Thursday, May 24th 2012
To kick public sector workers around the block is in danger of becoming an officially recognised sport; bloated, inefficient, over-paid - and don’t even mention pensions. Tony O’Brien is opining on the best instrument - scalpel or chainsaw - to achieve public sector savings:
‘If tackled correctly we could be aiming for efficiencies of 10 per cent, which is equivalent [...]
Eat Your Heart Out, Padre Pio!!
Si, is well-known American actor Tony Danza, who play Robert Stack, aka Iron Man in the new Hollywood blockbuster movie, also, coincidentally, called Iron Man. Once again we see the disgusting blasphemous heresy that happen when Americans get their hands on the story of Jesus and try to make it [...]
Chavismo and democracy
The assertion that Venezuela has become a more democratic society under Hugo Chavez is bitterly contested. We can pass over the repeated claims that Chavez is a brutal dictator who has turned Venezuela into a communist state - the people making such allegations are certainly not troubled by the burden of proof. But [...]
This is the second of a three part review of Bart Jones’ Hugo! The Hugo Chavez Story. Read the first part Chavez: The Hatred of the ‘Dark-Skinned Yokel’ here and the second part Chavaz: ‘A Subversive in Miraflores’?here.
Build-up to the putsch
It’s impossible to discuss the reaction provoked by the Chavez government, of course, without addressing [...]
Where stands the debate on the unusustainability of ‘universalism’ now? The Government has stated that only 5% of over-70s have incomes exceeding €36,400 (€72,800 for a couple) and the cost of providing them a medical card would be €10 - €15 million. Unsustainable? It amounts to pennies. In fact, it amounts to less than pennies [...]
Well, it’s been a busy few weeks trying to keep up with the US Presidential election campaign and the global economic crisis, to say nothing of trying to do some work occasionally.So, inevitably, the campaign is taking place in the shadow of ‘events’ and has been affected by them. As we move into the final [...]
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I think that’s an underestimate.
The chart above is taken from an analysis by Dan O’Brien of the Economist Intelligence Unit which appeared in yesterday’s Sunday Business Post. He presented this chart to make a point:
‘The increase in public spending in Ireland over the past decade has [...]
Castro comes to visit
In 1971, Fidel Castro went to Chile as a guest of its new president Salvador Allende. The Cuban leader left with a gloomy view of the prospects for the first democratically-elected Marxist government in the Americas. Confiding to associates in private, Castro predicted the tragic defeat of Allende’s Popular Unity experiment two [...]
The Leader of the Opposition would equally be of the view that he needs to see fairness and equity in the way in which scarce resources are allocated. Can he justify a change by his members’ on the basis that a Government decision to offer medical cards to well-off pensioners, to senior civil servants, High [...]
This week, indignant old men and women have led a wave of unprecedented social protest in the national media. Next week, the same old men and women will take their protest to the streets. The government may fall.
The primary issue may be medical cards but the core value at the heart of the [...]
