Collection of Articles. Non Comment Thread

[kerrygold]

Hi control team, any chance if we could have a thread designated to a collection of non GAA related articles on the forum. Theres a lot of users on the forum reading from many different and diverse sources through work, study and leisure reading around the world.

It could lead to quite an interesting and enjoyable collection of reading.

Golden Rule 1. Its strickly a non comment thread.

Golden Rule 2. The author and source has to accompany all articles when posting up on the forum.

[kerrygold]

Sunday February 28 2010

It's nothing personal John -- it's just business
Sargent sleeps with the fishes -- so the Greens now know you don't mess with the men in the mohair suits, says Cathal MacCarthy

WHEN last we met Don Gormleone and his mob, the Verde family, he had turned up the heat on the Esri crew, an uptown outfit that specialised in the numbers racket and had now decided to join with city hall and stick their noses into the rubbish business.

The Don smiled as he remembered their flailing attempts to explain that they had meant no harm, no disrespect. He loaded two organic walnuts into his fair-trade nutcracker and squeezed down hard. The shells split with a little squeak and the nuts inside were reduced to minute fragments. Oh, yeah. The Esri outfit had learned their lesson good. So would anyone else who wandered onto the Gormleone patch.

Life was good, thought the Don, as he threw back a shot of elderflower wine and watched two of his most trusted lieutenants poring over the details of the forthcoming Green Paper on the possibility of powering the Dail restaurant's sandwich maker through wave power.

His hard features softened as he contemplated Big Danny B, his consigliere and man on the (deep) Southside and they actually creased into a smile as he ruffled the curly, James Caan-style hair of his favourite, 'Sonny Boy' Sargento, the pesticide-free apple of Don Gormleone's eye.

Sure, the family business was rough and tough. But no-one would ever try and take out Sonny Boy. Everyone loved him. Who couldn't, with the little head of curls on him and recipes for cooking Brussels sprouts?

Big Dan? He was different. Dan could play for keeps when the need arose. He could express 'no confidence' in a fellow wise-guy faster than he could eat a plate of gnocchi.

Why, just a week ago, Big Dan has expressed no confidence in Willie the moustache, a big-noise hitman in the Gombeeno outfit allied to the Verdes. Big Dan said Willie would have to disappear for a while because he was drawing heat from the law. Although Willie wriggled around for a bit and the Gombeenos were visibly unhappy, eventually he disappeared.

Yeah. Don Gormleone could see how one day they might try and take out a threat like Big Dan B. But little Sonny, with the little curly head on him, he was safe. Everyone loved Sonny.

But just a bare week after Willie the moustache was disappeared, Don Gormleone was sitting with Big Dan and Paulie 'f**k you' Gogartini, a hot-headed soldier in the crew. The fateful knock on the door. The package that had been handed in at the offices of the evening newspaper. The frantic unwrapping and the gasps all round as the McFadden's of Balbriggan 100 per cent cotton vest revealed itself midst the pile of rotten potato peels, carrot shavings and fat, juicy earth worms.

The Don heard himself ask in a strange, frightened, voice.

"McFadden's in Balbriggan? Isn't that where little Sonny gets his clobber? What's going on? In the name of Gaia, what's going on?"

When Big Dan spoke, the words seared Don Gormleone's very soul.

"Sancta Mony", he whispered, crossing himself. "It's a message from the Gombeenos. It means that Sonny's sleeping in the big compost heap with the worms. They've taken him out, Don. He's gone"

Don Gormleone may scream in anguish and tear his clothes. He may swear a vendetta on those responsible till the cows, which hopefully will never see an ounce of artificial fertiliser, come home. But he knows enough to know that with this crew of political sluggers he's way, way, out of his depth. These guys know where all the political bodies are buried, where all the follies of youth and inexperience are recorded, where all the dubious letters are filed.

And if you insist on playing the tough guy at their expense then sooner or later -- and you won't know when or where -- they'll drive by nice and slow and down you'll go in a hail of leaks and off-the-record briefings. You won't even know what happened till News at One rings you up for a comment about that 10-year old letter to superintendent.

Don Gormleone, Big Dan B and all the others might have thought that they had the sharpest elbows and the most iron will. They know better now. You don't get to be the top dogs in this town for 70-odd years by allowing greenhorn punks who make their own yogurt, have proper spice racks that they actually use, and wear helmets on pushbikes to start thinking that they can call the shots.

They can't ever be allowed to think that. And if they can't be disabused of the idea that they can, then they'll end up under a couple of shovels of quicklime in a hole beside the one that contains the bodies of the O'Malley mob and the other wannabes down through the years.

Sonny Sargento is gone and nothing can bring him back. Don Gormleone, Big Dan and Paulie 'f**k you' Gogartini are going to have to suck it up, as the kids say. The worst thing they could start considering now is a revenge strike against the chief suspect for the Sonny rub-out, Dunnie 'Touché' De Aherono. He's a 'made man' and even within the ranks of Cathal Maccarthyeenos, he has a reputation as a man you don't want to irritate. If you go after him, you'd better not miss.

I'm sure it's going to be hard having to listen to the taunts from the other families. The ones about being hitchhikers, not even passengers. The little jibes from 'Slaphead' Charlie de Oliveritti and Eugene 'the attorney' Regianni about having to give up Sonny like that and leave the guys who whacked him walk away whistling.

But Don Gormleone is learning fast. And he's learned one lesson that he should value above all the others. Only a moron acts on the advice of those with a vested interest in seeing him fail. Only a moron would act on the advice of those who urge him to go up against the Gombeenos in a one-way shootout that will leave his own little famiglia in bloody tatters and wound the Gombeenos badly enough that they won't be able to resist the subsequent onslaught that will come from those who initially cheered on both combatants.

And not all those doing the taunting and making the little chicken noises are rival goombahs like Slaphead Charlie and Eugene 'the attorney'. There's a whole *load of interested onlookers who don't have the guts to get into the game themselves but who want to see the Gombeenos wiped out and are willing to fight to the last drop of someone else's blood, if that's what it takes.

They wait till the hour is late and the elderflower wine is in and then talk about the hit on Sonny and what a pity it was, what an honourable, stand-up guy he was.

And all the time they're waiting for Don Gormleone to do the stupid thing they want him to do: start a row with the Gombeenos that means the annihilation of both crews and the way clear for their turn at the top of the rackets.

Back in the old country, in those situations, they would ask a question that the Don should have tattooed into his forehead in the finest, chemical-free, vegetable dye.

Cui bono?

Who benefits?

Sunday Independent

[Mickmack]

The Irish Times - Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Nah, Kidney ain't going to drop the Bull on 99 caps


GERRY THORNLEY

JOHN HAYES will hate all the fuss that might accompany the historic landmark of becoming Ireland’s first Test centurion

JOHN HAYES wouldn’t often beat Brian O’Driscoll in a foot race of any kind, but pending confirmation of the Ireland team announcement today then he is set to pip the great man as Ireland’s first ever Test Centurion. Then, perhaps, it will be official.

The Bull can be conferred as, indeed, “a legend”.

There’s a small school of thought that Hayes struggled badly in Paris and that he may be demoted to the bench or even off the 22 this week. But a review of the tape of Ireland’s defeat in Paris shows all four lineout steals were while he was on the pitch, that the scrum actually went pretty well while he was there and when Ireland were at optimum strength, and he carried a couple of times and made his tackles.

Tom Court’s progress since being rescued from Ulster’s scrapheap by Matt Williams has been impressive – and as a more dynamic late developing prop with more room for improvement who can notionally pack down on both sides, it comes as no surprise to learn French clubs have taken an interest in him.

Yet he has started all 12 of his games for Ulster this season and is just that, a loosehead who can pack down on the tighthead side in an emergency. To start him for the first time this season at tighthead against England at Twickenham seems highly unlikely.

Nah, Kidney ain’t going to drop the Bull on 99 caps.

Hayes will hate all the fuss that might accompany this historic landmark. Ideally, he’d prefer the profile of a limbo dancer – ie no profile at all. That’s the way it’s been for the last 10 years since his debut as one of five new caps in the 44-22 win over Scotland which, at a stroke, launched all their careers and revitalised the Ireland team.

Indestructible, invaluable and indispensable. Apart from a groin injury in 2003, he’s only ever missed Ireland games through being rested or Lions tours. This will be his 51st Six Nations game in succession, all of them as the starting number three.

He has started all bar three of his 99 Tests to date, and by my calculations has completed the 80 minutes in 71 of those games. So it was that Nicolas Mas had a the rare sight of Hayes leaving the fray early a fortnight ago and deduced that Ireland weren’t just losing a tighthead but “a monument”.

Maybe they’ll build a monument to the Bull one day.

Quite where Irish and Munster rugby would have been without this veritable rock is a thought scarcely worth imagining. Ireland’s generally superb lineout over the years has in large measure been down to his lifting skills. His professionalism and memorising of calls is legendary. He has hardly ever missed a lift.

Hurling and football with Doon CBS and then with Cappamore were the only sports he played until he was 19, whereupon “curiosity” sparked by the 1991 World Cup and especially the Ireland-Australia quarter-final, took him to rugby. His debut, in the backrow, was a 0-0 draw with Bruff against Newcastle West.

Legend has it he was applauded off the field, though he maintained it was just some of his team-mates and it was after training the following Tuesday.

As Bruff didn’t have an under-20 side at the time it was Willie Conway, now the Bruff RFC president, who suggested Hayes go up to Shannon, where he came under the wing of Niall O’Donovan.

Of all the many legacies bequeathed to Irish rugby by the ex-Shannon, Munster and Ireland forwards coach, none have eclipsed the way he nurtured Hayes all the way up the representative ladder. A season with Marist in the mid-90s saw him go to Invercargill a boy and return a man, according to himself.

He was fast-tracked on to the 36-man Ireland squad to tour South Africa in 1998 by Warren Gatland at the behest of O’Donovan. By prompting Peter Clohessy to switch to openside, the latter reckons it extended his career by three years – ditto Mick Galwey for Hayes’ lifting skills.

A gentler giant and more likeably genuine and modest man you’d struggle to meet. It’s been extraordinary how seldom he has lost the rag in the furnace of the frontrow and likewise, as Declan Kidney has noted, that Hayes never once won a man-of-the-match award. Mind, he’d probably prefer it that way.

A Grand Slam winner and three-time Triple Crown winner, a four-time Heineken Cup finalist, and two-time winner, a two-time Lions tourist, multiple AILs and now this. A legend, all right.

[Mickmack]

Retirement age: New plan to keep us working beyond 65
By Charlie Weston and Aine Kerr


Monday March 01 2010

WORKERS in both the public and private sectors face the prospect of having to stay in their jobs well past the age of 65.

The Government plans to increase the pension age in stages, under radical new retirement and pension proposals to be published this week, the Irish Independent has learnt.

The new proposals come as Bank of Ireland (BoI) will tell staff tomorrow it is considering raising the retirement age for its employees to 68.

The Government's National Pensions Framework document will spell out how the increased retirement age will affect long-serving workers compared with new recruits.

Under the new pensions model, workers of different age groups will be given different retirement ages to reflect their proximity to retirement and level of pension contributions.

BoI is looking at forcing its staff to delay their retirement until they reach 68, in a desperate bid to plug a €1.5bn hole in its pension fund.

It is the first major employer to consider forcing its staff to work for longer before they qualify for a full pension, but other large companies are understood to be contemplating similar plans.

Social and Family Affairs Minister Mary Hanafin, who has responsibility for pensions policy, is due to launch a long-awaited pensions policy framework on Wednesday.

The minister warned last October the Government might raise the retirement age.

"Certainly, an increase in retirement age is an option we must consider and we will make any final decision in this regard as part of the package of pension reform to be announced in the long-term framework," she said at the time.

Most occupational pension schemes allow workers to retire at the age of 65, while the state contributory pension is paid from the age of 66. A state transition pension is paid from 65 years of age for those who retire before they reach 66.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said in December's budget speech that future public servants would not qualify for a full pension until the age of 66.

A new pension scheme for the next generation of public servants was to be announced this year, he said.

And in recent talks with public sector unions, the Department of Finance indicated the retirement age could be set at 70 for new entrants.

Costly

Previously, the An Bord Snip chairman Colm McCarthy urged the Government to examine the retirement age in a bid to deal with escalating pensions costs.

When publishing his multi-billion euro cost-cutting report, the economist claimed the sharp increase in life expectancy was becoming "hugely costly" to the Exchequer and creating "huge problems" for state pension schemes.

While his report did not recommend a new retirement age, the chairman said hiking the age was one of three options available.

"It's all very well saying 'let's all retire at 65' and the State will pay the pensions for a few years afterwards. If people used to snuff it at 70, but have decided to snuff it at 85 and 90, well then something's got to give," he said.

"There either has to be huge increases in taxes to pay for this or huge increases in saving rates in private funded schemes. If people are unhappy with either of those, it seems to be the obvious alternative is an increase in retirement ages."

BoI has a €1.5bn deficit in its defined benefit pension fund. This is more than one-and-a-half times its stock market valuation.

Making its staff work until they are 68 before they qualify for a full pension is one of a number of proposals being looked at to plug the deficit.

Other options include making its staff pay more than the average contribution of 2.5pc of salary, capping pensionable pay as opposed to actual pay, and reducing the rate that pensions benefits are built up, according to banking sources.

Bank staff with 40 years' service retire on two-thirds of their final salary.

Some 18,000 people are members of various BoI defined benefit schemes. This number includes workers still contributing to the scheme, pensioners and deferred members who have left the bank but have yet to retire.

The bank contributes 16pc of bank workers' salary into the defined benefit scheme, but has told its staff it is unable to pay more.

Former head of Bank of Ireland Life Brian Forrester was asked by the bank to outline various options for reducing the deficit. Staff will be told that one of the radical solutions he proposes is raising the retirement age to 68.

A BoI spokeswoman said no decisions had been made yet, but confirmed various options were being considered.

A spokesman for the Irish Bank Officials' Association (IBOA) said the union was concerned about the possible impact for its members.

The IBOA has submitted counter-proposals to the bank to address the deficit situation.

In Britain, the state pension age will rise to 66 in 2024, to 67 in 2034 and 68 in 2044, with each increase being phased in over two years. But recently there have been calls for the retirement age to rise to 70.

- Charlie Weston and Aine Kerr

Irish Independent

[kerrygold]

By Billy Keane


Billy Keane: Mad hatters enjoy party in wonderland


Monday March 01 2010

We will dedicate this win to the emigrant Irish. Our Tanaiste says they only move abroad to enjoy themselves. She makes Sarah Palin to insignificance. And how the diaspora celebrated. And the many I met couldn't wait to strut into work on Monday morning.

It was their day. A small country hanging off the edge of the known world defeated the leftovers of an empire. We were, in a word, awesome. And in a few more words, brilliant, resolute, brave, skilful, clinical and profoundly courageous.

Our boys only got their hands on the ball about 30pc of the time. England owned territory and possession but it's the story of the lad who spends all night chatting up the girl only to find another brings her home.

Martin Johnson's England are like drinking at home. No craic, same company, no escape from the monotony of conformity and wishing they had an upstairs in their bungalow. And that was it about England.

Their game-plan was sterile and upstairs in their heads was ruled by a coach who failed to grasp the fact that the team who scores the most tries usually wins. The carpet was pulled out from under him. Lino Johnson, it was good enough for you.

And we scored three beauties. Jonathan Sexton's off-the-side-of-the-boot grubber for the first was an ode to Barry McGann. His pass for the second was a Mike Gibson cover.

Declan Kidney is such a clever man. Sexton tackled himself into exhaustion and then on comes Ronan O'Gara with 10 minutes to go. O'Gara was the cleanest man on the muddy pitch. You'd need wellingtons to keep your shoes clean in Twickenham but he was a white knight.

O'Gara kicked for the corner and it was inch perfect. We cannot ever speak of this man with anything less than reverence. Sexton and O'Gara is jam with jam on it.

Ah but that last try, with the sand flowing like a river in flood from the egg-timer, lifted a nation. There's hope for us now. Tommy Bowe, we sang the Black Velvet Band three times for you in The Turk's Head. The pub was lifting. It was as good as it gets. And we kissed men and women.

We were right behind the goal when Tommy went over. It was Paul O'Connell's Micko catch that made it. If he lepped any higher he would have had to inform air traffic control. The throw-in was too high but he got to it barely leaving a fingerprint on the ball. Tomas O'Leary was on to the tap down and he drove. Then there was the lovely offload to Bowe.

The dead-ball zone was Kavanagh country. Bowe even had time to wave before he touched down.

Gracious

We were billeted in the English camp. Thank you for the ticket, Brian Bourke. They are without a doubt the most gracious of foes. It's strange that you have the worst of the Black and Tans' great-grandchildren living in the same country as the thoroughly decent rugby supporters.

The hip flasks were passed around like snuff at a wake. I was so wired before the game I told the man in front of me to shut up during our on-the-road anthem.

"It's only 'Ireland's Call'," said the Corkman who sat behind me.

And we met a lovely young lad and his dad on the way in. The child was 7, the optimum age for a human being, and his Christmas-morning eyes lit up when he had his first sight of the pitch. I had his name written down on the programme but it got lost in the mayhem that was O'Neill's in Convent Garden, as one of our boys called it.

Usually London's enormity wipes out the track of big matches but, on Saturday night, the Irish were everywhere. I would guess that there were 50,000 without tickets. Mostly young girls and boys. I didn't even see one out of order.

Honestly. The rickshaw man told us as he pedalled us back to the aptly named Mad Hatter Hotel that he had his busiest night of the year. And not one Irish person gave him the slightest bit of bother.

We kept all our botheration for the English team.

- Billy Keane

Irish Independent

[Mickmack]

Engineers issue warning as population soars

www.iae.ie/site_media/pressroom/documents/2010/Feb/26/IAE_Report_web.pdf


Monday, March 01, 2010 - 01:40 PM



Around 90% of the island’s population will be living in just eight city regions over the next two decades, a new report claimed today.

The study by leading engineers warns with the population North and South set to soar from 6.25 million to eight million by the 2030s, the country’s infrastructure urgently needs to be brought up to scratch.

According to the research, the greatest headcount will be along the Dublin-Belfast corridor, which will house four million people.

A south west corridor linking the cities of Cork, Galway and Limerick will have around two million inhabitants with many working in pharmaceuticals, biomedicine and agriculture.

The report, Infrastructure For An Island Population Of Eight Million, urges the Government to focus investment on eight key cities – Dublin, Belfast, Waterford, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Derry.

John Power, director-general of Engineers Ireland, said the country needed to get on a par with top international competitors.

“It is clear that there is still an acute infrastructure deficit in Ireland,” he added.

“This study provides a framework that can help the Government to direct funds to where maximum return on investment will be provided.”

The report, compiled by Engineers Ireland, the Irish Academy of Engineering and InterTradeIreland, says better quality transport and broadband connections are needed to make the country more competitive.

It highlights the Dublin-Belfast corridor as being crucial to attracting inward investment and calls for improved air and port services in the area.

It also recommends close links between universities and industry as well as highly developed education, health, and cultural services.

The report’s authors claim greater private sector involvement could help fund the developments and predict the possible establishment of an ’island infrastructure bank’ to provide long term finance from both the public and private sectors.

[Seoirse Ui Duic]

Evening up the Scor



Jarlath can ask daughter Megan for a look at her All-Ireland medal for some inspiration.


By Jarlath Burns
THINGS are hotting up in the world of GAA. The league has started and thus will begin an unbroken line of inter-county GAA action right until November. There'll be controversy, referee bashing, suspensions, sackings, upsets, set-ups, rumours, rows, fall outs, winners, losers, every week and lots of it from club, county, underage, international. You name it, we've got it right up until Halloween at least.

As I've said before, the GAA combines the two worst aspects of Ireland in perfect harmony – short bursts of violence punctuated by committee meetings. And that's why it has been such an unbelievable success for 125 years.

And then there's Scór. It starts for us at the weekend. Scór Sinsear, or Senior Scór. Our club is the Crossmaglen of Scór. We are Scór giants. Unbeatable in many disciplines in Armagh, particularly the quiz where our teams do two nights a week for at least a month before the first round. That increases to three for the Ulster final and now they're doing around four in preparation for the All-Ireland. I was on a Silverbridge quiz team that got to an All-Ireland. Years ago. In Leisureland, Galway.

We romped home a close third behind the winner. In other words, we came last. But this is now. Our young quiz team are ready, waiting and expectant. Beyond that, we currently hold an All-Ireland title and are now the proud holders of four Ulster titles – almost half of the total given out at the final in Galbally last month.

But this was for Scór na nÓg. It's now our turn. The adults, though I use the term loosely. Rumours are rife about the early ambition of our rival clubs. Carrickcruppin Ballad Group is practising behind closed doors and I kid you not. Dromintee céili dance team are on a drink ban. Nobody knows what Mullaghbán are up to, but they'll come out fighting. I expect a Valentine's Day massacre.

My own crowd are up and at it too and yours truly has been coerced into taking a part in the Novelty Act. Actually if I was ever back in charge of Scór, I would do away with the Novelty Act. Participating in something I dislike intensely is just another angle on the incredible contradiction my life in the GAA has become. This alongside not liking foreign sports yet voting to allow them into Croke Park and of course hating the GPA but cheerleading the recent accommodation which has them at the heart of GAA government. I'd be a rank bad politician.

But on Sunday night I'll tread the boards for the first time for Silverbridge in Mullaghbán Hall. I play a TV Licence Inspector. A rather unique commodity in south Armagh. In the play, I get the better of the hero and make him get a TV licence. I hope my performance isn't too convincing. Round our way, men have been taken away in the boot of a car for less. I'll let you know how we get on. It's a small cast. Myself, my two brothers and Kate Reel who is what we would call a great club woman.

Scór Novelty Acts have a very narrow window for humour. The rules are clear. No bawdy stuff, so Carry On Scór is a real no no; and lavatorial humour or anything which makes fun of Ireland or the Irish will get you disqualified. My brother wrote the script and since his entire repertoire of wit falls right bang into the above categories, the fact that he was able to write anything resembling a plot at all was a triumph.

Armagh midfield requires action

But back to last weekend and the first game of the league. Armagh are beginning to prove just how much of a work in progress they are with their narrow defeat at the hands of Meath on Saturday night. Their young team showed plenty of industry, bags of energy and a bit of promise. But they failed at the last gasp to earn the point I thought they deserved. The scoring of six points in a row was a tribute to their ability to bounce back from the two slack goals and the grit required to craft a comeback like this is more important than even the result at this stage.

It would be easy to blame the referee on the defeat, but I am going to do it anyway. No more comment needed. Anyone who was at the match will know what I am talking about, particularly in the last five minutes when a bit of common sense was required.

I get the feeling from watching the team so far, that Armagh are still playing to a system that isn't totally suited to their resources. I expect that to change though as the team settles.

They competed excellently round the middle last Saturday night, but Armagh does not have an out and out catching midfield anymore. We are emerging from an era where we based our entire game plan round the winning of primary possession from the kick out followed by a few quick passes into the full forward line. The reason this succeeded for so long was from the historical presence of the likes of Mark Grimley (still the best catcher in the history of the game bar none), Nial Smith, Paul McGrane and John Toal.

I sat on the line from 1986 until 1991 watching Smith and Grimley rule the roost with a mixture of strength and style and by the time it was my turn, I'd had a decade of marking Grimley at training and was able to fit into this template. A generation of Armagh footballers have grown round the expectation that midfield will be won from the kick out and this mentality will be hard to remove.

Tyrone haven't had a natural catcher round the middle since Harry McClure and they have skilfully managed to make this part of their game irrelevant. Armagh now need to consider doing the same. There is no shame in this. It only involves a creative plan round the kick out and a few half backs who know where it's going and can judge a short kick out. For the opposition's kick out you get men round their big men and torture them when they land. For a midfielder who made his name on catching the ball, this might seem like treacherous talk, but just consider it another contradiction. When it comes to making horses for courses, all angles must be tried because in the crazy chaotic world of county football, the end will always justify the means.

[Seoirse Ui Duic]

A letter to the hurling fat cats



BY JOHN MARTIN

[e-mail]

Croke Park's Games Development Committee meets tomorrow to discuss the 'way forward for hurling'. Chairperson Liam O'Neill has asked for 'fresh thinking from whatever source we can get it' to inform his committee's future plans, so being the philanthropists we are, hurling columnist John Martin pens an open letter to Liam...

Liam a chara,

You've asked for ideas that will benefit hurling, and fair play to you for doing so. I hope your mailbox has been full to bursting over the past few months with suggestions, plans, proposals and formats to progress the game throughout the country.

However, if any of those plans, proposals and suggestions are in relation to the senior championship, do us all a favour – and bin them.

The now-defunct Hurling Development Committee has over the years spent thousands of man-hours coming up with ingenious formats for the Liam MacCarthy Cup, that did little or nothing to develop hurling.

'Hurling Development Committee' was a complete misnomer. The HDC didn't get a chance to develop hurling, their entire time was wasted by having to sit round tables in Croke Park, tinkering with the format of the MacCarthy Cup.

Even then, they were unable to produce a format that would develop the game as they were held to ransom by the sanctity of the Munster championship. Any format that didn't get Munster approval, had no chance of getting passed at Congress.

It always bewildered me why a committee tasked with 'development', spent so much of their time focussing on the senior hurlers of the top 12 teams in the country, when totally ignoring juvenile structures throughout the country.

I've always had difficulty with the notion that senior players 'need to be playing against the top teams to improve'. It's not that I disagree with the logic that playing against better teams will bring players on, but I would have to question just how much they are 'brought on' when, at 21 or 22 years of age they make their way on to a senior county panel and play at most 140-odd minutes of championship hurling in the course of 12 months.

Are we really suggesting that if a player doesn't have the skills of the game by the time he is 20 years old, that he is going to learn them by playing two MacCarthy Cup games a year?

Certainly he may find out exactly what level is required, but instilling the necessary skills has to be done long before that, and when he returns to a club league that is played many revs below MacCarthy Cup standard, how is he going to get up to that level in the following 11-an-a-half months?

Hopefully the Games Development Committee will focus on where development can actually take place – at underage. Forget about the senior competitions – any format that might actually benefit hurling (i.e. scrapping the provincial system) won't get past the Munster counties anyway. The financial argument, never mind the romantic one, will see to that.

The same arguments can't be made for the minor championship however, so my first proposal for tomorrow's meeting is a remodelling of the minor championship format.

The All Ireland minor hurling championship has the potential to be a great competition. The format should be based loosely on the four-tier MacCarthy-Ring-Rackard-Meagher structure currently used at senior level - but without the absurdity of provincial restrictions.

Do away with the provincial championships, the 'special minor championship', the minor B and the minor C championships, and replace them with a three or four tier structure. On top of that Liam, there has to be a strong group element incorporated so that every county gets at least four games, and if necessary, groups can be split into shield and even plate sections so that every game is meaningful.

How much more beneficial would it be for the hurlers of Antrim, Down, Carlow, Westmeath or Laois to play at least four competitive games every summer, some of which would be against the top sides instead of the usual 60-minute massacre?

I realise that for some counties the cost of travelling the length of the country for a minor match would be prohibitive. Well for a start, not all games need to be played at a home venue, so a £1500 overnight stay or a flight to Cork airport could be replaced by a coach trip to Tullamore when Ulster meets Munster.

And sure maybe with the GPA on board next year, they could persuade Halifax to drop the gimmicky Hurling Twinning Programme and sponsor the minor championship instead?

A group made up of Cork, Wexford, Dublin, Offaly and Antrim would make a great summer of hurling for the Saffron under-18s, don't you think?

A change that was rejected by Congress a few years back should also be reconsidered. The proposal to change the minor grade from under-18 to under-19 failed to get the necessary support, but it should be resubmitted as a hurling proposal on its own.

The three-year window would tip the scale ever so slightly in favour of the weaker counties. The stronger players from the likes of Antrim and Down would still be challenging for a spot on an under-19 team when they emerge from the under-16 grade and while the Tipps, Galways and Kilkennys of the world will always have strong players coming through for virtually every position, when Antrim lose a Neil McManus or Down a Conor Woods to the under-21s, it could be years before they produce a player of similar ilk.

Further down the tiers it would have a knock-on effect in that players – most of whom are dual players – will have a stick in their hand for at least another year toward the adult grade.

Some - but obviously not all – of those players who would be hanging up their hurl at that stage will instead continue to play both codes.

A few years ago, the Monaghan manager Frank Brady told me that he had lost a few players off his panel to the footballers. He wasn't talking about Banty's county squad - three players had opted off the county hurling panel in order to concentrate on trying to win an intermediate club title.

That's what he and other managers in the 'weaker counties' are up against. That's where 'development' needs to take place, not in Ballyhale or Portumna.

I've ranted on a bit Liam so I'll leave you to get on with the job at hand, and remember, if anyone mentions senior competition tomorrow, kick them out of the room.

Le meas,

John Martin

ROSSA BREAK LOUGHGIEL JINX

O'DONOVAN Rossa are Belfast's most successful hurling club. The Falls Road side sit joint second in the county's roll of honour behind Ballycastle for senior championships won.

Their last senior championship came in 2004, and since then the club's senior side has undergone a barren spell, dropping into Division 2 of the All County League, and failing to get past the semi-final stage of Antrim's three-horse-race senior championship.

That looks like changing in the next few years however. The Antrim minor and under-21 championship trophies now sit in Rossa House, along with the Ulster Division 1 Senior League title, signs that the transition period is edging closer to its end.

Gerard McGettigan is one of the players who will pay a major part in the Rossa renaissance. He is one of the unsung heroes of this year's successful minor side that will aim to add the Ulster club title to this year's haul next week against Ballinascreen. The final against the Derry champions was called off last week due to the weather, and has been rescheduled for Sunday 13 December.

McGettigan is earning a reputation as an 'engine room' player. He's the type of midfielder who keeps a team going when the chips are down, and will leave nothing behind on the pitch.

Currently studying law at Queen's, McGettigan keeps a level head on and off the pitch. Hurling is his first love and he has also "played a bit of football now and again". He was content to stay in the minor and under-21 ranks this year, unlike some of his team-mates who showed their face at training for Aidan Hamill's senior squad.

"Obviously I'll try and make the step up to senior next year. I suppose it helped a few of the lads that went to the (senior) training but I was training two nights a week with the minors and that was enough for me," said McGettigan.

After Rossa's minor championship victory over Loughgiel, the players joined the under-21 training sessions as they prepared for their final showdown against Cushendall. The win over Loughgiel was particularly sweet for McGettigan, with the Shamrocks having thwarted several All-County title bids throughout his underage years.

"We always seemed to meet Loughgiel and lose out to them. This year's final was really the first time we beat them," McGettigan said.

"To be honest I was a bit surprised at the success this year. We were expected to do well last year, and at under-16, but it didn't happen. It wasn't expected this year so I suppose that made it a bit sweeter."

After their county win, the Gortfad Electrical/Leadon Timber Frames Ulster minor club

Tournament was the next stop. Traditionally not a happy hunting ground for Antrim clubs, Rossa faced Down champions Ballygalget in the semi-final.

"We only beat them by four but the scoreline didn't tell the true story. We probably should have won by more and I think Ballinascreen will give us a harder match in the final, but we're confident we can do it this year," said McGettigan.

"We've been training three times a week for this one. Sean (Shannon, manager) is driving it forward along with Jim and Paul Close. It is great to have that experience on the sideline."

McGettigan is one of a number of players who came through West Belfast hurling nursery St Mary's CBGS. He won a Mageean Cup medal in the 2007-08 season before losing out in the All Ireland final to a Maurice Shanahan-inspired Blackwater Community School.

As well as their colleges experience, Stephen Shannon, Stephen Beattie and Christopher McGuinness were part of the Antrim minor side that lifted the Ulster championship last summer. Shannon and McGuinness were two of nine Rossa players selected to attend last week's trials for Dinny Cahill's senior squad.

McGettigan added: "It is good to see so many being called up to trials but it doesn't surprise me, there is a lot of quality there. There is a great feeling round the club at the minute and winning an Ulster title would be the icing on the cake in a great year."

[Mickmack]

Sovereign Debt Woes:

Who's the 'U' in STUPID?
Published: Tuesday, 2 Mar 2010

By: Patrick Allen
CNBC Senior News Editor

PIIGS has become a financial crisis acronym to rival BRIC, ASAP and WML (whatever major loser for those over 15). Now, though, a new acronym is being talked about in the corridors of power and it is all about the economy, STUPID.




STUPID is said to stand for Spain, Turkey, Ukraine, Portugal, Ireland and Dubai. That's six countries that got themselves into trouble with high borrowing over the last few years and now worry investors across the world.

With all due respect to Ukraine, it is not yet seen as a major economy which could destabilize the global market. But there are two U's who could easily qualify for the STUPID rogues' gallery: the United Kingdom and the United States.

On Tuesday a former UK chancellor of the exchequer warned that unless Britain got its act together and lowered the budget deficit it would be joining the STUPID list. The pound has been the whipping boy of the foreign exchange markets for months on fears over government spending and uncertainty over the outcome of the upcoming spring election.


All this talk of crisis for the pound was, on Monday, dismissed out of hand by David Bloom, head of HSBC foreign exchange research.

Those calling for a sterling crisis are living in ‘Cloud Cuckoo land,’ Bloom said. He also questioned which major currency the pound is going to have its crisis against?

"The analysts that are putting the GBP crisis view are the very same analysts who seem to be simultaneously predicting the breakup of the euro and a GBP crisis, whilst only last year telling us the USD was finished and losing its reserve currency status," he said.

So, if we assume Bloom is correct and talk of a sterling crisis is overdone could we make the case for the United States to join the STUPID party?

The US is expected to borrow $1.17 trillion in 2010, taking its national debt towards an amazing $15 trillion dollars. Harvard economist Niall Ferguson said as a result of this huge borrowing US government debt is a safe haven the way Pearl Harbor was a safe haven in 1941. This dwarfs UK borrowing, of course, and is being widely condemned by those in the US who believe runaway government spending is leading the country to ruin.

Risk aversion has seen investors ignore this analysis of America’s debt time bomb since the fall of 2009, as other problems outside of the US sent investors rushing back into the greenback. Unfortunately, data shows that the Chinese have cut back on buying US debt in recent months. A solution to the PIIGS problem and a credible plan for the UK economy after the election could see the focus return to the US deficit and investors would be STUPID to ignore the risk.

[kerrygold]

Rooney deserves captaincy of the Bounty

SIDELINE CUT: Portsmouth teeter on the brink and England’s World Cup hopes seem gripped in a melodramatic farce, writes KEITH DUGGAN

THE VANITIES of England’s football culture have been exposed in recent weeks but one question is worth asking as Fabio Capello struggles to prevent his international team replacing Eastenders as the best soap opera going: Why isn’t Wayne Rooney the captain of the Bounty?

The sad demise of Portsmouth football club gives substance to the argument that sooner or later, the Premier League is going to be exposed as a house of cards. For years now, the modest but vital provincial clubs that are there in the main to provide fodder for the super clubs of English football, have been forced to spend recklessly to secure the services of relatively ordinary players just so they can survive in the top flight.

Portsmouth are almost certain to have nine points docked, which will virtually eliminate them from the desperate and always entertaining relegation dance at the bottom of the Premier League table.

The comments from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and of local MPs declaring the importance of football to the city do not really matter. Portsmouth are replaceable and can sink into the lower tiers of the English leagues, as once mighty Leeds have done.

Week after week, on Sky’s interminable football coverage or on the slickly packaged MOTD shows on the BBC, the camera angles cannot hide the empty seats in the edge-of-town stadiums where the main business is to survive in the big league.

The infusion of money from Sky television has done a lot of good for English football. It is slightly shocking now to see the pictures of 1980s games, with the fans penned in behind wire cages in scarcely human conditions. Football stadia have been transformed and exotic players were attracted to unlikely English cities by the promise of the new money that flooded into the game. There is no sign of that money disappearing: the €1.2 billion windfall resulting from Sky’s newly negotiated overseas rights package extends the bonanza time for English clubs. But even so, clubs are struggling to contain the ballooning running costs.

Nobody really blinked when clubs like Manchester United and Liverpool – supposedly the jewels in the crown of England’s football heritage – were forced to relinquish boardroom control to American investors with no emotional attachment to either the football clubs or the cities which they made famous.

There was something desperately touching about the signs the fans made when the Glazers took control at Old Trafford: Manchester United is not for sale. But it was floated on the stock exchange. For sale is precisely what it was and is.

There are rumblings of financial discontent on the horizon for Manchester United, now saddled with debts of €784 million, even as the current team flies high in both the domestic league and Europe. However long Alex Ferguson remains as Gaffer, you get the sense he will be baling out at the right time. At corporate level, United have extended the stadium and put the executive boxes in place and developed a flawless marketing strategy which guarantees their stadium is full and their merchandise is globally recognisable and still find themselves sailing into a financial storm.

Liverpool have managed to snatch a Champions League through a period when they have seemed on the ropes as a football club, finally succumbing to the requirement to pass control on to a moneyed owner from afar, constantly delaying their planned move to a plush new stadium up the road from Anfield and bringing a flabbergasting combination of players through the doors in an attempt to find the right combination for that elusive league title, a trophy that once seemed like second nature to their existence.

I often wonder how Jimmy Hill, the man who ended the maximum wage in English football, must feel about the state of the game today. Hill has lived through a period when football stars were treated like indentured servants by their paymasters to the other extreme which prevails today, when the players send their agents in to wring every last penny they can from the clubs. The players cannot be blamed. It was their good fortune to be born into extraordinary times in English football where a decent if unspectacular professional can earn €110,000 a week for mere competency.

Such vast wealth is bound to affect the mindset of the young men on whom it is bestowed. Two or three seasons into their football lives, young apprentices have acquired all the stuff they could humanly want, they are financially set for retirement and, out of boredom as much as anything, are drawn to the glitter of disposable celebrity.

All the signs were there during the ludicrous circus that overshadowed England’s World Cup effort in Germany in 2006. The gimlet-eyed Fabio Capello was supposed to come in and kill that culture but now, just months before England’s latest bid for the Fifa World Cup trophy, the Italian finds himself watching three key members of his full-back line caught up in the kind of soap opera that puts Coronation Street in the ha’penny place.

Already, Capello has had to sack his first choice captain, John Terry, which is not exactly a glowing endorsement of his own judgment of character. The replacement is Rio Ferdinand. The big Manchester United defender seems like an amicable individual and has put his weight behind noteworthy charitable causes. But still, this is a football player who missed Euro 2004 because he was serving an eight-month suspension for missing a drugs test. This is a man whose most concentrated efforts to England’s enduring obsession with bringing the World Cup trophy home was confined to his “Punk’d” inspired television show, Rio’s World Cup wind-ups.

These are not hanging offences but still, it hardly invites the conclusion that Ferdinand is cut from the same cloth as Bobby Moore.

A few years ago, I was lucky enough to sit down with Gordon Banks, the England goalkeeper for their fabled summer of 1966. He was an impressive man: courteous, smart, incredibly humble. Conversation turned to the difference between Sheffield as it is today and when he grew up there. The coal clouds are gone, of course. But so too, he said, is the sense of community and spirit he recognised.

Banks went on a long, quiet, angry denunciation of the deteriorating state of England’s education system and the moral bankruptcy among young people in a city he was struggling to recognise as his own.

And this was no hankering after the old days. Banks was saying that something has gone wrong in England in the decades since they last won the World Cup. Anyone who has ever watched any of Shane Meadow’s bleak testimonies to life in regional England can see that.

This week, Portsmouth teeter on the brink and England’s World Cup hopes seem gripped in a melodramatic farce. Through all this, Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney continues to have a season for all seasons, quietly going about the business of scoring goals week in and week out.

Rooney has gone along with the obligatory Hello! photo shoots and is occasionally seen at red carpet events but he has done little to disguise his indifference to that whole charade. Here is an English football player with virtually no controversies, who wears his heart on his sleeve when he plays, who speaks modestly and well and who seems to have an abundance of the traditional qualities Capello has tried to foist on his band of scatter-brained young millionaires. Plus, Rooney is the best football player England has produced in a long time, recently drawing comparison to Pele from Eamon Dunphy and John Giles, veterans who do not easily shower modern English football players with garlands.

If England can claim glory in South Africa this summer – and that is hard to imagine that this week – surely Rooney should be the first man to join Bobby Moore on that particular pedestal.

One thing’s for sure: that would be the closest we will ever come to seeing an Irish man lifting the World Cup.

The Irish Times.

[Mickmack]

James Andrews,
MSN Money,
02/02/2010

Cash runs out in the Premier League


The winter transfer window may well mark the end of football's age of excess.



Mountains of debt, players going unpaid, half the league sold to foreign investors and no money for new signings: not quite the vision of 21st century football that the men who formed the Premier League had in mind.

This January can be seen to mark the end of football's boom time, with just a fifth of the amount of money being spent in this year's January transfer window than was spent in the last.

Accountants KPMG calculated that Premier League clubs forked out just £41.5 million on players this time around - down from £190.5 million in the same period last year. That means the total amount spent was around half that spent by Real Madrid on one player last summer.

Money too tight to mention
Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester City, Aston Villa, Chelsea and Arsenal were among the clubs splashing out more than £10 million on a single new player this summer. Four players cost more than £20 million. Last January, Manchester City alone spent more than the total outlay by all clubs in January 2010 bringing Shay Given, Wayne Bridge, Craig Bellamy and Nigel de Jong to the club.

But now the money has simply dried up.

"There had been some expectation that Manchester City's wealthy owners, and the arrival of Carston Yeung at Birmingham City, might have produced some high value signings and that the funds raised from such deals would initiate further spending as they were recycled through the transfer market, but this has not happened," said Geoff Mesher, head of the Forensic Sports Industry Team at KPMG.

Moreover, half of the total spending this year is attributable to just two players, Chris Smalling moving from Fulham to Manchester United in a fee that could rise to £12 million and Manchester City spending about £7 million on Middlesbrough winger Adam Johnson.

"Financial uncertainty still exists for a number of English football clubs and many football club chairmen will look at the current plight of Portsmouth, facing a winding up order on February 10 in the High Court, with concern," said KPMG's Mesher.

Where the money has gone
Football was seen by many as recession-proof. Fans are rarely willing to give up their season tickets and prioritise heading to a game above most other non-essential purchases.

The money that comes in from television was locked into a deal that lasted many years, while expansion into new areas such as Asia has continued apace. But in the end this was not enough to make up for the crippling debts many clubs and owners got into chasing the dream of European and Premier League success.

"Football clubs have not been immune from the effects of the recession and indeed we have already seen credit crunch casualties," said Richard Fleming, UK head of restructuring at KPMG.

What's more, the lack of action on the transfer front could have major implications over the rest of the season.

"Clubs have three major sources of revenue: season tickets; broadcast revenue and the transfer windows," said Fleming.

"For clubs in financial distress, these are 'crunch points' when they are likely to go into administration. The end of the transfer window today is the last chance for clubs to generate significant revenue before the season ends; this could prove to be the final solvent testing point for distressed clubs as their ability to meet demands on their cash becomes apparent."

Player power dragging clubs down
In meetings ahead of the formation of the Premier League, chairmen across the land were dazzled by the potential new money that television rights could bring them. However, not everyone was convinced.

"Gentlemen, it doesn't matter whether the television company gives us £3 million or £33 million," then Tottenham Hotspur chairman Alan Sugar famously said at the time. "We'll p**s it up the wall on wages."

His prediction has proved worryingly correct, the most recent Premier League TV rights package sold for £1.78 billion last year, a deal that runs until 2013. That works out at an average £30 million per club, per season, for three years. This cash comes on top of ticket sales, overseas television rights, sponsorship deals, merchandise sales and any other sources of income - such as using your stadium for concerts or even half-time beer sales.

But the crushing weight of wages means that even these riches aren't enough, one club in three now spends 70% or more on wages.

"Player salaries appear to be outstripping club income and this may go some way to explain the lack of significant spending by English teams in the most recent transfer window," said KPMG's Mesher.

And more than just keeping players happy and in new Bentleys, the size of the wage bill has other implications.

"With up to 90% of turnover in football clubs accounted for by players' wages, the main creditor is often HMRC," explained KPMG's Fleming.

With the government's finances stretched even tighter than many football clubs', the taxman is not a good enemy to have.

"Clubs which have abused HMRC's flexibility by breaking promises to meet their tax liabilities repeatedly may be in for a short, sharp shock," Fleming noted.

[kerrygold]

By David McWilliams


Wednesday March 03 2010

ON November 24, 1942, General Von Paulus of the German 6th Army, bunkered down in Stalingrad, received the order he was dreading. Instead of the retreat that he was planning, the orders from Berlin stated simply that "Fortress Stalingrad" was to be held "whatever the circumstances". The general knew the game was up. The army was nearly encircled. There was one last chance of a breakout which could save hundreds of thousands of men and machinery that could be used to fight another day.

He knew there would be another day and Germany could ill afford to waste another penny or lose another life or commit another tank to Stalingrad. But the party bosses in Berlin were worried about the systemic impact of a defeat in Stalingrad. Having promised that victory was "just around the corner" and having assured people that they knew what they were doing and that there was "no alternative", how could they admit defeat now?

The party believed that it was better to risk everything via a mad gamble in Stalingrad than acknowledge reality. The generals on the ground knew that Stalingrad was of no importance. The soldiers were exhausted, hungry and scared. Apart from bearing the name of Stalin, there was nothing strategic or systemic about the city. If it fell, it would have no lasting negative impact on the German army's capabilities.

But the boss was obsessed by Stalingrad. In his "bubble" world, a defeat in Stalingrad would send out the signal to the rest of the world that Germany was losing the war and could be beaten. "What would the rest of the world think?" he fumed. The Fuhrer's line of thinking was that the credibility of the German war effort was on the line in Stalingrad. He was convinced that if they cut their losses there, their credibility as a fighting force would be irreparably damaged.

In fact, the opposite was the case. Defeat in Stalingrad with a retreat would have made Germany stronger, not weaker. However, those who had devoted so much political capital in Stalingrad couldn't do a U-turn now, for political rather than practical reasons. They couldn't be seen to admit that they were wrong, nor could they accept that the problem of holding Stalingrad at all costs was too big and that the resources of the army were finite.

Not surprisingly, Goering promised the German people that his Luftwaffe would keep the 6th Army fed by air. This was totally delusional as the German air force didn't have the planes to fly in to Stalingrad and they didn't have the logistics on the ground to cater for such air traffic under constant Soviet bombardment.

But reality never came into the politicians' equations, no matter how often the generals in the field told Berlin the game was up. The politicians continued to move around -- on their maps in the bunker -- armies that had long since been destroyed, aircraft which had long since been shot down and Panzer divisions which had long since been immobilised in the great Steppe battles of 1942.

In short, Germany's political top brass were totally delusional. Having fed propaganda about imminent victory to the people, they began to believe it themselves. This led to the ridiculous line that if Stalingrad could be held the war could be won. Of course the behaviour at Stalingrad simply confirmed to her enemies that Germany was run by fanatics and this fanatical behaviour would ruin the country.

Now keep this imagery in your head, and think about the Irish financial system. In banking terms, Anglo is our Stalingrad. Let's consider "Fortress Anglo".

Our politicians are throwing billions we don't have at a shell which has no systemic value and will simply suck in more of our money. This money could be spent on classrooms or hospital beds, or it could be used as start-up capital for new companies; but no, it will go to Anglo. Four billion euro of our money has already gone into this financial carcass. That money is gone; we will never see it again. Brian Lenihan and Brian Cowen seem to believe that stuffing good money after bad -- and in the process enfeebling the country -- is the way forward. This is the behaviour of fanatics, neither of whom has ever worked in financial markets and so they don't understand the people who they are trying to impress.

The guarantee was a bluff, not a policy. It has worked, now get rid of it.

The market knows we don't have the money and is therefore penalising us in the bond market with higher interest rates than anyone else in the euro bar Greece. They know that the more money we plough into Anglo, the higher taxes and debts go in the future -- both of which will drag the growth rate and undermine the ability to pay the interest on these debts in the future. They can see through the spin and the blather which might go down well at a Fianna Fail/GAA get-together but doesn't wash anywhere serious.

We don't need or want "Fortress Anglo". Apparently Anglo is about to announce a €12bn loss -- the biggest in Irish corporate history. Should we keep on drip-feeding cash into this? How can the average, decent Fianna Fail voter stand for this when unemployment is rocketing? Fianna Fail members should ask what Lemass would make of this?

It is time to shut Anglo down. The deposits should be transferred to either AIB or BoI. A "vulture" fund should be asked to come in to take the property debts and see what they can get for them. There are plenty of ways they could finance this. This avenue is always explored in distressed debt situations -- we are no different. One of the biggest creditors of Anglo is the Central Bank, which has very quietly lent Anglo over €10bn under something called the "master loan repurchase agreement". (It doesn't want you to know about this by the way.)

The agreement is a hangover from when we had our own currency and is the ultimate "cash-for-trash" vehicle. Our Central Bank, out of its own coffers, loaned Anglo money and in return taken toxic collateral which the ECB wouldn't touch. This is what has kept Anglo open. Therefore, we'd negotiate with our own Central Bank; it would take the loss and have to report less profit over the coming years. No big deal.

Anglo is our financial Stalingrad. We should close it down tomorrow, deal with the creditors and get the hell out. Ireland can't afford to spend another cent on it.

The financial markets would shrug and move on if we did so. What most people fail to understand is that financial markets are forward-looking. Tomorrow's prospects, not yesterday's mistakes, are what drive investors. Markets are not in the business of punishing countries. There is no money in punishment. They want Ireland to grow, so that they can make money. Could someone please explain this to the fanatics who run this place and their lackies in the media who pedal their propaganda?

[e-mail]

- David McWilliams

Irish Independent

[kerrygold]

March 1, 2010, 5:08 pm
In Obesity Epidemic, What’s One Cookie?
By TARA PARKER-POPE

Stuart Bradford
The basic formula for gaining and losing weight is well known: a pound of fat equals 3,500 calories.

That simple equation has fueled the widely accepted notion that weight loss does not require daunting lifestyle changes but “small changes that add up,” as the first lady, Michelle Obama, put it last month in announcing a national plan to counter childhood obesity.

In this view, cutting out or burning just 100 extra calories a day — by replacing soda with water, say, or walking to school — can lead to significant weight loss over time: a pound every 35 days, or more than 10 pounds a year.

While it’s certainly a hopeful message, it’s also misleading. Numerous scientific studies show that small caloric changes have almost no long-term effect on weight. When we skip a cookie or exercise a little more, the body’s biological and behavioral adaptations kick in, significantly reducing the caloric benefits of our effort.

But can small changes in diet and exercise at least keep children from gaining weight? While some obesity experts think so, mathematical models suggest otherwise.



The first lady, Michelle Obama, spoke last month at the White House about her “Let’s Move” initiative, which aims to change the way children eat and play.As a recent commentary in The Journal of the American Medical Association noted, the “small changes” theory fails to take the body’s adaptive mechanisms into account. The rise in children’s obesity over the past few decades can’t be explained by an extra 100-calorie soda each day, or fewer physical education classes. Skipping a cookie or walking to school would barely make a dent in a calorie imbalance that goes “far beyond the ability of most individuals to address on a personal level,” the authors wrote — on the order of walking 5 to 10 miles a day for 10 years.

This doesn’t mean small improvements are futile — far from it. But people need to take a realistic view of what they can accomplish.

“As clinicians, we celebrate small changes because they often lead to big changes,” said Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life program at Children’s Hospital Boston and a co-author of the JAMA commentary. “An obese adolescent who cuts back TV viewing from six to five hours each day may then go on to decrease viewing much more. However, it would be entirely unrealistic to think that these changes alone would produce substantial weight loss.”


Why wouldn’t they? The answer lies in biology. A person’s weight remains stable as long as the number of calories consumed doesn’t exceed the amount of calories the body spends, both on exercise and to maintain basic body functions. As the balance between calories going in and calories going out changes, we gain or lose weight.

But bodies don’t gain or lose weight indefinitely. Eventually, a cascade of biological changes kicks in to help the body maintain a new weight. As the JAMA article explains, a person who eats an extra cookie a day will gain some weight, but over time, an increasing proportion of the cookie’s calories also goes to taking care of the extra body weight. Eventually, the body adjusts and stops gaining weight, even if the person continues to eat the cookie.

Similar factors come into play when we skip the extra cookie. We may lose a little weight at first, but soon the body adjusts to the new weight and requires fewer calories.

Regrettably, however, the body is more resistant to weight loss than weight gain. Hormones and brain chemicals that regulate your unconscious drive to eat and how your body responds to exercise can make it even more difficult to lose the weight. You may skip the cookie but unknowingly compensate by eating a bagel later on or an extra serving of pasta at dinner.

“There is a much bigger picture than parsing out the cookie a day or the Coke a day,” said Dr. Jeffrey M. Friedman, head of Rockefeller University’s molecular genetics lab, which first identified leptin, a hormonal signal made by the body’s fat cells that regulates food intake and energy expenditure. “If you ask anyone on the street, ‘Why is someone obese?,’ they’ll say, ‘They eat too much.’ ”

“That is undoubtedly true,” he continued, “but the deeper question is why do they eat too much? It’s clear now that there are many important drivers to eat and that it is not purely a conscious or higher cognitive decision.”

This is not to say that the push for small daily changes in eating and exercise is misguided. James O. Hill, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado Denver, says that while weight loss requires significant lifestyle changes, taking away extra calories through small steps can help slow and prevent weight gain.

In a study of 200 families, half were asked to replace 100 calories of sugar with a noncaloric sweetener and walk an extra 2,000 steps a day. The other families were asked to use pedometers to record their exercise but were not asked to make diet changes.

During the six-month study, both groups of children showed small but statistically significant drops in body mass index; the group that also cut 100 calories had more children who maintained or reduced body mass and fewer children who gained excess weight.

The study, published in 2007 in Pediatrics, didn’t look at long-term benefits. But Dr. Hill says it suggests that small changes can keep overweight kids from gaining even more excess weight.

“Once you’re trying for weight loss, you’re out of the small-change realm,” he said. “But the small-steps approach can stop weight gain.”

While small steps are unlikely to solve the nation’s obesity crisis, doctors say losing a little weight, eating more heart-healthy foods and increasing exercise can make a meaningful difference in overall health and risks for heart disease and diabetes.

“I’m not saying throw up your hands and forget about it,” Dr. Friedman said. “Instead of focusing on weight or appearance, focus on people’s health. There are things people can do to improve their health significantly that don’t require normalizing your weight.”

Dr. Ludwig still encourages individuals to make small changes, like watching less television or eating a few extra vegetables, because those shifts can be a prelude to even bigger lifestyle changes that may ultimately lead to weight loss. But he and others say that reversing obesity will require larger shifts — like regulating food advertising to children and eliminating government subsidies that make junk food cheap and profitable.

“We need to know what we’re up against in terms of the basic biological challenges, and then design a campaign that will truly address the problem in its full magnitude,” Dr. Ludwig said. “If we just expect that inner-city child to exercise self-control and walk a little bit more, then I think we’re in for a big disappointment.”

The New York Times.

[Seoirse Ui Duic]

Saoirse 32 blogspot Deceber 13, 2009

saoirse32.blogsome.com/2009/12/13/terror-groups-unite-in-new-ira-2/

Republican terrorists are thought to have created a new IRA organisation, drawing membership from the Continuity IRA (CIRA) and two factions of the Real IRA.

The security services believe the group, which is not aligned to any political party, is led by hardline dissidents and Provisional IRA members who oppose Sinn Fein’s decision to join the Policing Board in Northern Ireland. Among those suspected of involvement in the new alliance is a former member of the IRA army council.

The group has yet to declare its existence, but may announce its intentions in the new year. “In terms of its capability to mount attacks, it represents the most potent threat in terms of launching a new campaign,” said one republican hardliner.

The group has chosen not to give itself a name, with the idea of making it more difficult for supporters to be charged with IRA membership and in a bid to confuse the security services.

To avoid infiltration by the security services, the new group is understood to be “hand-picking” terrorists who have already carried out attacks or proven their credentials as members of paramilitary groups.

“It is choosing people from CIRA, RIRA and the other groups and leaving those they consider to be compromised on the outside,” said the republican source. “They don’t want republicans who are involved in smuggling and other activities that could compromise them. They might use them to generate finance or even mount an operation, but they won’t be allowed to join.

“This group is highly secretive and paranoid about informants and their identities being revealed. They are serious operators who know what’s involved in running a [terrorist] campaign. They’ve done it before.”

The new group’s ranks have been bolstered by defections from the various splinter groups of the RIRA, the terrorist group which murdered 29 people when it bombed Omagh in August 1998. It has also drawn support from members of the CIRA who have defected in Tyrone, Fermanagh and Armagh.

Some hardliners believe the CIRA army council, which is dominated by members of Republican Sinn Fein, no longer considers the use of violence justified but is refusing to state this.

There has been a upsurge in republican terrorism this year. In March, the Real IRA shot two soldiers outside Massereene Barracks in Antrim. Stephen Carroll, a member of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), was shot by the CIRA in Craigavon, Co Armagh, 48 hours later. Last month a 400lb car bomb — almost as big as the one in Omagh — was used to attack the Policing Board headquarters in Belfast.

Alleged republican terrorists tried under the Offences against the State act in the republic are usually classified as members of Oglaigh na hEireann — the Irish term for the IRA. When suspects are charged, this all-encompassing term is usually followed by a reference to a faction.

Kevin McQuillan, a spokesman for the Republican Network for Unity, a forum for dissidents, said there had been a “re-alignment” within dissident republican groups.

“I think the turning point amongst the armed groups, ironically enough, happened in March when Martin McGuinness called the republicans who attacked Massereene ‘traitors’. The use of that terminology by an iconic republican figure shocked us,” said McQuillan.

He believes attacks by IRA factions have become more strategic and frequent. “I think there is a meeting of minds among dissident republicans. There has been an increase in attacks and those operations are more organised and strategic,” he said. “There is no appetite whatsoever on the ground for military engagement with the British security forces, but these groups are growing.”

The threat posed by republican dissidents has never been greater, according to both gardai and MI5.

However, some security sources say there is an “intelligence deficit” on dissidents.

“The main players are under surveillance but there is so much activity it’s almost impossible to decipher what is happening. They are meeting and planning the whole time. Dissidents from different factions are meeting each other and hardliners from the IRA, who have drifted away from them and Sinn Fein,” said one source. “The dissidents have the capacity to kill and bomb, but not in a sustainable way.”

[Mickmack]

Once again, Ireland’s young prepare to leave


27 February 2010


Ireland enjoyed a boom like no other in the last 10 years, fuelled by foreign investment and runaway property speculation. But it is all over now, and the desire to emigrate, set deep in the nation’s psyche, has taken hold once more

In the tiny sub-post office at Liscarney, on the road out of Westport, under the snow-touched pyramid of Croagh Patrick, postmaster William Joyce is considering his schooldays. “In my class maybe a third left. It was America then.”

Joyce, 54, got married and stayed put. “I’ve the farm as well as the post office and the wife works; one job is not enough around here.” His three teenage sons are at college, the first generation of the family to reach further education. “I knew the boom wouldn’t last. All the young crowd working on borrowed money with two cars to every house, out every weekend, they didn’t see the day coming when it would have to be paid back. They knew nothing else. But the minute the banks stopped, everything stopped.

“Now it’s people coming in here for the social welfare and the young lads are all looking for visas for Canada.” His youngest is thinking of Germany. “I wouldn’t stop them, any of mine. What am I going to say when I know myself what it’s like on 60 acres of worthless land? Travel is education.”

Cattle farmer Richard Duffy has come in and is nodding. “If I’d worked as hard as I’ve worked in any other country I’d be a millionaire three times over,” he says. “You can point at the banks and the developers for all these people left with huge debts, but the government here makes up its own way as it goes along. But you have to put some blame on the people for taking it lying down. If this was France or Spain we’d be having a revolution.”


Ireland, which went from being one of Europe’s poorest countries to one of its richest in less than a decade, has hit the bottom. Gross domestic product fell 7.3% last year. This month a report by financial experts Davy Research concluded that the republic had largely wasted a decade of high income during the boom, with private enterprise investing its wealth “in the wrong places”.

Most people blame the government for spending too much and regulating too little, and allowing construction to dominate. There is weariness with an almost tribal political system that has seen the same people returned to power over three decades. But now the real human wrench is under way: the first generation to have enjoyed the benefits of the wholesale reversal of Ireland’s recent wretched history is leaving.

A Boston Globe headline recently declared that: “The Irish are coming – again”. About 60,000 Irish citizens have moved to Australia, Canada and New Zealand in the past year alone. The number granted residence visas for Australia increased by 25% last year to 2,501. Another 22,786 people aged under 35 took up working holiday visas. A seminar held in Dublin by Australian Visa Specialists last month attracted “a phenomenal response” with long queues of mostly young families and single men. In the US, where new visa restrictions are making immigration far tougher, there are already an estimated 50,000 “undocumented” Irish immigrants. There is pressure on the Obama administration to give them an amnesty.

In Westport, a pretty town on the beautiful coast of Co Mayo, unemployment figures out last month showed a leap of 9.1%, with nearly 2,000 now jobless. And the figure is continuing to rise. “It means Westport is an unemployment blackspot,” says Michael Ring, the Fine Gael TD (MP) for the town. One of his constituents has just left his cramped office: she had come for advice on how to tackle the repayments on her 260% mortgage now she had lost her job.

“The big worrying trend is unemployment, especially the over-25s. We have people emigrating now because that’s what we have done since the foundation of the state, but a lot of doors are closed; its much harder to get into America or Britain. Everyone in this country is frightened: we have never seen a recession hit so fast,” he said. “There are houses around here half-built that will never be lived in. Negative equity is bad enough but here, where the banks weren’t even looking at incomes before they loaned out money, it’s criminal. We went mad and now we’ve gone down the pan.”

Over the past few years Westport has been a thriving tourist town, its economy touched and turned to gold by the raging success of Ireland’s boom. Hundreds of Polish and Latvian workers flooded in to fill jobs in the thriving service industry – the 11 hotels and numerous restaurants and bars – and, the fastest-growing industry of all, house-building.

Local young men and women had left their parents’ farms and gone off to college and university, or trained in the construction trades. Carpentry, building and plastering had suddenly all become a ticket to a startling wage packet. Culture flourished, in music festivals and art shows: a talented bunch of locals star in their own online soap opera, the Covies. A whole generation was educated, employed and aspiring. Unlike their parents, they were able to go abroad with a return ticket – for a holiday.

The population of Mayo had started to rise after 150 years of steady decline triggered by the famine of the 1840s, which wiped out a third of the population, and subsequent shockwaves of emigration that emptied the west of Ireland and swelled the workforces of newly industrialising England and America. A county that had nearly 400,000 people in 1841 was down to 109,000 in 1971. But then came the Celtic Tiger, and then, as it waned, the second boom, in property.

Around Westport the landscape boasts spanking new white-and-yellow houses, with colonnades and arches and pristine PVC window frames, poking out of the tussocky fields. New driveways have filled up with giant cars, safely away from the mud of the sheep-filled paddocks with their old dry stone walls. The paths inland through the Delphi valley, where hundreds of famine victims seeking food lay down and died on the hike from landlord to landlord, are now trails for mountain bikes and walkers that lead to revamped hotels with spas and eco-credentials.

While in Dublin much of the property speculation was in the commercial market, in rural Ireland – with no shortage of land – it was in houses, and everyone with a few euros in the bank became a part-time builder. But now many buildings stand empty, while for the owners of others the mortgages will be crippling. Prices have fallen so far that a plot of building land in Athlone valued at €31m in 2006 was reported last week to be worth €600,000.


Ger Scahill, 25, used to earn good money in the construction business. So much so that he bought himself a plot of land with a loan from the bank. He had a mortgage approved for the house he planned to build on it. “I just wanted to make sure I was building something up for myself, I could maybe rent it out and go away for a year or so and have something to come back to.”

But his timing was off, the bust had begun and the bank pulled the plug. It left him with an empty plot of land and repayments of €850 a month. Now unemployed, he gets an €800 dole cheque each month.

He says: “So I’m stuck here for a bit, but a lot of the lads have gone, especially in the last while. About a quarter of those I was at college with have gone. I’ve three friends in Canada who seem to be doing OK. My girlfriend is mad to go because all her friends have gone too. My dad was always saying about saving for a rainy day, but you didn’t see this coming.”

One of Ger’s sisters, Laura, had already gone to England. For their mother Ena there are mixed feelings. She and her husband, also named Ger, themselves spent three years in England before coming back to raise their four children in Westport.

“On one hand our family now have seen the good times and that’s all been taken away from them and that’s hard,” she says, sitting at the table of the large comfortable house the couple built and run as a B&B.

“But I was one of 11 raised on a tiny place on the side of Croagh Patrick and five of us left the country. It’s part of our heritage that young people leave. I think its great for everyone to travel but I’d like to see them come back. Laura would love to come home but she can’t right now.”

Ger senior is far more hearty. “It’s a great time to go, get some experience of the world. This is a reality check and it’s good for our country. In the past days people had to go on a one-way ticket, there was no coming back. We should learn from the Latvians and Poles who came over here and lived on a shoestring and were happy here and then went back with some money in their pocket.”

At its height, Westport played host to more than 1,000 eastern European workers. Most of those who came have gone back, or moved on to other European countries where there might be jobs to be had. In a newly built flat near the centre of town Aneta Dobrowolska, 24, is visiting her friend Piotr Kubasik, one of the hardcore of east Europeans who are hanging on.

Kubasik lost his job as head chef when his restaurant closed before Christmas and now has two days work a week at a cafe. He’s going to hang on until the summer if he possibly can. “I’m not ready to give up on it yet,” he shrugs. Dobrowolska has had a baby with an Irish man. “I guess that means I’m staying,” she says. “I’d like to give back to this country, I am at business school and we have a lot of ideas in that class I tell you.”

The spirit of entrepreneurship has carried the Irish into the boom and many hope it will carry them out of the bust. Older people are showing signs of getting a little frustrated with the shell-shocked boomers, or Tiger cubs, as some commentators have started to call them. Bill Cullen, a self-made Dublin millionaire, last week caused a storm when, exasperated by young unemployed people bemoaning their lot on a TV show, called them a mollycoddled generation.

“I certainly don’t feel mollycoddled and you can’t forget that a lot of people missed out on the boom years completely,” says Ruairi McKiernan, the 32-year-old founder of SpunOut.org, a youth web-driven organisation based in Galway City. “There’s a lot of unskilled unemployed and there are stiff immigration controls and a global recession they can’t get past in Boston or Sydney. That’s a lot of young men susceptible to mental health problems and the suicide problem is already huge. But sometimes at our lowest moments of crisis is where there is an opportunity,” he says.

“Emigration is a safety valve that Ireland has always used. It’s sadly ingrained in the culture, but while we bang on about the glory days when the Irish built this and the Irish built that, you have to remember not everyone did well, we often made up disproportionate numbers of homeless, particularly in London.

“We shouldn’t accept that losing our brightest and best is always progress. Certainly people go away and thrive in dynamic places but we are appealing to people to stay, to make a stand. This is a time when Ireland is totally leaderless, [there's] chaos at the helm, with the church, state, unions and banks all scrambling to put out the fires they helped start,” he says.

“Our parents were too frightened to challenge the status quo. A lot of that was because of the power of the church, but now that’s tumbling then maybe this is our time. We can’t keep on pointing the finger, we’ve been really, really placid, using pubs as health centres for self-medication. This is a huge opportunity. We are a young, well-educated people and this is our pivotal moment.”


While other European economies – Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy – have crashed into similar crises, it is in Ireland that the people themselves have felt the pain the most. But the length of the boom years, has also given them the best education. At Trinity College Dublin, the students hurrying across the sleet-slicked 18th-century cobblestones seem confident about their futures in carefully chosen, recession-proof professions. Accountancy is doing well; anyone studying architecture has long since jumped course. Many are staying on for longer than they planned. Almost all are considering a period abroad.

Professor Philip Lane is head of the economics department. “As far as the international situation goes we are worse than Greece because the Greek household hasn’t suffered so much; the closer analogy is probably Spain. Boom and bust is nothing new and nor are banking crises. The scale and speed of the downturn here was the dreadful thing and the huge reliance on construction. The big lesson has to be regulation.

“For our students it is tough; there are huge generational issues. The lottery draw here was what age you were: that was what mattered in the damage done. Those in their twenties and early thirties have been hammered. But nations survive,” he says.

“Emigration is hard-wired into the Irish and they will go and continue to go. The issue there is that the people who leave may never come back and it’s the lonely guy in the East End bedsit in London that we should be worrying about,” says Lane.

Back in Westport, in Matt Molloy’s pub in Bridge Street, 80-year-old Mick Lavelle nurses a mug of tea, and the reputation of being something of a sage. On request, he sings The Millionaire, his song about a Westport man who dreams he’s won the lottery only to wake up to the shock of his miserable reality.

“They’re saying it’s a song for Ireland today and its meaning for the young men isn’t lost on anybody, but nor would it have been lost for me as a young man when I was travelling about the world. We’ll go off and build the world and then come home where we belong,” he says. “I did.”

◦Ireland
◦Global recession
Tracy McVeigh

guardian.co.uk

[Mickmack]

By Kevin Myers


Wednesday March 03 2010

ALWAYS willing to oblige my two readers; one of them asked me what the rugby match at Twickenham showed about the English. No doubt the request was tongue-in-cheek, but either way, let me oblige. Because a great deal of that dangerously elusive quality "national character" was in evidence from the England performance on Saturday. The first was cultural: the English have virtually no songs denoting identity. The very fact that the only tune that English rugby fans seem able to sing in a group is a negro spiritual (as we are, for the moment anyway, still allowed to say), 'Swing low Sweet Chariot' suggests as much. The fact that the British national anthem is also the English team anthem tends to confirm it. Simply, the English get embarrassed by musical enthusiasm: the last night of the Proms is the exception, the annual pig-out by habitual anorexics.

Every Irish county has its own tune, and every town has its musical bard. These cultural fixtures are unknown in England. People simply do not sing of their home towns there; indeed, even the concept, "home town" is mawkish and rather American-sounding. The English do not even write songs about themselves. The three most "English" of wartime tunes -- 'Berkeley Square', 'A Foggy Day in London Town,' and 'Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover', were, essentially, written by American Jews (though the lyrics of 'Berkeley Square' were written by an Englishman of German-Jewish extraction). And to leap codes for a moment, the tune most often chanted by English soccer fans, 'The Great Escape', was also written by an American Jew.

All this suggests either indifference to or a certain emotional constipation about identity and place, which are things that the Irish, Scots, Welsh and, most of all, Americans, hold dear. The English exception is Liverpool, for obvious reasons. Shakespeare might have lauded Englishness, but few English people do so today. The result is a kind of nameless, stunted plant which expresses itself through a dysfunctional culture of entitlement whenever the English are doing moderately well. Absence of failure is seen as evidence of imminent triumph. Which no doubt accounts for the often nauseating smugness which is a characteristic of Twickenham.

What the English have, as they showed last Saturday, is guts. Though it is often witless, unimaginative guts, of the kind which caused British armour to drive obligingly into Rommel's tank traps in the western desert, and for RAF bomber command to bomb German open fields at huge cost to bomber crews from 1941-44. I am using British and English here interchangeably, simply because the British army and the RAF were English in culture and organisation. And Englishness was so evident in the cumbrous courage that the losing team showed on Saturday -- in such contrast to the flare and intelligence and versatility of the Irish play. There was probably but one English plan, but a full 20 renal options open to the Irish camp. Doesn't the count of 99 Irish successful tackles tell you something?

The "famous" English rugby world cup, which everyone else has completely forgotten, was based on stolidity and perseverance, and the Wilkinson boot. That is a one-time only, one-trick pony. And underlying all this is the English class system, which effectively discriminates against players from working-class backgrounds. You could probably pick a team from the English West Country whose redoubtably humble players would probably run rings around the English team on Saturday, but who are routinely ignored.

SO sport provides a wonderful insight into this elusive thing, "national character", though it becomes a less useful guide if the coach is foreign, and still less when the players are too. Jack Charlton's "Ireland" team was no use as a guide to national characteristics, because so many of the players were, like their manager, culturally English: (Tony Galvin didn't even know his surname was Irish until a certain journalist -- modesty forbids, et cet -- told him).

That's why I am glad the Germans don't play rugby. I love Germans. They have all the qualities: intelligence, courage, flair, imagination, technique -- though I note that all five words are French in origin. There's a sixth quality, stubbornness, which is a less constant feature of the French, but an invariable one from the English and Germans.

Stubbornness is not necessarily a virtuous quality. Stubborn stupidity, by trade unions and management, brought about the death of the English motor car industry, home of the Rover and Bentley, whereas stubborn brilliance has given us BMW, Audi, VW, and Mercedes.

Stubborn stupidity has strangled English rugby. Stubborn brilliance has given us French rugby, against whom Ireland has triumphed, away, just twice in the past 40 years.

Yet for all our smallness, we still expect some brilliance -- a Kyle, O'Reilly, Ward, Campbell, Geoghegan, O'Driscoll -- in even a poor Irish team, far more than do the English. All of those men had or have the individual flair of the warrior. Is it surprising that the most decorated rugby international of all nations between 1939-45 was Irish? Moreover, the grandfather of Ireland's hero, Tommy Bowe, won a Military Cross in the Normandy Landings: how many of the English team could boast of such ancestry?

[e-mail]

- Kevin Myers

Irish Independent

[kerrygold]

The Irish Times

The European Central Bank (ECB) today held interest rates at a record low level of 1 per cent today.

The ECB took further steps to unwind the extraordinary help it has given the euro zone economy in the global crisis today, although it still forecasts a fragile recovery.

It said it would return next month to ordinary competitive tenders for the three-month loans it gives banks, a sign that it is more comfortable with the state of the system and the latest stage in a gradual withdrawal of billions pumped into banking in the worst days of the crisis in 2008.

That, and the decision to keep interest rates unchanged at a record low for the 10th month running, were in line with market expectations, though the move pushed euro interest rate futures briefly higher.

As expected, however, the bank also kept access to one-week loans unlimited, with policymakers keeping one eye on a massive €442 billion of 12-month ECB loans that banks must repay at the start of July.

The bank's new staff forecasts also showed little improvement from the last update last December, underlining that Europe's economic recovery looks far from firmly set.

Growth in 2010 was seen in a range of 0.4 to 1.2 per cent from between 0.1 per cent and 1.5 per cent in December. Growth in 2011 was put at 0.5 to 2.5 per cent from 0.2 to 2.2 per cent.

"The latest information has also confirmed that the economic recovery in the euro area is on track, although it is likely to remain uneven," ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet told a news conference.

"Overall, the Governing Council expects the euro area economy to grow at a moderate pace in 2010 in an environment marked by continued uncertainty."

The bank also said it would index the final tender for 6-month money in March to the main short-term operations.

Analysts say making banks bid again for the longer-term money will make it easier for the ECB to reduce excess liquidity as it gradually normalises financing and starts to push up overnight interest rates towards the main refinancing rate.

But they say the move will probably be accompanied by high allotments to avoid financial system hiccups.

In the back of policymakers' minds, however, is the risk that the repayment of the 12-month money at the start of July risks upsetting money markets, whose problems were at the heart of the financial crisis.

"While there is a clear desire to return to normality and regain control of the interest rate instrument, tensions surrounding Greece and the banks in general are likely to inject some concern that a too fast exit could be dangerous," Goldman Sachs economist Erik Nielsen said in a note.

"One week operations ... will be left as fixed-rate full-allotment operations."

The rate decision came as no surprise, as the 87 economists polled by Reuters were unanimous this month in seeing no change in rates and on average expected the first rise only in the fourth quarter.

Money markets expect no increases until well into next year.

ECB staff saw inflation in a range of 0.9 to 2.1 per cent in 2011 from 0.8 to 2 per cent in December's forecast, the crucial period for today's monetary policy decisions given the long lead time and implying little need for rapid interest rate rises.

"This (rate decision) is just confirmation that the economic outlook warrants low interest rates," said RBS economist Silvio Peruzzo.

The Bank of England also kept its rates on hold today, at 0.5 per cent.

Reuters

[kerrygold]

Ministers jet around the world for St Patrick’s Day
By Claire O’Sullivan

Friday, March 05, 2010



THE Taoiseach has announced the litany of far-flung destinations to which his Cabinet will be flying for St Patrick’s Day this year – but he warned like last year that costs are to be kept to a minimum.



According to Brian Cowen, he and his ministers will be focussing on job creation, investment and tourism.

He has told the 22 ministers and the Attorney General first class flights, limousines, hotel suites and the use of VIP lounges are out – unless there is a compelling reason to do so.

Mr Cowen will be flying to Washington DC for meetings with President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Tánaiste Mary Coughlan will be flying to Germany for engagements in Munich, Berlin and Dusseldorf.

Agriculture Minister Brendan Smith will visit Italy, taking in Rome and Milan, while Justice Minister Dermot Ahern visits Paris.

Transport Minister Noel Dempsey will be in Atlanta. Social and Family Affairs Minister Mary Hanafin travels to Philadelphia. Mary Harney heads to Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington.

Government Chief Whip Pat Carey will visit Houston and Dallas while Children’s Minister Barry Andrews will be taking in the Big Apple. It’s Toyko and Seoul while for Education Minister Batt O’Keeff while Energy Minister Eamon Ryan will be going to New Delhi and Mumbai. Community Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs Minister Eamon O Cuiv will be in Warsaw. Junior Minister at the Department of the Environment John Finneran is off to Beijing and Shanghai.

Trade and Commerce Minister Billy Kelleher will visit Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth.

Minister of State John Curran heads for London and Birmingham while John Moloney will be taking in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Last night, Mr Cowen said the Government use the national day of celebration as a "unique global platform and an opportunity to reflect on all that is best in our country".



This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Friday, March 05, 2010




Read more: www.examiner.ie/ireland/ministers-jet-around-the-world-for-st-patricks-day-113730.html#ixzz0hI4IwISv

[kerrygold]

Top Irish businessman rails at 'intertwining with politics' FINTAN O'TOOLE

ONE OF Ireland’s most successful businessmen, Niall Fitzgerald, has told The Irish Times he did not feel that he could have pursued a business career in Ireland without compromising his personal principles.

Mr Fitzgerald left Ireland in 1970 and went on to become chairman and chief executive of the giant conglomerate Unilever and chairman of the global media agency Reuters.

In an interview published today, Mr Fitzgerald suggests that “many people in domestic Irish business succeeded because they were intertwined with politics” and that “unless I was prepared to engage more directly with politicians . . . and at some point be ready to compromise on my own principles, that that would restrict my abilities to develop a business career in Ireland”.

Mr Fitzgerald is critical of what he calls the “claustrophobia” of Irish business. He says “that very intimacy, the knowledge that you can take one small envelope and write all the names that matter on the back of it” militated against independent jjudgment and high ethical standards, contributing to the current crisis in the Irish economy.

Recalling a dinner last summer with friends who had served on the boards of Irish banks, Mr Fitzgerald (himself a director of Bank of Ireland during the 1990s) says he posed a question: Were they aware of the risks that were being taken and thus “complicit with the recklessness”? Or were they unaware of what was going on and thus failing to discharge their responsibilities as directors? The question, he says, prompted a “very ferocious conversation”.

Mr Fitzgerald is also critical of the argument that banks must continue to pay very high salaries to retain senior managers. “You mean, these terribly valuable people who either didn’t understand the risks they were running or understood them and continued anyway without thought for the consequences? You know what? I could do without those valuable people.”

He also criticises high-level business people and bankers who are going into exile in tax havens such as Switzerland. He is, he says, “deeply sad” that some seem obsessed with “how you avoid at almost any cost to yourself and your family being a supportive member of the wider society in which you live”.

Mr Fitzgerald expresses concerns about the ability of those in positions of power to take responsibility for what has happened. “If the leaders of a society are not prepared to hold themselves accountable or there are not the institutions which are sufficiently independent to hold them accountable, then I think you have a very serious problem on your hands.”

[kerrygold]

By DAVID McWILLIAMS


Wednesday March 10 2010

One of the saddest and most revealing books I have ever read was written about the Great Depression. 'The Unemployed Man and His Family' was written by an American academic called Mirra Komarovsky.

She interviewed 59 white men who had lost their jobs in the depression and tried to assess the impact on their families.

I read it when I was in university and it has stayed with me for the past 20 years. If you want to know why unemployment and the reduction in unemployment -- not the banks, the bondholders or some secondary issue to do with the financial markets -- has to be the cornerstone of our economic policy, read it.

If you don't have the time to read it, just look at what is happening around you.

The original American study was the first to relate the loss of a job to the loss in self-esteem; it was the first to highlight alcoholism and depression associated with redundancy. It was also the first to link marital breakdown and domestic violence to unemployment.

In 'The Unemployed Man and his Family', the writer went deep into families and documented how the redundant father lost the respect of his children as well as the wider society, how the sex lives of the couples were destroyed and how many men didn't recover from long spells of unemployment -- even those who did get jobs eventually when the economy recovered.

In the 1930s, unemployed families and couples stopped socialising, not just because of a lack of money but also because of the embarrassment. Anyone who has experienced unemployment in the family will know that the family can become quite remote from their neighbours and friends. The family sometimes cuts itself off. This puts huge pressure on the family and in many cases the family is not strong enough to deal with this.

The world has obviously changed dramatically since the 1930s -- not least gender equality changes and the entrance of women to the workplace -- but the lessons are still valid.

The detrimental impact of unemployment happens at any age. One of the most annoying things I have heard in recent months regarding unemployment among young people and graduates is when older people dismiss it with the "get off your arse" line.

Equally infuriating is the assumption that because they are young, a stint of unemployment won't affect them too dramatically. Again, the evidence from the United States reveals the opposite. The young unemployed go off the rails very quickly and very easily.

In Japan, which in the 1990s went through what we are going through now in terms of unemployment and economic collapse, the evidence is startling. The Japanese Centre for Socio-Economic Development reveals that the generation who started in the workforce in the 1990s and had to deal with high levels of unemployment in their early career now make up six out of every 10 cases of depression and stress.

Something similar is happening all over our country at the moment. So, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to let our doctors and our pharmacies deal with this? Are we going to let dealers make a fortune while we pick up the tab?

If we look at all economic recoveries, they are always led by small businesses. So small businesses will drag us out of this mire and in the main will be the key driver for employment growth. But at the moment in Ireland most small businesses are not in the position to employ people. The margins are too tight and demand is not strong enough, in fact it is weakening. In addition, if you have worked in a small business, you will know that training people can cost a huge amount in terms of time and cost. So we must do something that makes it easy for small companies to hire.

On the flip side, there are thousands of graduates who don't really know what they want to do, but might have an idea of what type of industries interest them. How many of us have been faced with the dilemma of "how do I get in the door"? How often, particularly when we were younger, did we lament, "if only I can get a chance to impress these people"?

So, how do we get in the door when the people inside the door don't even know that we are there? This is where the labour market has to be changed. We have to make it easy for small firms to take people on.

FAS has a scheme where young graduates can join companies for up to nine months to gain work experience on no pay, but they retain their unemployment benefits. This scheme should not be limited to young people. It should be open to all the unemployed.

Retraining is what is needed here and it can be done at a fraction of the cost by unleashing this programme to make it as open as possible. For instance, the scheme is restricted to companies of between 10 and 20 employees, which can hire only two additional staff on this basis. If the company can take on five people instead of two, why hold it back?

There is a myth that companies will somehow exploit such a system, but that is nonsense. Providing training within small companies is a hugely expensive task and is engaged in with care. No firm trains up somebody, not least a small firm, to risk seeing them walk out the door in six to nine months.

This is a win-win at little cost to the State. And there is a deeper opportunity here. For more mature businesses, let's deal with an age-old dilemma that has held back employment -- the initial cost of hiring staff.

When a company sees the potential for a new hire, it must weigh up the cost of taking on somebody for the position. Will it be worth it to train them? This is a cost to the company and deters employment.

What if, across Ireland, we adopted the policy that when someone is being hired, they are not hired at full salary from the get-go but would be given incremental increases as they learned their new role?

We could set out a period to full salary within a six-month period. This would have powerful knock-on effects. First, it would make it far more attractive for companies to hire. The expensive cost of early employment would be mitigated. Secondly, it would allow companies to take more risk in hiring as the costs of getting it wrong are reduced. For the potential employee, it gives them a chance to prove to employers that they were a good hire and a worthwhile investment.

Why not do this now? We are paying the dole anyway and the huge positive effect of employment can't be underestimated. Open the scheme to everyone and see what happens.

www.davidmcwilliams.ie

- DAVID McWILLIAMS

Irish Independent

[Johnnyb]

Water Boarding For Dummies by Mark Benjamin - Salon.com

Self-proclaimed waterboarding fan Dick Cheney called it a no-brainer in a 2006 radio interview: Terror suspects should get a "a dunk in the water." But recently released internal documents reveal the controversial "enhanced interrogation" practice was far more brutal on detainees than Cheney's description sounds, and was administered with meticulous cruelty.

Interrogators pumped detainees full of so much water that the CIA turned to a special saline solution to minimize the risk of death, the documents show. The agency used a gurney "specially designed" to tilt backwards at a perfect angle to maximize the water entering the prisoner's nose and mouth, intensifying the sense of choking – and to be lifted upright quickly in the event that a prisoner stopped breathing.

The documents also lay out, in chilling detail, exactly what should occur in each two-hour waterboarding "session." Interrogators were instructed to start pouring water right after a detainee exhaled, to ensure he inhaled water, not air, in his next breath. They could use their hands to "dam the runoff" and prevent water from spilling out of a detainee's mouth. They were allowed six separate 40-second "applications" of liquid in each two-hour session – and could dump water over a detainee's nose and mouth for a total of 12 minutes a day. Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session – a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding – the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. The agency recommended Ensure Plus.

"This is revolting and it is deeply disturbing," said Dr. Scott Allen, co-director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Brown University who has reviewed all of the documents for Physicians for Human Rights. "The so-called science here is a total departure from any ethics or any legitimate purpose. They are saying, ‘This is how risky and harmful the procedure is, but we are still going to do it.' It just sounds like lunacy," he said. "This fine-tuning of torture is unethical, incompetent and a disgrace to medicine."

Continue Reading


These torture guidelines were contained in a ream of internal government documents made public over the past year, including a legal review of Bush-era CIA interrogations by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility released late last month.

Though public, the hundreds of pages of documents authorizing or later reviewing the agency's "enhanced interrogation program" haven't been mined for waterboarding details until now. While Bush-Cheney officials defended the legality and safety of waterboarding by noting the practice has been used to train U.S. service members to resist torture, the documents show that the agency's methods went far beyond anything ever done to a soldier during training. U.S. soldiers, for example, were generally waterboarded with a cloth over their face one time, never more than twice, for about 20 seconds, the CIA admits in its own documents.

These memos show the CIA went much further than that with terror suspects, using huge and dangerous quantities of liquid over long periods of time. The CIA's waterboarding was "different" from training for elite soldiers, according to the Justice Department document released last month. "The difference was in the manner in which the detainee's breathing was obstructed," the document notes. In soldier training, "The interrogator applies a small amount of water to the cloth (on a soldier's face) in a controlled manner," DOJ wrote. "By contrast, the agency interrogator ... continuously applied large volumes of water to a cloth that covered the detainee's mouth and nose."

One of the more interesting revelations in the documents is the use of a saline solution in waterboarding. Why? Because the CIA forced such massive quantities of water into the mouths and noses of detainees, prisoners inevitably swallowed huge amounts of liquid – enough to conceivably kill them from hyponatremia, a rare but deadly condition in which ingesting enormous quantities of water results in a dangerously low concentration of sodium in the blood. Generally a concern only for marathon runners , who on extremely rare occasions drink that much water, hyponatremia could set in during a prolonged waterboarding session. A waterlogged, sodium-deprived prisoner might become confused and lethargic, slip into convulsions, enter a coma and die.

Therefore, "based on advice of medical personnel," Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Steven Bradbury wrote in a May 10, 2005, memo authorizing continued use of waterboarding, "the CIA requires that saline solution be used instead of plain water to reduce the possibility of hyponatremia."

The agency used so much water there was also another risk: pneumonia resulting from detainees inhaling the fluid forced into their mouths and noses. Saline, the CIA argued, might reduce the risk of pneumonia when this occurred.

"The detainee might aspirate some of the water, and the resulting water in the lungs might lead to pneumonia," Bradbury noted in the same memo. "To mitigate this risk, a potable saline solution is used in the procedure."

That particular Bradbury memo laid out a precise and disturbing protocol for what went on in each waterboarding session. The CIA used a "specially designed" gurney for waterboarding, Bradbury wrote. After immobilizing a prisoner by strapping him down, interrogators then tilted the gurney to a 10-15 degree downward angle, with the detainee's head at the lower end. They put a black cloth over his face and poured water, or saline, from a height of 6 to 18 inches, documents show. The slant of the gurney helped drive the water more directly into the prisoner's nose and mouth. But the gurney could also be tilted upright quickly, in the event the prisoner stopped breathing.

Detainees would be strapped to the gurney for a two-hour "session." During that session, the continuous flow of water onto a detainee's face was not supposed to exceed 40 seconds during each pour. Interrogators could perform six separate 40-second pours during each session, for a total of four minutes of pouring. Detainees could be subjected to two of those two-hour sessions during a 24-hour period, which adds up to eight minutes of pouring. But the CIA's guidelines say interrogators could pour water over the nose and mouth of a detainee for 12 minutes total during each 24-hour period. The documents do not explain the extra four minutes to get to 12.

Interrogators were instructed to pour the water when a detainee had just exhaled so that he would inhale during the pour. An interrogator was also allowed to force the water down a detainee's mouth and nose using his hands. "The interrogator may cup his hands around the detainee's nose and mouth to dam the runoff," the Bradbury memo notes. "In which case it would not be possible for the detainee to breathe during the application of the water."

"We understand that water may enter – and accumulate in – the detainee's mouth and nasal cavity, preventing him from breathing," the memo admits.

Should a prisoner stop breathing during the procedure, the documents instructed interrogators to rapidly tilt the gurney to an upright position to help expel the saline. "If the detainee is not breathing freely after the cloth is removed from his face, he is immediately moved to a vertical position in order to clear the water from his mouth, nose, and nasopharynx," Bradbury wrote. "The gurney used for administering this technique is specially designed so that this can be accomplished very quickly if necessary."

Documents drafted by CIA medical officials in 2003, about a year after the agency started using the waterboard, describe more aggressive procedures to get the water out and the subject breathing. "An unresponsive subject should be righted immediately," the CIA Office of Medical Services ordered in its Sept. 4, 2003, medical guidelines for interrogations. "The interrogator should then deliver a sub-xyphoid thrust to expel the water." (That's a blow below the sternum, similar to the thrust delivered to a chocking victim in the Heimlich maneuver.)

But even those steps might not force the prisoner to resume breathing. Waterboarding, according to the Bradbury memo, could produce "spasms of the larynx" that might keep a prisoner from breathing "even when the application of water is stopped and the detainee is returned to an upright position." In such cases, Bradbury wrote, "a qualified physician would immediately intervene to address the problem and, if necessary, the intervening physician would perform a tracheotomy." The agency required that "necessary emergency medical equipment" be kept readily available for that procedure. The documents do not say if doctors ever performed a tracheotomy on a prisoner.

The doctors were also present to monitor the detainee "to ensure that he does not develop respiratory distress." A leaked 2007 report from the International Committee of the Red Cross says that meant the detainee's finger was fixed with a pulse oxymeter, a device that measures the oxygen saturation level in the blood during the procedure. Doctors like Allen say this would allow interrogators to push a detainee close to death – but help them from crossing the line. "It is measuring in real time the oxygen content in the blood second by second," Allen explained about the pulse oxymeter. "It basically allows them to push these prisoners more to the edge. With that, you can keep going. This is calibration of harm by health professionals."

One of the weirdest details in the documents is the revelation that the agency placed detainees on liquid diets prior to the use of waterboarding. That's because during waterboarding, "a detainee might vomit and then aspirate the emesis," Bradbury wrote. In other words, breathe in his own vomit. The CIA recommended the use of Ensure Plus for the liquid diet.

Plowing through hundreds of pages of these documents is an unsettling experience. On one level, the detailed instructions can be seen as helping to carry out kinder, gentler waterboarding, with so much care and attention given to making sure detainees didn't stop breathing, get pneumonia, breathe in their own vomit or die. But of course dead detainees tell no tales, so the CIA needed to keep many of its prisoners alive. It should be noted, though, that six human rights groups in 2007 released a report showing that 39 people who appeared to have gone into the CIA's secret prison network haven't shown up since. The careful attention to detail in the documents was also used to provide legal cover for the harsh and probably illegal interrogation tactics.

As brutal as the waterboarding process was, the memos also reveal that the Bush-era Justice Department authorized the CIA to use it in combination with other forms of torture. Specifically, a detainee could be kept awake for more than seven days straight by shackling his hands in a standing position to a bolt in the ceiling so he could never sit down. The agency diapered and hand-fed its detainees during this period before putting them on the waterboard. Another memo from Bradbury, also from 2005, says that in between waterboarding sessions, a detainee could be physically slammed into a wall, crammed into a small box, placed in "stress positions" to increase discomfort and doused with cold water, among other things.

The CIA's waterboarding regimen was so excruciating, the memos show, that agency officials found themselves grappling with an unexpected development: detainees simply gave up and tried to let themselves drown. "In our limited experience, extensive sustained use of the waterboard can introduce new risks," the CIA's Office of Medical Services wrote in its 2003 memo. "Most seriously, for reasons of physical fatigue or psychological resignation, the subject may simply give up, allowing excessive filling of the airways and loss of consciousness."

The agency's medical guidelines say that after a case of "psychological resignation" by a detainee on the waterboard, an interrogator had to get approval from a CIA doctor before doing it again.

The memo also contains a last, little-noticed paragraph that may be the most disturbing of all. It seems to say that the detainees subjected to waterboarding were also guinea pigs. The language is eerily reminiscent of the very reasons the Nuremberg Code was written in the first place. That paragraph reads as follows:

"NOTE: In order to best inform future medical judgments and recommendations, it is important that every application of the waterboard be thoroughly documented: how long each application (and the entire procedure) lasted, how much water was used in the process (realizing that much splashes off), how exactly the water was applied, if a seal was achieved, if the naso- or oropharynx was filled, what sort of volume was expelled, how long was the break between applications, and how the subject looked between each treatment."

[Mickmack]

Publicans should pay crash damages, court told
By Tim Healy


Thursday March 11 2010

PUBLICANS who served drinks to a man later involved in a crash in which he and another person died should be made liable for damages resulting from the collision, it was claimed in the High Court yesterday.

John Connolly (79), of Kinlough, Co Leitrim, was allegedly served between five and six pints of beer at the Diamond Bar, Tullaghan, Co Leitrim, before he drove on the wrong side of the road and hit another car on the afternoon of March 31, 2005.

The nominee of his estate has claimed it is entitled to an indemnity, or contribution, from pub owners Seamus and Concepta Kelly for a €275,000 damages claim brought against the estate by the driver of the other vehicle involved in the collision.


Contested

The case, which is being fully contested by the Kellys, was described by the publicans' lawyers as "groundbreaking" in that an attempt was being made to "blame somebody else" for a collision that was Mr Connolly's fault.

The court heard Mr Connolly was killed when his vehicle collided with a car, in which driver Mary Flanagan was injured and her daughter Anne McSorley, from Antrim Road, Belfast, was killed.

The collision occurred at Bunduff Bridge on the main Sligo to Bundoran Road.

In the proceedings, it is claimed the Kellys were negligent and in breach of duty of care by serving alcohol to Mr Connolly when they ought to have known he would be driving. It is further claimed that the Kellys did not take any adequate steps to prevent Mr Connolly from driving.

The court also heard that separate High Court proceedings had been taken by Mrs Flanagan, of Oakland Road, Omagh, Co Tyrone, against Mr Connolly's estate and they had been settled for €275,000. Liability was admitted.

The case continues.

- Tim Healy

Irish Independent

[glengael]

Irish times March 12th 2010


Get off your high horse, it's only the Leaving

An ample window into how others saw usParents are being worn down by the prospect of the Leaving Cert, and mildly terrified at the potential outcome, writes ORNA MULCAHY

MEMO TO Batt O’Keeffe: I know there is talk of scrapping the Junior Cert examination, but would you do the parents of Ireland a favour and abolish Transition year as well?

OK, it is a nice concept. It eases the little darlings towards adulthood with its glimpses of the workplace, and it gives them a breather from exams; sometimes, even, they get a chance to help out in the community, or to study abroad, but here’s the downside: most of them will have passed their 18th or even their 19th birthday when they come to sit the Leaving Cert, and Batt, it’s very hard to force an adult to study.

Believe me, Batt, we are trying our best, but it’s tough when you have a towering man on your hands, not a boy, and when there are 590 things he would rather do than open his books. Whatever shred of authority was there when he was 17 has simply evaporated.

Around the corner, my friend is a fellow sufferer. She has a daughter who has also reached her majority and now thinks that the world is her oyster, even though her recent mock exam results indicate otherwise. We’re like two old crones on the Blaskets talking about it, her mother and I. What are they going to do with their lives when we are not around to give them €50 notes and drive them everywhere, even to the gym, where they wouldn’t need to go if they tried shanks’ mares once in a while, or dusted off their bikes?

From other households, I hear a litany of similar complaints from parents worn down by the prospect of the Leaving, and mildly terrified (it’s still only March) by the potential outcome. One mother has found herself rushing from the office to a Super Valu to pack bags to fundraise for her 6th year scholar, who is hoping to help build a school in South America this summer – after the regulation Leaving Cert holiday in Puerto Banus.

All these things we are doing, even if through gritted teeth, so as to keep them on an even keel for the next few months. But the one thing we can’t do for them, Batt, is sit that exam. It’s the first big event in their lives that we cannot fix. There is no one we can call who can fix it either.

No, the Leaving Cert is crunch time. We may think that if we keep the house quiet and provide healthy meals it will help, but the only person who can make this happen is the child/adult themselves. The exam is brutally and unusually fair in this respect. It is probably the one thing in Ireland that can’t be fixed with a bit of pull here and there, and a novena or two thrown in.

This realisation is a setback for helicopter parents, who hover endlessly over their young and not so young, making decisions for them wherever possible.

They’re a resilient bunch though. Some follow their children to college and beyond, helping them with term papers and dissertations, and worse.

I heard of one mother recently who was threatening to ring the Bar Council when her newly qualified barrister son couldn’t get a regular seat in the Law Library. That would have done wonders for his career.

There are also the social engineers, who have worked hard from earliest childhood to make sure their children made friends with the right kind of people all the way up the system, and who even as they finish school are hoping to steer them towards more socially advantageous colleges and job placements. It’s hard to compete with this kind of parenting, and easy to say it ruins the child.

Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. Everyone knows of a spoilt drop-out or two, but equally there are plenty of examples of children who were groomed from an early age for success, and who in fact succeeded.

“Don’t worry about it . . . they all find their niche eventually,” a kindly woman told me recently at an event where I had her pinned against the wall listening to my matronly woes. Her own children are now well past exams and, like childbirth, she has forgotten the pain. But of course it is not a niche that one wants for one’s child – it’s a career. A niche sounds like something they might get comfortable in and might not be able to get out of. A niche could be just a nice word for a rut.

Perhaps what all of us worried parents need to do is start managing our expectations, a phrase estate agents have adopted to describe their dealings with clients who think their property is worth a fortune and need to be talked down from their high horses. The Leaving Cert may seem like the end of the world for now, but no doubt there’s all the rest of their lives to worry over too.

[Mickmack]

The Irish Times - Saturday, March 13, 2010


Greekonomics: a country in crisis


ARTHUR BEESLEY, European Correspondent, in Athens

Bars, restaurants and theatres may still be busy, and Europe may be bailing them out, but Greeks remain furious about their broken economy, clannish politics and corrupt society

GREEK PEOPLE are disillusioned, bitter and frightened by a financial meltdown that has taken their country to the brink of bankruptcy. As anger mounts, the country’s dynastic political class is under fire.

Walk around Athens at night and you’d scarcely think this was a society in the grip of acute anxiety about the future. Restaurants and bars seem busy, queues form in the theatre district and traffic clogs the streets even well after dark. Start talking to people, however, and worries spill forth about the country’s dire predicament.

“People want justice, they want somebody to go to jail. The corruption is everywhere. Not only should the ordinary people have to pay, but also the big people. Otherwise we will not resolve our problems,” says Alex Opuolos, a business analyst in his 50s.

Greece is on the rack, and its socialist government is struggling to borrow the tens of billions of euro that are needed to keep a porous system of administration afloat. At great cost to taxpayers, premier George Papandreou has pared back the budget three times this year already.

For Greeks – always proud of their ancient heritage – the current episode is something of a humiliation. Emotions are running high. For Papandreou, the son and grandson of Greek prime ministers, the family franchise is on the line. That his immediate predecessor, Kostas Karamanlis, of the conservative New Democracy (ND) party, is nephew of another former prime minister underlines the awesome power of Greece’s political clans.

The present state of affairs does no credit to either of the two “royal families”. Neither does it reflect well on a divisive political culture still split along traditional left/right ideological lines. It used to be said that every village had three cafes: one each for conservatives, socialists and communists. In Greece today, the divide finds its reflection even in soccer, in the sense that the two dominant teams are politically aligned. Olympiakos shoots left, say locals, Panathinaikos shoots right.

This factionalism makes political reform difficult. Yet reform, radical and immediate, is badly needed. Rampant maladministration has been exposed, leaving the country vulnerable to speculative attacks on the financial markets and to the imposition of a form of “economic government” from Brussels.

Papandreou’s strategy of attacking the speculators has won some international support, but it cannot gloss over the spending binge that brought Greece to this sorry place. The country’s powerful trade unions are up in arms, but there is no water left in the well.

Money is tight, very tight, fear is everywhere. In a debt-laden country that created no less than 75,000 civil service jobs in five years, pay cuts and tax hikes are the new order. While in-jokes suggest that Greeks are given to short-termism and the “last-minute school of management”, things are running very late indeed. Yet the latest austerity plan may – just – have done the trick in keeping the markets at bay.

In the fiscal maelstrom in which the country finds itself, there is relative calm now after weeks of wrenching uncertainty.

“It was a very scary experience. People have been afraid of losing their deposits in banks,” says Yannis Stournaras, director of the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research in Athens. Such fears are potent, he adds, pointing out that there was legislation to freeze bank deposits immediately after the second World War.

But what of the strikes? Will they continue? “People say they’d prefer to see 10 per cent of their salary go, rather than see their deposits in banks disappear,” Stournaras says.

Numerous national idiosyncrasies have been shown up recently, some of them in the realm of outright absurdity. Thanks to old quarrels with Turkey, for example, military spending here continues to be the EU’s highest.

“We lived in total surrealism,” deputy defence minister Panos Beglitis told Le Monde last month.

As Greeks brace themselves for a prolonged period of austerity, what is at issue is whether the country’s politicians can reverse decades of laxity in relation to corruption and the collection of taxes. With millions of ordinary folk struggling because of government efforts to balance the books, the estimated seepage of up to €15 billion in personal and valued added tax has become a lightning rod for anger.

Much private wealth is salted away in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Some locals say this is a legacy of socialist domination in the 1980s because the administration was “unfriendly to wealth”. Whatever about the background, the issue rankles now more than ever. In Washington this week, Papandreou said that fewer than 5,000 Greeks declared an annual income of €100,000 or more.

“We’ll be prosecuting offenders, no matter how rich and powerful, to show that we mean business,” he promised. Critics argue that the problem should have been tackled long ago.

THE SAME APPLIES in respect of corruption, for Papandreou himself has also acknowledged that the Greek state is riddled with the problem. Stop strangers on the street and they raise the issue in a flash.

“It’s been so corrupt for so long, we’ve reached rock bottom. There’s nowhere to go but up, but it’s going to be tough and difficult,” says Xenophou Kyririazas (45), an architect.

The culture of bribes in “little envelopes” is common in dealings with the health, planning and tax services, and is seen to a lesser extent in transactions with banks and lawyers. A local businessman explains: “If you want an operation – so that you have it tomorrow and not in six months – there’s no negotiation. There’s just an envelope put on the table.” Expectant parents are particularly vulnerable on this front, he adds.

The problem goes further up. Allegations that German engineering giant Siemens paid millions of euro in bribes to politicians and public officials to secure lucrative contracts are currently being heard before a parliamentary committee. It is not surprising then that suspicion is rife in a country in which the business world maintains close ties with the political classes.

“There is a huge lack of credibility between the citizens and the political parties,” says Costas Bakouris, an upbeat character who chairs the local chapter of anti-corruption group Transparency International. “Almost 85 per cent of the people don’t believe that the parties are capable of making tough decisions and that they are corrupt.”

Bakouris is 73, a businessman who was the first managing director of the 2004 Olympic Games project and is a former chairman of Greece’s inward investment agency. Drinking a can of sugar-free cola in a sparse office, he attributes the ballooning cost of the Greek public sector to clientelism in the political system and the creation of public jobs for cronies.

“The everyday person, of course, he was not directly responsible; he wanted to have a job, and an easy one,” he says. “We left the farm and, instead of planting tomatoes, we decided that if we go to the government we could get a job, a permanent job that nobody can fire you from, and therefore solve your problem and do nothing. So the whole society, in a way, is guilty, but primarily it is with the leadership that we had the problem.”

Greece’s modern political system dates from the restoration of democracy after the military junta fell in 1974, but in many ways the Greek economy is still stuck in that era. As many as 70 professions are closed shops, massively inflating prices, and the business system is structured to protect insiders.

“Everything is built around connections. There’s no meritocracy,” says a businessman.

Locals also speak of an “entrenched sense of entitlement” on the part of labour unions which derive their power from the expansionary period of socialist rule in the 1980s. Indulgence is not the word.

“There have been sweeping changes in the world that the Greek left has failed to understand,” argues Stournaras.

On the other side, meanwhile, the previous conservative government lost all control over expenditure as it pump-primed the state. The ND movement always argued that it inherited a mess in 2004 from the socialists, who had been in power for 19 of the previous 23 years. Still, the situation is so grave now that even senior ND figures acknowledge the party’s role in the debacle.

“We just benefited from the cheap funding and resisted making any structural change that had any cost. The same kind of policy was continued by my government, a conservative government,” says Kyriakos Mitsotakis, an MP whose own father was prime minister in early 1990s.

“We did make a considerable effort at reducing the deficit, but that proved not to be enough and we were rather timid as far as implementing those structural changes that would make the economy basically more competitive.

“The problem with the Greek political system is that both major parties have, to various degrees, used the state to promote their own political agenda. It is still – less than it was – a political system that works based on clientistic logic and I think it is very, very clear that we can no longer fund this state. It is inefficient, it is to a certain extent corrupt and it needs to be drastically curtailed.”

The clock ticks on.

[Mickmack]

The Irish Times -

Friday, February 26, 2010

Rise of structured finance aided destruction of wealth


CHARLIE FELL

SERIOUS MONEY: ALBERT EINSTEIN published the general theory of relativity in 1915. His geometric theory of gravitation points towards the existence of black holes – regions of space in which space and time are distorted in such a way that nothing, not even light, can escape – as an end-state for massive stars.



In the world of finance, banks have proved particularly adept at locating black holes in which to sink shareholders’ funds, and “bricks and mortar” has emerged through the centuries as a favourite end-state in which investor wealth has disappeared.

The recent boom and bust in real estate worldwide has proved not to be an historical anomaly in terms of the wealth destroyed by bankers. But the growth of structured finance enabled naive banks to erase their capital in new ways.

The traditional banking community sold their less-than-stellar mortgages to investment banks, and repurchased the repackaged loans via highly rated securities that were subject to lower capital requirements. The game continued apace as property prices moved higher but, once the capital gains stalled and losses mounted, it became clear the financial alchemy was a mirage – it seems a silk purse cannot be made out of a sow’s ear. Exposure to subprime mortgages proved to be the weakest link in the world of structured finance, but it would be foolish to think that the excesses created by the combination of easy money and investors’ hunt for yield were confined to residential property. Indeed, the chronology of developments in residential property during the asset-price bubble was paralleled in commercial real estate, albeit with a lag.

Cheap money increased borrowers’ capacity to service debt, while investors’ thirst for yield increased the demand for evermore esoteric products. Lenders were happy to oblige to boost income in the face of a flat yield curve or a negligible spread between short- and long-term interest rates that placed significant pressure on net interest margins.

Not surprisingly, new issuance of commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) soared and reached $240 billion (€178 billion) in 2006, a greater than fourfold increase in just five years.

Meanwhile, larger institutions and less-regulated participants came to dominate the market for home mortgages during the boom in residential real estate, which served to increase the willingness of small-to-mid-sized banks to authorise commercial property loans. Predictably, the banking sector’s outstanding commercial property loan book exhibited rapid growth, increasing almost 60 per cent in the four years to end-2008.

Disturbingly, mid-sized banks’ exposure to commercial real estate reached dangerous levels and, at almost one-third of total assets and 4.5 times Tier 1 capital, the loan concentration is now more than double the levels of large-sized institutions.

Increased exposure to commercial real estate was accompanied by a decline in asset quality. Loans to the highest-quality borrowers were increasingly originated by the larger banks for subsequent distribution to the CMBS market. The relatively smaller mid-sized banks lacked the resources to satisfy the needs of these customers and were thus unable to capture the most secure commercial real estate investments. This trend, combined with rapid growth in their commercial property loan books, meant mid-sized banks became increasingly exposed to a riskier set of commercial real estate loans.

Asset quality suffered as investors’ insatiable appetite for high-yielding CMBS products permitted the aggressive use of leverage, and pushed collateral values to fanciful levels. Loan-to-value ratios climbed higher and surpassed 100 per cent in early-2008, debt to net cash flow soared to almost 13 times – a 60 per cent increase on the previous peak in the late-1990s, and interest coverage dropped below 1.3 times.

The aggressive use of leverage also became apparent in the CMBS space. The share of loans with full or partial interest-only loan terms jumped from below 10 per cent in the late-1990s to more than 85 per cent of the loans consummated during 2007, and the percentage of deals with subordinate debt in place at origination or with the ability to add debt over time also reached record levels.

The overbought and overleveraged commercial real estate market was ripe for a fall and duly obliged as the economy transitioned from slowdown to deep recession. Values have dropped more than 40 per cent from their peak and remain under pressure. The increased vacancy rates and the resulting downward influence on rents, which have dropped 40 per cent for office space and 33 per cent for retail space, means prices are unlikely to turn higher anytime soon.

The commercial real estate “black hole” is of grave concern to America’s mid-sized banks, which managed to sidestep the worst of the fall-out in residential mortgages. Roughly $650 billion in commercial property bank loans and some $400 billion in the CMBS space will mature in the next four years; refinancing will be difficult. Troubles in the banking sector are far from over.

[kerrygold]

By Henry Winter


Wednesday March 17 2010

STILL the Special One. Still the king of Stamford Bridge. Still the tactical grand master. Jose Mourinho, Inter's inspiration, orchestrated Chelsea's first home defeat in the Champions League in 22 games, sending his old club crashing out of the competition that Carlo Ancelotti was so expensively brought in to win.

So, the mistake Roman Abramovich made in falling out with Mourinho in 2007 came back to haunt him. The Portuguese had hinted beforehand that he would not celebrate any Inter goal out of respect for his former employers, but he couldn't resist it.

Mourinho marked Samuel Eto'o's fine late strike with a few steps down the touchline before remembering his promise, heading back to the dug-out, still scarcely able to conceal his delight.

He knew Inter were superior in all departments: their defence was mobile defiance personified, their midfield a winning mix of passing and tackling while their four-man attack never gave Chelsea's back-line a moment's peace.

Sadly, shamefully, the game ended in even greater humiliation for Chelsea.

Didier Drogba, having tangled with Thiago Motta, who went down as if shot, was dismissed, echoing his embarrassing exit last season. Suddenly, it was England-Argentina as John Terry and Javier Zanetti exchanged unpleasantries.

As tempers flared all over the place, as Dejan Stankovic could have followed Drogba for a challenge on Alex, some of the Chelsea supporters around the away dug-out suggested exactly where they felt Mourinho should go. He headed for the tunnel, taking a famous, familiar scalp with him.

Mourinho had sprung a surprise, sending out his strong, athletic Inter side in 4-2-3-1 formation. His intentions had been clear: going for the jugular, going for the away goal with Samuel Eto'o, Wesley Sneijder and the left-sided Goran Pandev supporting Diego Milito.

Duels

In a tense match crammed with compelling duels, Inter started at top speed, looking to test Ross Turnbull, Chelsea's inexperienced, but promising 'keeper. Maicon, showing his ambitions with an early shot, enjoyed a buccaneering opening half down the right, but Chelsea never found their stride in the first half.

Florent Malouda wriggled into the box only to be thwarted. Michael Ballack, needing a big game but not delivering and removed on the hour, fired wide.

Nerves jangled like alarm bells. Chelsea, needing to score, knew they were in a real scrap, both physical and tactical.

With the stakes so high, tempers rose high as well. Lucio's foot was certainly high on Malouda. Eto'o then pushed Ballack. Eto'o was enraging Chelsea fans, partly with his angry hornet impression and partly with his play-acting. Such was the tumbling Cameroonian's eagerness to inspect the Stamford Bridge lawn closely, that an invitation to the Chelsea Flower Show surely awaits.

Eto'o was eventually booked for dissent and could have walked when, waving an imaginary card, attempted to get Alex cautioned. Inter's appliance of the dark arts and sciences was rampant at times, particularly at defending corners. Thiago Motta hauled down Branislav Ivanovic. Then Walter Samuel wrestled Didier Drogba over. So obvious, so outrageous, so ignored.

Sadly for Chelsea, the German referee, Wolfgang Stark, haughtily waved play on. It must have all been deeply confusing for Malouda as he ran in to deliver his corners; familiar faces kept disappearing in the box.

Frustration and fear ate away at Chelsea in the first half. Maicon again threatened, lifting a ball down the right for Eto'o to chase. John Terry, spotting the danger quickly, darted smartly across to clear. Sneijder's corners coaxed more sweatbeads from Chelsea foreheads.

Fortunately for the hosts, Drogba demonstrated his defensive power, repelling one of Sneijder's specials. Inter's Dutchman then crashed a free-kick into the wall after Alex had sneakily blocked off an Eto'o run.

Still Inter menaced. When Maicon hoisted in a great cross from the right, Terry misjudged its flight pattern, allowing it through to Eto'o. The miscalculations continued, Eto'o heading down and over.

Increasingly aware of time's unforgiving passage, Chelsea stepped up a gear, finishing the half promisingly. Alex swept a free-kick over. Nicolas Anelka began buzzing down the inside-right channel. Drogba started to break free of Lucio's shackles.

Mourinho was living every moment with his team, willing them to make every tackle, every header, every clearance. Some of Stark's decisions set the Special One off on the road to meltdown, Inter's coach remonstrating with the fourth official when Chelsea were ludicrously awarded a corner after the ball had come off Drogba.

Still Chelsea built. Still Inter blocked. Malouda teased the ball through, but was brilliantly dispossessed by Samuel, the obdurate centre-half aptly nicknamed The Wall. When Drogba then chipped a perfect pass on to the chest of Anelka, Samuel and Julio Cesar combined to slam shut any window of opportunity.

The half concluded with Lampard bursting through, losing possession but earning a tirade from Samuel, who accused the England international of diving. Nonsense.

tense

Still the visitors' gamesmanship continued. Inter arrived late for the second half. When it did, Thiago Motta promptly body-checked Malouda. The ensuing free-kick was badly wasted by Drogba, whose 25-yarder dribbled through towards an untroubled Julio Cesar.

Lifting Chelsea's spirits, Malouda was beginning to influence proceedings.

After a brief moment of concern when Sneijder superbly released Eto'o and Turnbull rushed out to collect, Chelsea stormed through the gears, Malouda bringing a magnificent low save from Julio Cesar.

Brimming with intelligence and growing counter-attacking class, Inter should have wrapped the tie up midway through the second half. Zhirkov rescued Chelsea as Pandev was about to shoot. Then Sneijder seized on poor control by Terry to chip the ball over Chelsea's ragged defence. Milito ran through but placed his shot wide. Bad miss.

Inter had the edge, Chelsea the edginess. Sensing the hosts' apprehension, Mourinho's men broke time and again on the counter.

Some of their passing was immaculate, one pass from Esteban Cambiasso to Maicon was exquisite.

Ancelotti was ringing the changes, withdrawing the anonymous Ballack for Joe Cole and then sending on Salomon Kalou for Zhirkov.

Pushed forward, Chelsea were knocked out by a brilliant counter-punch. When Sneijder lifted a pass towards Eto'o, his response was majestic, the ball drilled right footed past Turnbull. Chelsea were devastated. Mourinho ruled the Bridge. Again. (© Daily Telegraph, London)

- Henry Winter

Irish Independent

[kerrygold]

Scientific breakthrough could be ‘crucial’ to treating asthma
By Niall Murray

Wednesday, March 17, 2010



IRISH scientists have helped make a discovery which may be crucial in the treatment of asthma and other allergic diseases which affect half a million people in this country.



A previously unknown white blood cell has been found which plays a key role in triggering allergic responses by releasing a chemical when exposed to allergens.

In lab experiments using parasitic worms to trigger these responses, Professor Padraic Fallon from Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and his collaborators in Britain were able to identify the cell found around the intestine or the lungs as the start point of allergic reactions.

The newly-discovered cell is called the nuocyte, and Prof Fallon and his 11-strong team plan to spend the next few years examining it to find out why and how it causes inflammation and allergic responses. Their work may also help to determine the degree to which asthma and other allergic diseases are genetically or environmentally caused.

"We need more understanding of the basic mechanisms and function of the cell and that leads to the question of whether some people are genetically predisposed to have more of these cells," Prof Fallon said.

"We hope that in about three to four years, our work may lead to treatments of asthma and other allergic diseases."

His work at TCD’s Institute of Molecular Medicine is funded by Science Foundation Ireland and the latest discovery is the result of a collaboration with the Medical Research Council Laboratory for Molecular Biology in Cambridge.

Their findings have been published in the leading science journal, Nature, indicating their significance.

"It’s an exciting time for Irish science because Irish scientists are competing at the top level internationally," he said.

While asthma is mostly a developed world disease, the nuocyte cell discovery may also have a significant effect on treatment of parasitic infections which can kill people in the third world if untreated.

Around 470,000 Irish people suffer from asthma, giving this country the world’s fourth-highest asthma rates for size of population and the disease was estimated in 2003 to cost the state €227 million a year. Irish adults with asthma lose an average of 12 days from work each year and up to 24,000 bed days a year are used to treat patients admitted with a principal diagnosis of asthma.

Almost 95% of the average 5,347 people kept in hospital with asthma annually between 2000 and 2004 were admitted through emergency departments. Of almost 80 asthma deaths in Ireland every year, 30% are in people aged under 40.



This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Wednesday, March 17, 2010



Read more: www.examiner.ie/ireland/scientific-breakthrough-could-be-crucial-to-treating-asthma-114731.html#ixzz0iQMqX09A

[kerrygold]

By David McWilliams


Wednesday March 17 2010

On St Patrick's Day two years ago, while nudging my way up a crammed Fifth Avenue, the idea of the Farmleigh Global Irish Forum came to me. I'd thought about it before and I had seen how other countries cultivated relationships with their global tribes -- particularly the Jewish tribe and Israel -- but it was only after seeing the unique outpouring of Irish America on March 17 that I knew we should do this. We should tap into the power of the tribe and see where it takes us.

Like many initiatives, the real power of something like Farmleigh can never be dictated in advance. There is an element of chaos in putting people together who don't know each other and are bonded by something as fluid as having an "interest" in Ireland and allowing the conversations and ideas to flow.

But Ireland has never been short of ideas, if anything we have loads of ideas and not enough people who can execute them. The hardest part about ideas is getting them to fulfil their potential. This is what any entrepreneur will tell you. It is also what any artist or writer will tell you. It's easy to have an idea for a book, the hard part is having the discipline to write it.

Similarly, had the officials and Foreign Affairs Minister Micheal Martin not been open to the idea, Farmleigh would have remained an idea thrown out in a bar on St Patrick's Day -- how many of these do we have? So it's all about execution and no matter how amenable the diaspora or tribe is, we still have to translate an emotion into a reality.

Out of Farmleigh have come a number of concrete initiatives and only time will tell how many others are bubbling away under the surface. Dermot Desmond's University of the Arts, the Farmleigh Graduate Programme, the latest tourism campaign 'Home', the 'Gateway Ireland' portal as well as the many regional Farmleighs which are taking place today -- all these are tangible. Sure, Farmleigh had its critics, and some of the points made are valid and apposite -- but you have to try, you have start somewhere and the connections made are likely to throw up more initiatives.

This is the beauty of setting up networks and bringing people together, you simply have to stand back and let human curiosity, ingenuity and love of risk run its course.

These are the sort of characteristics which join two of the most interesting types of people in our world -- the artists and the entrepreneurs. One of the most gratifying and unexpected developments to come out of Farmleigh has been the realisation that artists and entrepreneurs are on the same side.

For many years this natural alliance has been obscured, often by arts administrators who, as bureaucrats, are more risk averse than either artists or entrepreneurs. Some academics play this role too, a sort of false bohemia cosseted by the protection of a State salary.

These folk like to hang with artists but would never risk their own creature comforts and live like artists. It is natural -- no in fact it is essential -- therefore, to create an enemy that is inimical to the artistic temperament so that the artists never see who their real kindred spirits are and the entrepreneur never sees that the artist gets up every day.

The fat-cat businessman image is a type of Dickensian caricature, counting his swag and scoffing at artistic effort. But this is far from the truth.

Take James Joyce for example. Joyce was an entrepreneur before he was an artist.

In September 1909, on a visit to Trieste, Eva Joyce, James's younger sister, suggested to Jim that there was money in cinemas. For a city of 400,000, Trieste had loads of cinemas. In contrast, there wasn't even one in Ireland.

Joyce was sold and he put together four venture capitalists to back him. Joyce negotiated 10pc for himself. Today, this capital would have been known in the jargon as "sweat equity".

Joyce set off in October 1909. By December the Volta cinema was open on Mary Street in Dublin, with Joyce as proprietor. The 'Evening Telegraph' covered the Volta's opening night on December 20: "James Joyce, who is in charge, has worked apparently indefatigably and deserves to be congratulated on the success of the inaugural exhibition."

Two other ventures captivated Joyce. The first was a plan to import skyrockets into Trieste, and the second was to import Irish tweeds into Italy. Both projects were dropped and the Volta folded, but all three episodes reveal a portrait of the artist as a young entrepreneur.

Joyce, arguably our finest and definitely our most celebrated writer, saw no contradiction between artist and the entrepreneur. Rather they are complementary and at their root the artist and the entrepreneur are similar. A fine business brain is as interested, irreverent, creative and alert as a fine artistic mind. The artist sees himself as outside the mainstream. So too does the entrepreneur. Both celebrate the individual over the collective. Both regard security with a certain distance.

There is a striking similarity about their worldview. Both regard most of society's obsession with certainty and security as bizarre. Neither can bear the idea of working for someone else for a wage.

The very thought of taking orders from a bureaucrat strikes fear in both. Working is about creating, beating the competition and expressing themselves, not about pointless committees, political games and promotion.

In the end, artists and entrepreneurs are the only people in society who do not retire. They rarely become jaded or washed up. Of course, many artists and entrepreneurs become part of the establishment, feted by politicians, the media and corporates alike, but most remain beyond the pale.

What binds these two apparently contradictory groups? Risk. Risk and a love of risk, originality and freedom, distinguish the entrepreneur and the artist from others.

Both groups live on their wits, not from the type of corporate arse-kissing that dominates many "successful" career structures in corporate and public sector Ireland. They make things happen by displaying enormous self-belief, hard work and attitude.

An interesting way of looking at the similarities is to remember your schooldays and examine the subsequent careers of friends. In many cases those who ploughed their own furrow either artistically or in business were remarkably similar.

It wasn't really that surprising, therefore, that when I got up to chair the final session at Farmleigh, there was a little knot of some of Ireland's and the diaspora's finest entrepreneurs and artists huddled together excitedly.

These people understood each other. They are spiritual bedfellows and unlike others they -- artists, writers and entrepreneurs -- realise that the idea isn't the end, it's the beginning. The hard part is the hours spent on your own -- writing, tearing up, getting up when you've been knocked down and taking the flack from the critics, who tell you that idea will never fly. This St Patrick Day, let's celebrate these doers.

www.davidmcwilliams.ie

- David McWilliams

Irish Independent

[kerrygold]

Sunday March 21 2010

The Chelsea press officer, understanding how journalism works, wanted to clarify a few things at the end of Carlo Ancelotti's press conference on Friday.

"Just to be clear: Carlo said we will win the double if we win all our matches. He didn't say we would win all our matches. Secondly, Silvio Berlusconi was disappointed and angry when Milan went out to Coruna in 2004. Roman Abramovich was disappointed when we lost on Tuesday."

Carlo Ancelotti understands the difference between a master being angry and a master being angry and disappointed. Abramovich's Chelsea project was dismantled by Jose Mourinho last week and the mood of Abramovich and the state of Chelsea are linked again.

When Ancelotti arrived at Stamford Bridge last summer, he was the fourth man to follow Mourinho in two years, and he was, everyone was told, the man who knew how to win the European Cup. He appeared to know nothing on Tuesday night as Inter took apart his side.

Until they win the European Cup, Abramovich's plan for Chelsea will have failed. It will remain, as Mourinho said on Tuesday, "a history of frustration". There was a time, Mourinho claimed after the game, when Abramovich thought it would be easy to win the Champions League. "Because he is an intelligent person, he is not the same person he was a year ago."

Abramovich doesn't think it is easy now. It is unlikely he has any of the same thoughts about football. When he began to build Chelsea, they were going to use the European Cup to become the world's most famous club. The assault on the great institutions of the world would be achieved by using the tournament as a battering ram. The hostility of football's old world would be overcome and around the globe Abramovich would be seen as the man who produced another Real Madrid, a team the world loved. Instead, since Mourinho left, Chelsea have had to be satisfied with an FA Cup, "just an FA Cup," as he called it.

Chelsea have more to play for this season. Victories at Blackburn today and on Wednesday when they travel to Portsmouth would put them top of the Premier League, having played their game in hand. "We need to win," Ancelotti says.

A Premier League title would represent a triumphant season but Chelsea do not look like a side preparing to triumph. Abramovich may still be engaged but he is as frustrated as Chelsea's history. There is no longer the infatuation, the awe around footballers. Last month as the headlines about John Terry and Ashley Cole kept coming, Abramovich reminded the players of their responsibilities.

"Everyone involved in this club is interested in preserving the image of the club," Ancelotti said on Friday. The image that is preserved is not the one they imagine. Mourinho played his part in that, creating the conditions in which he could be described as "the enemy of football" and it would appear that the term had been coined for Chelsea.

Last season's harsh exit to Barcelona was met with an aggressive response in keeping with the feeling that Chelsea now expect to be rewarded and will behave badly when they are not. That feeling is reflected among the supporters. There were some knowledgeable Chelsea fans who were appalled when Wayne Bridge was booed on his return with Manchester City, but there were many who think that the boorish act is one they must affect.

'* off, Mourinho,' they chanted at the most successful manager in their history at the end on Tuesday night but the chant was almost drowned out by the sound of thousands who had decided to leave the moment Didier Drogba was sent off storming towards the exit. Beating the traffic is part of the fabric of Chelsea football club.

Abramovich has not been able to change that and, while he has altered Chelsea's status in English football, without the European Cup, they remain a club of only passing interest on the world stage.

Mourinho knew he could damage his old club fundamentally last Tuesday. He has not turned Inter into a great side or become a cavalier coach. Manchester City had demolished Chelsea and Mourinho observed what happened when they were forced to run. With a goal lead, Inter could afford to take risks, especially as it was assumed that another strong English club would overwhelm a faded Italian side. Mourinho had nothing to lose and a lot to prove.

His side whispered his genius on Tuesday night and tore at Chelsea. Mourinho knew his opponent and he had noted their recent vulnerability. Once Inter had the ball, Chelsea lacked the drive to win it back or the wit to keep it.

His show of respect for Chelsea before, during and after the game was another great performance. When he came to sit quietly in the away dug-out before the match, the cameras did not leave him. Mourinho seemed entirely comfortable and in repose during this photo-op.

Before the game, Ray Wilkins, Ancelotti's only non-Italian assistant, came over and shook Mourinho's hand before returning to Ancelotti's side where he gave his manager a comforting pat.

While Wilkins would later engage the Inter bench in some abusive banter, Mourinho remained relaxed. He joked with his lieutenants and rarely engaged with the officials. He never looked towards the Chelsea bench. In contrast, Ancelotti always seemed to be aware of Mourinho's presence. Ancelotti is an aristocrat of football and has a history with Mourinho of disdain.

Mourinho's talent has always been to warn these people -- the gilded managers with illustrious playing careers -- that he is coming and enjoys that they can do nothing about it. On Tuesday night, Ancelotti was helpless once more. In contrast, Mourinho, even at his most demonstratively restrained, had his players working as one organism.

After Samuel Eto'o's goal, Esteban Cambiasso and Javier Zanetti came to the touchline during a break in play. Mourinho was preparing a substitution and Zanetti took some orders from the manager. The players listened and then returned to the field. Cambiasso thought of something, turned around, went back to the manager and started bellowing at Mourinho.

He wasn't panicking, he wasn't in revolt, he just had a clear idea of what was going on and he wanted to share it with Mourinho. His message seemed simple: we're in control, don't change anything. This game is ours. On the bench, Mourinho listened and put out his hands to gesture that he understood. He would be led by his players at this moment as willingly as they were led by him.

Ancelotti, by contrast, waited and waited. The players seemed to have no more to give and his substitutions only made things worse.

At the end, Mourinho was already down the tunnel, confusing Wilkins who had quickly made his way over to the Inter dug-out for a post-match handshake. Wilkins looked around, wondering where Mourinho was but Mourinho had wrong-footed him.

He wasn't the only one. Abramovich was disappointed but not angry and Ancelotti has experience of managing a megalomaniac's expectations.He dealt with Berlusconi's frustrations for eight years and he will hope that Abramovich has become as tolerant.

For Mourinho to have ended the ambitions for a side and revealed them to be stale and weary was a triumph for a man who was fired for being an egomaniac who played boring football.

These were the things Ancelotti was supposed to change. "We wanted to play a different game but we were not able," he said. Once more, Abramovich's desire for a more expansive style of football which partly prompted his decision to fire Mourinho has proved to be worthless as a means of success.

This joyous, expressive football was also demanded of Phil Scolari and Avram Grant. Ancelotti ended the week talking up the double and saying he was certain he would be manager next season.

He may be right but in previous years the power of the players would be enforced right about now. This year, some like John Terry are in reduced circumstances while others like Michael Ballack and Frank Lampard are the players who faded so quickly as Inter set among them.

By the end of the week, it was being reported that Abramovich was ready to spend extravagantly again to rebuild the squad and win the European Cup. This is where he came in but now he is, as Mourinho points out, a changed man.

Mourinho changed Abramovich and wore him down. Ancelotti is more comfortable humouring powerful men and he may be able to persuade Abramovich to invest as extensively as he used to do.

If you were not aware of his blue-blooded pedigree, you could be forgiven for forming the impression that, with his woolly jumper and avuncular style, Ancelotti is a woodwork teacher from Ballyhaunis.

But he has found a way to make his style work in some of Italy's great clubs, particularly Milan. Chelsea will want more than the FA Cup if he is to be viewed as a success in England.

There is something preposterous in asking a man who managed AC Milan if he thinks the Chelsea team is too old. "I don't think this team is old. I won a Champions League with players who were 39 years old. I think a player who is 30 is in the middle of his career. Because he improve the physical aspect, he improve the prevention. When you have a team with an average of 28, it is a very good age. This is not a problem."

Ancelotti allowed the Milan side to grow old in a league that was not dynamic. It may not be as successful in England where the pace drains the players and reduces their effectiveness. Ancelotti says they are still eager to win things.

"I think the players were very disappointed, like me, like Roman, like the fans. These are good things because it is the first step towards finding new motivation for the rest of the season." Nothing else concerns him. "Why do we need to speak about the future when we have 11 important games to come?"

Ancelotti can still see a way to success this season but the recent signs are not encouraging. Then comes the summer and the almost traditional period of turmoil at Chelsea.

Only one manager since Mourinho has not had that feeling of impending doom. Guus Hiddink said he was leaving all along and that made them want him even more. Chelsea find it hard to sustain a relationship with anyone who wants to sustain a relationship.

On Tuesday night, Ancelotti met the press before Mourinho. Even in defeat at his home ground, he was a warm-up act. Yet he must go on after him, must find purpose for a club which increasingly looks like it only had one under Mourinho.

Jerry Lee Lewis once suffered what he considered the ignominy of opening for Chuck Berry. Using his fervent mixture of the devil's tunes and biblical fervour, he drove the crowd and himself into a spiritual yet sinful frenzy. As his set concluded, he doused his piano with petrol, threw a match and watched it go up in flames. He walked off with his message delivered. In the wings he encountered Chuck Berry who was waiting to go on. "Follow that," he said.

Jose Mourinho delivered the same message. Chelsea are still trying to follow him and the frustration has become all-consuming.

Blackburn v Chelsea,

Sky Sports 1, 4.0

Sunday Independent

[kerrygold]

By Vincent Hogan


Vincent Hogan: Sad farewell to rugby's emotional Croker union


Monday March 22 2010

It was a pity that the final, memorable acoustic of rugby in Croke Park should be a cacophony of jeers for a visiting goal-kicker. Dan Parks may or may not have noticed. His winning strike was such a brazen read of the wind, chances are he heard nothing at that moment beyond some inner voice preaching cold procedure.

Still, the din was ugly and disappointing. It spoke of a loss of grace brought on by the realisation that this Triple Crown maybe wasn't to be grasped from the cheap shelves after all.

You wonder how we'll remember it all in our dotage. Ireland's four years in Croker were book-ended by two defeats that cost the team silverware, yet it was ultimately a time of plenty. They played some wonderful stuff and carried themselves impeccably.

You think of the great, emotional prairie that the GAA had to cross before opening their doors and it all seems a little inexplicable now.

Imagine telling Brian O'Driscoll or Paul O'Connell that their presence on the Croke Park sod might, somehow, have soiled the legacy of other Irishmen? Then again, I don't suppose rugby was ever the real issue. Letting soccer in was, for some, the equivalent of daubing a swastika on Jerusalem's Wailing Wall.

Still, it took pretty twisted nationalism to sustain the fight for as long as it ran. And a damn bad business sense.

Now we know that the sea didn't boil up, the sky didn't blacken, starched birds didn't topple out of trees when Croke Park's gates opened to the outside world. On the contrary, the outside world came in and availed itself of a history lesson.

The stadium and all it represents now has a global recognition factor that would have been unimaginable without the suspension of Rule 42.

It has certainly been one of the unspoken little pleasures on the seventh floor press gantry to observe the incredulous stares of visiting rugby journalists when they first step into the home of an organisation they cannot fathom could possibly pass as amateur.

At Cheltenham last week, this column was gently upbraided by an old colleague for our role in that recent tawdry spat with Wales coach, Warren Gatland.

This man is of Ireland, but living in the UK and reckoned that the language used flew in the face of our tradition as cordial, respectful hosts.

And it's probably true, in isolation, the words did look a mite gratuitous in tone.

That said, they weren't written or published in isolation and we'd still be inclined to argue that the column in its entirety was immeasurably more rational than portrayed.

Nonetheless, the commotion had its consolations.

We particularly enjoyed Warren's dismissal of us as someone who was "more of a GAA man," as if this constituted the ultimate dunce's cap.

Maybe Warren imagines the job of chronicling an All-Ireland Championship summer to be some kind of rehabilitation programme for people who've slipped the wrong side of the tracks.

It could be he sees the gig as a half-way house between a first offence and Wheatfield.

But he was sitting in Croke Park as he said it. Didn't he bother to look around? The place looks wonderful under a pastel sky in March.

Could he not imagine it when there's pampering heat in the wind and the likes of Kilkenny and Tipperary are taking hurling to the realm of art?

So, being described as "more of a GAA man" didn't quite feel like Groucho Marx was stubbing out a stogie in my best slacks.

Deep down, I think the entire GAA community has grown a few inches in stature since the decision was taken to extend a welcoming hand to the IRFU and FAI. And, in hindsight, maybe Saturday's game was an illustration of one team's desperation just to write an appropriate letter of gratitude.

Ireland, at times, looked to be trying too hard to decorate the occasion with a Barbarians' flourish. Their rugby was like beautiful handwriting, all plump whorls and fish-tailing letter-ends. They didn't so much try to beat Scotland as dazzle them with light.

The Scots, in turn, just waited for the show to ebb and Parks, with his stiletto sideburns, kept picking us off with sniper-fire.

And, through the stands, a little grace began to leak away.

The winning kick flew through that late hailstorm of jeers like a defiant spark from a fire everyone had just presumed spent. And so rugby was suddenly gone from Croke Park, lurching south with a heavy heart.

The silver saucer awaiting will sting the eye with its beauty. The Aviva looks set to be splendid and, on the really big days, insufficient. No matter.

Croker and rugby was, on the whole, a pretty good union. So, turn out the lights behind ye folks, close out the door.

Slan abhaile as the GAA voice on the tannoy said.

It's been emotional.

- Vincent Hogan

Irish Independent