Iceland: “but people ask why can’t I pay my mortgage? Why is my salary not going up?”

Whilst everyone else is focused on the tribulations of Greece, I would heartily recommend that if you don’t read anything else today, read this Reykjavik Letter (€) from Peter Geoghegan in today’s Irish Times: visions of Iceland as a Nordic Nirvana – burnt bondholders, jailed bankers, a crowd-sourced constitution – often clash with reality here. The Icelandic economy has recovered since the kreppa, the 2008 banking meltdown. But the cost of living remains painfully high, even if the country is far more …

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Surviving the job hunt part 2

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece about how to survive the job hunt. Luckily for me things in that area have turned around and I am now faced with an exciting new challenge that I cannot wait to get stuck into. I am writing this piece as I think it’s always good to illustrate when looking for jobs that in the employment market a month is literally an eternity. I was thinking today about a friend of mine …

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The brain drain from Northern Ireland continues…

I wrote a few weeks about the increasing brain drain from our province. Typically in Northern Ireland we view emigration as a problem that mostly impacts the Irish Republic rather than us. However, today thanks to a question by Phil Flanagan to the Finance Minister, we have found that emigration from Northern Ireland now is actually worse than it was during some of the worst years of the Troubles. Now here I must put a note that emigration from Northern …

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Emigration returns to top of Ireland’s pile of concern…

Fascinating set of figures from Hays Ireland: # 35% of the respondents left Ireland during the last three years to find work, some because they felt like they had no other option. # Of those who left, 27% headed to the UK, 22% to elsewhere in Europe, 15% to Australasia, and only 7% headed to North America. # Three out of five emigrants said that the quality of life was better where they had moved. According to the ESRI, the …

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Irish Government tough on fiscal policy; weak on dishing it out to the banks

P O’Neill with a sharp observation of the Irish version of mañana, or ‘don’t do today, what you can do tomorrow’. Think of those late agriculture, regional development, education and OFMdFM draft budgets, if you’re getting all nordie and smug. But in the maelstrom of the Republic’s economic crisis, the consequences have been catastrophic, not least in the government’s ‘unaggressive’ dealings with the banks… He quotes Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, a member of the ECB: “Markets waited and waited and since …

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Social media fuels protests across political divide

Yesterday it was the turn of hundreds of school children demonstrating outside Parliament to save their playing fields and delivering a petition signed by 500,000″ organised by 17 year old Debbie Foote from Grantham , Lincs.” Last Saturday, TopShop at Oxford Circus, the shopping mecca for metro youth, was forced to close as hundreds protested against Philip Green’s tax avoidance. The organiser if you can call it that, was Ununcut – ( another potential disaster area for the Today programme’s …

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Sovereignty is less Ireland’s issue than not knowing what to do with it…

A fair amount of rubbish is talked about Irish sovereignty. Despite what some have said, it is not like virginity (ie, once it is gone, it is gone forever). But then again, like sex, it is not something that Ireland likes to talk about in public either. In our Lisbon essays (scroll down) it formed the base of some of our liveliest contributions. I was particularly struck by Ben Tonra’s suggestion that the country was too timid to make any …

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Economic Crisis Blogburst 5: Outsourcing the nation’s debt?

– Okay, let’s start off with Gavin Sheridan on The Cycle of Market Emotions… Some of which you can pick up in the letters page of the Irish Times this morning… – And the Independent reports the bail out could come to as much as €100 Billion… – Phillip Lane at IrishEconomy.ie worries that (with a mild economic recovery in the offing) the price of back pay may be a further crippling of growth in the Irish economy: Given the …

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Economic Crisis Blogburst 4: The collision of dreams and reality

– Michael Hennigan of Finfacts explains just why the big boys are in old Dublin town today… – And, the word from the FT… Ireland’s basic problem is that it now has to choose between its own sovereign solvency and the solvency of its banks. Other European countries – in and out of the eurozone – may soon face the same choice. In such a world, keeping banks afloat with public capital risks sinking the sovereign – and with it, the …

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Economic Crisis Blogburst 3: Take the money or open the box?

Apart from John’s piece, one thing anyone should get a hold of after ten this morning when it goes up, is the economic crisis panel from this morning’s Morning Ireland broadcast. IN particular, Aine Lawlor’s lacerating interview with Brian Lenihan, who seems to be slowly capitulating to the international pressure, and which concluded with the rhetorical question: “Does that mean the government, the soldiers of destiny have failed us.” Okay, here’s the best of the rest this morning… – The …

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Economic crisis blogburst 2: Not an overnight crisis…

Okay, the news is coming thick and fast so here’s a slice of today’s comment, bloggish and otherwise: – Ronan has a piece pointing out that whilst other periphery countries have their budgets in the public domain, Brian Lenihan is having to work with the most unbearable public scrutiny and an EU Commissioner taking in everything he does over his shoulder: Is this the crux of that economic sovereignty issue we keep hearing about: …no-one in Europe wins if, for …

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Economic crisis blogburst 1: Government in denial of bailout

The sovereign/bank debt story has moved on over the weekend, with the Government denying it was talking about triggering a bailout, and everybody else talking about the likihood that they would. So, with little or no attempt to editorialise, here’s some of the best commentary of the day: – Dan O’Brien suggests this is no longer a domestic only issue. The question of a bail out for Ireland may be secondary to a larger crisis in the Eurozone… – As …

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