Noel Whelan wants you to read The Report. He wants you to read it now. Call in sick, dump the kids on grandma, kick the cat out - and read it. Mark Hennessy also wants you to read it - to know why you must take that bitter medicine. Ed Walsh wants you to read [...]

Over at Dublin Opinion, Conor McCabe is continuing his excellent analysis of contemporary class relations, this time using the CSO’s new National Employment Survey for 2007. He challenges the sloppy thinking that suggests we have a ‘middle-class’ majority, concluding that nearly two-thirds work in what can be properly called ‘working class’ occupations:
‘From the viewpoint of wages, [...]

During the Great Depression, the British King announced he was cancelling the purchase of a royal yacht as a gesture of sympathy towards his beleaguered subjects. John Maynard Keynes claimed this was misguided. Instead of cancelling the order for his yacht, Keynes said the King should have purchased two yachts. His line of reasoning was [...]

The Irish Times can claim it is stimulating debate on important issues. After all, didn’t one of their columnists provoke debate on the ‘generosity’ or otherwise of our social welfare system? And isn’t that same columnist provoking a debate on job subsidies? What I find curious is the mode of provocation: rather than investigation, examination [...]

History is such a malleable thing. It can be twisted this way and that to support or oppose any contemporary position. Take An Bord Snip Nua - this is a grand thing altogether. How do we know this? Because, sure, its predecessor was such an outstanding success. Yes, it brought pain but it set the [...]

What would be your reaction if it could be shown that a set of policies would result in deepening the recession, increasing unemployment, reducing domestic demand (meaning more business closures) while having only a minimal effect on the fiscal deficit? What would you say to the political party or the Minister who offered you such [...]

Great. Coming home from a few days break and there’s the IMF, holding open the cell door. The projections are worrying enough, though hardly new.  Still, to be reminded one more time that the economy is crashing through the double-digit barrier - it doesn’t really perk up your day. The real worry is the prescription, the [...]

Today, UNITE the union launched their ‘Growing the economy:  A Programme for Economic Stimulus‘. It constitutes a fundamental challenge to the economic orthodoxy that dominates the current debate by outlining an alternative investment approach to the economic and fiscal crisis.
It’s premise is simple enough:  Fianna Fail’s deflationary budgetary policies are not working.  In fact, they [...]

Over at Cedar Lounge Revolution, WBS is doing a good job tracking the ongoing campaign against Ireland’s borrowing capacity and, in particular, the performance of the National Treasury Management Agency. On a recent post, I agreed but received this challenge from barratree:
Michael, - I’ve yet to see you addressing the point that most people are [...]

Boy, was Senator Fergal Quinn taken in. Or was he? In his recent column, ‘Getting people work a priority’ he attempts to make two real-life comparisons - one based on a letter he received and one from what he read in the paper. Senator Quinn forgot the first universal rule of life: don’t believe everything [...]