IABA leads with the chin

We don’t have too many living freemen of Wexford.  In the past some of those selected as freemen have been paper tigers when it came to their abilities.  In my time on Wexford Borough Council, we only selected one.  I think we picked well.  He’s Billy Walsh.

Billy represented Ireland in an Olympics in Korea.  His intense rivalry with Michael Carruth brought out the best in both men.  When Carruth won gold at the Barcelona Olympics he said that the toughest fight he’d had in the previous year was in the National Championship against Billy Walsh. The winner of that bout automatically became Ireland’s Olympic entrant at middleweight.

When he finished with boxing he built up a business in Wexford delivering milk.  He was our milkman when we moved to our house. While Billy never won gold, his personable and trusting nature built up relationships with boxers down through the years.  This made him a constant feature in the corner at many an international competition.  Walsh heads up the Irish Amateur Boxing Association High Performance Unit.  When Carruth won gold he had his father in his corner.  Walsh has been like a father to many of his team members.  He’s actually the Uncle of one Irish European bronze medallist, Dean Walsh.  You can’t hide in a boxing ring but if you have Billy Walsh in your corner you will go forward with confidence at what is thrown at you.

Billy is extremely loyal to his town.  He loves the county and in particular GAA.  He’s not driven by money but with someone who knows what it takes to achieve he expects his athletes give their best and in return he’ll do his best for them.

That’s the bit that the blazers who run amateur boxing out of the National Stadium on South Circular Road don’t quite get.   Clearly in the background he has been courted by other nations that admire what he has achieved with his boxers.  Boxing has delivered more Olympic medals for Ireland than any other sporting discipline since 1924.

Perhaps it may well be the case that somewhere in the IABA someone has made a calculation that Walsh was threatening to take some of their power and decisions away from the committee men resplendent in their green blazers with crested breast pockets.  So when he was negotiating a contract which was going to be underpinned by the state through the Irish Sports Council, the breaking point was not money (despite the reality that they haven’t provided for the 51 year old’s pension) but the right to take decisions about team membership.

In most other sports managers are entitled to pick their team members and manage them in the interest of the team.  Not so with boxing.  The Blazers don’t pay for Walsh but want to decide who he puts into the ring.  What about meritocracy?  Why shouldn’t the best box in a team and shouldn’t the manager decide who he will work with? If Walsh doesn’t pick the best would not any committee then be entitled to decide if he manages the team at all? That is what happens in every other sport. 

The IABA must have someone quite extraordinary lined up to take Walsh’s job forward to Rio. There is a whole lot riding on this for Irish sport as the Olympics is less than a year away.  If Billy Walsh, Freeman of Wexford can’t knock sense into the IABA, who can?

What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander

If anything has been used as symbol of the slump it is the food bank.  It conveys an image of the great depression, of charities feeding those abandoned by the system.    It is perceived as symbol of failure and implies the 21^st century version of the poor house.  The growing number will without doubt be thrown in political debate as an example of how society has failed to provide often by those on the left to suggest lack of concern that charities are providing for people’s needs. 

Dublin MEP Nessa Childers (who was on 2 occasions of this parish) sees food banks as a product of austerity.  It’s often hard to resist the lure of a good line so let’s park the spin and let’s look at not just why a food bank is a good idea now, but necessary into the future. 

What determines the price of food?  Well it’s the cost of raw material, production its distribution and the profit margin.  If the price is less than the value that the customer expects to pay then sales follow.

But that makes a huge number of assumptions. One is that all the raw material ends up as a product on the shelf.  It presumes there is a consistent market led demand for the product and it also ignores the CO2 emissions and the cost of disposing or rendering of food that is processed but doesn’t sell.  All of that adds to the cost of production. 

During the week I caught up with a former college colleague who is involved with the Bia Food Bank.  He is full of praise for the support from Joan Burton that his venture has got.   He instances one meat producer who gives a ton of pork free every month to Bia Food Bank. They send the food on to charities that use the food to prepare meals on wheels around the country.  The gain for the company is that they do not have to pay for either rendering or incineration of the food or handling of the food once they donate it.  This in turn reduces costs to the meat processors.  The plus for the charities is that volunteers prepare free food that is distributed to elderly, homeless, and those in poverty. 

That is a good use of surplus food. Whereas just 1% of produced food on the supermarket shelf is banked because of the best before date, 15% of food in the production process never reaches any market.

During the slump consumption can be reduced and surpluses less however in a consumption led boom, food surpluses increase.  The cost that a consumer pays for an item includes the cost incurred dealing with the surplus food.  Any company that deals with this food surplus effectively reduces a cost and this impacts on the bottom line. 

However when consumption increases in a boom, so too does the volume of food unused in the production which is often disposed of.  Banking is an ethical way of dealing with produced food.  Is it moral at a time when CO2 emissions from agriculture are increasing that we should allow food to go unconsumed?  Is there not an obligation, especially when it comes to meat, that as much of the slaughtered animal be processed and that less animals should be farmed or slaughtered? Is it not possible by eliminating costs of dealing with surplus production that the cost of food be reduced for all consumers?

It is questions like these that don’t fit into an anti-austerity analysis.  Into the future these questions challenge those of us on the left to come up with an economically and environmentally sustainable   future proofing analysis.