Good lord - is Master Batt O’Keefe in danger of turning into a modern-day Huey Long, a radical redistributionist who wants to confiscate wealth from the rich and give it to everyone else?  He seems to have recently discovered the fact that there are lots of millionaires running about the place and he is using that [...]

In a previous post, I suggested Turlough O’Sullivan suffered from an unfortunate quirk - he couldn’t bring himself to saying the words ‘low-paid’ with inserting the rider ‘so-called’. I proposed the appropriate therapy - read the facts. But a reader of my blog, Yvonne, has diagnosed another malady Turlough suffers from - innumeracy.
Prior to re-entering [...]

From the American political blogosphere - an interesting concept (actually the religious-political-progressive blogosphere). Yes, American religious-progressive.
With all the European media focused on Governor Sarah Palin and her supporters (Rush Limbaugh calling on all those who believe in ‘babies, guns and Jesus’ to support her), it’s important to keep in mind that religion in America [...]

I don’t know Dr. Gerry Burke.  Were he to walk past me on the street, I wouldn’t know him.  So, please, someone point him out.  I want to buy him a pint.  For Dr Burke has been going around getting himself disliked in certain circles.  He has made a complaint to the Competition Authority, [...]

Yes, yes and yes again.
‘What Ireland did in the 1990s is something that had never really been done before by anyone. We imported development. Most modern economies plugged foreign direct investment into an existing set of skills, traditions, resources. But, to an overwhelming extent, we depended on the attraction of fully-formed global corporations, who [...]

Just when you despair of sensible commentary in our media, along comes someone like Carl O’Brien, Social Affairs Correspondent of the Irish Times. Writing today, he puts the educational challenges facing society into context - and not a very hopeful one considering the level of political debate surrounding the tuition fee controversy. [...]

The rain conjures up many things for people: depression, wet clothes and dreams of a sunny Mediterranean village with cheap wine and grilled prawns.  I share in that but there are a few more inter-related things I’d like to raise:  wild-eyed environmentalists, greedy public sector workers and falling profits for insurance companies.
I live in a [...]

What a dog’s dinner. Education Minister, Batt O’Keefe, flew his ‘bring back tuition fees’ kite. It was immediately shot down by the Greens, the PDs and, even, Minister Hanafin. Then the PDs were shot down by Minister Mary Harney who thinks its a good idea to, at least, debate tuition fees. Is [...]

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 [...]

It was only a matter of time before the business sector opened up another front in the recession wars. Hamburger king Pat McDonagh of Supermac has accused the Government of ’strangling entrepreneurship’ and ‘criminalising business’. And just how is the vile Government doing this?
‘Bureaucracy, legislation and regulation’.
But Mr. McDonagh is just getting started.
McDonagh [...]