Like all nursery rhymes, the origins of ‘Old Mother Hubbard’ are more complicated that they seem at first. When I was young, the rhyme was repeated to reinforce the value of savings. The moral of the story was that if you don’t put away something in the cupboard when times are good, you’ll have nothing to fall back on in bad times.
For years, it was thought that the “bone” in the rhyme referred to money, the Old Mother Hubbard was shorthand for all of us who forget to save in times of plenty, and the dog referred to anyone close-by who needed something to tide them over.
In fact, the rhyme may have a more complicated, political meaning, referring to the demise of Cardinal Wolsey and Catholicism in England. Wolsey was Henry the VIII’s trusted adviser and head of the Catholic Church. When he couldn’t deliver the Vatican’s blessing (the cupboard) of divorce (the bone), poor old doggie (Henry VIII) got nothing from the church. So the King set up his own church and the rest is history.
Whatever the origin, let’s go back to the idea that Old Mother Hubbard is someone who needs cash and goes to find whether she has put something aside for the bad times.
Now think of Brian Cowen as Mother Hubbard and consider the next stage of the Irish recession.
In the next year or two, Ireland will have to go to the cupboard to see whether we can sell assets for cash. That’s what happens when you are broke and can’t pay your bills. It is already happening in the real world. Have you noticed the mushrooming in the “cash for gold” business in recent months? These gold-buying outfits are now becoming commonplace on our streets. It has been like that for over two years now in Belfast, but it is only beginning to catch on here. I spent a lot of time recently in Belfast and was amazed to see the amount of shops — in reasonably well-heeled areas — advertising “your gold for cash”.
Whether North or South, the message is the same. People need cash and are selling their assets to get lolly. Like Old Mother Hubbard, we now have to go to the cupboard. Countries have to do the same and — strange as it may sound now, because it has not been talked about for years — Ireland will have to sell some of the family silver to stay afloat over the coming years. Privatisation is back on the cards.
This should not come as such as shock because if you look at any country which has experienced a debt crisis following a period of economic mismanagement, privatisation is a normal result. The chaotic Labour government in the UK of the late 1970s, which had to go cap-in-hand to the IMF, was followed by the privatisation agenda of Margaret Thatcher. Likewise, the humiliated Carter administration, which allowed American government spending to get out of control, was followed by Reagan’s home-spun conservatism supported by his economic catechism of “sell everything” (to your mates). You could even see the end of the Soviet Union being down to state and regime bankruptcy, which led directly to the privatisation of the Russian oligarchs. All around the world, the government that bankrupts the nation — this one and the last one in our case — is followed by one that must sell assets to balance the books.
For those of the right-wing persuasion this is a godsend, the “natural” opportunity that comes from crisis. For those of the left-wing view this is the incarnation of Naomi Klein’s “shock doctrine” where a crisis is engineered to force through policies which move ownership from the people to private shareholders.
Whichever way you look at it, it is likely to happen because we have no money to fill the potholes or to re-line our leaking reservoirs. But what if, like Old Mother Hubbard, Cowen goes to the cupboard and finds that while the cupboard is not quite empty, what’s left doesn’t amount to all that much.
What’s in the cupboard? Well, did you know we have a semi-state company for seaweed? Or do you remember that we have a separate commercial semi-state body for greyhounds? Or horses? As well as RTE, TG4 and, if we are in the flogging game, the port of New Ross, or Dun Laoghaire Harbour, Dublin Port and the ports of Cork, Galway, Drogheda and Waterford. We could also flog the National Lottery and Radio na Gaeltachta. What do you make of the cupboard so far?
It’s unfair to judge yet because the really big semi-states include CIE. This is Bus Eireann, Irish Rail and Dublin Bus together. The total revenue is €789m. Unfortunately, the total cost of operation was €1.18bn in 2008. The company also has a net pension liability of €560m. Maybe it’s not worth so much, on the market.
Then we have An Post. It made a profit in 2008 of €31m. Although it has a pension liability of €582.3m due to the financial downturn, which means the company has a shareholder’s liability of €212m. It is basically insolvent.
Oh my, oh my, the cupboard looks bare. What else is in there?
Bord Gais is an interesting one because it has been spending lots on wind farms. This is one that might be worth selling. It has good cash and not unreasonable debt in relation to its assets, and has 900 staff.
Bord na Mona has a profit of €19m on a turnover of €400m, which is hardly an O’Leary-esque return. But with a decent enough balance sheet we might get something for it.
ESB made a profit of €273m on turnover of €3.5bn last year; its net debt of €2bn seems high but if you look closer it has a €2.6bn pension deficit — of pensions it has promised to staff who have yet to retire.
Taken together, it seems that although this Government or the next one might want to sell its assets, there is not that much of significant value in Irish semi-states. That doesn’t mean they won’t be sold. Like the hundreds now selling their gold jewellery for cash, the forced seller never gets a bargain.
Yet again, Irish taxpayers will be shafted by our politicians. Old Mother Hubbard Cowen will go to the cupboard at the worst possible time and sell assets for the worst possible price. Maybe, like Cardinal Wolsey, this signals not merely a bad economic deal but the end of an era.
With all the free rooms in empty hotels now is the time to open up gambling and let Paddy Power or Dermot Desmond pay $1bn for the rights to run our own Las Vegas.
The rights for gambling must be worth far more than the horses and greyhounds put together.
Cowen could put the semi states up on Ebay !
On a more serious note what happens next? They say that every society is only three meals away from revolution. Deprive a culture of food for three meals, and you’ll have an anarchy. Wonder how long till we get to this point if the cupboard is bare?
There’s also Coillte David who, as the largest landowner in the country have, along with Bord na Mona, the greatest site potential for industrial wind-farms. Plus crops in Coillte’s case. Be it trees or otherwise, depending on underlying soil quality. We all know that over the next 10-20 years etc, agricultural land prices will improve (on a world scale, obviously Irish farmland prices were being squeezed by one-off site developments plus a shortage on the supply side. Secondly, our drinking water is worth a bomb, as embodied freshwater will enable our exports to be more fruitful and more competitive on… Read more »
But then I suppose, looking at things over 10-20 years, is hardly the “going forward” that Mother Hubbard Cowen has in mind; more like as Tim Says “Confidence, confidence, confidence!!” with the zeal of a bowsie on a Sunday night promising he’ll pay you back…..
Humpty DUMPTY : Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall Humpty Dumpty had a great fall All the Kings Horses and all the Kings men Could not put Humpty Dumpty together again We need to ask ourselves : Why was Humpty sitting on the wall? What did he see ? Why did he fall? What were the kings horses and the kings men paid for to do when they could not fix Humpty? Why was Humpty so fat? Was Humpty drunk and burping ? Why did he not wear protection before he fell ? Where did he hide the rules and… Read more »
Mother Hubbard – if the sum of the parts dont add up to the value of the whole we have ‘ fallacy of complacency’ and that leads us on to what happened in Japan over twenty years ago except to say ours will be worse because we have no idiginous industries that export value – added products/ services.
Humpty Dumpty :
Who was behind the wall ?
Who built the wall?
Will the wall fall too and why?
Oh why Humpty do you make us all angry ?
Can you smile Humpty ?
Is there a river behind the wall or a flood?
Mother Byer – if she were around she would ban all food imports that cannot be substituted by home grown foods on the basis of inability to pay in the future.That would be reasonable to the sellers otherwise they should face bad debts in the event of national inability to pay.This policy would enable farmers to increase their incomes and repair their roads.
Let’s not forget we have 800 quangos that are also of no worth to the people. Stick the quangos on Ebay and sell them to the highest bidder. And also I would like to know what the state got for the 400 Million Euro plus that Johnny Cash threw at the Farce Association of Ireland when the ESRI were holding off from telling us that a recession was coming. Anyone prepared to buy Anglo Irish Bank, or INBS. Or the rights to Ahern’s “work of art”. Let’s start by selling the rubbish. Coillte is a national asset, and if it… Read more »
W are a small country with widely dispersed and mostly unprofitable services. Like happened with Telecom, potential purchasers of public assets will cherry pick the profitable bits and leave the culchies to hang in the wind.
Asset striping, privitisation etc is the neoliberal way, in Bolivia the people rose up and kicked out Bechtel and some French operators who were trying to privitise the water supplies, it could come to that here but it would take time. As for one poster saying, a country is only three meals away from revolt, well again we are venturing into the area of Food Security/Insecurity – something developing countries have been experiencing with a lot more frequency in recent decades – Hait being yet another example of same. Time will tell, but it is shaping up to a vicious… Read more »
Deco – who does Humpty Dumpty look like ?
Thinking it through: privatisation by Chris Harman Privatisation has been one of the great capitalist crazes of the last decade. From Moscow to Milan, from London to Lima, from Bombay to Budapest, it has been the device which is meant to give new zest to stagnant economies. That is why a trend which started with the most tentative steps by Thatcher in the early 1980s is now accepted as the only way forward by governments throughout the world. Yet the question, ‘What’s in it for the system?’ is not as easy to answer as it might seem. After all, in… Read more »
Apologies to you all as I am back posting sooner than I had intended . Australian Government is not taxing its banker bonuses – because it sees the US and UK tax on bonuses as an opportunity for the Australian banking industry. Which brings up 2 points 1) Were the Irish Banks right to have tried to punch above their weight over the last 20 years (their execution being at fault) and 2) should Irish banks (and country in general) be taking advantage of the US and UK tax on bonuses. I recently posted that of 8 financial centres surveyed… Read more »
Well, it is good to know that we have more empty houses than realised by our esteemed Mother Hubbards.. With a total of 300K plus and rising – and this with no input from the construction industry, I see a huge opportunity for mushroom farming (all types) and the cultivation of a lot of other things that like to be out of the wind and the rain and instead be in dark warm little rooms. Afghanistan….move over.
Philip – you are talking about ‘ Kat’ or q’at’ ( a drug ) what you really mean is ‘Squat’ is the new business for young people .
We could sell bankers or rent them out. They seem to have magical properties that defy the usual laws of economic gravity.
Indeed we should consider doing the same with Feel and Fail. They look harmless until you start dipping them in loose credit. Economic gremlins all over the shop before you know it. CIA may be interested in them as a weapon of mass economic destruction. Maybe we could have an auction between between China, Russia and US.
Humpty Dumpty =Biffo!.Ireland has missed the windfalls generated by privatisation, thanks to the crazy level of pension liabilities.How about turning Donegal, Cavan, Leitrim into forests ?.The climate is ideal and there will always be a demand for wood, it is environmentally friendly ,there won’t be many people living in those counties within a decade!, the land will be virtually worthless.Desperate times, radical measures.
Can we sell our social partnership model to some Godforsaken country? They’ll get ICTU, IBEC (including SIPTU et al) & we’ll even through in the Labour Court and a few hundred overpaid underworked technophobic Air Traffic Controllers!
Were we to namatise the bankers whereby we obtain their expertise for 10 years plus, free of charge it could make better sense and a lump sum payment from their coffers depending on their age.
Seriously, who in their right mind would buy Irish stocks?
Bit off topic but maybe pensions are an asset (or not?
On the one hand, this is being said;
http://www.businessworld.ie/bworld/livenews.htm?a=2542158
But on the other hand come this glum assessment;
http://www.mercer.ie/summary.htm?siteLanguage=100&idContent=1366640
Both reports by Mercer.
My “Spin” detector just shot off the radar……..
Can NAMA approach ECB to extend its remit to include property in Spain and Greece? And maybe even distressed assets in other parts of Europe. we could leverage the taxpayer income from several sources and distribute gains evenly or to the benefit of the ECB. The way I see it, a combined effort could be used to muddle the Euro pond completely and create a Euro run which might solve export issues and spending mismatches in one fell swoop. The problem with Europe is down to a lack of synchronisation. Not everyone is in the same room making plans. So… Read more »
Old Mother Hubbard Went to the cupboard To get her poor doggie a bone, When she got there The cupboard was bare So the poor little doggie had none. The Old Mother Hubbard referred to in this rhyme’s words allude to the famous Cardinal Wolsey. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey was the most important statesman and churchman of the Tudor history period in 16th century England. Cardinal Wolsey proved to be a faithful servant but displeased the King, Henry VIII, by failing to facilitate the King’s divorce from Queen Katherine of Aragon who had been his queen of many years. The reason… Read more »
Privatization? Bring it on! The assets will make a profit (well, short term anyway). All you have to do is export the people laid off as a result (for the common good) – I’m sure somewhere will take them in (and pay them a pension). Those remaining will therefore have a higher standard of living (going forward) as there will be less to share around. Fewer people means fewer roads, reservoirs needed etc. Foreign capital will flood in. And (‘to be fair’) the country will look so much neater too. Here’s an idea. Some of the ghost estates could be… Read more »
Humpty appears in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, where he discusses semantics and pragmatics with Alice. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,'” Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t — till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!'” “But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,'” Alice objected. “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different… Read more »
All this talk about privatisation…there are many area’s that should be privatised, but we need strong regulatory bodies to ensure we don’t have another Eircom situation. Its interesting that a governement that contemplates privatisation as a fiscal and even an ideeological point of view could be fervent in their socialisation of debt. Now the debt belongs to the taxpayer. The system is saved once again. And here’s another little caveat that was kept quiet. The infamous Rothschild family have been appointed to “advise”, here’s the blog – http://fiddleferme.blogspot.com/2009/09/rothschild-as-irish-government-adviser.html. The sad thing about it is that the people on the streets… Read more »
Family silver is government bond issuance.
The bond issuance / family silver is been thrashed by who can get to it and thrash it, do a smash and grab on it.
Using the states bond issuance to set the banks up with 54 billion euros is thrashing the family silver.
We have nothing in the cupboard no doggie and no bone and if you think about it we have no cupboard either.And mother cupbord has emigrated .
…hubbard
This is the kind of cynicism FF would appreciate
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/17/cruise-ships-haiti-earthquake
Old mother hubbard / controlling interests,
went to the cupboard / place of state bond issuance NTMA,
and grabbed the bone / bond issuance (in of itself no value).
Ah Nursery Rhythm’s myabe this is what WE Really Need , that is to learn from the ground up start again, learn to crawl before driving off in the over priced Mercs. !. The Irish cupboard is for sure bare and also lacking in any social fibre. Greed has surpassed ignorance, selling off semi state bodies will not solve our problems as what would our present bunch of school boys do with the win fall only bet it all on one of Charlie McCreaveys horse tips, that’s if they don’t set up a few hundred quango’s to study and do… Read more »
Hi Furrylugs, Bertie developing a structured, sustainable development programme? I’ve seen it all…….
Maybe he’s the leader that we’re all crying out for. Socialist, environmentalist, writer, philosopher, father, grandfather, Republican, European, metrosexual, Dub urbanite yet son of a farmer…..
If he ever returns, I’ll beat David to the razorblades in Aldi and top meself……
We will at some stage in the near future privatise both education and health . We keep a core element of both in State hands for the less well off and offer tax breaks to the rest . it will save a fortune . The really big one is the outscourcing of the work of the civil service to the private sector . Some will actually do the work offsite but the real action will be for employment agencies to provide minimum wage casual workers for employment in the civil service . We will see a complete overhaul of employment… Read more »
Papaconstantinou is “afraid of the potential for social unrest if Greece were to issue huge cuts at once”.
If only we had this problem. But the biggest talking point in Ireland is the latest sub plot on eastenders. The EU must be delighted with Eire’s docile minnions.
When interest rates go up, we are finninshed
Folks, Hubbard is the Irish people/taxpayers;
The bone was supposed to be normal money-management, but turned out to be the disgusting treatment we are getting from Govt/bankers/oligarchs/IBEC/NAMA;
The Govt. is the dog:
Old mother Hubbard
Went to the Cupboard,
To feth her doggie a bone;
But when she bent over,
Rover took-over,
And gave her a bone of his own.
Tim – you have explained your principles so many times and we all agree with you .Its a pity that some make you do it again.
David always puts things in such a round about way, he is a bit like Geramy on top gear its all in the presentation. But I was genuinely astonded by the shortfalls in pension schemes, these semi state bodies are insolvent and thus are worthless. What potential buyer would pay money to inherit Irish workers of their ilk anyway, most of them are overpaid, lazy and unemployable elsewhere. To me it is a non question realistically privatisation cannot happen even in better times. The solution is simple, cut government spending drastically now, more than the current plan of 2014. e.g.… Read more »
Alan42, Do you read anything? I am not trying to “sell” you anything and, really, the means by which I oppose the injustice of the ruling party in this country is none of your business. I chose, freely, to post on this blog in an honest fashion and declared my political activism, rather than hide the truth because hiding truth is one of the elements I am trying to defeat. If you think I support NAMA, there is no point in ever responding to you again. (and I refuse to rise-to-the-bait of your “test”). I do not know why, but… Read more »
Alan42.
I was on an anti NAMA march with tim, i saw him, in real life, marching against NAMA.
Folks, I was only trying to give you a bit of light comic-relief by twisting the Nursery Rhyme at No. 38 above. (sorry for the distraction it seems to have invited – but that is over now, as I will not post on it again tonight.)
As Obama is ‘talking’ about introducing banking legislation that will ‘radically’ overhaul aspects of speculative/casino style transactions in derivatives etc only RTE could lead the ‘main evening news’ about some murder court case and follow it later with a story on con-joined twins. Only RTE could say a slight increase in ‘support’ for the government was something positive for Cowen and his beleagured cabinet, the fact that a staggering 76% of the population are dissatisfied with the government’s performance only got a passing mention, these are numbers akin to the lowest levels for George Bush. Only RTE could produce such… Read more »
Old mother hubbard here has had enough of getting the bone. Good morning, everybody. I just had a very productive meeting with two members of my Economic Recovery Advisory Board: Paul Volcker, who’s the former chair of the Federal Reserve Board; and Bill Donaldson, previously the head of the SEC. And I deeply appreciate the counsel of these two leaders and the board that they’ve offered as we have dealt with a broad array of very difficult economic challenges. Over the past two years, more than seven million Americans have lost their jobs in the deepest recession our country has… Read more »
I imagine that David has his own framework for the rollout of themed and timely adjusted articles. I for one, would love to see a wargaming of where we are now, where we’re headed within 12 months and where we should have been headed. Roll back, roll forward etc. What if we had gone with a good bank and the bank guarantee lapsed as intended? I’d love to see those scenarios spelled out with approximate economic indicators. It would be a nice wake-up call to the Independent / SB Post readership that we don’t have to be where we are,… Read more »
Ok, Folks, I will ask some questions: What success has anyone here had in their “fight” against the FF Parliamentary party from outside that party? If you are a member of no political party, who/how are you actively trying to influence to bring about change; and how is that non-membership working-out, for you? Who, here, is a supporter of a political party, other than FF; and how is that working out for you and will you be honest and declare that support? I am a member of FF who does NOT “support” the current Parliamentary Party. I am as opposed… Read more »
Folks, have a look at this:
http://www.progressive-economy.ie/2010/01/who-really-took-hit-in-budget-2010.html
Folks, this is actually worth posting, in full: Thursday, January 21, 2010 Who really took the hit in Budget 2010? Slà Eile: Once upon a time there was a thing called ‘poverty proofing’. And there used to be Agencies (State ones) that specialised in looking at ‘poverty’ (and not just inclusion or equality or human rights although some of these things are not quite a la mode anymore). We have not heard a lot about poverty or poverty-proofing in recent times. If anyone has seen or heard about ‘poverty’ in the recent deluge of official reports and 2010 Budget official… Read more »
That article is, I think, well put-together, backs-up it points with references that are linked and hemmers-home what the elite is doing.
Wherever you find yourself on the “scale”, at the end, try to think of how those beneath your “rank” may be feeling?