In case you missed it, Ruairi Quinn called for the establishment of a Minister for Public Service Reform the other day. I’m going to claim partial credit for that idea. I can’t remember whether I actually said it to Ruairi himself, but I was punting the idea around the Labour Party backrooms for a couple [...]
July 21st, 2009 at
08:53 in
Politics (Ireland) | tags:
election,
general election,
ireland,
labour party,
mandate,
manifesto,
minister,
policy,
public sector reform,
public service reform,
ruairi quinn,
unions |
10 Comments
I’m back. I’m alive. The election was won. (Thanks, Avril). Took a bit longer to get back to blogging than expected, due to a bug in the upgrade of WordPress, but all sorted now. A few online things to note from the campaign – Liveblogs and Twitter really came to life during the counts & [...]
June 16th, 2009 at
09:51 in
Politics (Ireland) | tags:
blog,
canada,
canadian election,
election,
european parliament election 2009,
facebook,
gareth's travels,
himalayas,
ireland,
irishelection.com,
libertas,
liveblog,
MBA,
RTÉ,
sauder,
twitter,
ubc,
vancouver,
youtube |
No Comments
Following on from Active Growth’s post on Bank of Ireland security, I didn’t want AIB to feel left out. They’ve an even worse card security procedure, which they continue to use despite my repeated complaints. Picture the scene, if you will. Something fishy is going on on your credit card (normally it’s small value internet [...]
April 14th, 2009 at
12:58 in
Security | tags:
aib,
bank of ireland,
banking,
banking security,
banks,
credit card,
credit card fraud,
fraud,
ireland,
Security |
1 Comment
RTÉ’s Prime Time last night was a discussion on tax. Reporter/presenter Mark Little repeated several times Noel Dempsey‘s (and the Government’s) claim that “38% of people pay no tax at all”. That’s rubbish. 38% of people pay no income tax. But they all pay tax. VAT, or sales tax, is paid by everyone, without exception. [...]
March 4th, 2009 at
17:03 in
Politics (Ireland) | tags:
brian goggin,
budget,
decile,
fairness,
fianna fáil,
income,
ireland,
march budget,
mark little,
mini-budget,
no tax,
noel dempsey,
prediction,
rich,
RTÉ,
sales tax,
tax,
VAT,
wealthy,
widow |
No Comments
Interesting listening on today’s Morning Ireland (well worth a listen). George Lee has now formally used the word “fraud” in relation to what has been happening in Anglo Irish Bank. About time too. And if Anglo have a problem with that, I look forward to them suing George Lee and RTÉ. I don’t think they’ll [...]
February 12th, 2009 at
10:24 in
Politics (Ireland) | tags:
anglo irish bank,
bank,
banking crisis,
bear stearns,
brian lenihan,
fbi,
fraud,
george lee,
illegal,
ireland,
jeff skilling,
ken lay,
michael tannin,
minister for finance,
morning ireland,
news observer,
perp walk,
ralph cioffi,
RTÉ,
sec,
securities and exchange commission,
wall street |
No Comments
Well, I did. Budget 2009 seems like a long time ago. Things have gotten a hell of a lot worse since then. But all the warning signs were there, and the Government’s failure to address them has been astonishing. Still, in February, they’re only talking about doing something. As I said back in October, what [...]
February 2nd, 2009 at
14:20 in
Politics (Ireland) | tags:
bord na gcon,
brian lenihan,
brussels,
budget,
denmark,
department of finance,
economic slowdown,
economics,
economy,
fear,
finance,
greece,
ibec,
ictu,
ireland,
pain,
prsi,
social partners |
No Comments
I was at a very interesting presentation this week (probably last week by the time you read this) at the Irish Institute for European Affairs (IIEA). They were launching Johnny Ryan‘s paper The Next Leap. It describes what we should be doing to bring Ireland into the next stage of its economic development. It would [...]
December 22nd, 2008 at
13:19 in
Politics (Ireland),
Technology | tags:
canada,
cluster,
edmonton,
education,
framework for sustainable economic renewal,
iiea,
intellectual property,
ireland,
irish institute for european affairs,
johnny ryan,
key action points,
mary coughlan,
microsoft,
nanotechnology,
next leap,
niche,
ottawa,
paul rellis,
photonics,
recycled,
Technology |
3 Comments
If you listened to the various TV and radio vox-pops over the last few days, following the tragic murders in East Wall, Howth and Ranelagh, and even Dick Roche’s hold up in Wicklow, you’d think the murder rate was soaring and the country was going to pot. But what’s the real situation? In reality, the [...]
December 19th, 2008 at
11:00 in
Security | tags:
bbc,
bruce schneier,
children,
clontarf,
crime,
dublin,
east wall,
gardaí,
ireland,
irish independent,
journalists,
media,
morning ireland,
murder,
murder rate,
ranelagh,
risk,
risk analysis,
RTÉ,
Security,
tom brady |
2 Comments
With a hat tip to RedMum. Needs sound, but probably headphones in the office! fastswfembed(“http://www.youtube.com/v/Ldse04fTFhc&hl=en&fs=1″,425,344,’358-0′);
December 3rd, 2008 at
12:45 in
Politics (Ireland),
Random Rocks | tags:
bertie,
boomtown,
chart,
christmas,
ireland,
irish,
no 1,
no.1,
number,
number 1,
one,
parody,
redmum,
spoof,
video,
xmas |
1 Comment
Vodafone have just announced that the Blackberry Storm will go on sale on Friday eh, Thursday (it’d help if I could read a calendar). Vodafone: We promised that you would be one of the first to know. So here’s the news to beat the queues: the BlackBerry® Storm™ smartphone is launching on November 27th, purpose-built [...]
