Wednesday, Feb 8th 2012
Paula Clancy, director of TASC, has written an articulate and forcefully response to David Quinn’s column in last Friday’s Irish Independent. In that article Quinn claimed that ‘out of control public spending’ combined with the poor enforcement of existing regulation was to blame for the current crisis, but not, to the extent that it has [...]
There is much in Michael Taft’s ‘Towards a New Economic Narrative‘ that most socialists can agree with. The state must take measures to protect the majority of its population from the ravages of unemployment and recession.
So, yes, we need a new social housing programme, a school building programme, a conservation maintenance programme for older housing, [...]
Michael Taft’s 10 point plan for addressing the profound problems which face the Irish economy is an excellent starting place for discussion of the response of the left. Its major strength is that it recognizes that we cannot get beyond the current impasse without a comprehensive list of separate but intimately related changes in the [...]
John Maynard Keynes once remarked that “practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”. Are we approaching a time when practical men (and women) will have to make a conscious choice between the philosophies of two long-dead economists: Keynes himself and Karl [...]
The view from the world’s second-tallest building, the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, is a bit of an anti-climax - once you get near the top there’s not much to see that can compare with the skyscraper itself. You can’t help being impressed, though, at the ambition behind the Towers. In case visitors over-look what [...]
The state of the Ireland’s maternity services is deeply unsatisfactory. In August of last year, in considerable frustration and anger at the lack of any cohesive action to make improvements, I wrote to the Irish Times (letter) to describe the situation. By budget time, it was already known that several large maternity hospitals had had [...]
The European Commission’s Eurobarometer report is available (PDF)
Background to the Referendum
On June 12th, 2008, the Irish electorate was presented with the opportunity to vote “yes” or “no” to the Lisbon Treaty. This was the seventh referendum on European integration in Ireland in the last 36 years, so EU referendums are very much part [...]
