LAUREL AND HARDY COUNTRY!

If you have the good fortune to live outside this show they call Ireland, you must be laughing. You should be grateful as well, in between your hysterical shrieking. Those of us living here are not amused.

This week we landed ourselves in another fine mess. Or rather, the banks did by putting on their version of the Laurel and Hardy Show.

We all know that Ireland Inc is a small side street theatre compared to the bigger Broadway productions. Everybody knows everybody who is anybody in this country. Business conducts itself in an incestuous manner really.

This week, Sean Fitzpatrick, chairman and former chief executive of Anglo Irish Bank, was found to have fooled the auditors for the last eight years by under-declaring his director loans from his own bank. At the time of the annual audit, he would simply transfer his loans to Irish Nationwide Building Society and when the auditors had completed their work and presented the accounts, he would merely transfer it back. Some thing like a corner-shop owner camouflaging from the auditors the fact that he eat too many of the Jelly Beans himself by adjusting the stock figures, you might think.

No quite so, I'm afraid.

Our esteemed Anglo banker was in hock to his own bank to the tune of €80million plus, not something you'd want made public. Questions might be asked and that wouldn't reflect well on the gung-ho image of the proactive Anglo-Irish Bank, not to mention the bould Seanie himself. The whole embarrassing show is only beginning as we write.

Sean promptly resigned when the writing was on the wall and his chief executive, David Drumm, followed him.

In the financial industry stretched parameter, the crime was being found out. The action wasn't illegal we were assured. It was unethical, but not illegal.

Shades of Roddy Molloy stating that he was entitled to first-class travel as head FAS. Entitled, no less? Entitled by whom?

Seanie Fitz is the epitome of the image of the financial sector; “we rule the world and we couldn't give a damn about the little people” attitude.

The kings of the grey suit screw all before them. Big swinging dicks will close little businesses by not giving them an overdraft of €5,000 but will lend billions to their buddies in the incestuous world in which they operate.

The Financial Regulator, a supposedly independent monitoring authority, didn't do its job - it knew about Fitzpatrick's scam since January 2008, perhaps it knew it all along for all we know - and told nobody.

The Central Bank is supposed to be wary of this sort of activity and either about it and done nothing - a crime - or didn't know about it should have which is incompetence. Either way, the banks have fooled the people, the Government, their auditors and the regulatory authorities.

It all adds up to a farcical production not quite worthy of playing Broadway (Wall Street has cornered that end of the market) but definitely fit for Las Vegas where gambling with other peoples money is an industry.

Once again, the greedy evil bastards that are bankers have shamed the country and made us look like Laurel and Hardy in the eyes of the world.

LESSONS LEARNED THE HARD WAY

Where will it all end for little old Ireland?
Where could you possibly begin to project where it will all end?
Well, one could take a quick look at our northerly neighbour, Iceland, and you might gain some indication of the destination that the descending road we are on will take us. It is a town called the IMF.
The International Monetary Fund is the last port of call for bankrupt countries. You don’t call them however; they march in on you without as much as word of greeting.
The IMF is in local terms the equivalent of the court sheriff calling. The IMF will let you keep the milk and perishable foods needed for your family but they will take the fridge.
Iceland is a country of 300,000 people. In the last seven years, they prospered on being a centre for international financial trade. Previously they were fishermen. They made money out of paper, sometimes quite literally. Like the IFSC in Dublin, they provided a compliant tax and lax regulatory regime allowing vast amounts of money flow through their systems whilst reaping a fortune in fees and commissions. In a country with such a small population, it did not take long for the effects to permeate all the way down the food chain.
Like Ireland, Iceland grew prosperous and arrogant. House prices climbed through the roof making accidental millionaires out of ordinary folk , money from all over the world flowed in to the coffers of the banks, (including billions from the English County Councils), attracted by the high interest rates offered. Shops sold out of expensive stock. Fancy cars never seen before, except on television, soon jammed the streets of Reykjavik. New retail outlets opened up to gobble up the sudden stream of cash in the system. Igloos melted with the heat of all this frantic activity.
The Icelandic banks, strengthened by all this cash, puffed out their tiny chests and decided to take on the world. They bought other banks and financial institutions in countries throughout the world, including Ireland (Merrion Stockbrokers).
Remember, this is a country roughly the size of Blanchardstown in population and a little bigger than Ireland in size.
Like the Irish on the property scene, the Icelanders punched away above their weight in the international financial boxing arena. They were feared wherever they entered a country, targeting banks and stock broking institutions with relish.
Sadly, however, reality hit home when the credit crunch bit worldwide. When the big boys that dominated the world for a century like Lehman Brothers fell, what hope had our vastly leveraged Icelandic raiders? Their strength was based on the high share price of the bank and the strong capital ratio brought about because of insanely high interest rates paid to attract international depositors.
When international depositors took fright at what was happening worldwide and pulled their money back to their own countries that guaranteed the deposits, the house of cards that was the Icelandic financial giant tumbled to the ground. The IMF now runs Iceland with the cold authority of a Nazi concentration camp commander.
Warren Buffett, that great American investor, is fond of saying that you only know who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.
Back home in Ireland, the tide is retreating fast. Some obvious candidates are naked, but so too are some very surprising ones. We are in the middle a financial tsunami not known in our history. The government, paralysed by inertia and incompetence, dither and pretend it will be alright on the night. We await our fate, rather than being proactive and trying to input some direction to it.
Conditions are perfect. The IMF is on the way!

Petty Politics

There have been many repercussions from the various daft and ill-thought Budget proposals, which were enacted in the Finance Bill published last week.
Such was the apparent haste in dreaming up the cuts that they needed to implement to shore up the nations finances, that Brian Lenehan had to row back on many of the ideas and scrap some altogether.
What we got was a hotch–potch of ridiculous cost cutting measure with all the imagination of a lump of wood. Far from stimulating the economy, these brainless measures will stifle the country into a depression.
We could talk all day about the gang of idiots that now run this country but let us stick to one item that was formalised into the Finance Bill last week despite much protest.
The Government will save €10 million on not distributing cervical cancer vaccines to girls from 12-year old upwards. The Minister for Health, Mary Harney had committed to introducing this measure before the Budget. She made a very compelling case at that time for the need to do this. It is estimated by the medical profession that two in ten women will get cervical cancer in their lifetime. These victims will all die from it; there is no cure or lasting treatment for this virulent form of cancer.
The wonderful medical breakthrough in inventing this vaccine and allowing it to be administered to young girls would have saved thousands of lives in the future. Not alone that but the agony of kids and partners losing a loved mother would spared to so many more.
How dare Mary Harney allow this to happen? A miserable €10m, half the weekly budget of that useless body, FAS.
Of course, Harney was well treated by those assholes in that particular quango, including her husband, Brian Geogheon, who was once head of this so-called organization. Blow jobs in Florida, private jets and limos to ferry her and her entourage around sort of blinds you to reality. If the little people were suffering, well it was their problem. Let them eat cake. Let them die for the sake of a petty €10 million euro.
As a woman, could she not appreciate what this breakthrough could do for her gender companions throughout Ireland?
Could she not have told the Finance Minister that this was sacred? That it could not to be touched by the unseen mandarins of the Civil Service who were advising him. She let down the women of Ireland in a shameful way. For that, Mary Harney, you deserve only one title – BITCH! Sam Maguire

God help us all!

We have been away for a while and look what happens! The country goes down the tube. Is it a coincidence? Did our absence allow those supposedly in charge of the banana republic fall asleep at the wheel?
I think no, somehow. Our degree of influence may extend to getting Obama elected as US president but to achieve anything positive in getting Brian Cowen to run this little country of four million is beyond our realm I fear.
When Cowen was elected Taoiseach this scribe appealed for a chance to allow him show his mettle. He was carried shoulder-high around Clara and happily supped pints for the media. Here was an ordinary guy, just like Bertie, except he had a brain that would be employed for the good of the country, not protecting his political arse in Drumcondra.
Difficult times meant there was little chance of a honeymoon period normally accorded to incoming office holders. We forgave him some early lapses, wondered aloud about Mary Coughlan as his choice of Tainaiste, but left well enough alone for him and his team to get on with it.
Boy, did we get it wrong!
We know there is a world crisis, unprecedented in its force and effect. But, eighteen months ago Ireland was regarded by all and sundry across the world for the healthy position of its finances. We had fifteen good years to shore us up for the rainy day. Batten down the hatches and we’ll get over this hump, we said smugly to ourselves.
Look at us now. My God, look at us now!
Once again, we are the paupers of the world. It was all an illusion. Daggers and mirrors, as Bertie might say. We are penniless. Much worse, we owe a fortune and the perfect storm has erupted over our heads. We never put a penny by for the first rainy that came. We blew the good times.
Tax revenue falling as fast as Biffo drops from 10,000 feet without a parachute, massive rising unemployment, banks closed for business, the consumer not spending (and those who are do it in Newry).
Who is to blame for the disaster?
Bertie, of course! But isn’t hindsight 20/20 vision? On reflection, who was Finance Minister for the last four years when the ground was quietly crumbling beneath our feet?
Biffo the Brain was at the helm of the SS Moneybags Ireland; heading for the rocks, unknown to us, throwing our life savings over the side.
Bertie anointed Cowen as his successor.
Smiling two-faced Bertie was replaced by grumpy straight and Brainy Biffo. Sure, wasn’t the man a genius according to the spin machine?
But now it has emerged that we were duped all along. Grumpy Biffo was plain old Grumpy Biffo. The brain was missing.
The two Brians and Mary now are in charge.
Oh my God!

PARTY NIGHT

Wouldn’t it be nice to be young again and getting your Junior Cert results? Today the results of the 2008 Junior Certificate we relayed to anxious youngsters countrywide. Tonight there will be celebrations.
The great thing about the Junior Cert is that it is not the end of the world if things do not go right. You have time on your hands to make up for it in the next two years.
They are only a halting post until the real thing-the Leaving Cert- hits you in two years.
So, tonight they celebrate as only teenagers can. Sure, there will be the usual outcries from concerned parents and teachers about bad behaviour on the streets of our cities and towns. There is no doubt that the effect of drink and drugs play havoc this night each year. Garda sources are of the opinion that the Junior Cert students’ post-results behaviour is far worse than their Leaving Cert counterparts are. This is because they reckon that the older students are better able to handle their drink and drugs whereas tonight marks the first big celebration in a teenager’s life. The lack of experience shows and can lead to appalling behaviour.
Nonetheless, we should not deny them their chance to paint the town red (as long as it is not blood).
Of course, they are not supposed to be drinking, but since when did Irish teenagers obey silly little rules like that? Or, publicans turn a blind eye to under-age tipplers.
Look back in envy and remember our own days. Times like this were great and live with you forever. In fact, they become enhanced with sentiment over time.
Tonight, a small percentage of gurriers will cause trouble and tarnish the name of the rest.
But, the rest are the best, so go and enjoy it! You deserve it. If only I could go back again. Ah, well! Where are my slippers, dear?

HURLING – THE GAME OF GIANTS

This Sunday, the 7th September, sees the mouth-watering prospect of a fantastic All-Ireland Hurling Final between Kilkenny and Waterford. Waterford are in their first All Ireland final in 45 years and Kilkenny are seeking a historic three-in-a-row under manager Brian Cody.
Waterford has had a rags-to-riches season thus far. They controversially parted with their manager, Justin McCarthy early in the season after the championship had commenced. It was widely rumoured that a dressing room rebellion by the players in relation to fitness levels ended the reign of the Cork man. Whatever the reasons, Waterford gave themselves a stick to beat them with their attitude. The appointment of legendary Clare goalkeeper, Davy Fitzgerald, as manager has galvanized the team it would appear. That Fitzgerald is a controversial character in his own right adds to the drama of the occasion. The Clare man is not afraid to speak his mind and in the past has regular brushes with authority both inside and outside his own county.
Brian Cody is a no-nonsense manager who has ruled Kilkenny hurling with an iron fist since appointed seven years ago. His remarkable achievements off the field have mirrored his exploits on the turf. A multi-All Ireland medal winner at every level of the game, a three in a row on Sunday would practically immortalize the man.

In each of the teams are players of pure genius that will make the showdown on Sunday an undoubtedly memorable occasion. Players such as Ken McGrath, Dan Shanahan, and the fiery John Mullane will inspire Waterford. On the Kilkenny team, the peerless Henry Shefflin and Charley Carter rule the roost.

Hurling is one of the great field games of the world. It gets little exposure internationally, yet anybody from abroad who ever sees it played rave about it. The speed and the skill are phenomenal. For amateur players, the level of physicality and fitness is hard to fathom.
As a game it seems made for the American market. It would make all their muscular games seem like tiddlywinks! NFL football and baseball seem boring by contrast to even a bad hurling game. Ice hockey, reputedly the fastest field game in the world, would pale into insignificance when compared to a junior hurling game.
And yet the GAA seem strangely reluctant to market it in America, the most obvious place to expand the game. Rather, they promote a bastardized version of football against full Aussie Rules players every two years. The series is almost dead because of the consistent violence of the Australian players.
Would it not be wiser to talk to the American associations and TV networks in an effort to spread the gospel of the most fluid ball game there is?
In the meantime, we all look forward to Sunday!

FREE EDUCATION MYTH

This week thousands of schoolchildren returned with most likely great reluctance to their places of learning at either primary or secondary level. Generally, kids have grave reservations and worries about going back to the classroom. After the summer we had in Ireland this year who could blame them.
However, their concerns are dwarfed by those of their parents who must fund the cost of them getting through the basic education process. In the week that was in it, when calls were made for third-level college fees to be re-introduced, a shiver of fear must have gone through those parents who are struggling just to get their children to the conclusion of second level education.
In 1967, the then Minister of Education, Donnacha O’Malley, introduced the most revolutionary and far-sighted piece of reform in providing free education up to and including Leaving Certificate Level. Later still, third level education fees were abolished. Ireland had, in theory a complete free education system. Tens of thousands of disadvantaged children were allowed the opportunity to avail of education that previously their circumstances prevented. There is no doubt that it changed the Irish society dramatically and beneficially.
Over four decades later, the bold initiative by Donnacha O’Malley has soured for many of the citizens it was designed to benefit.
Today primary and secondary education is free in name only. There are no entrance fees to be paid (unless you opt for the private school route) but there the free element ends.
Thanks to the politicians and mandarins in the Civil Service, Ireland has suffered a huge deficit in education investment in the past twenty years. No account appears to have been taken of the population demographics of the country in considering the need for more classrooms and lower teacher-pupil ratios.
Together with increased immigration during the Celtic Tiger years, the accommodation of primary and secondary pupils and teachers is chaotic. Prefabricated buildings more suited to construction sites are the norm for classrooms in many schools. Investment in education infrastructure seems way down on the priorities of government. If that was the case in the good times, what will it be like now that the economic downturn is upon us?
In order to keep schools running, Boards of Management and Parents Committees are forced to resort to fundraising from the parents of the pupils. Raffles, race nights, monster draws, and poker classics – you name it and they will do it in order to keep the school budget in order, something the funding from the Department of Education will not do.
In addition, parents will receive direct begging letters from the school asking for a “voluntary donation” which then suggests a figure to give. It is as about as voluntary as standing in front of a firing squad.
Add to this the cost of school books- up to €500 at secondary level- uniforms, transport etc., etc. and you soon realize that this is not free education by any means. Hard-pressed families struggle to meet the staggering costs that a large brood of children impose on them when it comes to educating them.
In these troubled times, free education in Ireland does not come cheap!

THE DAY THE TOLL BARRIERS CAME DOWN

Mark this day, August 29^th 2008. This is the day that the notorious M50 toll bridge lowers its barriers for the last time. Dubliners and commuters should be celebrating as Berliners did in 1989 when the infamous Berlin Wall dividing East and West Berlin was knocked. They should go around to the booths and pull them apart and derive some glee from ripping out equipment that made their daily lives hell.

Not that it is going to make any material difference to the unfortunate motorist from an economic point of view. In fact, with the new e-tolling system billing you from cyberspace, you are likely to be worse off in that regard.

What is new? Screwing the motorist has been a hobby of all governments since the state was formed. Nothing really changes at all.

Do not expect that the demolition of this monstrosity will mean quicker travelling times ahead for unfortunate commuters. Ongoing works on the M50 to upgrade it to three lanes will not be completed until 2010. Inevitably, that will be 2011 or 2012 by which time the capacity of the road will be exceeded just like the original M50.

What is with the public servants we employ in this country? Do they not have some training in forecasting trends? They have a raft of data at their disposal, yet they continually fail to forecast our infrastructure needs in an accurate manner.

The M50 is now effectively an inner relief road for the city of Dublin. Just look at the residential and industrial development outside its boundaries. Despite economic downturns, progress will continue on this type development. Can planners not consult other cities with similar demographics to assess our needs for the future? There has been a suggestion that a new M50 style motorway should start at Drogheda and link to the new M7 at Portlaoise. This makes sense and should be done now, but going on past performance, by the time they get around to it further remedial action will be required.

There are scientific models out there for estimating our requirements for all forms of infrastructure. Those in authority appear to ignore those tools that will provide them with the necessary information to predict future requirements.

Ireland is a past master at reactive remedies to infrastructure problems. You only have to see the devastation that the recent floods caused to realize that none of the meteorology warnings of changing climate had any effect on planners. Against all advice, they allowed residential development on flood plains despite being told over ten years ago that the weather patterns were going to change to what we are now seeing. Sub-standard drainage systems were installed based on existing geological data and not future estimates. A five-year old child familiar with Lego would do better at design and build than the clowns in the public service.

Anyway, back to the Westlink toll bridge. During its existence, it made fortune for its owners, NTR. Not alone was the bridge paid for many times over during its lifetime, but the Government actually paid NTR €650 million to close the tolls. What an absolute farce. NTR continue to operate other tolls throughout the country so their income stream from the hard-pressed motorist will not dry up. Shed no tears for them.

Instead, why don’t motorists take the pleasure of saving NTR demolishing the tollbooths on the M50 by going up over the weekend and burning the lot. It will not change things very much but by God, it would feel good!

THRIFTY IS TRENDY

How things have changed in Ireland in such a short space of time.

In 1994, the Celtic Tiger started out a whimpering cub, trying to shake off the generations of poverty and lack of confidence. In the next decade, it grew into an animal that devoured all before it.

Confidence went up. The price of houses and wages went up. The cost of credit came down. The availability of it from all financial institutions became easy. Credit card spending became the norm. If you were not in debt then you were a fool became a tag line. Use cheap credit to improve your life was the advice of a new breed of homespun financial advisers, usually with an agenda to pursue.

The dot com melt down of 2000 caused merely a blip in consumer-oriented Ireland. A few shaky months passed and the upward trend continued. Houses soared in price and demand as immigrants fuelled the need for accommodation. New car sales set year on year records. Foreign holidays became a seasonal event and weekends away became a monthly event. The chattering classes outdid each other with their boasts of Mediterranean villas and Manhattan apartments. For God sake, even the window cleaner had a home in Spain!

Come the end of 2005, the first signs of the bubble bursting began to manifest themselves. Interest rates increased every quarter on eight consecutive occasions.

Suddenly the second mortgage on the Irish home to finance the holiday property did not seem such a good idea. Cash flow became tighter as monthly mortgage payments rose. Interest only periods on mortgages came to an end and the reality of paying over twice as much per month to meet capital and interest payments hit home.

The party is over. The new trend is thrift. Vanity has a new overcoat. It is coloured Green. Being forced to do without is dressed up as a virtue in helping to save the planet. All those carbon emissions – how dreadful, lets get a smaller car, dear.

The number of fancy cars repossessed has soared. The number of fancy cars voluntarily and quietly returned to their lenders has soared even more. Shopping in Aldi and Lidl for the upper middle classes is de rigueur. Buying designer clothes in Oxfam is helping the less fortunate, don’t you know. The Hermes bag and Mercedes convertible are vulgar monuments to the excesses of the past.

The thrift trend has permeated down to the working classes. Cheap imported beer bought at service stations is now the alternative to being fleeced in your local pub. Drink irresponsibly at home is the new adage.

Restaurants are feeling the pinch as people suddenly start to use all those fancy appliances in their homes that heretofore were merely for decoration. Aga cookers are actually used to cook food for the family. Who would have thought we would see the day?

Welcome to the new Ireland folks! What next? The D4 set ordering fish n’ chips at Malloccas?

PITY THE POOR IRISH MOTORIST

Nobody in authority in Ireland appears to have any sympathy for the Irish Motorist (IM). The IM is a much-maligned creature, blasted with venom from every angle. This, despite the fact that many of the people who are openly critical of IMs are in fact IMs themselves.

It is hard to find another country in the developed world that is as anti-car as Ireland.

From the word go the IM is screwed.

First of all, as he or she buys their new car they are fleeced with an illegal tax, known as Vehicle Registration Tax (VRT). This used to be call import duty, which was banned by the EU on the reasonable basis that we are, in effect, one trading entity of 27 countries and there was no need for this antiquated protection tax. Ireland, however, managed to get derogation from this for a period. When this expired, they hit upon the swindle of calling it VRT instead of import duties and ever since are getting away with it, despite the attentions of the watchdogs in Brussels.

Having endured this initial pain, the poor IM is faced with the very high road taxes that pertain in Ireland. Now that the means of calculating these has changed to emissions, the poor IM who has a high-powered car or jeep not alone faces higher taxes but also has to endure the wrath of the mad tree-hugging Greens.

Next up is insurance of said motorcar. Insurance for experienced drivers has fallen considerably since the early years of the decade when, post-9/11 it soared to outrageous levels as the gangsters that masquerade as insurance companies took the opportunity to increase cover on all risks by ridiculous sums.

However, for a young driver in Ireland, there still is this horrendous outlay for them to meet annually. For years, insurance companies convinced the public that they were losing money on motor cover for young drivers. It was only when one large underwriter accidently (no pun intended) broke out the profits it made from each risk category that we realised that in fact they were making massive profits in that sector. Even with the fall in motor insurance for older drivers, the IM pays a much higher premium than those in all of the of the other EU countries.

Once on the road the going gets really tough for the IM. Ireland has third world infrastructure and under the NDP, they are gradually upgrading the road network. Despite getting billions from the EU to do this, it seems that they cannot build 20 kilometres of motorway without putting a toll on it. The commuter who drives to and from Dublin each day is faced with anything up to eight tolls depending on where they work.

Along with the high fuel prices (out of which the Government extracts painful amounts of duty), the unfortunate IM sees their weekly wage decimated by the cost of getting to work.

It is not as though there is much alternative with public transport.

Despite a fortune spent on advertising telling us how they are “getting there”, Irish Rail remains a farcical dinosaur from the semi-state days. It offers the commuter very little by way of a reasonable alternative to driving their car to work. If everybody were suddenly to take the train to get to work tomorrow, there would be chaos. As it is, travelling with Irish Rail makes those over-crowded Indian trains seem very attractive.

Buses offer an alternative, particularly the private operators. Of course, the state owned Bus Eireann uses its muscle to squeeze out private competition. With them, it is a case of using taxpayer’s money to hammer the same taxpayers.

So, spare a thought today for the IM. It may shortly be an endangered species. As it is, the IM is a little-loved creature through no fault of its own.

TEACH THEM ABOUT MONEY

Continuing the education theme of the last post, one observes that the education system in Ireland, up to completion of secondary level, actually delivers very little knowledge in the ways of life that students will encounter.

Sure, it teaches them the life science subjects but one aspect that is missing is financial education.

All education is designed to inform, first and foremost. After that, it is all about coaching students to pass exams in order to have a career where they earn money to provide them with the essentials of life. Money is the key word here. Money provides the basics, but it also provides the luxuries we all hanker after.

If you take the career graph of a university graduate in any discipline, it is noted that 94% end up in jobs working for somebody else. They move jobs as their career progresses but they still end up working for someone else. Their ability to earn is dictated by the constraints of the career or company they work for.

They have fallen into a trap. It may not be a poverty trap in the sense that they are not begging on the streets, but it is a trap nonetheless, that imposes limits as to what they can earn.

They get married or live with partners and start a family. They need a mortgage to buy a house or find the money to pay the rent. They need a car or maybe two depending on circumstances. They need holiday breaks from a demanding career that stresses them out. All of this costs money; for most ordinary people the career path does not provide enough of it.

From the outside, things may look rosy but scratch the surface and you find people who struggle to meet the bills every week of their life. They save to educate their kids, advise them on finding a safe career that actually sentences them to the very same lifestyle they have.

It is one of a grinding battle to find the money to live within a tight parameter impose by the salaries they earn. They will never be rich. At best they might achieve what is called being comfortable. It doesn’t matter if it is the university professor or a public servant. There is a ceiling on what they can do with their lives because of the income they have.

Avoidance of this could be addressed if money management and money creation was taught at secondary school, instead of what is in effect bookkeeping.

Teaching kids lessons on how be creative in making money will throw up entrepreneurial flair at young age. Some will say that this trait will show itself anyway, but that is only true of a limited number of people who have confidence at that age.

Others without this quality need to be taught that there is more to life than straitjacketed careers of enduring desperation. There is no money to be made in working nine-five for somebody else. You are merely a tool in another’s ambitions. You are deemed useful until you become useless. A grey suit in a faraway place will study a spreadsheet and make a decision that puts you on the dole. You do not have control of your own destiny.

If the education in Ireland had financial self-reliance as a subject on the syllabus for the five years of secondary education, there would emerge from our colleges a body of students with a an entirely different outlook on life and how to deal with the most important part of it.

In fairness, it is not just Ireland that is at fault. The entire western world lacks this facet of knowledge in their education systems.

There is a famous book written about achieving financial independence, called Rich Dad, Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lecter. It should be compulsory reading on any secondary school syllabus. Secondary education should see their goal as one that sends out students equipped to deal with the world.

Failing that, every parent who cares about their kid’s future should buy it and make them read it! It is worth the price.

WHAT IS THE POINTS?

This being the silly season where nothing much happens, the media have an annual field day with the Leaving Cert results, which came out this week gone by. Acres of newsprints covered the topic, much of it filler commentary that could have been transcribed from last year’s newspaper editions, such were the similarities.

The same old views are expressed, the same people make the same sane recommendations, the Department of Education agrees to consider them and a year later, nothing has happened.

Tomorrow, the CAO publishes the offer list and students are faced with another harrowing experience as they digest the offers and make a decision, which send them on a life-changing route and maps the future the rest of their lives.

Second – level education is fundamentally flawed in Ireland. By default, this leaves third-level education flawed by the CAO points system.

At secondary level, we are teaching our kids how to pass exams, not educate them. We educate them to score points that will get them their preferred place in college, but not necessarily the course most suitable to their attributes.

Career guidance in our secondary schools is so poor that it is beyond belief. It is merely a nameplate on an office in which sits somebody more intent on achieving high points for the school than the interest of the pupil. That is maybe too much of a generalization and harsh on some good people in the system, but by and large it is a fact.

The Leaving Cert should be abolished, and replaced by a five-year continuous assessment system. There should be an exam in the middle of that period that would define the status of a pupil for the final years of their secondary education.

At present everything is geared towards a two or three-hour exam at the end of five years.

A pupil could be sick on the day, freeze with nerves or have domestic worries that wrecks five years of good work.

Their entire future and life is determined by that exam and that most brief of periods. Mess it up and their career course takes a different direction that may lead them into a dead-end job doing what they don’t like just to make ends meet.

Not alone that, but the points system emanating from those results can ensure that a person who may have an aptitude for the career that the other higher qualified person hates, doesn’t get the opportunity to follow it.

The only way forward is continuous assessment during secondary level education. After that the points system must be altered so that students are not selecting courses in advance of exams as at present. Continuous assessment would ensure that the aptitude of the student is matched to the course rather than the current carriage-before-the-horse situation.

Every year at this time, the same old changes are advocated, and then forgotten about.

It is time to do something – now!

JOY AND SORROW

Harrington does it again! The remarkable Padraig Harrington won the US PGA Championship at the weekend to bring his golf majors tally to three in thirteen months.

What a man! Undoubtedly, he is the greatest sportsman Ireland has ever produced and that is without what may happen in the decade or more he has left to accumulate more honours. The look of steel in his eyes on Sunday evening as he caught Sergio Garcia on the home straight and crushed him with a superb finish suggests that Harrington has only begun to achieve and is a different and more ruthless warrior than in the past.

Indeed, Tiger would arguably not have lived with him on Sunday last, with his two rounds of 66 posted over a long day after rain delayed the third round on Saturday.

Well done Padraig! You have again lifted the hearts of a nation - again.

The joy of seeing Harrington achieve great things was offset by the reality of life in Ireland now. A mere temporary escape from the doom and gloom pervades throughout Ireland now.

Ireland is frozen, in an economic sense. The headlines scream with the tales woe being felt by everybody from billionaires to paupers. The banks have no money to lend to anybody and they will not even lend to each other. All building has stopped. Developers, sub-contractors, small builders are going out business. The really big developers are being kept alive by the banks who know if they call in their loans that the whole house of cards will collapse.

Fear is the new drug. It is causing people to stop shopping for all but the essentials. Shiny glossy shopping centres and retail parks are spartan places now. Footfall has dramatically decreased. Luxury goods stores are suffering big time. Impulse spending is being curtailed. Restaurants that would normally be impossible to get a booking in for months will now happily seat you if you walk in unannounced. Pubs are empty in rural towns and only half-full in the cities. People are staying at home, drinking cheap beer bought in Aldi or Lidl.

The country is flooded by water, and flooded by empty hotels. All of the lovely places that were built on the back of tax breaks are now finding that their business plan was built on sand. There is a glut of hotels throughout the country, all of them losing money. If you want good value in a break in one of the many 5-star hotels dotted around Ireland, look at the advertisements in the national press. Rooms are half-price. Ring them up and offer less and they will take it. Believe me, they will. The customer is now king, but the customer is now poor and utterly lacking in confidence. Don’t expect much company when you get to your nice hotel. Don’t expect much service either, as many of the staff are sacked and the place is running on a shoestring.

The Americans are staying at home and many of the Irish have no home anymore. Repossession of houses is reaching for the stars and still a long way to go. Crippling readjusted loan- to-value (LTV) criteria on many homes are leaving people facing negative equity and higher mortgage payments that they are simply unable to meet.

None of the above scenarios is the stuff of urban myth. They are the current reality and beneath the generalizations expressed are the horror stories of individual situations. The banks are, as always, the bastards behind all of this. When trouble comes, they are like a moon on a bright night – useless!

Padraig, it is time for you to rise to the occasion again!

BANJAXED IN BEIJING

The Olympic Games opened in Beijing last week with great fanfare. The Chinese are using this opportunity to show case the country to the world whilst conveniently hiding any evidence of human rights abuses for which the country is notorious.

Indeed there would be no Olympic Games opening in China on the 08/08/08 (they love their eights in China – lucky numbers and all that bull) were it not for human rights abuses.

All the Games stadia were effectively constructed by slave labour, particularly so when it looked like they were not going to make the necessary deadlines. At that point, the Government hauled hundreds of thousands of workers in from the fields to complete the projects on time. People had no choice in the matter. It is estimated by news agencies that hundreds, if not thousands, of workers lost their lives during the preparations for the games. Health and safety issues on building sites were low down on the Chinese authorities’ priorities.

In an overall context, you would wonder about the status of the modern-day Olympic Games. Their value is completely eroded because of the political circuses that have grown around them. They are monuments to power, money, illusion and corporate excesses. The staging of them has broken cities, and even countries – witness Los Angeles and Greece- and the benefits are only short term in relation to the return on the investment. When the Olympics are finished the host city is generally left with an excess of sporting facilities that become dormant and end up a millstone around the neck of the city authorities.

The process of selecting the locations is corrupt in the extreme with well-documented bribery apparent in many of the past choices. And, of course, this corruption extends onto the track where doping scandals have destroyed the reputation of the Olympic Charter.

The amateur ethos is long since departed and with the rewards for success so high, the temptation to use drugs to enhance performances is huge. As soon as more stringent anti-doping measures are put in place, the scientists are inventing methods to defeat them. It has got to the stage that if a world record is broken, then rather than acclaim the athlete, the public wonder how he or she avoided being tested positive. It is a bit like the suspicion in which we hold the husband of the murdered wife: Guilty until proven innocent, in other words.

This year Ireland travelled with a team of 57 athletes. RTE travelled with a team of 93 personnel, none of them athletes and most of them not broadcasters either.

What an utter waste of money in both situations.

Of the 57 athletes, about 14 are there on merit. All of that 14 have only outside chances of making a semi-final, much less win a medal. The balance are there because that arch-dictator, Pat Hickey, head of the OCI in Ireland, needs to justify his position and the money that is given to his organization by us, the taxpayers, through Government funding.

No disrespect to the athletes, but in all honesty, most of them shouldn’t be there and are only embarrassing the country. The much-maligned and oft repeated mantra that the importance of the Olympics is the taking part is historical bullshit. That was fine when all the athletes were actual amateurs and went back to their day jobs when it was over. Now the Olympic Games are a professional event, thinly disguised as adhering to the original principles. The fact that ladies beach volleyball is regarded as a sport worthy of Olympian merit says it all. This is soft-core porn parading as a sport. What next? Olympic lap dancing?

As for RTE, one would be forgiven for thinking that Ireland was a world-class athletic nation, judging by the number of people they have covering the occasion.

I doubt CNN sent as many staff! What do we get in return for this grossly extravagant waste of our money? Colm Murray eating Chinese food as though it was a new found cuisine. He couldn’t even use the chopsticks, for Gods sake! May we suggest he visits Kites, just around the corner from RTE, for authentic Chinese food and they will also teach him how to use the chopsticks?

We also had the cringe-inducing sight of him trying to perform a native dance with a posse of Chinese girls. Is this what we pay our licence fee to see?

A suggestion that would save RTE and us a lot of money: leave them all out there and see how they like it when the Games are over and they are despatched to the paddy fields!

LEARN TO PLAY THE GAME, TV3

I had the dubious pleasure of watching for the first time on Sunday last the coverage of the All Ireland Football Championship from TV3.

Last year the GAA auctioned the rights to provide coverage of the games in both football and hurling codes. Previously RTE had a monopoly on coverage since time began, with the exception of BBC Northern Ireland, which covered some of the All Ulster clashes.

I sat down to watch the Kerry-Monaghan qualifier clash at Croke Park. Initial impressions were good with sound analysis from the studio team, headed by Matt Cooper.

Cooper and TV3 impressed when handling the Rugby World Cup in 2007 so a similar refreshing take on GAA games was not an overly ambitious aspiration by the viewer.

There the professional presentation unfortunately ended.

The viewers were sold a pup. We had the bland and entirely unsuitable Trevor Welch commentating on the game. Is TV3 living on such a shoestring that they must employ this excuse for a commentator on GAA games as well as soccer matches?

He is bad enough at that pedestrian game because firstly, it is as slow as a caterpillar in the Olympic 100 metres and secondly there are only 22 players to identify instead of 30.

On Sunday, the commentary and camera work was appalling. You would see and hear better at a county final of a Junior Championship, when the committee would ask the least illiterate of its number to do the job for the sake of the club. This lad would then borrow a handy cam from a friend and bellow his way through the game. You can be sure though that he would know his players and those of the opposition. The viewer would be at least entertained.

The Kerry-Monaghan was a great match. Welch and his camera crew were a disaster and an embarrassment. Constant mistakes with identification of players followed by hasty corrections made the viewer cringe. The monotone voice that might as well be commentating on a particularly tragic state funeral, failed to grasp the important scores and events throughout the game. Poor judgement and opinion on pieces of action were constant throughout. It was an utterly incompetent display of commentating made worse by the fact that it was a good game.

Worst of all was the camera work. The panning of the action was atrocious. At one stage, the Monaghan corner forward was bearing down on goal and the camera stayed fixed in close up mode. The viewer was screaming for a wider view to see the context of the play, and the options available to the Monaghan forward. He could have been hurtling towards his own goal for all we knew. The dreadfully inept camera crew must have been on their first assignment after college – that is if they went to college at all.

TV3 paid a lot of money for the rights to broadcast GAA games. They should now go out pay good money to hire decent staff to protect their investment.

STAY AWAY CHARLIE

Charlie Bird is a national institution in Ireland. He is far from a national treasure but he is getting up there. When he dies, he will probably be deemed as such. RTE describe Charlie as their Special News Correspondent. This gives him licence to turn up on our screens with breaking news on any subject under the sun. It must really piss off other journalists dedicated to politics or crime that when something big happens in their field, Charlie has first handle on it.

Charlie has this breathless urgency about him when reporting. He can make an orderly bus queue sound like a riot; a report on flash flooding generates such excitement that the viewer expects to see Noah and the Ark in the background.

He was in Rome for the election of Pope Benedict and the resulting dispatches put Dan Brown and his TheDe Vinci Code novel in the category of boredom occupied by Becket’s Waiting for Godot. When his sources told him that the odds were on the German to win, we half expected Hitler to appear from the white smoke and announce there was no Heaven.

When his prediction about Cardinal Ratzinger proved correct, Charley delivered his “I told you so” report with all the smug pleasure usually reserved for the doctor who tells a patient they have three months to live and thumps the table in satisfaction when they die on the 90^th day.

We can therefore assume that RTE place great value on the contribution of Charlie to the broadcaster’s archives. So much so that they, in effect, give Charlie a free holiday every year, at the taxpayers expense, to indulge in his hobby of exploring the great rivers of the world.

Last year RTE viewers were treated to Charlie exploring the Amazon. This year it is the Ganges. We can only imagine what all this is costing the national broadcaster, which usually brings us American junk TV.

To listen to Charlie rowing his boat down the Ganges or the Amazon, you would be forgiven for thinking he was the first person to discover the place. Looking suitably dishevelled with a nice beard growth, Charlie tells that he is approaching a place that poses real danger because of the presence of some obscure tribe who like to eat people. He informs us in hushed tones that he is all alone in this wicked place. What about the camera crew Charlie? Cue an advert break and we are left wondering (perhaps even hoping) that we may see Charlie being turned over on a blazing spit after Vodafone tells us about another great deal. But, lo and behold, there is the bould Charlie talking to the cannibalistic natives. They are all smiles and Charlie is making wild gestures when they run into difficulty with translation. They all love Charlie and before he leaves for the next dangerous assignment, they are kissing him and the women are all shaking their exposed breasts at him. Obviously, they get the RTE News out there in the jungle because Charlie is feted like a hero.

The series runs for weeks and we learn very little about the Ganges or Amazon and a whole lot about Charlie. What a load of semi-state institution cobblers. What a waste of money that could be put to better use doing real and relevant documentaries. RTE insults their viewers with a series devoid of any real information. This crap just caters to the whims and desires of their egotistical chief news reporter.

If they really wanted to provide us with in-depth information on both of these great rivers all they had to do was pay a small royalty fee to the National Geographic Channel or Discovery Channel, who both have done many wonderful documentaries about all the great natural wonders of the world.

Instead, tens of thousands of euro are wasted on paying for Charlie’s holiday.

Do us all a favour RTE: leave him out there in the jungle and hope he never comes back.

SARKOZI – THE THREE-MINUTE MAN

French Prime Minister, Nicolas Sarkozi came to Dublin recently to talk down to the Irish people about their abominable behaviour in rejecting the Lisbon Treaty last month.

Sarkozi is the current boss of the EU by virtue of the fact that France holds the rotating Presidency for the next six months and before his visit was loud in his condemnation of our failure to bend the knee to Brussels.

Thus, he arrived in Dublin for a one-day trip and holed up in the safety of the French Embassy rather Government Buildings, as is normal protocol. In true Napoleonic arrogance, he granted various lobby groups three minutes, (three minutes!) to make their point before being despatched with dismissive Gallic flourish.

We are a bit concerned at this three minute business and wonder is it anything to do with his personal life and his high profile marriage to Italian model Carla Bruni. One of our intrepid spies managed to infiltrate the “speed dating” meetings and reported as follows:

Well Sarkozi came to Ireland this week

and told us all that we must be meek

and adopt the Brussels glorious master plan

or else our little country would be an also-ran.

He stood therein in all his pomp and grace

and told us we were a fucking disgrace.

How dare we turn around and just say No

when he Bonaparte Sarkozi was running the show.

I will give you all three minutes each

To explain this unforgivable breach

and I want a change of heart then

said he rising to all of his four foot ten.

Tell me now that you’ll say Yes

and put an end to my embarrassing distress.

I have no time, I must be home before night

Or else Carla will kick up an awful shite.

That’s why I can only give you three minutes to decide

Because Carla loves, how you say in Ireland,”le ride”

She is very demanding, so hard to satisfy

So many orgasms, but I try, how I try!

She is very tall, six foot two, mon amour

Thirty lovers she said, but I can’t be sure

Standing by her side, her tits are level with my head

One swing from her and I am fucking dead!

So you see the reason I ask for a Yes decree

Will you awkward Irish hoors please agree?

So that to the Elsyee Palace I can swiftly retire

where my Carla lies panting with desire.

Nobody told me politics would be like this

And that you Irish would take the piss

By voting No to the Lisbon Accord

And spot my clever little French fraud.

I must be off, away now from this place.

Sacre bleu, you Irish are an ungrateful race!

We gave you subsidies and the finest of wines

now you thank us by ruining our grand designs.

Bring me now to my private jet

Home to Carla, my very big pet

But first a consolation, a treat I cannot miss

“Le Biffo Big Lips” will give me a kiss!

TWO LOSERS PART COMPANY

I see that Eircom are to discontinue their sponsorship deal with the League of Ireland/ (LOI) and the Football Association of Ireland (FAI). They have a relationship, which spans nearly a decade, and now finally the penny has dropped with Eircom that the money was being washed down the plughole.

If ever two organizations (an unwise term given that neither could score in a brothel) deserved each other, then these two did.

Eircom is one of the most inefficient of the ex-semi-state companies that could be found. If you had the equivalent of an efficiency Geiger-counter and scanned all the companies in Ireland the beeping would be at a peak when tested against Eircom.

For years, it was known as Telecom Eircom, a public-body monolith that was as lazy and slow moving as a rhinoceros mating in the mud.

Then the government of the day decided to privatize it and sell the shares to an unsuspecting Irish public. Mary O’Rourke, then Minister of Telecommunications and Various Other Things, urged the public to buy shares in this great new venture where everybody would become rich. She even convinced the banks to lend money to those who had none to buy the shares, using the shares as collateral. Which of course the greedy banks gladly did, smelling the scent of a killing.

In hindsight, O’Rourke was ahead of her time – in effect, she introduced what is now known as sub-prime lending.

Of course, everybody took a bath with the shares and the Geiger-counter beep merely increased in intensity as Eircom lurched forward in private ownership, dragged down by the millstone of the unions.

In its distracted state, the LOI managed to convince it to sponsor their league championship. Millions poured in with little return. If Eircom was useless at making money, the LOI/FAI was even better at losing it.

In the last decade, the combined entities have become farcical. There had been more internal strife and wars in soccer administration in Ireland than there has been in the entire continent of Africa for the last century. They had to start buying red carpets in Merrion Square so that the blood wouldn’t show after every meeting. Des Kelly had made a fortune supplying replacement green carpets until that fateful decision!

It should be called the SOI – the Scandal Association of Ireland.

Directors embezzling funds, tickets being sold by officials on the black market, senior clubs not paying taxes due on inflated player wages, all the FAI reserves being depleted by planning and consultancy fees for the aborted Eircom Stadium. Add the ego trips of Chief Executive, John Delany, the latest being the boast that the FAI could write the cheque for €74 million in the morning for their contribution to the new Lansdowne Road Stadium they will share with the IRFU. He couldn’t write a cheque for the €74 he spends on his lunch everyday!

It will be interesting in these troubled times to see who will have the balls or the foolishness to sponsor a game that is about exciting as watching the polar ice cap melting. A funeral undertaker might be a suitable possibility.

Truth is that the country would be better served if both the FAI and Eircom became extinct tomorrow, and headed for the dinosaur’s graveyard.

WHO SAID CAVAN PEOPLE WERE MEAN?

I am not from Cavan so I have no hidden agenda when I make the point that I find Cavan people generous, friendly and helpful.
The popular myth throughout Ireland and the greater outside world is that Cavan people are mean, bloodsucking, hard-necked leeches who would eat you for a cent if they could.
I can claim thirty years experience dealing with the people of Cavan in business and social settings and, whilst like any good businessperson they drive a hard bargain, I can honourably and safely say that I have never had a bad experience with them.
I often wonder where the myth started as to the meanness and cute hoorism of the Cavan brethren. Of course, Niall Tobin, actor and comedian from Cork, has made a successful career from taking the piss out of Cavan people and perhaps this has influenced the notion. No better people either than those same Cavan folk to take the jokes in the spirit they were given.
Way back in the seventies, when things were bad and your only recourse to comfort was a couple of pints in a Dublin pub, chances were you would served by a Cavan man. Every pub in Dublin it seemed at that time was either owned or managed by a Cavan man. Conventional wisdom had it you would never see an old Cavan barman for the simple reason that by that stage they would own the bar!
I find the Cavan people warm-hearted, generous and great company in any setting.
On top of that, they can drink for Ireland and need only the flimsiest excuse to have a party. Contrary to popular myth, they will stand their round of drinks when their turn comes around.
Thrifty, perhaps, would be a better term to describe the Cavan people. They do not waste money on unnecessary purchases. In the current economic down turn, such attributes are bound to stand the in good stead.
As a friendly, warm-hearted people who would bend over backwards to help you, Cavan people come top of the list, in my opinion.
So I don’t want hear any more of those silly jokes about Cavan.
Make some jokes about the Dubs or the Meath people for a change. There is plenty of scope there!
Oh! By the way, did you hear the one about the Cavan man who found a crutch and proceeded to cut off his leg in order to put it to some use? See what I mean by being thrifty!

A SPORTING TRIUMPH LIFTS THE SPIRIT

The Sunday newspapers in recent times are full of doom and gloom as to the future of the economy and the various potential disasters awaiting us all in a variety of forms due to the worldwide financial crisis. It has gotten to the stage with me that I am reluctant to read them at all. They would spoil your entire weekend. It is bad enough trying to please the bank manager during the working week without it impinging on your Sunday afternoon.
Today however, the Sunday papers did not receive any attention at all.
To hell with the doomsayers, when your life is enhanced by a wonderful sporting achievement.
A beaming Padraig Harrington, with a wonderful display of nerveless golf, not only won the Open Golf Championship at Royal Birkdale, but also took the Old Claret Jug by the scruff of the neck and marched to sporting immortality by winning back-to-back British Opens.
Until last year, our only Major winner in golf had been Fred Daly over 50 years ago.
At Carnoustie in2007, Harrington beat Sergio Garcia in a play-off after the Spaniard missed a five-foot putt on the 18th to win it.
It was known as the one that Garcia lost rather than the one that Harrington won despite the fact that the Irishman produced a miraculous up and down at the 18th after being in the water twice. He dominated the four hole play-off to win by two shots and bring joy to Ireland. Now, he is only the fifth player of all time to win back to back Opens.
Today, no begrudger could deny Padraig the acclaim he was due as he won by four shots, with some stunning back-nine golf in very difficult windy conditions.
Harrington is an ambassador for both the game of golf and for Ireland. A true gentleman with a permanent smile on his face whether dealing with triumph or disaster on the course, unlike the boorish Colin Montgomery or the sulking Sergio Garcia.
A more modest and humble superstar you would not see in the world of sport. His feet are firmly on the ground and his acceptance speech today would make any Irish heart swell with pride.
The bad news can wait until later in the week. The doom merchants can take a few days off and the country can feel rightly proud. Triumphs like this do matter.
Today, Padraig, you lifted the spirits of all Irish people. With your attitude, we can do anything!
Well done and thank you!

WILL AN OBAMA VICTORY BE GOOD FOR IRELAND?

It seems now that the Democratic American presidential candidate, Barack Obama, has Irish roots. We are wonderful nation altogether when reaching for the genealogy books as soon a figure rises to prominence in American politics. It is as though we as a nation have a point to prove about the Irish making America great. The most tenuous connection is enough for the gravestone-searching merchants to embark on a venture of research into the roots of an individual.
In this case, they have determined that Barack’s great, great, great grandfather was born in Ireland, with speculation centred on the Clara area of County Offaly. (We wonder is that Brian Cowen trying to establish links with the likely future president of the United States in order to get some help to extract the nation from the economic meltdown it is in.)
We do know that his mother is Kenyan (Barack that is, not Brian) and it is well known in the midlands that Offaly men in the distant past had a great yen for the black women. Where they ever found black women in the bogs of Offaly is a question for another day, but is alleged that the observation that “once you go black, you never go back” was coined by a well-endowed Offaly resident who was fond of the Big Mamas.
All of this conjecture adds weight to the theory that Barack Obama may indeed have roots in the centre of Ireland, but will this count for anything if, as likely, he becomes President of the United States in November of this year.

There is no doubt that Obama has charisma in spades. (Shit! Is that a racist remark?
Sorry!). His campaign to win the Democratic nomination was an exhilarating display of powerful, moving speeches that enthralled the voters and indeed, greater America. We were witnessing the first black candidate making a serious attempt to gain entry to the Oval Office. For some, it was like the re-incarnation of Martin Luther King: the only other black man that would have the qualities a Presidential race. His untimely assassination by the dark forces of racism ensured it would never happen. In any case, it is doubtful that it would have ever occurred anyway – those were difficult and different times when the race issue was at its most brutal stage and even the Democrats would have baulked at the prospect.
Today it is more to with policies than colour, or so we like to think. Deep down race is still an issue in America. It demands circumspect discussion among the chattering classes in order to remain politically correct, but behind closed doors in the corridors of power, you can be sure that the prospect of a black President is upsetting many conservatives in both Democrat and Republican parties.
It does not help either that the Republican candidate is somewhat of a maverick in his own party. John McCain is a war hero and self made man – qualities that Americans love in their leaders. Were it not for Obama, he would be a shoe-in for the Presidency. However, his age and his more liberal assertions on various subjects have the Republican Party right- wingers losing sleep at night. McCain is loose cannon in their opinion, and were Obama not black, they would possibly do the unthinkable and vote for a Democrat just to keep McCain out.
As it is, they have little choice but to vote for him.
And, this is where Ireland comes into the picture. The Democratic Party has made it abundantly clear that when in power they will introduce a raft of measures to increase the tax take from US multinational companies operating abroad. They are suggesting a 30% repatriation tax from all foreign domiciled companies. If this measure were implemented, it would have a disastrous effect on the economy of Ireland.
Most multinational are here because of the low tax rates. Not alone that, they also use a facility known as transfer pricing to inflate the profits of Irish companies and decrease those from other higher tax jurisdictions, including the US itself. They tolerate the high wage environment of Ireland for that reason alone. If that were to change, the Intels and IBMs of this world would up sticks overnight and the already sinking ship that is Ireland would crash to the bottom of the ocean.
Traditionally, the Irish favoured Democratic presidents. This goes back to the Kennedy influence and their roots in Ireland. The Clintons helped in negotiations to bring about peace in the North extending the affiliation of the Irish to the Democrats.
This time however it is different. The US economy is as bad as ours is. That topic and the war in Iraq are the priorities for any incoming president.
Ireland will come way down the list in the scheme of things. The black vote will elect Obama and he will not be as dependant on the American Irish for their support as previous Democratic candidates were.
His only link to Ireland will be those horny Offaly men of the past who had a penchant for the black babes!
Not much to go on, is it?
Do something Brian!

MOVING THE DECKCHAIRS ON TITANIC IRELAND

Last week we had much-heralded Government response to the economic crisis that is engulfing the country like one of those frightening summer gorse fires you see in Australia or America.
Solemn–faced ministers gathered around their leader, Brian Cowen, at a press conference to announce what were predicted to be dramatic solutions to dramatic problems. However, as the farce got under way it was clear to see that the Government was tackling the blazing fires with a garden hose.
Savings of €440 million were projected for the rest of the year. This is a mere drop in the ocean relative to what is needed to combat the doomsday scenario facing the country.
Minister of Finance, Brian Lenehan, appeared inept and unsure when probing questions were asked of the small detail of such savings in the over-hyped plan.
In fact, it was a cobbled together exercise by the Government designed to show that it was doing something in the meltdown facing us. It was non-specific, clouded with the veneer of aspiration rather than expectancy. When forensically examined by economists, the plan failed to meet national school arithmetic standards in that it contained fatal miscalculations.
What hope have we as a nation if this display incompetence is a yardstick to measure future Government action to tackle the real problems? Two days after presenting the ‘great solution’, they all went on their summer holidays until the end of September. What a great little country we are.

Once again, the elephant in the room was ignored even though he was having a piss in the corner. The Minister bleated bland and non-committed assertions regarding public service pay and costs. It was the sound of the lambs surrendering to the foxes.
Bertie Ahern’s legacy lingers with a whiff of the unpleasant stuff. The government are once again capitulating to the public service unions. We said her last week that with at least 300,000 staff, the public service is pulling the economy down to the depths of the ocean. Unless such drastic action is taken, there is no way that we will survive this crisis.
Pluck up some courage and tackle the public service millstone now, for Gods sake!

The government Quangos should be next on the list for dismantling. There are so many mini-organizations operating within Government that one would think the country had a population of 20 million. Quangos are NGOs that make reports on reports and advise the advisors on what to advise the advisors to the government.
It is nothing short of a maze of waste costing the state hundreds of millions each year. Inevitably, these organizations are peppered with people affiliated to the Fianna Fail party. Egos abound within these miniature think tanks and the level of hot air released by them would blow a hole in the ozone layer, if there were not one there already.
Get rid of them now! Send them back to the real world.

The tribunals of enquiry into So Many Things That One Forgets now have cost over a billion and have meandered on for over a decade.
They have investigated the great, the good and the bad. They will arrive at the same conclusion that the public arrived weeks after they started – that corruption exists in public and private life in Ireland.
We have known this for years before these stage shows kicked off. The lawyers have fleeced the Exchequer of vast sums of money representing in many cases the most peripheral of figures. No sooner was a witness summoned than he sought at the taxpayer’s expense an army of lawyers to represent him or her. The tribunals became a real life version of the Dublin Theatre Festival. When it is all over, nobody will suffer. Except, of course, the ordinary folk who foot the bill for the €2,000 per day lawyers.
Stop it all now and let common sense prevail!

RAINY DAYS AND NO SAVINGS

Who is laughing now? Not us, for sure. We take no pleasure therefore in saying we told you so. A long time ago. There is point gloating at the condemned man when you are next in line. It is a short-lived and empty pleasure.
For the last fifteen years, we have experienced a boom in Ireland. We all knew it had to end but nobody seems to have told the Government. For the last two years, all those who had a vested interest in a whole range of sectors that stood to lose out if we crashed peddled the mythical soft landing scenario.
A cursory look at the history of global economics would have yielded the information that cycles are boom and bust. An up and down graph that provides no mercy. This is the real world folks, not Disney. Stories of soft landings were suitable tales to get the children asleep at night.
We can spend all day apportioning blame. Best confine it to a couple of paragraphs and then look for a solution or some mitigating event that would help this little island.
The blame lies with Bertie Ahern’s Fianna Fail led Government. You can throw in greedy banks and various financial engineering thugs, but they are simply support acts.
Bertie blew the good times in so many ways. Bending his arse to the unions on a permanent basis was an important factor that cost billions.
Wanton and criminal waste of the river of taxpayer’s money flowing into the coffers from all sectors, especially property, are the real reason why we are in the mess that shows a €3 billion hole in Government budgets.
The Government is the keeper of the Irish family of four million people. In olden days the thrifty Irish mother, the Finance Minister of the family, put the spare shillings away when there was an excess in income. She would not say anything about it, but it would be there come the day that the need arose, as it always would.
Similarly, in modern times, a potato farmer achieving a bumper yield and price this year, will reserve a percentage aside because he knows that for every two good years of returns, he will have one bad one. He prudently predicts the cycle that inevitably will happen and plans for the shortfall.
Bertie Ahern would make a poor-quality housewife and farmer. He is the reason that we have nothing under the mattress for events outside our control. A blight has attacked world economic and finance crops. Not our fault, of course, but we suffer nonetheless.
What to do?
It will be cuts, cuts, cuts, of course. A gold-plated Chubb for the empty stable door.
We agree there has to be cuts. Any business trying to survive a recession will implement cuts in all areas. Workers will lose their jobs. Investment in plant and equipment will be put on hold. Expenses will be hacked in large and small factories and businesses.
The Government is the largest employer and business in Ireland. It employs 310,000 people on inflated salaries and expenses. This figure doubled in the last ten years. The economic boom in Ireland required the increase in public service jobs, the Government told us.
Well the boom is over. Get rid of them! 150,000 extra people on the dole are a huge cost to the Exchequer, will be the cry. Still, a lot cheaper than employing them to do nothing! (Unfortunately, for us, whilst the unions were buggering Bertie, they managed simultaneously to get him to sign a “job for life” clause so the above probably won’t work.)
The next thing to be done is go out and borrow to finish our infrastructure plans. Do not put these on hold. They offer the obvious benefits of what they were designed to do and they keep the construction industry from complete meltdown in the interim. Future generations will thank us in hindsight if we have the balls to do this.
Reform the stamp duty fiasco. Cowen and co are taking any money in from it now. The cash cow has gone dry so what is there to lose by cutting it drastically and maybe kick start the property market.
Then, force the banks to lend money to first time buyers. The arch-villains in the worldwide financial meltdown now shit in their drawers every time a couple come looking for a measly mortgage. Two years ago, a drug user from Nigeria would get 120% from the bank nearest the port he landed. So give them a Pampers adult nappy and let them lend and lend. The nappy can be in the form of a guarantee to the banks that protects a certain amount of their exposure. No different from Mum and Dad being guarantor for their kids first loan. Just go and do it Cowen! Think outside the box for once. These few measures along with hundreds of other creative ideas are needed now to keep the show on the road.
More thrifty ideas next week. Just have to call the mother and my old friend the spud farmer.

Profiting from our Misery

The first duty of a Government is to look after the citizens which it claims to protect under the Constitution of the country of Ireland. This is the mandate they were given when elected by those same people.
The world is in the grip of an economic crisis caused by many factors, one of the main ones being the price of oil. Oil is at the time of writing priced at $138 per barrel, 63% more than it was 12 months ago. Reflected at the pumps, this means a massive increase in costs for those who drive to work. Home heating oil has increased by the same ratio, agricultural diesel ‘ditto’. Manufacturing industry is being crippled under the weight of higher energy costs.
Everybody from the small homeowner to the large industrialist is suffering because of events outside their control. There are no winners in this situation. Right?
Wrong!
Every time the price of a barrel of oil goes up, the Government of this banana republic of ours wins. They win because of the high levels of excise duty and Vat on the price of oil. Every price rise at the pumps means more money is extracted from the unfortunate drivers of Ireland, who have no choice but to use their cars to get to work because the lack of alternative transport infrastructure.
Having blown away fifteen years of boom-time revenue, our Government doesn’t have a bean to see out the bad times that we are now facing. Therefore, despite numerous calls from various industry lobby groups for some sort of fuel rebate, the Government has refused to even consider the matter. They are making money on our misery.
One of those lobby groups is the Irish Road Haulage Association (IRHA). This body is so weak that the Government just swats away the feeble protests from it, not unlike you might do with an annoying fly. It might listen to the farmers (IFA) but the stuff the truckers.
The IRHA should consider using the ammunition it has in its arsenal.
If unity could prevail in this most notorious of fragmented sectors and a combined transport stoppage strategy was employed, the Government would soon wake up to the crisis facing all sectors because of their inherent greed.
If all trucks, buses, and smaller commercial vehicles stopped tomorrow, carnage would ensue.
In five working days there would be no food or general provisions left on the shelves of supermarkets.
In three working days there would be no fuel left in any of the filling stations.
In seven working days, stocks of critical medical supplies for hospitals would run out.
In five working days, pharmacies would have no medicines to dispense.
Pubs would close because deliveries of drink would stop. Restaurants would do the same.
Because most major factories use a JIT system (Just-In-Time) of ordering and receiving raw materials for production, factories would close within two working days, throwing tens of thousands out of work.
Schools would close immediately because there would be no buses to transport the pupils, and even if there were, there would be no heating in the classrooms.
Airlines would have to stop flying because fuel would not be delivered to their tank farms.
Within ten working days, the country would descend into anarchy. Riots and looting would be commonplace and a dysfunctional society would turn on itself. The Army would patrol the streets, but what services can hungry soldiers perform?
And, if you are waiting for the Government to implement the National Emergency Plan, you will wait.
We are an island nation that depends on transport to provide the links so that we can live. Without transport, any island is doomed.
Will the IRHA and other transport organizations please get together and tell the greedy mandarins in Government the consequences of ignoring the pleas of the transport sector.
For once in your life, show them the power that you have. They might just listen this time.

A BLOODY NOSE NEEDS A TISSUE

Well, look what we have done to poor old Europe! Left their Lisbon Treaty in shatters, it seems. Ireland is now the pariahs of the European Union. A little island in the North Atlantic, population 4 million, has wrecked the plans of the other 496 million people in the EU by voting No to the Lisbon Treaty.


One German MEP stated that we should “be thrown overboard from the EU boat without a lifeboat” for doing such a thing.


It is only when you hear such a statement you realize that we were so right to vote No in the first place. The bullies in the European schoolyard, having muttered veiled threats before we voted, now are very clear about their desire to kick the shit out of us for not doing what suited their agenda.


Ireland has a constitution, which demands that any changes to it are voted on by the people. This amendment required just such a vote. In this instance, that luxury was not afforded to the citizens of the other 26 countries that make up the EU. We wonder if it were, how many of the 500 million people would have voted against the Lisbon Treaty?


In 2005, the basis of what is now the Lisbon Treaty document, was put to the French people and roundly rejected by them. France took no chances this time and did not allow a free vote on the issue. They have some cheek is lecturing Ireland on the democratic decision reached by their people.


Already the blame game is underway in Ireland and in Europe as to who is responsible for this so-called `failure' to bend the knee to our masters. So what really happened to make Ireland reject the Treaty?


The answer is a combination of factors.


First, the intelligence of the Irish voter is of the finest calibre. In all our general and local elections, we have always the PR (proportional representation) system. Experience of this complex voting exercise has educated the Irish voter.


Secondly, the arrogance of all the mainstream parties in personalizing the canvass.


Images of your local TD or councillor, seeking your Yes vote insulted the electorate by asking them to vote along party lines without actually examining the contents and implications of the treaty.


Thirdly, the bullying tactics of Brian Cowen and his cohorts in Europe, who were wheeled out to the Irish public telling them to be grateful for 35 years of EU benefits and implying that Europe was owed a Yes result or there would be hell to play.


The fourth, and probably most pertinent reason, was the strength of the No campaign. Normally a plethora of loony left-wingers, Greens, Sinn Fein and various shadowy anti-establishment organisations would have comprised the No opposition. They would have been dismissed by the media and the politicians for what they were - a disaffected bunch of no-hopers with spurious agendas. They would have little or no credibility with the electorate.


However, this time the No campaign was painted with a veneer of respectability and


authority by the presence of the Libertas group, led by businessman, Declan Ganly, together with the campaign fronted by another well-known and successful business magnate, Ulick Mc Evaddy.


The articulate arguments of these men in relation to the tax issues, amongst others, made the floating vote suddenly sit up and as their own questions. These were no head bangers telling the nation to vote No because an endangered snail species in Kerry might become extinct if the Yes campaign got their way.


These guys had street credibility and a history of business achievement envied by many, including those in Government, who questioned their source of funding in a effort to blacken them.(just tell them you won it on the horses, lads!)


The high turnout was reckoned to favour the Yes campaign but the reverse occurred because those higher numbers were people who were informed of the alternative and arrived armed to vote No.


The schoolyard bully is always a coward. It is no different this time. Cowen and EU president, Barriso, have crawled back into the undergrowth threatening that when we are on our own they will get us.


And they probably will, you know. But for now at least, they are looking for some tissues to wipe the blood of their noses.

LISBON TREATY MY ARSE !

It is only when you see the flustering and blustering of Brian Cowen and assorted Government ministers in the last week as the polls showed that the No vote was equal to the Yes vote that you realize the Irish people are being sold a dummy by their own Government on the Lisbon Treaty.
Cowen and his fellow puppets in all the main parties are afraid of displeasing their masters in Brussels. What we are getting, in effect, if we vote Yes, is a Constitution of Europe, which will take precedent over our own. It is fair comment to say that our current Irish Constitution allows the people have a say in their destiny in Europe. Most other countries steam-rolled it through, with recourse to the opinion of the people who elected them to high office.
In Ireland, thanks to the foresight of our fore fathers, issues like these have to have the approval of the people. In this sense, we will be used as a barometer of opinion as to where the EU is headed. There is no doubt that a federal Europe on the lines of the United States is the ultimate aim of the bigger states like Germany and France. here. The Lisbon Treaty is of course partially the work of Bertie Ahern who got agreement on a great deal of what we are voting on when Ireland had the EU presidency for six months in 2006.
Of course, as we now know, Bertie had only his own interests at heart when he brokered that deal. Ireland came way down the list on Bertie’s agenda.
He had his own goals to pursue, which was a nice job in Europe in reward for being a good boy and leading little old Ireland into the starting stalls, to use a horseracing term. (Not that Bertie would know too much about horses. Oh! Wait a moment – he does! He made a fortune on the English racetracks in the nineties. Christ! I nearly forgot about that.)
Anyway, Bertie probably has the best of both worlds now that he is no longer leader of our country. Cowen will take all shit from Brussels if he fails to deliver and Bertie will claim all the glory if the Yes side wins by saying that he was the architect of the Treaty. Cue a plaintive cry from Drumcondra about that job he was promised.
The truth of the matter is that the powerful Eurocrats will swipe Bertie’s interest away as that of an annoying fly buzzing around their big room. And they will do the same to Ireland. Make no mistake about that.
The EU is a much more culturally and geographically spread entity now. It is not like the days when it was made of ten states and Ireland had one tenth of the power and a proper veto on items of national interest.
In those days, Albert Reynolds could win an election by boasting about the £8 billion punts he extracted from the EU coffers for Ireland. Those days are no more. The EU is a community of 300 million people of which we make up a little over 1%.
What clout do you think we are going to have in such a monolith? Very little, under the proposed Lisbon Treaty and no matter what way all the Government and opposition spin it you can be sure of one thing – we will be shafted.
Tax harmonization will enter through the back door, be very sure about that.
Take no heed of the so-called get out veto clause for Ireland. It is so vague and open to interpretation that we will not stand a chance of imposing our will upon the rest of Europe. They have looked on for the last 35 years as we rifled the coffers of Europe to make the country temporarily rich, only for Bertie and his cohorts to blow all the gains away on crazy projects and arse-licking the unions.
Vote No for a chance to make the many grey areas of this Treaty more black and white. Do not let the vested interests of Cowen, Kenny and Gilmore (not to mention Bertie) allow us to sleepwalk into a federal Europe without any protection.
Do not believe the false and alarming rhetoric that comes from them about us being the black sheep of Europe if we vote No.

Vote No!
And, if you get the chance, vote No a second time!