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Today’s ESRI Quarterly report is not pleasant reading. Growth at 1.6% a deficit of nearly €10 billion by end-2009, the construction slump to continue well into 2009 and worries about unemployment.
Happy St Paddy’s weekend all.
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Cathal Coleman out at my alma mater emailed the details of his adult education course on Democracy this morning. The course is called The Worst Form of Government: Democracy from Plato to Marx and full details are in the pdf.
Bertie at the Tribunal - The Money Trail | Keith @ Granite Shavings
Keith has a great post tying together the threads of Bertie's evidence at the Mahon Tribunal
Obama takes the gloves off and the US Election gets dirtier. Take a gander at his new ad attacking McCain's dirty campaign.
Female Clinton Supporters In Focus Groups See Talent, Mudslinging In Palin’s Speech
Very interesting instant focus grouping of Palin's speech. It remains to be seen how the issue of sexism becomes resolved for the Hillary supporters who remain to be won over - how does Palin need to come across to get support? As tough as the men or picked on - and is she better of playing base politics than worrying about marred Clinton-women in Nevada
Plugged-in politics hits our shores
Online politics hits Australia
When I posted “WHITHER APATHY” in 2006, you asked if I thought the “Tipping Point” had arrived.
I sent that overview to Ahern & others - whom I felt should be interested.
Silence: followed by an explosion of social spending, as though there were no Tomorrow!
And the follow up?
Hot air about social injustice; glass ceilings & general moans from the “have-nots”.
Well, they have even less now & the Unions will start bleating about their downtrodden members - who have saved nothing from the “Fat Days”.
I feel sorry that they have been let down so shamelessly by a government that think nothing of pissing away €50,000+ to celebrate St. Patrick driving out the Snakes.
Poor misguided Saint.
The Snakes are still here: in the tent at the Galway Races; next week in New York & various exotic locations - blowing the taxpayers’ hard-earned money on their mistresses, wives - and returning favours to a bevy of developers; stockbrokers; builders & various hangers-on.
And Bertie continues to survive.
For shame.
The FT report on the ESRI forecast is good.
You think this is unpleasant reading? It’s actually one of the more optimistic predictions!
The same people now talking of a ‘modest recovery in 2009′ have had to admit that ‘over the last three months that provide indications of future trends in house-building all point to a more dramatic slowdown than we had previously anticipated’ http://www.esri.ie/UserFiles/publications/20071219164742/QEC2007Aut_ES.pdf
The optimists (I’m not specifically referring to the ESRI) have been proven wrong time and time again (”there won’t be a house price crash in Ireland” became “there won’t be a house price crash in Dublin” became “there won’t be a house price crash in Dublin 4″ and now they have simply shut up on house prices!)
Write off the doom mongers like me at your peril. All the data from the last 6 months (inflation staying high worldwide, unemployment rising worldwide, house prices plummeting worldwide) has been in accordance with the pessimists’ predictions made last summer. And most of the optimists have been proven wrong over and over again.