Irish, English, Scots and Welsh people are so reluctant to talk about death they often fail to tell their families what they want to happen to them when they die, or so a recent survey has found. 60% of people have not written a will, including a quarter of over-65 year olds. And of those [...]

This paper was delivered to The Kate O’Brien Weekend, Saturday February 27th 2010.
Irish writers are more insiders than outsiders now. We have the Arts Council to give us bursaries, albeit much reduced since the Depression began; we have Aosdána to support us in our old age; we have Ireland Literature Exchange to help our work [...]

In the aftermath of an earthquake that devastated the slum-cities of Haiti, there has been a strong influx of foreign money and troops, apparently to help rebuild the poverty-stricken country. However, we should note that many of the countries that have been to the fore in expressing their altruistic intentions are those which are most [...]

Despite the wondrous technological developments and global wealth generated since the start of the 19th century, billions of people continue to live in the direst conditions of poverty. While this is clear from even the most casual observation of anyone who has travelled, lived or worked in the South (the Southern Hemisphere), the definition of [...]

Global Auction of Public Assets: Public sector alternatives to the infrastructure market and Public Private Partnerships by Dexter Whitfield. Spokesman Books 380 pp

Dexter Whitfield’s book is a resource that can help a myriad of groups, organisations and even states if they so wish, to understand the impact, dynamics and inequalities of the privatisation of public [...]

Today Haiti is most commonly known for being the poorest country in the ‘western’ hemisphere and a land wracked by destitution and despair. This picture has only been reinforced by the horrific consequences of the January 13th earthquake, 15 kms south-west of Port-au-Prince. While the media networks are falling over themselves to relay stories of [...]

When the world financial system looked as if it might collapse in the autumn of 2008, many people assumed that there would have to be drastic changes in the wake of the crisis. Nothing would ever be the same again: the neoliberal philosophy which had spawned the financial meltdown was now irreparably damaged, and a [...]

This is the second part of a two part series on the Trade Related Intellectual Property System (TRIPS) and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and the international treaties negotiated through the World Trade Organisation by economies of the Northern Hemisphere (North) and those of the Southern Hemisphere or South.
TRIPS-Plus
Despite the initial euphoria of the business [...]

The nature of crises is a multi-faceted one; they seem, at first, to come from nowhere yet they are the unfolding of underlying laws of motion to their ultimate and destructive conclusion; they are both a moment of great catastrophe but also one of great opportunity; they are, so to speak, the end of one [...]

Paul Sweeney has an excellent post on progressive-economy.ie today about the bid by the Babcock & Brown execs to buy Eircom. Drawing on a chapter in his own book Selling Out? Privatisation in Ireland, Sweeney argues that this is another nail in the coffin of liberal economics and that the original sale of the state [...]