Slugger’s Daily Blogburst…

Kicking off, with the Irish Government’s final understanding that those guarantees are not enough to fend off the impending crisis, and it finally came up with the re-capitalisation of the banks that Irish Election (amongst others) called for over a month ago. Though as David McWilliams noted on Morning Ireland this morning, 10 billion Euro is likely only to be the start. – Ciaran has four gripes with Ireland just now. My favourite:

We re-elect a venal government that talked down to us about supply and demand when their mates were gouging us but has switched to lecturing us about our patriotic duties now that we’ve been high-tailing it to shop in foreign parts (you know, Newry).

– In the meantime, as though retail did not have enough problems, Gerard has found a piece of social legislation which he thinks is putting severe restrictions on the amount of money local business can make (and presumably the amount of jobs they can offer): double time on a Sunday. He concludes:

The bottom line is that we need to rapidly dismantle the straightjacket of partnership-inspired labour market madess: while we still have ‘responsible’ employers willing to hire staff and meet their customers’ needs.

– And Splintered shakes his head in untypically laconic disbelief at the puff PR the FM and DFM over the X Factor runner up Eoghan Quigg…

– Johnny is highly sceptical of treating a forum as a branch when it comes to the new highly localised initiative in South Armagh… Nothing Slugger has heard indicates the party is focused on anything other than getting itself and the Republic through what’s looking like a very sticky economic mess…

– The Irish Blog Awards have removed themselves to Cork this year; specifically to the hotel out by the new Airport terminal… 200 registered so far, so if you are going you’d need to get your skates on… Damien’s looking for some crowd wisdom on the categories: looking new ones, and suggestions for older ones that need taking out and shooting…

– Chekov notes moves by the Scottish Government to make Scottish and British mutually exclusive in the ethnicity section of the 2011 Census…

– Staff at Bob Balls thinks that Syliva Hermon may be the only one her party that’s shown some strategic nouse in steering clear of the Tories, now Com Res shows Labour pulling to within a single point of the Conservatives… My advice to Campaign Headquarters at Millbank for what it’s worth: don’t be driven by your aggressively impatient bloggers

– Shuggy has a great post ostensibly focused on the recent civil disobedience campaign at Stansted Airport, but it turns quickly into a useful critique of generic forms of Direct Action. Not the problem of bring proportion action to the nature of the problem in the first place…

– Connall celebrates a nice piece of Eco-commercial economic success

– And finally, Fabius Maximus reminds us why learning from history is profitable

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