Cargo of Bricks – Slugger O'Toole

#TheReset Podcast: “Why can’t government do things (anymore)”?

Mick Fealty on October 28, 2020, 1:41 pm

| Readers 1431

Ed Straw has been in and around government and state led projects for a large part of his later working life. He has also been involved with the UK Labour Party using his trained engineer’s eye to look at how things work. His new book throws new light on the problem of poor “government agency”. Powered by RedCircle In it we cover: Governments are hooked on a systematic approach which assumes society remains as simple as it once was. This results …

Siobhan O’Neill on the need to develop “pack leaders” at every level of society in our responses to Covid 19…

Mick Fealty on October 14, 2020, 3:44 pm

| Readers 348

Now today’s Cargo of Bricks with Siobhan O’Neill, Northern Ireland’s mental health champion was recorded before this morning’s announcement of a four-week circuit breaker lockdown, which in reality is some way short of the near-total lockdown we had in Spring. But in today’s podcast, we cover what we have learned so far and what are the issues that come with facing the uncertainty of a second wave and trying to balance a number of factors external to the core concern …

Covid has unleashed a vast global economic experiment, #CargoOfBricks…

Mick Fealty on October 7, 2020, 6:38 pm

| Readers 1288

In today’s Cargo of Bricks, we take our first look at how the southern economy is coping with the shocks to the labour market in particular. With my guest Dan O’Brien, chief economist at the IIEA in Dublin we cover… Powered by RedCircle It is absolutely impossible to read too far into the success or failure of what amounts to ‘the biggest social policy or political experiment in decades’. Government is able to hold to it’s massive intervention in the …

#CargoOfBricks: Strategic response needed from Stormont for “education leavers”

Mick Fealty on September 30, 2020, 8:00 am

| Readers 567

One of the key reasons for having #TheReset project in a space like Slugger is to look behind the headlines and try to assay the effects of the Covid emergency, not just in health, but in other key areas of life. As we prepare for a second wave, the effects on those leaving education are acute. So this week I spoke to Professor of Education Tony Gallagher, to get his take on what that means in practice… Powered by RedCircle …

#TheReset: Sheer fluidity of technological change means our cultural industries should be more central than ever

Mick Fealty on September 9, 2020, 6:58 am

| Readers 550

It’s hard to think of a working sector in society that delivers quite so much social, cultural, and economic benefits to society at large but where the living for those talented individuals who often devote their lives to it is quite so precarious than in the Arts and Cultural industries. In today’s Cargo of Bricks, I speak to Ali FitzGibbon and discover how the long slow and steady bottom-up development of Northern Ireland’s cultural industries over the last thirty years …

#TheReset: Time to wake up to Covid’s economic challenges and get beyond our long sleepy capture by the Status Quo…

Mick Fealty on September 2, 2020, 7:00 am

| Readers 1222

And after a brief break after the first series of the Cargo Of Bricks, we start the second series in partnership with Ulster Bank with a brief introduction from Richard Ramsey to the Reset Project, an overview of where Northern Ireland finds itself regarding Covid and how to get involved in #TheReset. Powered by RedCircle In it he covers… How politicians need to take heart from their ability to work under the pressure of the crisis and change things that …

#CargoOfBricks: From library assistant in Oldpark to Smash Hits boss in four years…

Mick Fealty on July 22, 2020, 7:02 am

| Readers 709

Talking to a retired nationalist politician recently he recounted how important it was for him to get out of Belfast in the early days of the troubles to UCD and a Dublin in which society and its operants (arts, commerce, science) outsized the politics of the day. #CargoOfBricks and Brian’s In Conversation podcast series draw from a wider circle of sources share insights and stories that perhaps can have a fresh bearing on our lives in-the-round, not always through the …

#CargoOfBricks 8: Ruth Dudley Edwards on life in Lockdown London and getting “kettled” outside Downing Street

Mick Fealty on July 15, 2020, 7:02 am

| Readers 1169

Episode Eight of #CargoOfBricks is with the Dublin born, London based commentator on both Irish and British politics, and crime writer. Initially, Ruth started as a lockdown sceptic, so I asked how she had managed what was probably the oddest period of disruption in our post-war lives, and what changed during the lockdown, for her and for the rest of us… Powered by RedCircle In a free-flowing conversation, she talks about… Although she began defiantly anti lockdown, ‘when the orders …

#CargoOfBricks: Cooperation, looking outwards and maximising Northern Ireland’s advantage…

Mick Fealty on July 8, 2020, 7:02 am

| Readers 733

Episode Seven of #CargoOfBricks, is with Willie McCarter a man who brought Fruit of the Loom in from the US to expand his family business at a time when the Troubles were at their height and brought skilled jobs to both sides of the border: In it Willie tells us: In the early 80s, with high-interest rates as governments tried to get inflation under control, the business was getting crushed on cost and prices. With IDA support, they looked for …

#Angrynomics: Governments can use idle stock markets to close the gap between rich and poor, and save the planet

Mick Fealty on July 1, 2020, 7:00 am

| Readers 801

Episode Six of #CargoOfBricks, and I speak to Eric Lonergan who along with Mark Blyth has critiqued in #Angrynomics how populism has filled the vacuum between democratic politics and unregulated markets, and between markets and real economies: At the crux of the book, anger is one of the most powerful agencies within politics just now. It takes two forms: moral anger as in the witness of injustice and an improving agent within society and the second which acts as a tribal …

#CargoOfBricks Ep 5: After the #Covid sledgehammer, can Northern Ireland’s politicians continue to lead?

Mick Fealty on June 24, 2020, 9:00 am

| Readers 410

In episode five of Cargo of Bricks podcast, I spoke to Tina McKenzie who is the current chair of the FSB in Northern Ireland as well as CEO of Grafton Recruiting and honorary consul to Finland about how business had coped with the lockdown. Subjects included: The fact that there was no time to plan for the massive disruption that lockdown would bring, that businesses had some big decisions to make without a lot of guidance from government in London or …

#CargoOfBricks: After 100 years, the Civil War ends, Sinn Féin rises, Irish Greens step up to save the planet

Mick Fealty on June 17, 2020, 9:54 am

| Readers 3005

In Cargo of Bricks, as the draft programme for government finally emerges nearly five months after February, Dr. Theresa Reidy and I talk through the blocks and difficulties that have had to be overcome to get a sellable deal back to their parties The main points we cover: The ideologically committed Greens have taken a harder line in the framing of the draft programme than either Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil, possibly making it harder for their two larger coalition …

#CargoOfBricks: On the political purgatory of Irish government formation, and Sinn Féin’s great leap forward

Mick Fealty on June 10, 2020, 2:45 pm

| Readers 2079

In this week’s episode of Cargo of Bricks, I’m talking with Professor Gary Murphy of Dublin City University about last February’s tumultuous general election and the dilemmas facing the now five-month-long process of government formation. In it, we dissect: How Ireland’s swing from right to left, illustrated by the collapse in the Fine Gael vote and Sinn Féin’s unanticipated great leap forward, has nullified Micheál Martin’s long-held ambition to lead a non-SF, left-leaning coalition government. The political purgatory now facing the …

On #CargoOfBricks Graham Brownlow says economic recovery from #Covid19 must be long sighted and ambitious

Mick Fealty on June 3, 2020, 1:12 pm

| Readers 604

In this week’s episode of Cargo of Bricks, I’m talking with Graham Brownlow who is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at Queens Management School in Belfast about the economic effects of Covid 19, and what he thinks our response needs to be. Some of the themes we talked about include: Rise of internet-based giants like Amazon poses huge business case challenges for local retail calling into question its capacity to continue providing services to local communities, leading to downward pressure on …

Podcast: #CargoOfBricks talks to Ian Parsley on Northern Ireland’s response to #Covid19

Mick Fealty on May 27, 2020, 1:39 pm

| Readers 1289

Well, since everyone else is doing one, I thought I would take a plunge into podcasting with short weekly conversations with someone who I think can add value to our understanding of the changing world around us. This week, I spoke to Ian Parsley whose frequently updated blog you should definitely put on your reading list for its incisive analysis of many aspects government, and most recently for his coverage of Covid 19. In it we cover: How Northern Ireland …