Archive for June, 2006

In the opening lines of “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” Max Weber observed…

Robinson was on his best behaviour, talking about “neighbourly” cooperation and the like, sounding for all the world more like a visionary entrepreneur than the next head of the socialist DUP.

Other countries have military service; Ireland has the Leaving Cert. The Leaving Cert experience is as close Ireland gets to a moment of national solidarity. It gels us together; it is a common bond because we all do it. The sweating, the stress, the panic, the hay-fever, the relief and euphoria are conditions that most of us instantly recognise. For many, the experience is traumatic. You only have to listen to the furore over this year’s Maths exam to appreciate how devastating it is to open the paper and fail to find that friendly/easy/well-flagged question. It should be there. Where is it? It didn’t come up.

It was Brazil’s first game and the fans demanded a team performance to match their own, which was by now in full swing. As the tanned girls in yellow and green bandanas started to move their hips, the whole bar swayed effortlessly on cue.

For the thousands of students sitting the Leaving Cert history exam today, Charles Haughey, even when he was alive, was just that – history.

Yet for the parents of these students, he was a divisive, towering colossus who dominated Irish political and financial life during the least successful economic period this State experienced.

If you want to see the future for companies, particularly those in the service sector (like accountants, lawyers and increasingly Irish building companies that are branching out abroad), buy a huge plasma screen and settle into the World Cup.

If you also want to get a leading indicator of where Irish companies looking for good overseas returns might invest, just switch on and put the feet up.increasingly Irish building companies that are branching out abroad), buy a huge plasma screen and settle into the World Cup.

Richard Delevan – Business Editor of the Sunday Tribune
Senator David Norris – Member of the Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs
Constantin Gurdgiev – Director of the Open Republic Institute
Declan Ganley – CEO of the Ganley Group, Chair of the Forum on the European Constitution
Izabela Chudzicka – Presenter of Oto Polska on City Channel TV
Professor Brigid Laffan – Director of the Dublin European Institute at UCD.

Have you heard the ad for food poisoning?

Well, it’s not actually for food poisoning, rather how to avoid food poisoning. One sunny weekend and there we are, the Paddies pretending to be Afrikaaners, up to our gills in gas-fired barbecues on our new varnished decks – poisoning each other.