Archive for September, 2007

While ordinary house-buyers are paying high priced loans on average houses, the banks are falling over themselves to lend millions to super-rich developers.

The ploughing championship gets into full swing today and, together with the extraordinary popularity of inter country GAA, it shines a light on the thriving nature of rural Ireland. Sometimes with all this talk about how the economy has changed and how Ireland is unrecognisable, we forget that certain things are permanent. Not only is…

A strong United States is good for us Ameropeans, but heaven help us now that the dollar is on its knees.

Driving past Northern Rock’s Dublin office just off Harcourt Street yesterday, I thought the queue of concerned depositors is reminiscent of scenes from the Great Depression. Hopefully, the customers who were lined up outside the banks will get their money out. Despite the panic, things look reasonably positive. But, what a shambles.

The lot of the Irish sports fan is a cruel one. From now on there is an argument for all of us to support Kerry, Kilkenny and the All Blacks exclusively. At least we would save ourselves the excruciating weekend that has just passed.

‘You were a crap player and you are a crap manager. The only reason I have any dealings with you is that somehow you are the manager of my country and you’re not even Irish, you English cunt.’

Allegedly, with that parting shot, Roy Keane walked out of the Irish team at Saipan in 2002. But Roy had used the word that can never be spoken in polite society.

Billy Bunker picked up his corporate hospitality tickets for the Rolling Stones’ Bigger Bang Tour concert at Slane. He didn’t go the last time, 25 years ago, but now, courtesy of www.corporate.ie, he got a weekend hospitality ticket for the Stones and brought clients. This was the Ryder Cup with music. It was a day out for the gilded generation, the people who run the country. We are ruled by an evergreen, middle-aged generation, who, like their idol Mick Jagger, are coining it.

In the past few weeks, the financial markets have suffered a heart attack.

The arteries and capillaries that supply credit to the economy have become clogged with bad loans and the supply of liquidity has been choked off.

One of the best views of Dublin is from the top of one of the new cranes operated by Irish Ferries down at the docks. These enormous machines move slowly and silently on giant tracks, stacking freight containers.

The grossly under-used Dublin Port Tunnel is typical of our entire infrastructure fiasco.

Driving through an eerily empty Port Tunnel the other day, I began to ask myself, why did we build it? It is practically empty all the time.