From Peter Geoghegan’s Blog » Politics:
Retailers in the North this weekend are counting the cost of last week’s emergency budget in Britain.
Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne’s first budget included a package of spending and welfare cuts and tax increases aimed at saving an estimated £40 billion.
In an effort to tackle Britain’s spiralling deficit, Osborne [...]

From Morbid Hope » Page not found:
A few weeks ago Ed Gaffney wrote this rather interesting piece about the potential impact a list system would have on the Irish electoral map. This got me thinking about the challenge facing anyone trying to predict the upcoming Irish local elections or indeed any election that uses Ireland’s [...]

From Morbid Hope » Page not found:
In recent times I’ve been on the radio a fair bit discussing the battle over rights for music and movie distribution over the internet. In essence this is part of a larger debate, one that will very much decide the future of all forms of the media as well as [...]

From Strong Language » political:
Western society has hang-ups about ageing, and older people are often invisible or ignored.

Fianna Fáil TD Mary O’Rourke, one of the more senior members in the Dáil, was being asked for her advice to older people running for politics last Monday.
Thankfully, O’Rourke did not have a “senior moment”, the American expression [...]

From Strong Language » politics:
From WSJ:
“[US] banks have generally been keeping a lid on commercial real-estate losses by extending these mortgages upon maturity. However, that practice, billed by many industry observers as “extending and pretending,” has come under criticism by some analysts and investors as it promises to put off the pains into the future…
Critics [...]

From Strong Language » politics:
Nama is a bad idea said Professor Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, on Wednesday night while addressing Trinity College’s historical society. Nama is likely to “burden this generation for 25 to 50 years or more. I am very uncomfortable with a government with such a minority support making such a decision.” 
The view that there is no [...]

From Strong Language » politics:
Last night’s Leviathan debate was an interesting one – despite the egg-throwing – and it showed even more clearly that Nama is not fit for its purpose and that the politicans have no idea what they are doing. They are truly making it up as they go along.
Nama, according to its website, is [...]

From Strong Language » politics:
First published in Sunday Business Post, Ireland
Oct 6, 2001
By Margaret E Ward
Sculptor Michael Richards spent his last evening on top of the world. After watching Monday night football in his studio on the 92nd floor of One World Trade Center with fellow artist Jeff Konigsberg, he knuckled down to the work [...]

From Strong Language » politics:
Remember the computer simulation game SimCity in the early 1990s? The objective of SimCity was  to build and design a city either without specific goals or towards certain scenarios.  The game allowed you to see what would happen in the future based on your specific choices and performance when playing. You also controlled the speed at which time passed.
For [...]

From Strong Language » politics:
Western society has hang-ups about ageing, and older people are often invisible or ignored.

Fianna Fáil TD Mary O’Rourke, one of the more senior members in the Dáil, was being asked for her advice to older people running for politics last Monday.
Thankfully, O’Rourke did not have a “senior moment”, the American expression [...]