The Naked Taoiseach

I’d love to know how people get away with this type of thing without beign noticed, but it gave me a bit of a laugh on a dull Tuesday anyway. A painting of Mr Cowen holding his underpants appeared in the Royal Hibernian Academy and one of him pictured on the toilet ended up in the National Gallery. RTE BBC I await the caption suggestions……. Kensei

An empirical analysis of what went wrong

Via Paul Krugman, a paper by John Taylor (he of the Taylor rule fame) from last November examining the early part of the credit crisis in the US. It is somewhat technical but still readable by a layman, it’s worthwhile ploughing through because he takes a look at the policies pursued by the US Government and their outcomes. His assertion that the Lehman bankruptcy didn’t matter as much as convential wisdom would have it has been challenged but I think …

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The formula that killed the banks

Neat article from Wired on the Mathematics behind the secutiries at the heart of the credit crisis here. Kensei

Goldie joins Shadow Cabinet

Via The Scotsman: DAVID Cameron has installed Annabel Goldie in his shadow Cabinet in London as part of his strategy to bring Holyrood and Westminster closer together. Goldie, below, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, will attend shadow Cabinet meetings once a month as the Tories attempt to build stronger links between Edinburgh and London in the run-up to the General Election. This is presented as somewhat of a step up for Goldie, and as a nice natural Unionist friendly link …

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The rational versus the radical left

So, as pointed out on a few other threads, in launching his new book Eoin Ó Broin described SF’s position and future as: It is the left republican tradition started by Connolly and continued by Mellows, Gilmore, O’Donnell, the Republican Congress, Clann na Poblachta and even the Workers’ Party to which we belong….. Sinn Féin’s future must be a left republican future, taking our place in the globally resurgent radical democratic left of Europe, Latin America and the wider world …

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Why SF is stuffed in the Republic

Just highlighting a wee thing from the morning post. Opposition’s proposals for the Republic’s economy Sinn Fein * End subsidising of the private practices of consultants in public hospitals. * Take control of some useful resources, such as the Corrib gas pipeline. * Renationalise the telecommunications network. FG and Labour’s are a bit of a hodge podge, but renationalise telecoms!?? Good grief. Kensei

Is there an even bigger fall in the pound coming?

Interesting blog here on a mechanism whereby the pound could be forced even lower: The fall in global reserve growth will cut into central bank demand for pounds no matter what. Countries like India that have long had a higher pound share are no longer adding to their reserves. Russia also liked the pound and its reserves are falling. If other central banks don’t buy pounds (and sell other currencies) as the pound falls to maintain the pound share of …

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Identity as a weapon

Even the UnIrish may be Irish too but both the Hawk and the Sparrow can accurately claim to be birds so it is perhaps a statement of limited usefulness.Browse some of the Unionist blog sites like 3000 Versts or A Pint Of Unionist Lite and the authors are quick to take umbrage at Nationalist co-option of “Irish” but search their sites and you will find precious little to do with the either the state to their south or of the …

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How do we tackle inequalities in society?

A couple of articles in the Independent touch on inequality and social mobility. Hamish McRae is sceptical of the commission headed by Alan Milburn to look into working class access to the professions as a top down down solution. The problem with this political approach is that it is likely to fail. You can prise open a bit more access to say, the law, but you won’t have a material impact on society. If you start from the other end …

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Could translation of government documents to Irish be crowdsourced?

Social networking site Facebook is being translated into Irish by enthusiastic volunteers. Given a common objection to the translation of Government documents into Irish is cost, could such a system be used to harness the Irish language community itself to do much of the work? There would probably need to be systems put in place in order to make this possible, but large scale projects such as Wikipedia prove that crowdsourcing can be viable where there is an interest. There …

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Do we really want a “save save save” culture?

David Cameron has announced plans to abolish tax on savings for lower rate tax payers and to build a culture of “save save save”.The first question that comes to mind is whether or not this is a good idea. The idea of increasing saving during a recession brings up the paradox of thrift; if everyone increases saving during a recession, it will decrease aggregate demand and potentially cause the recession to deepen. This would be compunded by how the Tories …

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A few things you may have missed

A few articles you may have missed as they are probably outside the “normal” blogsphere here. I haven’t the time to do a Pete-style drag out all the detail, so I’ll just highlight them and leave the thread for any discussion.Author of IRA: The Bombs and the Bullets compares the operational capabilities of Al Qaeda and other Islamicist groupings unfavourably with the PIRA. I suspect some of what he says may be controversial for some here. Try to keep it …

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Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalleluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuujah

So after managing to ignore X-Factor for the entire series, I flick round to see the absolute murder of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” by the winner. Perhaps the thing I dislike most about the show is that it promotes the idea that to be good at singing you need powerful vocals and a smooth style. In this case, all it accomplishes is to overwhelm the song. Jeff Buckley’s more delicate, emotionally honest take below the fold. For my money the best …

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Should we move towards a US Style Constitution?

Interesting discussion on the British Constitution with David Starkey arising from the Damien Green affair: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_week/7766700.stm Much of the criticism could equally be applied to the Dáil (if not more so, with even less oversight in the Senate), and Starkey suggests moving from the traditional British model towards a more American style system, primarily to strengthen the legislature. A disjoint between the Executive and Legislature might make for a difficult adjustment for those used to Parliamentary systems, but I tend …

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Can anyone explain this to me

Apologies for another thread on the Tories, but the world appears to have gone mad and I’m the only one that has noticed. I was going to go through the highlights of Cameron’s very Unionist friendly speech, but a neater and quicker way is the word cloud created from it below the fold. If this is about values and reaching out, where is the evidence? affect belfast believe better britain build cent change conservative constitutional create democracy devolution executive fight …

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Victology

I don’t know if this one will work, but we’ll see. I am going to update this thread periodically. Go with gut reactions and try not to double guess what I’ll post next. ****UPDATE 4 ***** A man is shot dead in his home front of his wife and two children by loyalist paramilitaries. Who are the victims? Update1: The man is active in the IRA. Does this change how you feel, and why? Update2: His wife wasn’t involved directly, …

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Outliers and the Eleven Plus

I have just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers. It is focused on how successful people achieve that success. Like his other books, it is very readable, and he presents interesting stories and unusual arguments. While the book didn’t even escape the reviews without criticism of the underlying theories, it is thought provoking and worth reading for that reason alone. The topic of success also of course speaks to the eleven plus and heaven knows we need thoughts provoked …

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The SDLP need to become the SDLWii

I imagine that even the old fogies and political geeks that inhabit this site have heard of the DS and Wii, given they are currently tearing up sales records all over the planet. But what probably isn’t understood is how unlikely this was just a few short years ago and that there are perhaps lessons in here for our struggling parties. Bear with me, and hopefully some parallels will come through. Nintendo was the dominant gaming giant of the 80s …

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Is it time someone pulled the trigger on the Assembly?

With the executive now seemingly deadlocked longer than it has been functioning, threat and counter threat exposed as ineffectual and now the apparent unraveling of even the limited agreement made, is it time someone brought the matter to a head?With Sinn Fein apparently rowing back on the form of the Policing and Justice Ministry, and the DUP’s stance seemingly dictated by Jim Allister, the Assembly seems locked in a death spiral. In normal circumstance it would probably do little harm …

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Health care rights and responsibilities.

On my previous thread on Republicanism, access to health care was raised a few times as an important right in a modern society. It is hard for any sensitive person to witness the suffering of someone who is sick and suggest nothing should be done. But how far does our moral obligation extend, and what responsibilities lie on the individual? The argument is often framed in the terms that quality of health care provision should be independent of ability to …

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