Comparing Iceland with Ireland.

Mary Ellen Sinon, in her blog reproduced in the Daily Mail from the Irish Daily Mail this morning, linked here, compares the hopeful future for Iceland with the growingly ever more desparate plight of the Irish peopl.  The following quote provides a taste:

Last Wednesday the group of independent Deputies in the Dail proposed a motion seeking a referendum on the repayments the last Government and this Government have promised. The motion was swept aside by the big parties.

I find the arrogance of that a punch in the gut, but I don’t really much care that we won’t get a referendum on the debt. I know what any referendum in this country is worth when it goes against the demands of Brussels. The Government would shred the results and just tell us to vote again. Or in the case of a referendum that did not involve a Constitutional issue – which is the kind of referendum a vote on the bank debt would be – the Government would simply ignore a ‘Can’t pay, won’t pay’ result and claim the voters didn’t understand the issues.

Any talk of a No vote in a referendum handing a powerful weapon to our Government for negotiations in Brussels is naïve. That idea depends on the assumption that our Taoiseach and Finance Minister want a powerful negotiating weapon to get this debt off our backs. There is no evidence that they want any such thing. Mr Kenny and Mr Noonan won’t even use the weapons they have already to hand – a default on bank debt, a determination to take a bail-out only from the IMF and not from the EU, an undertaking to leave the euro or even the EU.

After much more of such accurate observation, she concludes as follows:

The only hope Iceland has to defend its independence against this onslaught is the           extraordinarily strong character of its people. The fact is a people can’t live isolated on the edge of the Arctic for 1,000 years without growing tough. I’d say Iceland has what it takes to defeat the EU machine.

However, there is one thing which could destroy the independence of that small island nation: treachery by their own government. For of course that is exactly what has destroyed the independence of this small island nation.

Icelanders in democratic vote reject paying their bad banks' debts!

Lucky Iceland, outside the EU, where votes still matter. The Sky News report is here.

Iceland again and the ongoing banking crisis.

The second day when the Online Times refuses to publish a comment of mine on the Iceland affair (see post below). Less surprisingly today perhaps, as my ire was raised by this nasty slur at the start of Mr Hattersley's article upon which I commented, linked here: "Icelanders are, by nature, intrinsically unreasonable." Hattersley states in his first sentence. At least The Economist recognises the significant aspects of the Icelandic situation which The Times chooses to ignore - Read here. MEANTIME - ANTICIPATING REJECTION - I today copied my exact comment to the Hattersley tripe in The Times, which was as follows: Mr Hattersley, as has been his habit down the years, is completely wrong on this matter. The Icelandic refusal, if confirmed in their referendum (wot that?), to repay deposits lost outside normal EU interbank guarantees are showing the way for ordinary people everywhere to eventually escape the results of the banking fiasco and the present government's policy of the printing of vast sums of useless money under QE. Brown and Darling will eventually be found to have acted illegally in the banking bailout as confirmed by the NAO on the last day of the parliamentary sitting in June last year. When they are eventually jailed (if such is possible under Scottish Law), or otherwise brought to account, then I feel sure small property owning English taxpayers will be as reluctant as the Icelanders to pick up the tab for the profligate commitments made without benefit of parliamentary approval by these two incompetents. A blow by blow account of the HBOS Lloyds RBS fiasco is available in these blog archives as well as the illegality of the bailout as stated by the NAO last June. The illegal conspiracy has now been compounded by Parliament's inaction on this matter since its return. The depth to which this law-busting conspiracy has spread across large parts of the British establishment was again illustrated last evening on the Jeff Randall programme when, from Edinburgh please also note, a funds manager refused to explain why he had deliberately thrown millions down the sewer at the behest of Brown and Darling and contrary to the obligations of his office and interests of his policy and share holders.