Category: Irish Politics

Irish hack Sam Smyth has an article on the Irish economy in this weeks Spectator. Lots of facts and figures, and Sam is sad to be saying goodbye to the one and only, Charlie McCreevy.

Uncle Anthony with another letter in the Irish Times from last Friday: Madam, – It is grotesque in the extreme that the organisers of Dingle Regatta continue to honour Mr Haughey for his so-called services to the town (The Irish Times, August 26th). During his self-serving career Haughey was a tax cheat; he felt that…

Dick O’Brien and William Sjostrom have been duking it out on the free vs fee debate in regard to Ireland’s schools. Is William not relying on an entirely anecdotal example? I am not sure that one story such as that would put me off public schools, well in fact it wouldn’t. I went through the…

Good news for the Irish economy. How does it happen that it’s good PR to tell a country’s citizens that the government has succeeded in taking more money off them than it expected, and that the citizens think thats a good thing? Surely we should be up in arms that the government is getting all…

Anthony Sheridan with another letter in the Irish Times today, oh and it appeared in the Irish Examiner today too. Madam, – The powerful American billionaire Martha Stewart was recently sentenced to five months’ imprisonment for lying to government investigators about alleged insider trading in late 2001. From crime to jail sentence took less than…

So Ahern might have known about the whole thing 11 years ago but did nothing about it. Why does that not surprise me. Wholescale theft of customers, outright robbery, and what’s done about it? Or what will be done about it….nothing I would predict. And as for the ‘class act’ Flynn: The Inspectors’ Report includes…

Whenever I have had interviews for jobs in the UK, the question has always arisen: What is the Leaving Certificate? To which the reply is: Well, it’s kind of like A-Levels, but not quite, its kind of…umm…emm. Now finally I have the answer, its two-thirds of an A-Level. According to a study done by Oxford…

The Guardian, with its editiorial take on the Irish Citizenship referendum. I, for one, intend to vote no.

Dick wonders if Matt Cooper has been playing the chicken song on the Last Word. Indeed he has, every week, more or less, for the last number of weeks. The latest time I believe the chicken noises lasted a good 30 seconds. Which is a long time to listen to it on live radio… Matt…

Yet another AIB scandal, I can’t say im surprised. Though I am surprised by the reaction of some bloggers… This time: This allegation again concerns rates charged to foreign exchange customers and the possibility that AIB branches that were not meeting their targets altered their exchange rates to increase profits. Does this actually surprise anyone…