You can pick your friends but not your friends’ friends. Out last night with some of the former who brought some of the latter and, of course, their conversation turned to the recession. And those of the latter were real Euro-jockeys, propounding such thoughtful gems as ‘trade unions are sapping our vitals’. […]

One of my wonderful, pious, intrepid apparition spotters in America alert me to the news that Our Lady was recently making an appearance in Salinas, California, at the Old Town Bar & Grill restaurant. Our Lady was not a customer, however. No. She was spotted by a plumber in a floor drain! What could she […]

It must be great to be a spokesperson for employers. You can just plonk yourself in front of a microphone and say anything that comes into your head, no matter how outrageous or unsubstantiated. On Thursday’s Morning Ireland Mark Fielding of ISME was being interviewed together with UNITE’s Jerry Shanan. Mr. Fielding […]

Did anyone catch the curious symmetry? On the day that unemployment, once again, shot up, AIB announced their half-yearly profits. Two different worlds on this small island.
Not that there weren’t attempts to show that these different worlds are experiencing the same thing. The Irish Times headlines: AIB Profits Fall. And […]

Si, is brilliant Spanish bicyclist Carlos Sastre, who win France’s Tour de France last week in Paris, France, putting the seal (and also the lion) on a fine summer for Spanish virility, which have seen the man-boy-child Rafa Nadal also lick all-comers at Wimbledon, England, and the genius national football team win Euro 2008 in […]

The Israel-Iran phoney war took a dramatic turn last week when Transport minister Shaul Mofaz said that if Iran’s nuclear weapons programme continues, Israel will attack. Mofaz is one of three deputy Prime Ministers with pretensions to the current incumbent Ehud Olmert’s position. Though Israel attacked Saddam’s Iraq in 1981 in similar circumstances, the […]

You Are Going Nowhere, Sonny Jim. Stitch That!
Did you read in the crappy English newspapers about how the atheist communist leader of Manchester United, Sir Alex-Fergulson, has been making the disparaging remarks about Real Madrid, accusing it of moral bankruptcy because of its success during the glorious Franco period, a time when, he seems to […]

Following developer Bernard McNamara’s decision to pull out of several regeneration projects proposed under a Public-Private Partnership arrangement with Dublin City Council, there has been some speculation regarding the future of another McNamara project. The Leargas consortium headed by McNamara - which also includes international prison operators GSL and Barclays Private Equity - has […]

You can almost smell the sense of anticipation!
The big news in Spain this week was that a butcher in Pontevedra name Marcelino is winning a million and a half euro in the Primitiva lottery, thereby doubling the gross regional income of Galicia in one stroke. As you can see in the video I have […]

What a good news week for Fianna Fail was last week. It wasn’t just the latest Irish Times poll even if it’s only a honeymoon result. There was also that report– the ESRI’s Medium -Term Review: a little rough patch and then clear skies and calm waters for . . . well until 2025 minimum. […]