Fecklessnessiosity

The ESRI released a report last week on participation levels in sport amongst different classes in Ireland and the resulting policy implications. It found that people with low income or low educational attainment had much lower participation in sport.

Regarding income, more people who play sport come from the top 25 per cent of earners than from the bottom 50 per cent. Regarding education, 43 per cent of people who play sport have a third-level qualification, compared to 28 per cent in the wider population.

It appears that around 53% of top half earners (the 'rich') play sport as opposed to only 30% of bottom half earners (the 'poor'). Uh oh, I know what you're thinking; lots of ammunition for the less PC / more rabid columnists at the Sunday Independent in those stats. Well the ESRI thought of that and are very eager to head it off at the pass:

It could be argued that there is no direct impact of income or education on playing sport, but that people with high motivation are simply more inclined to work hard to earn money, to obtain qualifications, and also to make the physical effort required to play sport. If this were to be true, then the relationship between income, educational attainment and playing sport revealed in the last chapter would be driven by a common underlying cause, motivation, and it would be incorrect to assert that low income and low educational attainment themselves cause people to play less. However, this hypothesis based on motivation finds little support in the data.

They go on to give the stats on levels of interest and non-interest in playing across the income quartiles. It turns out that a fairly consistent 58% or so, say they are interested in playing sport - with little variation due to income. So that's alright then. But it strikes me that interest and motivation are two different things. I, for one, am interested in playing sport but not sufficiently motivated to do so (it's too cold, I left my P.E. gear at home, I have a note).

For sheer devilment, lets assume that only those interested in playing sport are actually playing it. Based on this around 90% of the 'rich' that are interested in playing sport, do so but only around 52% of the 'poor' that are interested in playing sport, do so. This means that 48% of the poor who want to play sport, don't, compared to 10% of the rich.

The ESRI seeks external reasons for the disparity (what in society is preventing poor people playing sport). The report says the participation differences are not down to lack of facilities or sport being too expensive. It has a little to do with not having a car or not living in a big city, but these are only relatively minor effects. The report never really examines the case for 'internal' reasons (what is different about poor people that they do no play sport, even if interested) being the cause. It does, however, admit:-

Overall, it is not possible to rule out underlying psychological causes, such as motivation.

.. while being anxious to point out ..

But there is nothing in the data to suggest that this is a helpful approach for explaining the strong relationships between income, educational attainment and playing sport.

One could imagine that if there was something in the data that suggested that poorer people were interested but just lacked the motivation to play sport, the ESRI would think very, very hard about publishing it. They know that the day after they did, the newspapers would be full of 'ESRI Says The Poor Are Feckless' headlines. Fintan O'Toole et al would have a conniption. There would be apoplexy on the Joe Duffy show, questions in the Dail and righteous indignation all over the blogosphere . Probably best not to go looking for such data too hard, eh?

Beyond Irony

Meanwhile in Kerry, an embittered old man polishes his father's medals and stares into the middle distance, while a nation celebrates.

The only sound, other than singing, during God Save The Queen was of a large portion of the Irish media muttering "Ah crap, there goes my pre-written story". Their attempts to whip up some controversy last week over the matter were despicable and pathetic. We deserve better.

How to Measure Media Slant

There is an interesting discussion over on the Cedar Lounge Revolution about the editorial movement to the right/centre/take-your-pick of the Irish Times. Apparently there are only three or so left-wing commentators remaining now that Eddie Holt has been axed. Personally I have my doubts about that but it does raise a really interesting question - how do we measure the 'slant' of a writer or paper one way or another? Fortunately I remembered an article (scroll to the end) I discovered on FinFacts about research by two University of Chicago economists, Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro, entitled “What Drives Media Slant? Evidence From U.S. Daily Newspapers”.

The methodology the researchers used was clever. They identified 1000 partisan phrases (from political speeches) and measured how frequently different newspapers used them in their non-editorial pages. So for example Republicans say “death tax” while Democrats say "Estate tax". They both mean the same thing but using one or the other reflect a certain slant. The results were pretty much as might expect - The Washington Times used Republican phrases while papers like The San Francisco Chronicle and The Boston Globe used Democratic ones. It is a useful ready-reckoner if you find yourself reading something from a non-familiar source - you can determine what slant they are likely to be coming from. The data can be found here.

The question is if one was attempting something similar for Irish papers or individual columnists (or even bloggers), what 'partisan' phrases should one use? For example: On the right: "national competitiveness", On the left: "race to the bottom".

I would love to hear suggestions for others.

The Archbishop's Petri Dish

"Do we want to have a culture of Podge and Rodge, or one of decency and respect?" asked Catholic Primate of All-Ireland, Archbishop Seán Brady.

This is a marvellous question and the potential basis of a very entertaining game. There are not enough spurious comparisons and choices to be made between entirely unrelated items. There should be more questions like it such as "Do we want a culture of apples and oranges or one of puppies and kittens?" Or how about "Do we want magenta and yellow or Pasta & Pizza?"

I don't even particulary like Podge & Rodge, I find their level of crudity is rarely justified by the level of humour. But I think I understand where they are coming from - attacking the soft underbelly of minor (or even major) celebrity. Their interview with Chris Brosnan was a little masterpiece of bubble bursting. On the otherhand the one with Brian Kennedy was cringeworthy. They are part of a backlash against all those years of Gay Byrne being so feckin' grateful that some B-list celebrity would come to little ole Ireland to hock their wares on the Late Late. There is a lot of pent up anger to have to work through.

"The increased "coarseness and aggression" in Irish society was evident "on the roads, in drinking, the increase in sexualisation of children at an earlier age, stress, excess generally. It is dehumanising". Such "dehumanisation is linked to secularisation", he said.

The argument he is making is:
Modern life is increasingly rubbish
Modern life is increasingly secular
Thus the trend towards secularisation has made life rubbish which, of course, is a basic logical fallacy.

But wait! There's more!

[Secularistation] was opposite to Christian core values which "called on Christians to look out for one another" and to develop "a good caring attitude, bringing healing to brokenness", he said.

Message: Secularists have no values, don't care for anyone else. I guess it must be Christians doing all the good stuff, not secularists. The secularists are off corrupting children and being crude.

The past decade had seen a rapid decline in both vocations to the priesthood and attendance at weekly Mass, but he felt using attendance at Mass as a yardstick was "an incomplete way to assess the life of the Church" as there had been, for instance, no decline in numbers at Catholic schools.

Let's face it the Church's marketshare is massively down in the areas (Mass attendance, vocations) where people partake in them voluntarily but is stready (or steady-ish) in areas, like education, where they don't have much of a choice. You could say there is an increase in people attending 'Catholic' hospitals but I doubt it reflects one way or another on the degree of 'life of the Church'. It does of course explain why they are not going to give up the schools (or hospitals) without a serious fight.

He said it was not right "for the State to seek to monopolise education" and did not accept that the segregation of children attending school along religious lines contributed to sectarianism.

He is correct, State monopolies in education or in most other things are not good. It is even less right for there to be a Church monopoly in education particularly when large swathes of the population are no longer interested in what they are peddling.

Do you want "Cathecism and ritual" or "Freedom and choice"? Oh wait I got it wrong, those items are related.

All These New Ones

When did all this 'neo' prefixing start?

'Neo-liberal'. 'Neo-conservative'. 'Neo-Darwinian'.

Was it the Matrix?

OK so a 'neo-con' (being former lefties converted to, eh, righties with an invasive attitude) is actually distinct from a traditional conservative and the neo- prefix is at least linguistically justified. But neo-liberal? Who or what are they?

Is it too obvious to say that users of these terms hope they will subconsciously link them with everyone's favourite neos - neonazis? Yes folks, just add 'neo' to your least favourite political label for instant added sinisterness. More to the point, since we're so fond of Greek, are there such things as paleoconservatives or paleoliberals, ?

Prosperity = Good, Poverty = Bad

There was a piece in the Irish Times by academic Joe Clery on Saturday about Fairytale of New York, the Pogues classic, it concludes:

"And when our home-grown neoliberals summon up the sorry ghost of the 1980s to remind us we have never had it so good, MacColl's and MacGowan's duet can be a reminder that not all back then was misery and despair; there was also resilience and resistance."

The fact that hard times can bring out good qualities in people is no argument to return to them. Out of necessity, solidarity in Blitz time London was sky high, but I don't see anyone making a case against peace. Have people really forgotten just how fucking miserable the 80's were in Ireland? It Sucked-with-a-capital-S. We were a poor, insular, insecure, Church-ridden, tax-dodging, miserable little people. I got out as soon as I could and so did 50% of my friends and classmates to London, New York, Amsterdam. There was 16.7% unemployment when I left college. I can remember only a handful of Irish companies recruiting on the Milk Round and loads and loads of UK ones. Tell that to the young people today, and they just won't believe you...

So anytime I hear someone bemoaning our recent prosperity (I can't bring myself to write 'C____c T___r') or the "Oh dear what have we become" brigade, I get quite uptight. Give me the problems of prosperity over those of poverty any day. Yeah even the traffic. Or the house prices. Or the 'loss of our spirituality', whatever that is. As Des Bishop points out, we have traffic jams because now people have jobs to go to and can afford cars to do so. If you had a decent enough job in the 80's life wasn't too bad because relative to everyone else you were quids in. Back then my father was able to drive from the northside of Dublin to his job in Ballsbridge in about 40 minutes. Great. Wonderful. But two of his three sons had to emigrate. We're both back now, because of prosperity.

It wasn't just poverty that made Ireland in the 80's shite. Hand-in-hand with it, went the small-town, small-mind, squinting-window begrudger attitude. Nobody could disentangle cause and effect relationship with those two. We were poor because we were shite and vice versa. I suspect there are at least two types of people people complaining now that everything has gone to hell in a hand basket since we 'got rich':

• Those who were pretty comfortable during the bad times and now only see the down side of prosperity. Their relative position in society has slipped. After all what's the point of being able to go on a second foreign holiday if your house painter can too?
  
• Those who object to how we got here because it does not fit with their political ideology. We got here through a combination of many things but most people agree that our low tax policy and foreign direct investment primarily from U.S. companies were key. If you denigrate the outcome, you denigrate the process by which we got here.
  

Prosperity clearly has not benefited everyone equally or even fairly. Growth has created huge problems, exacerbated by our sometimes pitiful Governmental response to it. But it has resulted in the greater good to the greater number. People are a) happier despite what our commentariat tell us and b) here. It gives us the means to assist those who, for whatever reason, have not benefited from it - if we want to. Would the Niall Mellon house building initiative in South Africa been possible in the 80's (if apartheid had not existed)? It has also gone hand in hand with a dismantling of a lot of the old begrudger attitudes. Success can be admired now rather than be derided as the product of 'pull' or dodgy-dealing or luck.

Repeat after me. Prosperity = Good, Poverty = Bad.

Even when the prosperity we have is unbalanced and sometimes inequitable. If pointing this out makes me a 'neoliberal', I'll take that risk.