I have a friend with a strange sense of humour. His email says only ‘Enjoy the weekend’. But attached is a news statement from the Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association (ISME). Some friend. ISME and the Small Firms Association are in competition with each other over who can best represent small/medium [...]

It is a well-known fact that public sector workers are (a) greedy, (b) not productive (in fact they’re anti-productive), (c) over-paid and under-worked with big fat pensions, and (d) the single most important cause behind our recession and the poor showing of the Irish football team.  How do I know all this? Because I read the [...]

If it wasn’t great over the last few years, how much worse can it get?  Recently, we have had to endure a mish-mash of confused debates over the ‘middle class’, the ‘coping class’, the ‘aspiring class’.  I’ve gone over this ground before but in these recession days it is always well to remind ourselves of [...]

You know its recession time - the unemployed are getting hammered. Mary Hanafin, straight from slashing the education system in her previous portfolio, is now getting her hooks into those who have been thrown out of work. Why? To save money. Apparently, there are queues of people ripping off the social welfare system. Let’s go [...]

Here’s a recession tip for you: join a trade union. Get your friends, workmates and family to join a trade union. It will improve your living standards, help economic growth and give out a dig-out to the Finance Minister Brian Lenihan. The Centre for Economic and Policy Research, one of the [...]

It gets worser and worser. Davy has just issued their predictions for the economy. One always has to treat Davy with a large grain of salt. They tend to be quite pessimistic; if there’s a downside they’ve been to the bottom and gone looking for new depths to plummet. That’s what [...]

What better way to spend a lazy afternoon than reading National Competitiveness Council reports, in particular its submission to the Commission on Taxation? The NCC is full of information but they do have a particular agenda and damn the facts. For instance, Ireland’s low tax rate has driven
‘ . . . . entrepreneurship, [...]

Ah, the haute bourgeoisie - I know the old Scotsman warned us against letting them talk to each other. This is wise counsel but I have found that they can be amazingly open, almost innocent in their discussions. Take the Merrill Lynch Survey of Fund Managers July: never mind the amusing language - [...]

Retraining is all the political rage. To deal with rising unemployment and slowing job creation, the opposition parties are demanding a programme of retraining - in particular, those being laid off in the construction sector. No one, of course, is opposed to that. It makes sense. Yes, let’s retrain and retrain [...]

Here’s a thought courtesy of Cllr. Eric Byrne - a suggestion so common-sensical its’ frightening. Immediately after Bernard McNamara did a runner on the PPPs in Dublin city, Cllr. Byrne proposed that the City Council scrap all such ‘partnership’ proposals and do the following:
Dublin City Council already owns the sites in question. The Council [...]