Desperate Times In Dublin...

The Indo, having spent several years acting as a cheerleader for the property industry has now lurched to the opposite extreme and is promoting desperate schemes to restore national prosperity:

ADVICE on how to beat the recession has come from the unlikeliest of places.

The Naked Cowboy, now world famous for playing his guitar in Times Square wearing nothing but his hat, boots and underwear, has jetted in to offer the despondent Irish public advice on how to beat the credit crunch.

While I don't doubt Mr. Burck's entrepreneurial skills I have two major reservations about all this.

Firstly I have to wonder whether naked cowboy busking is what the business school guys call a 'Scalable Business Model' - If all of New York can support one naked singing cowboy could one scratch a living in Ireland? Could we replace the jobs Microsoft provide with people doing this?

The second problem is that the Irish have already gone beyond Mr. Burck's old fashioned play-songs-and-make-money-while-looking-silly business and moved into the high concept and very Celtic Tiger area of Human Statues, in which people stand in Grafton Street and expect to get paid for doing nothing...

Not So Stupid After All...

Imagine, for a moment that you are in a charge of a large public financial institution. Nice isn't it? Corner office, flash car, all the perks and benefits that go with being a "Titan Of Business".

But there's a problem. A fairly serious one. Actually a very serious one. And this problem has friends. And you know that when all your problems come out into the public eye things may get a bit .. legal. Not circuit court legal. We're talking about not having to worry about being housed and fed for a few years because the Minister Of Justice will be looking after that side of your life.

So what do you do? Obviously you hire really good lawyers. But then what? You could become a fugitive but that involves running away and leaving all your nice toys behind.

You could try being a visibly nice guy - visiting orphanages, hugging kittens, that sort of thing. But it's very unlikely to work.

Or you could go on national radio and do an interview in which you announce that Child Benefit and Pensions be means tested, along with pretty much every other program the government has for the less-than-very-rich. Of course doing this will make everyone, and I mean everyone, hate you.

But it will also make it really hard to find an unbiased Jury who are smart enough to understand the kind of financial shenanigans you were involved in...

Maybe that interview wasn't such a dumb thing to do after all...

Passing the Fintan O'Toole Morality Test...

In today's Irish Times Fintan O'Toole argues that George W. Bush isn't the worst president in history because all US presidents are bad and the US is an irredeemably bad society. You really have to wonder about Fintan - does he really believe this stuff? If so there's clearly hope for us all as apparently having an arm's length relationship with reality doesn't prevent you from holding down a job at the IT. I penned the letter below but then decided to put it in my Blog instead...

Madam,

Fintan O'Toole argues that the historical treatment of
Native Americans by the United States was an act of
evil that permanently disqualifies the United States
from any sort of moral leadership. But if we are to
follow his reasoning who can assert such leadership?
Britain, France, Belgium and other former colonial
powers are obviously disqualified. Russia isn't going
to pass the test. Let's not even mention Germany. Or
Austria. Sweden might be peaceful and fun loving now
but applying the O'Toole test we have to count them
out due to a long track record of military adventurism
in neighboring countries. And while we're on
Scandinavia what about those vikings? That means we
can rule out Denmark, Norway and Iceland as well. We
have to pass on Central and South America due to all
those nasty Juntas, which involved the locals
oppressing each other, albeit with outside assistance.
Since South American generals kept their money in
Switzerland we 're going to have to make them
ineligible as well. Wait! The Canadians! No, they club
baby seals to death. How about Africa? Granted the
invention of the Kalashnikov and the demented national
boundaries dreamed up by imperial mapmakers haven't
helped but the place wasn't exactly a garden of eden
before the Europeans showed up, as the slavers could
rely on the Africans to catch other Africans for them.
What about China? No, the Dali Lama just objected.
Wait! Nepal! No, they have some weird stuff with
Maoists and a Royal family. We're going to have to
pass on Japan - all that 'Co-Prosperity Sphere' stuff.
Maybe somewhere in the Middle East? No.  Drew a blank
there. How about the Pacific Islanders? No - 'Not
Being Eaten' may not be an enunciated civil right but
they used to do it and it's probably covered by the UN
somewhere.

Coming back home Ireland doesn't count, because the
Irish spent several hundred years providing the
manpower to expand the British Empire before they got
down to the real business of fighting each other. De
Valera's signing of the condolences book when Hitler
died doesn't really help either.

The bottom line is that no nation passes the "Fintan 
O'Toole Moral Superiority Test" - and if we find one 
that does it's only because they haven't been given 
the opportunity to fail it yet.

A Scene Worthy Of Father Ted

From Yesterday's Irish Times:

First unmanned service station opens

The State’s first card-operated service station for the public has opened on the Aran Islands.

The Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs Éamon Ó Cuív officially unveiled the facility on Inis Mór, which has one tank earmarked for biofuels.

It is the latest landmark initiative to be rolled out on the off-shore islands after last March’s launch of an electric bus.

Mr Ó Cuív also turned the sod on the island’s €40 million new port project, the single biggest investment in the islands in the country’s history.

“We are all aware of the challenges posed by climate change, and the need to find more sustainable energy sources and practices,” said Mr Ó Cuív.

“My Department has been working closely with Sustainable Energy Ireland over the past year and Terms of Reference have been drafted for a major energy needs survey of the islands, using the Aran Islands as a pilot, aimed eventually at developing strategies that will reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

“The station provides the islanders with diesel at present and I believe that one tank has been earmarked for biofuels, for when they become commercially viable on the island.”

The station will be unmanned and members of the public will be able to refuel and pay at pumps using special cards, details of which have yet to be revealed.

It's hard to find words for the stupidity of all this:

1. There's nothing even remotely exciting about the concept of an unmanned gas station. From my own personal experience both the US and Switzerland have pumps that are credit card operated.
2. Biofuels went from being 'the next big thing' to 'bad news' in the space of a couple of months when the implications of growing fuel instead of food became apparent.
3. But that's OK, because the station doesn't actually have any Biofuels...
4. ..and if it did it couldn't sell them because the inventor of this scheme hasn't got round to doing the 'special cards' and clearly hasn't heard of Visa or Mastercard.

So what actually happened was the Minister traveled to the Aran Islands to bless a tank of Diesel that nobody can buy...

Why are the media ignoring the lack of a plan 'B'?

It's nearly a week after the referendum and it's taken until now for someone, somewhere to state the blindingly obvious - A 'No' vote was always a possible outcome and for the political classes to say they didn't anticipate it is just unacceptable.

I sent a letter to the IT on this but they didn't publish - presumably because watching the pro- and anti- sides beat each other up is much more fun than pointing out that the nations entire political and media elite failed to see this coming....

Madam,

If Mr. Cowen really doesn't know what to do in the face of this entirely predictable crisis he might want to reconsider his career as a political leader. His public pronouncement that he has no idea has made the situation much, much worse by handing the political initiative to a freak show of nineteenth century nationalists, single issue obsessives and other unelectables. If this is the quality of leadership we can expect in the face of a predictable event what can we expect when faced with a real crisis such as a flu pandemic?

'Local Needs' Planning: Irish Government Prepares To Defend The Indefensible...

One of the basic premises of the EU is the freedom of movement for capital and people - EU members can't deny people from EU countries the right to buy property or live anywhere they want in any member state.

But this being Ireland various local agencies have designed regulations that favor 'locals' over 'outsiders' when it comes to securing planning permission for property developments or even in some cases being able to buy property in one of the few remaining 'Irish Speaking' areas of the country. According to the Irish Times:

State defends 'local needs' planning rules to avert EU action

Jamie Smyth in Brussels

Charlie McCreevy: Irish language rule "discriminatory"
Photograph: The Irish Times

The Government has told the EU that local planning regulations based on criteria such as a person's bloodline or ability to speak Irish are "well balanced and proportionate".

It has also argued that such "local needs" restrictions, which exist in 23 county development plans in the Republic, are necessary to maintain the rural fabric of society, achieve balanced regional development and reverse rural population decline.

This robust defence of local planning regulations is contained in a Government dossier sent to the European Commission this month in an attempt to stave off EU legal action. The dossier, which has been seen by The Irish Times , also highlights Ireland's "dynamic property market" as a reason why the restrictions do not breach rules that guarantee the freedom of establishment and the free movement of capital.

About half of the State's local authorities include "local needs" restrictions in their development plans. The move restricts planning permission and sometimes ownership of homes to those who can demonstrate a local need - either that they are working in the area or already live in the area in a home which is not their own.#

...

From an EU perspective current Irish planning regulations are indefensible. If they allow Ireland to get away with them they'll undermine the entire premise on which the EU is based, as well as opening the floodgates to rather more blatent racism elsewhere in Europe. After all, if the Irish rules are legal what's to stop French property developers only selling to French citizens who can prove family residency before France left Algeria, Germans not selling to Turks or even an Irish developer marketing a block of flats in London as 'Irish Only'?

Presumably the government knows this. So why are they wasting taxpayers money trying to defend this when they should be passing legislation to outlaw the practice? Blatant political cowardice perhaps?

Ireland's contribution to racism in the US...

One thing which never ceases to annoy me is the holier-than-thou attitude the Irish media has to all things American. This Saturday the Irish Times let Kevin Stevens write an Irishman's Diary (subscription required) article on the awfulness of American Racism. The first seven-eighths of the article reads like a Wikipedia entry on the dire predicament of African Americans prior to the civil rights movements. But rather than mention civil rights and the radical realignments of race relations that continues to this day Stevens jumps straight into a description of racially segregated neighborhoods:

As William Faulkner so acutely observed, the South suffered from a pathology of racism that left an indelible stain on its culture. But state-sponsored racism was not confined to the southern states. De jure segregation was in effect throughout the US not long before the tumultuous years of the 1950s. African-Americans were barred from many federal government jobs until the second World War. A California law, still in force in the 1940s, authorised the segregation in public schools of children of Japanese, Chinese and South-east Asian ancestry. And the American armed forces remained segregated until 1948.

Moreover, de facto segregation in the US continues to be a problem into the 21st century. Housing patterns, economic factors and "white flight" from urban areas have created segregated neighbourhoods and, consequently, segregated schools. And though poverty is now the critical factor, poverty and race are intertwined. Poor school districts, predominantly black and Hispanic, have poorer schools - which are still segregated, still separate, and still unequal.

And there the article ends. No kidding. Let's not mention civil rights. Let's not mention MLK. Let's not mention anything about the changes that have happened since the 60's. And since Mr. Stevens has apparently been hiding under a rock for the last two years let's not mention anything about the Duke University Lacrosse Team saga, which shows that Race Relations in the US is no longer the black and white matter (sorry!) he thinks it is.

This is a classic example of the Anti-American bias shown by the Irish Media, who are remarkably short sighted when it comes to racism. Do you know why the Irish don't have an open problem with Racism? The real reason, not the nonsense about us being the land of a hundred thousand welcomes? I'll tell you why:

Ireland doesn't have a problem with Racism because we haven't got round to it yet. The people on this miserable rain swept rock have only just finished sweating the last drops of innocent victim's blood out of the medieval intra-Christian religious hatred that's been the driving dynamic here since the time of Henry VIII. The Irish have been much too busy fighting each other to fight the immigrants, who weren't a factor until about three years ago in any case.

Real racism is alive and well today in Ireland. There are now at least two locations in Ireland where planning laws openly discriminate against outsiders on the basis of language or being related to one of the people who live there already. More importantly, nobody seems to find it strange or odd. But what really takes the biscuit and drives me to write this entry was a puff piece in today's Irish Independent. I've highlighted the interesting bit:

Irish investors get first pick in Chicago

Sunday October 07 2007

The best émigré story for some years must be that of Sean Conlon, the Chicago property developer who left Kildare some years ago to find fame and fortune in the windy city and did precisely that.

In fact he is now one of the the largest property developers in the Chicago region. It's all quite depressing for types like me, who are still celebrating the fact that we managed to get to university. While we were busy discussing critical theory and Marx, Mr Conlon and others were a little busier making money. I'm not bitter. Honest.

Well, here comes an money-making opportunity for the cerebral types out there -- those who know too much about Finnegan's Wake and not enough about overseas investment. Castlroc Estates, an Irish overseas company, is offering those of us who missed the property boat a chance to jump on board with PURE2o in uptown Chicago.

First the prices. With one- beds up to 95sqm (1,020sq ft) going from €160,000, this investment is likely to appeal across the board. There is a deposit of only 5pc to be putdown on the signing of the contract and with a two and a half years build time, completion is expected mid 2010.

Here's the bit I like. The project is not being released in the US until January 2008, so the Irish at home have the pick of units. You may think that's not so important now but you try renting an apartment that is 100 feet underground with no windows -- you know what I mean at the back of the class.

Once PURE2o is launched in January you can expect a price increase almost immediately and when you calculate where this development is in Chicago this will come as little surprise. The view from the units of the lake and park is spectacular and the developments are just a street off Lakeshore drive itself.

Let me get this straight. On Saturday I read yet another lecture on how racist the Americans are. On Sunday I see a full page puff piece on how an Irish property developer is building an development in Chicago which American Citizens (be they white, black or polka-dotted) can't buy on the same terms as Irish people and will end up paying more for apartments that are "100 feet underground".

Do the good citizens of Chicago know about this apparently racist business plan? I suspect not. Because if they did at least one Irishman would be rapidly developing an intricate knowledge of just how seriously the Yanks take racism......