Joan Burton calls me a neocon!

Luckily enough I am not too sensitive, but I nearly died of shock when Joan Burton called me a neocon in the Dail yesterday and suggested I was heavily influenced by the US Republican party!

The topic was the Labour Party amendment bill on the Competition Act which was, I believe, a misguided attempt to exempt self-employed professionals from competition law.

The Competition Act prevents price fixing, agreed minimum prices and other anti-competitive agreements, decisions or concerted practices together with abuses of dominant positions by large companies. It is a wonderful pro-consumer piece of law.

However, the main problem with this law is that the Competition Authority seems to take on cases that most people with a bit of common sense would regard as having nothing to do with price-fixing or things like that. Instead, the Authority has just raided the Irish Pharmaceutical Association because of a joint action taken by pharmacists in relation to their dispute with the HSE. I stated in the Dail yesterday that this was a waste of resources, which it is.

However, the Labour Party bill would effectively exempt professional associations from competition law, which would not benefit consumers and would go a lot further than simply letting the IPU negotiate with the HSE, on behalf of its members, which I would support.

The Labour Party also seem to think, from yesterday's debate, that the right of collective action of unions (an employee's right surely?) should also be extended to employers. This is crazy stuff and it shows the extent to which the Labour Party have drifted from their roots as a worker's party to become simply a niche party of certain middle class sectoral interests.

Getting back to Joan Burton, she certainly doesn't know me or my politics. I wore a "Gore got More" t-shirt for years after neocon George Bush won the US presidency despite getting less votes than Al Gore. In fact, I think of Al Gore as my political hero and have done so since 1996 and before it became fashionable.

Joan Burton appears also to know nothing about US neoconservative views on competition law. I think Judge Robert Bork (pictured), a noted expert in competition law, but more famous simply for being refused a US Supreme Court position because he was too right wing, would have approved of the Labour Party bill yesterday. He has been arguing since the 70s that competition law has been brought too far - just like Labour in the Dail yesterday.

How ironic - maybe if Joan Burton is looking for neocons, she should look a little closer to home...