So we see the back of Cullen as a government minister
Sunday, March 07, 2010 Edited by Pat Leahy It appears that the long and distinguished ministerial career of Martin ‘the Dynamo’ Cullen is drawing to a close at last. After several scrapes - involving matters such as electronic voting and dodging sundry reshuffle bullets - Cullen’s continued presence in cabinet earned him the reputation among his colleagues as the Great Survivor, the Man They Couldn’t Hang.
In fact, Cullen was more able and intelligent than the crude caricatures allowed for, even if his attachment to e-voting would have led to his resignation in most places.
In the wake of the Monica Leech controversy, Bertie the Merciful decided that he couldn’t have a cabinet minister run out of Dodge by the accursed meeja, sections of which pursued Cullen with a feral bloodlust. So he sent him to the Department of Transport with the immortal words:
‘‘You’re getting fucking transport and don’t fuck me up with the unions. Good luck!”
* Farewell to Michael Foot, the 96-year-old former leader of the British Labour Party who died last week.
Foot was a great man who got many things wrong. His 1983 election mani festo, dubbed ‘‘the longest suicide note in history’’, handed the rest of the 1980s to Margaret Thatcher and gave the Labour Party a reputation for unelectability which it did not shake off until Tony Blair led it to victory a decade and a half later.
Among the bits that made so many natural supporters of the Labour Party decide he was unelectable was his attachment to unilateral nuclear disarmament.
Had Foot succeeded, would the Soviet Union have fallen? Who knows. But next time you go for a coffee or hire a plumber or pay the babysitter, ask our new friends from central and Eastern Europe what they think.
* So José Manuel and the lads at the European Commission have another ten-year economic policy. Excellent news.
The last one, as you’ll no doubt recall, was a thundering success. The Lisbon Strategy, agreed by EU leaders in the year 2000, has achieved all its targets, transforming the EU into the world’s most competitive economy by, er, 2010.
Oh, and full employment has been achieved, while decoupling economic growth from the use of natural resources. Goodwork, fellas.
Oh, even better news: the Spanish are in charge of it. They’re having quite the time of it. Unemployment at 20 per cent. We’re in good hands. &Quote of the week from David Broder, political commentator for the Washington Post:
‘‘From too many years of covering politics, I have come to believe as Axiom One that the absolute worst advice politicians ever receive comes from journalists who fancy themselves great campaign strategists.” Dunno what he means by that, really.
* The report of the innovation taskforce will be out next week, so expect heavy incoming guff about the smart economy and suchlike.
The group features most of the country’s heavyweights, including Iona Technologies founder Chris Horn.
No doubt all will be sweetness and light at the launch, but Horn and some of the others on the taskforce are not messers and it might be worth looking at what they have to say. Have a look at the following entry from Horn’s blog, about one meeting of the board.
‘‘As a footnote, I personally was slightly disturbed by the exodus of some of the task force members who were civil servants and/or agency staff from the meeting from about 4pm onwards (the scheduled time it was due to close), in many cases without apology or explanation to the rest of us. ‘‘By 4.45pm,we were only left with Minister Lenihan, and the civil servants of the Department of the Taoiseach and the Department of Finance.
‘‘No doubt the others had absolutely critical meetings to attend of extreme national importance, or were rushing to catch public transport to their decentralised offices outside of Dublin.
‘‘Nevertheless, many of us in the task force also have our own day jobs, our own families and social obligations, and have been putting in considerable work pro bono. I was disappointed.”
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