All examples welcome.
In the Sunday Business Post there's an old line repackaged about public sector wages:
Speaking to the Business Post, Neil McDonnell, the chief executive of Isme, the small and medium-sized business association, has said that there is already a public sector wage premium of 19 per cent over the average wage.
Such recurring wage increases will only heighten the legitimate sense of grievance felt by many lower paid workers in the private sector, who often share few or none of the protections and perks offered to their state-employed counterparts.
And yet, the question is never asked why it is that those so-called 'protections and perks' aren't offered by a significant tranche of private sector employers. Instead the piece defaults immediately to calls for more 'reforms' and 'efficiencies'.
From the Independent yesterday - a piece sponsored by Drinks Ireland which arrives at this conclusion:
Drinks Ireland's #MyDayMyWay campaign illustrates how drinking and socialising habits in Ireland are changing for the better, driven in many ways by young people. Gen Z is a potential beacon for "Better Socialising", which is all about having greater balance, prioritising 'premium' products, driving growth in cocktail culture and people drinking 'better' but less.
Doesn't this analysis from earlier in the week miss the point entirely?
The UK and Ireland have been equal partners in changing the shape of the relationship into something unrecognisable. Now Britain's economic woes are set to entrench this psychological shift. Schadenfreude has been a common feature of the Irish response to Brexit – bearing the sentiment that somehow Britain's suffering is just deserts for such a foolish decision to leave the bloc; that Britain's struggles are merely historic justice in action.
And the questions are always the same. How could they not see that erecting trade barriers with your closest trading partners would generate economic catastrophe? Was the Office for Budget Responsibility's analysis – that trade as a share of GDP has fallen by 2½ times more than in any other G7 country – not a highly predictable outcome?
Sure. But aside from this attitude being plainly uncharitable, and certainly not in the spirit of fostering comity between close neighbours, it also fails to recognise the weight Britain bears on Ireland. Britain's economic story is closely – inextricably – tied to our own. Sneering at the mess Brexit has wrought on the British economy, therefore, is a disposition as pompous and navel-gazing as any Brexiteer is capable of. Because when Britain gets poorer Ireland suffers too. Or, to revert to old adage, when Britain sneezes, Ireland catches a cold.
Surely all those questions were and continue to be asked precisely because they do impact on this island, politically, economically and in other ways.
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