For those of you who haven’t read it, because you didn’t take first year sociology in Trinity (thanks very much, taxpayers) let me save you the trouble: One of these days you’re all going to realise that you’re slaves of the bourgeoisie, and rise up against them to fulfil your own potential. The only problem […]
Anne McCloskey is a retired GP and is also an Aontú councillor on Derry City and Strabane District Council, highlights her concerns about the current situation. I suppose it was the sight of our Bishop Donal Mc Keown, furtively going at dawn to bless the graves of the faithful departed in Derry’s main cemetery on […]
Keelings employs over 2,000 people. Over the past century it has transformed from being a prosperous north county Dublin family farm which in 1926 began to concentrate on fruit and veg wholesale and export. It is now a vast enterprise with branches in 42 countries. One of its successful ventures has been to buy fruit, […]
They’re averaging 2000 deaths a day, and five million new job losses a week, now. Here are the numbers for this week alone: "The modest decline in initial jobless claims to 5,508,500 last week, from 6,615,000, means that the unemployment rate is now on track to hit somewhere between 15% and 20% in April, well […]
Ireland’s dependence on China for goods like PPE is another sign of how vulnerable we are when international markets fail. TIM JACKSON says indigenous industries should be rebuilt where possible. #gript
I’m writing this on the evening of day six of our four week “lockdown” (as if we were in prison) in New Zealand. So far we have survived pretty well, something I put down to having jobs which have so far not been too disrupted by the shutting down of the entire country, and good […]
Top work from Niamh Horan at the Sunday Independent yesterday, reporting that one of the biggest potential problems with the Covid-19 outbreak is being addressed: Irish billionaires who were in Ireland the day the lockdown came into place will get a free pass to stay here for as long as it lasts. The Sunday Independent […]
The unemployment figures for March are out, and they’re not pretty. Basically, unemployment has more than doubled: “The unadjusted Live Register total for March 2020 is 205,209. When seasonal effects are taken into account, the seasonally adjusted Live Register total for March 2020 was 207,200 which was an increase of 24,400 from February 2020. Outside […]
Although the corona virus will run for months yet, its social, economic and political ramifications over the longer term are already apparent. Wall St’s winners will be those fit bucks who gobble up their debt-hobbled opponents in the recession that awaits us all. Major oil companies will merge to cut costs, most European and American […]
Covid-19 looks likely to rank among the most startling black swan events of history. A black swan in economic parlance disturbs the existing paradigms, sails into sudden view out of seeming nowhere and shatters settled doctrines about white feathers, orange beaks and blacked up eyes. Who could have predicted? We were looking in the wrong […]
It’s very easy to write about how the Irish Government is bungling the Coronavirus crisis (for it is, now, a crisis) by not moving quickly enough to restrict public gatherings and enforce strict containment measures, and to list the many ways in which it is failing to do so. Primarily, it’s easy to write because […]
Before you get all outraged about the new report from the Central Statistics Office declaring Ireland the second most expensive country in Europe, take a minute and reflect that it’s probably not that surprising: Irish consumers pay the second highest prices in Europe, according to new figures from the Central Statistics Office. The country also […]