As Alan has noted, Northern Ireland Employment Minister, and out-going UUP Leader, Sir Reg Empey will be attending this year’s meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative [CGI]. Last year the CGI held a special session on Northern Ireland, which the Employment Minister also attended. As did the NI Secretary of State and the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, along with others from within the NI Executive – and without. But what will the NI Employment Minister report back to the CGI on? Beyond the one-day …
Sir Reg Empey is over in New York this week wearing his Minister for Employment and Learning hat. A BBC online news article explains: Sir Reg’s itinerary this week includes a gathering of world leaders and a magazine event honouring the top 50 Irish-Americans working in finance … will visit the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a philanthropic institute set up by the software billionaire … attend a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, which was formed in 2005 to …
If you have the great fortune (or life planning abilities) to live in this wonderful country then you can buy the Western Mail. Do so today because it’s the start of what looks like being a super series. If by ill-fortune, bad planning, or inconvenient romance you have ended up elsewhere don’t worry it’s on the internet!
Welsh Nationalist. Rugby Fan. Know a bit about History and Railways…
The Irish Times‘ Arthur Beesley with an update on the situation in Europe. From the Irish Times article One way or another, most of Cowen’s senior counterparts in Europe are on the hind foot politically. Merkel’s room for manoeuvre has been circumscribed ever since she lost her majority in the upper house of parliament; Sarkozy’s popularity has collapsed; Silvio Berlusconi administration in Italy is teetering; and José Zapatero is haunted by fear that his reprieve from the markets may prove …
Taoiseach Brian Cowen is off to Brussels today. He could do with a break… His party colleagues have been rushing the microphones to congratulate him on his “manly” apology after a somewhat under-par performance in a pre-breakfast radio interview on Tuesday – you can hear that in its full glory here [RealPlayer file]. The iol report has an account of the “confluence of events” responsible… Witnesses at the get-together in Galway said Mr Cowen was among scores of party members, including senior Government …
The Irish Times‘ Arthur Beesley has been asking some ‘stupid’ questions in Brussels about the Irish Government’s plan for the Anglo-Irish Bank and its dependence on Europe. From the Irish Times Investor types who lend billions to Ireland want final figures for the Anglo wind-down; the Government can’t provide same yet, its credibility over the bank is in some doubt anyway and Europe anxiously wants the brouhaha to quickly go away. But will it? Can it? When people do talk …
There’s been much public posturing from the two main [mandatory] coalition parties here following comments by the Northern Ireland First Minister, the DUP’s Peter Robinson, about the expected cuts in public expenditure. Reported attempts by the deputy First Minister, Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness, to play down suggestions of a split appear to have fallen on deaf, non-Ministerial, ears within his own party. Mark Devenport tells us that DUP sources reckon there’s a difference between the public line being pushed in Sinn …
There’s a good piece in The Guardian from Julian Glover who says, yes, the Coalition does want cuts for ideological reasons, but then what of it? Yet ministers, by and large, hesitate before admitting this. Liberal Democrats worry about scaring their voters. Conservatives aren’t sure the country will understand their big idea. It’s easier to take refuge in the alternative truth that cuts are happening because they are needed. Even Ed Miliband issued a press release last week agreeing. From …
Looks like things just got a little more complicated at the end of a very complicated week for the troubled government owned Anglo Irish Bank: Banks in Austria were used to launder about 2 billion euros ($A3 billion) for the Italian mafia between 2005 and 2007, the Austrian weekly profil reports, citing Rome prosecutors. According to prosecution documents, the money was laundered through 14 accounts at Raiffeisen Zentralbank, Bank Austria – which now belongs to Italy’s UniCredit Group – and …
In a statement yesterday the Northern Ireland Agriculture Minister, Sinn Féin’s Michelle Gildernew said Announcing the LPIS Improvement project, the Minister said: “It is unfortunate that the EU decided to take a hard line and impose a £31m disallowance for the 2004-6 scheme years at such a difficult economic time both for the Executive and the wider economy as a whole. That said, the EU decision has been made and we have to move to mitigate future disallowance.” The Minister neglected …
The Dissenter takes an interesting tack of his own, inspired (if that is the right word) by the News Letter’s Unionism 2010 series. And in the process he says things that should be of interest to all constitutional camps in Northern Ireland: …the business sector is as much grounded in a dependency culture as the social sector. Nationalists cannot complain about a significant reduction in Northern Ireland’s public sector. If there is to be an all-Islands economy (one of the largest …
As the Irish Times reported, the Irish Finance Minister, Brian Lenihan has been in Brussels this week in meetings about the troubled Anglo-Irish Bank. He’s announced a three-month extension of the Government guarantee for short-term bank liabilities until the end of 2010. The bank’s longer term future remains uncertain. Meanwhile, the cost of the Irish State’s borrowing continues to rise Irish bond spreads widened today and yields inched above 6 per cent, rising above the peaks reached at the height of …
I know…..but only just got round to reading the papers:
The Independent concentrates on:
Welsh Nationalist. Rugby Fan. Know a bit about History and Railways…
The BBC reports on the evidence provided to a Northern Ireland Assembly Committee today by two Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure senior civil servants. From the BBC report Overall, the department’s current budget of £109m is projected to fall to less than £92m by 2014/15. Speaking at a Stormont committee meeting on Thursday, [DCAL director of finance Deborah Brown] said the figures represented a cumulative cut of £46m over the budget period. She said the department would [cut] its operating budget by 14% …
BBC NI Radio Ulster’s Evening Extra has reported that the Northern Ireland Department for Social Development have confirmed that the ‘Magic Jug’ public art sculpture, destined for Fountain Street, Belfast, has been cancelled. [added link to BBC report] Nothing to do with the campaign, apparently. The £100,000 cost has been cited as the main factor in the decision. They have, reportedly, already spent £20,000 on the commissioning process. Adds In the comments zone Moochin points to this 27 Aug letter from the …
As iol noted, and RTÉ also reports, Newsweek has named Taoiseach Brian Cowen as one of 10 world leaders [or is it 11? – Ed] who “have managed to win serious respect” – “The Fiscal Taskmaster”, no less. They’ve pushed through austerity packages drastic enough to win the admiration of the international community, raised taxes, and slashed some public salaries by more than 10 percent. But the Irish aren’t showing much gratitude–Cowen’s ratings have plunged to a mere 18 percent, and …
It is difficult to believe now that one country recently sent 19 delegations to Ireland to study how well our economy was managed. The revelation that our model of economic management featured positively in political and economic discussion in countries including Estonia, Greece and Scotland may also come as a surprise. As we survey the ruinous aftermath of the collapse of a property and banking bubble, it is salutary to read that ‘Ireland turned out to be the first country …
The BBC report that police have searched an office at the Policing Board headquarters and the home of the board’s chairman Barry Gilligan. From the report In a statement, the PSNI said: “Searches have been conducted in Belfast as part of an investigation into matters concerning development land at Nelson Street in Belfast city centre. “A number of items have been removed for examination from an office and a house.” A spokeswoman for the Policing Board said it could confirm that …
In the her excellent lecture on “The coming collapse of the American Middle Class”, Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren investigates the stagnation in real median wages in the United States since 1970, and highlights the massive amount of extra-risk assumed by families in moving from one to two income households (The Two Income Trap). It’s probably worth noting at this point that Warren employs a more expansive notion of middle class than many (although not all) in Ireland. Large swathes of …
