suggest if they want to earn real money, that they start by throwing away the suit along with the idea that to get your hands dirty is somehow revolting. Plumbers and general workers are commanding wages beyond the suited shit heads who commute into the city center every day to service an ever dwindling serviceable population. Plumbers, electricians etc etc are commanding wages much in excess of these people, because of a deep shortage of their ilk.