IRA’s former political wing takes aim at Apple over back tax Ireland’s republican party Sinn Féin has declared it has no intention of giving Apple any wriggle room over an upcoming European ruling that could leave it liable for billions in back taxes. Ireland is braced for an election - and starting 100th anniversary commemorations of the Easter 1916 rising against British rule. Some …
@ Pascal Monett
That would be due to the competing interests. On one hand when you want peoples votes it is a good idea to focus their attention on something negative and its even easier if you make up the problem. But then once elected you have to run an economy where people actually want jobs and wages as well as various products. Apple likely has more support than the very people trying to get elected (based on people using their products/services).
Its politics. You have to offer what people demand but deliver what people want.
So will they use the line they used to take when trying to encourage people to "obey the law" and explain that while they are peaceful democrats who just want Apple to pay the taxes they owe they ought to point out that there may be other more violent people (whom they have absolutely no control over) who might take a more "robust" attitude to getting this to happen.
Maybe Apple should just buy itself a small country so it doesn't have to worry about taxes.
Thought that's what they'd already done, with these tax deals.
Anyway, they could very easily make make a formal offer to purchase Eire for cash. The Dáil becomes a rubberstamping operation for directives from Cupertino
As far as I'm aware, pretty much everyone in the Republic of Ireland is an Irish Republican, no matter what their particular political preference (unless there's a groundswell of monarchist sympathy I hadn't heard about). Perhaps some other epithet might be more useful when discussing Sinn Fein in this context.
Sinn Féin are a party that spans the entire physical island of Ireland. The party's principal goal is a unified republican Ireland. As such, they seek election to both the Dáil in the Republic and UK Parliament. They used to boycott both legislative bodies in protest against the governments' perceived illegitimacy. It's only been since 2014 that SF ceased their abstention of the House of Commons. "Republican" is a perfectly acceptable epithet for Sinn Féin.
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AC who commented about epithets.
Yeah, I agree there are several others that are available and appropriate for the Shinners. I wanted to strike a narrow focus on whether republican was one of them and try to avoid the deeper, still present issues of Irish politics which create fluid and contradictory definitions of things like "Ireland" (see the 26+6 comment above as an example), "Sinn Féin", "IRA" and variants (this is a tech blog. "*IRA" a la "*NIX"?). And yes, I realise "republican" is one of those words that has a range of definitions as well. I probably should have just left it alone, haha.
Ordinary republicans in normal sense that want constitutional unification by consent are "Nationalists".
Traditionally "Republican" in Capital R sense is those that LOST the Civil war and don't accept the partition of 1921, the anti-treaty people. Since the 1950s "Republican" means anyone wanting the 6 UK Counties added to the 26 by ANY means possible. Fianna Fáil also known as Fianna Fáil, The Republican Party were on the "losing" side. Technically SF is really Provisional SF, the political wing of Provisional IRA, a splinter from the Official IRA, a Northern splinter of part of the Anti-treaty of 1921 side.
Some long while ago Fianna Fáil became The republican party as they agreed to abandon the Territorial claim to the Northern six counties. Only SF is now a "true" Republican party in the bizarre Irish sense of the word. They make the Tea Party, Trump, Palin etc look logical. They are in reality run by the IRA Army Council in Northern Ireland (the bit in the UK).
The last Irish High King was nearly 1000 years ago and the coronation stone was lent to the Scots, who managed to let the English take it to Westminster. No-one in Ireland's 26 counties has been wanting a Monarch for about 900 years.
Republican thus, like USA, doesn't mean what you think. Though the Irish ones are left wing and think Stalin, Cuba, Libya, PLO etc are great.
SF stand for Election to Westminster. They do not swear the oath, nor recognise the Government of UK. Till very recently they didn't recognise the Irish Government either. I'm not sure given recent comments about Supreme Court that they really recognise the Irish State.
If you have a look at Joe Fay's previous writings you have to say wtf does he know about SF/Irish politics/Inward investment/Tax competition, etc.
The policy that allows the tax nonsense has been criticised for ever, but it has created a base of small, smart, businesses. That isn't a bad divvie.
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