Property porn doesn’t float

The property pornographers have been giddy this week over news that property prices have been rising. Reported sightings of a new breed of foreign property speculator in fancy Dublin restaurants, clinking flutes of champers over mega deals, have sent property hype...

Time to break convention

According to the great American economist, JK Galbraith, “the conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking”. The painful job of thinking is what makes the difference between doing the right thing and simply doing the thing that...

Tax breaks for the healthy could change the way we live

Okay, hands up: whose family doesn’t have rows over loo seats, the state of the jacks and the men and boys in the family not being able to aim properly? Girls, tell me you haven’t been driven demented by your man and his inability to hit the target? And...

What if our brilliant young never come home?

In these soaring Mediterranean temperatures, spare a thought for the peoples of southern Europe and consider the similarities between what is happening there – and here in Ireland. The Mediterranean economies are large, historical countries with profound...

We’re backing three horses

Did you ever see a jockey riding two stray horses at the end of a race? I’ve always been amazed at the ease with which an experienced jockey can get the two animals trotting along at the same time. However, woe betide the poor jockey’s nether regions if...

How the banking collapse turned into a dramatic hostage crisis

The brilliant English economist John Stuart Mill, writing in the 1860s, noted that “a crash doesn’t destroy wealth, it merely reflects the extent to which wealth has already been destroyed by stupid investments made during the preceding boom”....