Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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TD/Senate expenses 1998 – 2008
[cross posted from thestory.ie] No, we don’t have the expenses, yet anyway. But we have started the process. In August I sent the following FOI request to the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission (the crowd who manage the Dail and Seanad): August 17, 2009 Request for access to records under the Freedom of Information Acts…
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Michael O'Flynn vs Eamon Gilmore
At the CIF annual conference today, a room full of developers sat down for some speeches. Eamon Gilmore gave one, and in the Q&A Cork developer Michael O’Flynn (famous for the Elysian development, still mostly empty) had two questions for Mr Gilmore: What does he think of developers? Why does he keep saying NAMA is…
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"A floor in the market"
The lads over on the Pin have been discussing this particular sentence, in the context of its use by Brian Lenihan in front of the Oireachtas Committee last week. Let’s take a closer look to what Mr Lenihan said, because this is really important. It goes to the core of his thinking, and the likely…
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New car sales figures and other stats
New figures were released today, and they are not pretty. I’ve tabulated all new car sales on file from the CSO, that is since 1965: (The data was gleaned from here) Here is the large version of that image. New car sales are now hovering around what they were at least 15 years ago. I’ve…
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The John O'Donoghue files (Part 10 – 'Joxer' goes to Stuttgart)
John O’Donoghue goes to Stuttgart. Stutt0001 Stutt0002 Stutt0003 Stutt0004 Stutt0005 Stutt0006 Stutt0007 Stutt0008 Stutt0009 Stutt0010 Stutt0011 Stutt0012 Stutt0013 Stutt0014 Stutt0015 Stutt0016 Stutt0017 Stutt0018 Stutt0019 Stutt0020 Stutt0021 Stutt0022 Stutt0023 Stutt0024 Stutt0025 Previously: JOD Part 1 (India) JOD Part 2 (Birmingham) JOD Part 3 (Berlin) JOD Part 4 (London) JOD Part 5 (London) JOD Part 6 (Venice)…
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In case you missed it…
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The missing €270,000
Here’s a question for everyone: Add these numbers and what do you get? €39.409m €17.548m €22.742m €20.359m €5.777m €8.303m Answer? €114.138m. But according to the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission document, it’s not. Here is a screen grab from the document, for 2007 spending: €113.868 million? That leaves one question. Where is the other €270,000?…
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Friday night newsdumps and Bord Snip
So during the buildup to Brian Cowen appearing on the Late Late Show, the Department of Finance went and published a huge amount of information onto their website, the Special Group Background Documents, submitted by departments etc to Bord Snip, to outline how they proposed cutting back. It is worth noting that many or all…
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The John O'Donoghue files (Part 9 – Turin)
The minister heads to Turin with his wife, his private secretary, secretary general Philip Furlong and assistant secretary general Con Haugh. They use the Ministerial Air Transport Service (MATS) to do it. Tur01 Tur02 Tur03 Tur04 Tur05 Tur06 Tur07 Tur08 Tur09 Tur10 (MATS receipt) Tur11 Previously: JOD Part 1 (India) JOD Part 2 (Birmingham) JOD…
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Donations to TDs 1997 – 2008
Myself and Mark Coughlan, with huge help from Elena Eghawhary, have been working on spreadsheets for the past number of weeks. We are beginning to publish the results. First off is a spreadsheet of all declared donations to TDs on record. We have setup a new blog to start publishing this data, along with the…
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