Archive for March, 2010

Last year I remember watching the ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ programme on RTE featuring the eminently likeable Simon Delaney. The unfolding story of his grandfather in the First World War was extraordinary. Using records from the Guinness brewery, an odd mention of the British Legion in a newspaper and British military records, Delaney…

I did a piece with the BBC World Service on “World Business News” today.
The interview is available to listen to here through the BBC iPlayer:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p006wtf2/World_Business_News_30_03_2010/
Follow the link for a podcast of the interview:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/wbnews

We have had the Emperor’s New Clothes act and before we close with the final act of Humpty Dumbty fell off the wall we have to endure the Mad Cowan’s Tea Party.
A defunct politcal system with a curtain backdrop portraying a delusion of democracy where TDs are a useful as a mules tool in a…

2+2=5
At the end of George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the hero, Winston Smith, was prepared to believe this sum.

Having committed the ‘‘thoughtcrime’’ of questioning the system, Winston was rumbled. After a few days in the infamous room 101 he was so broken that he was prepared to believe anything. He was prepared to believe something was true, even though it was obviously false. This is what is called in the book ‘‘doublethink’’, where you can see no inconsistency in saying one thing and thinking another.

In light of today’s news stories about the nationalisation of the banks tomorrow, I was reminded of an article I wrote back in November suggesting all the banks would be nationalised by March.
Read the article again here: http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2009/11/08/worst-case-scenario-looms

I talked to Derek Mooney on RTÉ yesterday on the importance of local businesses/communities coming together particularly in the face of paralysis at national level.
Listen to the discussion here in the RTÉ archive for March 25th.

I walked by the barbers in Dalkey yesterday and for a split second I was back in the mid-1970s. I was once again the little boy with the flaming red hair, short pants and freckles looking up at the kind barber. The boy had a dilemma and the barber was the only person in the whole world who could solve it.

March 2010 – The Abbey Theatre is delighted to present the world premiere of OUTSIDERS by leading economist and commentator David McWilliams on the Peacock stage, opening on Wednesday 16 June (previews from 9 June). David McWilliams takes to the stage in an event which is part stand up, part discussion, part social observation and is directed by award-winning director Conall Morrison.

When I was in school there were fellas whose Mammies stood behind them with a mallet when they were filling in their CAO forms to make sure they ticked law, accountancy or medicine. The holy of holies of this type of Irish mammy was to have her son in the professions. This was what she…

On St Patrick’s Day two years ago, while nudging my way up a crammed Fifth Avenue, the idea of the Farmleigh Global Irish Forum came to me. I’d thought about it before and I had seen how other countries cultivated relationships with their global tribes — particularly the Jewish tribe and Israel — but it was only after seeing the unique outpouring of Irish America on March 17 that I knew we should do this. We should tap into the power of the tribe and see where it takes us.