Why the spending on the residence of the Irish ambassador to Canada matters.
The Eiffel Tower, The Colosseum, Buckingham Palace, The Empire State building architecture matters. Buildings are so much more then just vessels for housing their contents, they are symbols that represent the cities and the countries that they are part of. Without architecture city breaks, the delight of the middle class, would be far less common. People visit [...]
Read moreTax individualisation
Leo Varadkar raised the spectre of tax individualisation the other day. Some have talked about Leo Varadkar being lonely I will focus on the idea of tax individualisation. Tax individualistion was a hot topic around the 1999 budget. The idea was basically rather then taxing a married couple as a couple they would tax the individuals thus reducing the [...]
Read moreIs She Hot? Media, Eamon Lillis and Crime.
In Fridays Independent Dearbhail McDonald wrote an opinion piece.
Justice must be done — and be seen to be done
PUBLICITY is the very soul of justice. It is the keenest spur to exertion, and the surest of all guards against improbity. So said the English jurist and legal reformer Jeremy Bentham in 1843.
Although the public’s understanding [...]
There was an interesting side in the Irish Times.
60% have lost jobs in architectural firms
As many as 60 per cent of employees at architectural practices in Ireland have lost their jobs over the past two years, according to a new survey undertaken by the recruitment firm Hays.
In Dublin, the figure is slightly higher with 61 [...]
NUI to be dissolved.
The NUI system is going to be dissolved.
The Minister for Education and Science, Batt O’Keeffe TD, is to dissolve the National University of Ireland (NUI).
Minister O’Keeffe acknowledged the important role the NUI has played in Irish education for more than a century.
‘However, the central role of the NUI was significantly reduced in the Universities Act, 1997, [...]
Reinventing or Rewriting Ireland
What does a Park named after a bishop who covered up child sex abuse , a statue to a terrorist who sought the help of the Nazis and Dublin Housing estates have in common?
A while back I was having a debate with a friend of mine over the statue to Sean Russell that sits in [...]
At Risk Of Poverty EU15
The latest Eurostat data on the at risk of poverty rate is out as a percentage of the total population for 2008.
Ireland is 10th in the list with the UK 13th. The average is 15.2% with Ireland on 16% and the UK on 19%. The data also tells us about the Median Income of a country. Relative poverty is [...]
Read moreTime to ditch TV licensing
In Ireland it costs roughly €12 million to collect the €200 million a year that the TV licensing brings in. €12 million is quiet a lot of money. Put it this way if the collection of all taxation worked on the same 6% ratio. Of the €33 billion that was collected in taxation. The revenue commission would cost around €2billion [...]
Read morePlanning leads to Housing Bubbles
Interesting piece on the Adam Smith blog.
Who am I to argue with a Nobel Laureate? Paul Krugman points out that the places with really terrible housing bubbles were those with more restrictive planning regulations. The less land available to build on (as opposed to looking at and going “Awe!”) the worse the bubble was.
And as has [...]
Leadership, In the defence of Batt O’Keefe
Update: Schools reopening tomorrow.
Leadership is something lacking in Irish Politics so much so that we can’t even recognise it when it happens. Much criticism today is heaped on Batt O’Keefe for closing the schools. Now lets look at the issue in context. The decision was made last Friday when the forcast was for [...]