I'm beginning to think that the best way of advancing issues which attract my journalistic energies may be to stop writing about them, writes John Waters
No sooner do I decide to take a break from the ritualistic attentions of the jackboots of the gender fascists than the Supreme Court delivers itself of a devastatingly commonsensical judgment on barring orders. Then I read a leader in The Irish Times advocating ideas I grew bored with nearly a decade ago.
The leader appeared on Friday, November 1st, under the heading "Social Engagement", making reference to an interview in the same edition with the American author Robert Putnam, whose book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, has pride of place these days on the Taoiseach's desk.
Mr Putnam, a Harvard professor of social policy, is, according to Kathryn Holmquist's interview, "fascinated" by the decline of the Irish post office at the centre of rural life, which he connects to the reduction of what is termed "social capital", the new buzz-term among social policy-makers.
The leader-writer summarised the concept thus: "Social scientists have coined the term 'social capital' to describe the pattern and intensity of connections between people, together with the values arising from them. Their basic premise is that more interaction helps people build communities, make mutual commitments and thereby create a social fabric enabling more satisfying and effective living together."
The decline of social capital is linked to issues of low electoral turnout, social alienation and other problems of modern society.
About 10 years ago I wore out two computers writing along similar lines in this column and was accused for my trouble of offences against modernity ranging from bog ignorance to pursuing the bankruptcy of the Irish economy. One critic, responding to a column arguing for the retention of sub-post-offices, described my views as "not just wrong but dangerously misleading". His name was Brian Patterson, then chief operating officer of Waterford Crystal, and nowadays chairman of The Irish Times Ltd.
The conclusions to be drawn from this are fairly obvious. The most immediate is that, no matter how commonsensical or banal an observation or analysis might be, there is no point in delivering it unless you are a Harvard professor with a ready stock of buzz-phrases. Arising from this is the inevitable conclusion that, unless we can interest a sufficient number of Harvard professors in our problems, we are, so to speak, truly goosed.
Prof Putnam was in Ireland last week speaking at the Céifin conference on values and ethics in Ennis. One hopes that he was sufficiently interested by the Irish Times page 2 headline on the opening day of that conference - "Loss-making freight routes likely to close" - to become "fascinated" by the decline of the Irish railway station.
The report underneath told of imminent further closures in the Iarnród Éireann network - the lines between Ballybrophy and Limerick and Limerick Junction and Rosslare Harbour, as well as the final winding-down of CIÉ's freight service. Concern was expressed by various interests about the extra road traffic likely to be generated by these ratonalisations. This is an area where Prof Putnam's theories concerning "social capital" might come in useful, since one presumes such thinking must place some weight on the displaced costs of the further emasculation of the railway system: lost employment, further overburdened roads, damage to the fabric of various communities etc.
This, however, is a logical process utterly alien to economists and social theorists who, for all they may occasionally go all swoony over buzz-words, see everything in boxes with the bottom line deciding the viability of everything.
THE odd thing is that, even leaving social capital out of it, the facts can vary greatly from what the bottom lines would have us believe. According to the official statistics, Iarnród Éireann's rail freight operation lost some €8 million last year, this figure providing the main justification for the proposed ratonalisations. This is meaningless.
I have a particular interest in this, having begun my working life more than 20 years ago with two two-year clerking stints in the goods offices of Claremorris and Westport railway stations.
One of my tasks was to complete a monthly account known - don't ask me why - as The 953, essentially a way of dividing traffic revenues between CIÉ's rail and road operations. Most consignments carried by CIÉ were transported by a combination of rail and road, and the policy was to assign a vastly disproportionate level of the revenues for each transaction to the road end of the operation. The logic was that rail attracted subsidy, whereas road did not, so it was important to make it appear that the rail end was performing less well.
This creative accountancy meant that many railway lines and goods stores were closed which might have stayed open had the correct picture as to their viability been available. Many people lost their jobs, communities lost vital hubs of their existences, and much of what we are now required to call "social capital" was broken up for scrap.
Now it's started again. What a tragedy we don't have more Harvard professors coming over to tell us how to live!