Monday 14 October 2013
Imagine children's allowance was paid not in cash but loaded on to a smart card that could only be spent in domestic shops and couldn't be spent on certain items, such as cigarettes. Would that be a good idea?
Every so-called 'civilised' society likes to pride itself on its treatments of animals.
NOTHING is agreed until everything is agreed. And in the case of Budget 2014, nothing is agreed just yet.
MOST referendums are forgotten pretty quickly. There are exceptions – Lisbon 1, the 1983 abortion referendum – but few have any medium-term impact on the political status quo.
Should we tax the bejesus out of sugary soft drinks to get skinnier kids? The Government needs to think about new taxes to balance its books. One idea that now appears to have been discarded before the Budget is a tax on sugary soft drinks. The basic idea of such a tax is to raise prices on these products, reducing the amount consumed, in much the same way as cigarettes are taxed now.
Last week at a political seminar, a participant asked me "what was the fundamental problem with the Progressive Democrats (PDs) which led to its electoral decimation and ultimate end"?
SEANAD? What Seanad? After the humiliating defeat in the referendum, the spotlight will swiftly shift on to next week's Budget.
The sight of someone like Sinéad O'Connor portraying herself as the victim in the spat with Miley Cyrus will have raised more than one eyebrow.
WILL Finance Minister Michael Noonan deliver his final Budget in nine days' time?
WHEN the Green Party started to go into meltdown, its opponents used to mockingly cite the old Muppet Show song about "it's not easy being green".
'IN the middle of my life I went into a dark wood," says Dante in the Inferno. Early middle age is when we mostly experience what was once called a nervous breakdown. What follows is a flat account of my own experience. It has a happy ending – I have not had a bad depression for the past 20 years – but it came after considerable effort.
IT'S a bit of a happy coincidence that in a week when I'm writing on mental health, I also happen to be reading Alastair Campbell's ebook, The Happy Depressive: In Pursuit of Personal and Political Happiness. Campbell had a pretty public breakdown in 1986, and since then he has been very open about his intermittent bouts of severe depression.
The Irish people are thinking for themselves. How very inconvenient for the Government. Yesterday's referendum should have been a walk in the park for the Yes side. Few arguments could have been easier to make: a rotten, elitist, unelected House was offered for the chop. Nothing was more obvious than that the disillusioned Irish people would send all those overpaid, irrelevant senators packing.
Ireland's ability to survive without EU and IMF bailout loans, no longer available from January next, will be determined by the Government's willingness to keep the budget deficit falling. It will also be affected greatly by the stress tests on the banks to be undertaken in tandem with the European Central Bank (ECB) over the winter. If it needs further capital, the State is in no position to provide it and it is not alone.
THERE was an amusing moment on Thursday when a hapless BBC newsreader told viewers that General Ray Odierno, Chief of Staff of the US Army, had said "that they needed to resolve this budget shit shutdown as soon as possible". It was, of course, a slip of the newsreader's tongue, but he was speaking for millions who are wondering if the stand-off between the Obama administration and the House of Representatives is liable to play merry hell with the global economy.
Aengus Fanning was fond of asking what was the one thing a leader needed. He would then answer the question himself. Followers. A leader also needs to be present. Anyone who has been on a team, or worked in an organisation, or lived in a country where the leaders scuttle around avoiding everyone and speak through diktats or only in set-pieces, knows that the absence of leadership is felt much more acutely than its presence. When the leader is there, you are buoyed along by him; he is part of life; he is in it with you, cajoling and encouraging and occasionally ordering. We almost take it for granted. Our natural state is to be led.
From time to time in Britain you get newspaper headlines declaring that the British marriage rate has plunged to the lowest level on record. Here in Ireland we imagine it could never get like that. In this country, we imagine marriage is in rude good health. But it's not.
CONSUMERS who fear they have been mis-sold payment protection insurance have been told by the Central Bank to do nothing. They will be automatically compensated by their bank, lender or credit card company if they had been mis-sold the insurance.
So, got your voting card in your sweaty little paws? Strategy all planned out? Maybe you'll drop into the local school or wherever your nearest station is on your way to work. Or maybe you might wait until after work and then go for a few pints afterwards, after all, you've just done your democratic duty and deserve a little treat.
WITH Finance Minister Michael Noonan preparing once again to shrug off Dame Street's economic recommendations, it is time to ask ourselves what we expect from the Central Bank and even whether we really need it.
It is sad to see a proposal for the abolition of the Seanad being put forward in such a sour fashion. We are told a sum of money will be saved – how much is disputed – the number of politicians will be reduced, as they were a form of disease; we are to get rid of "elitism" as if to strive to be elite was not desirable.
One of my secret pleasures is a film called 'The Prince and The Showgirl' in which music hall performer Marilyn Monroe is pursued by Laurence Olivier, who monocles up to play a would-be seducer with both blue blood and red blood rushing through his veins.
So, what's really grinding your gears this week?
Despite the outrage and theatrics in the partisan TV studios, last night the average New Yorker seemed more concerned about how 'Breaking Bad' ended than what was happening down on Capitol Hill.
SO WHAT would a 6pc showing in a general election do to the Labour Party's Dail seat total? Last time it polled such a low total – in the 1987 General Election when it got 6.4 pc of the vote – it returned a mere 12 TDs. A repeat of that outcome next time out would mean a 25-seat loss when compared with its all-time high in 2011.
Like many people in their 20s, most of my brother's mates have emigrated. Few of them have any plans of returning soon, if ever.
"He is going around the country stirring up apathy."
During one of those lovely, unseasonably warm days last week I passed an old guy, on his knees, praying on the street.
THIS is a kind of golden time – despite Ireland's various tribulations – for many people determined to avail of second-chance adult education.
The old nun was in a half- way house somewhere between this word and the next. She was tiny, wrinkled and feeble.
THERE'S a column that we responsible journalists traditionally publish the week before a referendum. You know the one – a column that weighs up the choices. Maybe advocating a Yes or a No, but stressing that above all you must get out and exercise your right to vote. Because that's what the patriotic heroes of old died for – your right to make a meaningless choice between two equally bad options.
IT STARTS right at the beginning, when the mother is required to attend her local maternity hospital in order to deliver her child. It shows where both mother and child stand in the hierarchy of things. These hospitals are "not fit for purpose". But sure, being maternity hospitals, they're only for the use of women and their babies.
IF YOU ever watch the big race meetings on television, you may have noticed a pattern in the post-race analysis. If an outsider wins the Cheltenham Gold Cup, or the Derby, his connections are interviewed and asked to describe how a horse who seemed to be "friendless in the market," as they say, could have performed so brilliantly.
ONLY connect, says Shakespeare. So I will join a few dots this week. But by and large I want to give you a break from the bits and pieces of the Budget.
THE Reform Alliance has identified 40 key candidates to target with a view to setting up a new political party to challenge the Government, the Sunday Independent can reveal.
'Looks like an ad for Phantom of the Opera" was one of the kinder comments below pictures of celebrity cook Nigella Lawson, in a British newspaper yesterday. Nigella was spotted leaving her London home looking like an old, out-of-shape, bag lady. Not a scread of make-up in sight and hair that looked as if it had been dragged through Beechers Brook.
Join Gareth Naughton from 9.15pm tonight for all gossip and reaction to the latest episode of the gripping crime show Love/Hate
On the Monday morning after his son Donal appeared on The Saturday Night Show, Fionnbar Walsh got a call at home from a Kathleen Lynch. This woman, whom Fionnbar presumed was from the HSE, was wondering if Donal would record a video talking directly to his peers about suicide.
Join X Factor's Melanie McCabe along with Independent.ie's Brian O'Reilly as the X Factor's first live show kicks off.
Professor Donal O'Shea on the measures he believes the government should take in the upcoming budget.
Since the ‘Age of Austerity’ began, society’s most vulnerable have been hit hardest.
The owner of family business Timber Trove has fought to stay solvent throughout the depths of the financial crisis and is terrified that Budget 2014 may set them back again.
THE parents of inspirational teenager Donal Walsh said they could hear their son's message to appreciate life at the funeral for Limerick girl Chloe Kinsella who tragically took her own life last week.
Video preview of the big kick-off
A statement of affairs is supposed to be a kind of last will and testament of a bust business.
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