Archive for November, 2006

Where is the last place in Ireland where all the classes mix? With the increasing hierarchies in the education system, the health system and sports facilities, where can you see the full social mix?

Are we coming to the end of an era? Will the world’s economic geography shift dramatically in the next 20 years? What if the action does, in fact, shift to Asia?

For the past 50 years, the North Atlantic has been the place to be. This was the epicentre of the known world. Ireland has been ideally placed between the United States and Europe – the world’s economic superpowers.

Have you noticed the size of kitchens these days? In the past, kitchens were bog standard affairs. Today, they are huge, cavernous spaces where you could land a Blackhawk helicopter. Walk into any estate in urban or rural Ireland and you will see builders’ vans, cement mixing machines and Polish lads in overalls fitting double glazing to outsized windows in these monster-kitchens. Irish families are getting smaller, but our kitchens are getting bigger. When we were kids, “an island” was a piece of land projected up from the sea, like the “Isle of Man”. Today “an island” is the essential centrepiece of the latest status symbol – your kitchen.

In this programme David takes us back to learn some lessons from history. What is stable today can change dramatically tomorrow, David poses the questions about a ‘plan B’ for Ireland going forward – how are we going to deal with china? With immigration? And with increasing monthly mortgage repayments?

It’s probably a bit sad if your hero is a five-foot-three Jewish intellectual with a weakness for hard sums, statistics and argument.

But for many economists, Milton Friedman – who passed away aged 94 last Thursday – was the real deal. The reason he was so important is less to do with the accuracy of his theories or their universal applicability than because he stood up and argued for economics and science at a time when it was deeply unfashionable.

I heard Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet on the radio yesterday and it all came flooding back. Few of you know what it is like to be a redheaded teenager at a disco. Spandau Ballet’s “True” was the slow-set number of choice in my youth and simply hearing Hadley’s voice was enough to give me the creeps.

The below webchat took place today on the RTE website, www.rte.ie, reproduced from the original location, here.
David: Hello everyone. Thanks for sending in all the emails. Good to see you’ve nothing better to do at lunchtime! Does your boss know?
MR: David – What is going on with the property market? Is it just due to…

In this programme David examines our relationship, or national obsession, with property. New Ireland begins and ends with the property explosion. The boom has not just changed Ireland economically, it has changed us as a people and turned us into a nation of property speculators. Property is the new pornography.

David discusses his current TV series based on the book and tells Ryan about his business and family background on the Ryan Tubridy show on RTE radio 1.

In the 10th century, the King of England, Ethelred the Unready, faced a crisis. Danish longships threatened rape and pillage all along the east coast of England.

Sensing that his armies would be routed, Ethelred conjured up a scheme: instead of facing the enemy head on, he would persuade the tide not to come in, thereby stopping the invaders before they even set foot on land.