Blog

News of food contamination in the developed world travels fast. Sophisticated food testing in a number of European countries detected dioxins in pork fat as far back as September. Towards the end of November the source was traced to an animal food recycling plant in Ireland. When confirmation of high levels of contamination was obtained […]

The internal audit report into the corporate affairs of the state training agency FAS has produced evidence of profligate spending by a largely unsupervised public official during the years of plenty, which have now come to an end. The public official has a very different version of the events, showing that he was being given […]

The case of asylum seeker Pamela Izevbekhai who lost her appeal against deportation to Nigeria in the High Court last week was given a reprieve when the European Court of Human Rights intervened, delaying the deportation for 3 weeks, while they review the case to see whither or not the grounds for deportation were warranted. […]

Drugs have been in the news for all the wrong reasons this last week. We had almost 2 tonnes of cocaine removed from the yacht “Dancing with Waves” when the customs seized her in the Atlantic. Then came the death of Shane Geoghegan, a tragic case of mistaken identity, at the hand of a hit-man […]

It has been interesting to come back to Ireland at the end of last week to find that the Budget has been subject to revision by the people. Formerly it was the task of the opposition to critique the proposals and the Government to stand by the decisions they made. In fact it cut short […]

Using various financial devices different countries have had to come to the rescue of the god mammon this last week. Mammon has been successful in creating the biggest wealth gap in human history as his devotees scaled hither undreamt of financial summits. How has it been done? The New York Times wrote in 1999, “Fannie […]

When the former British Prime Minister, Harold McMillan was asked by a journalist what troubled him most in his political life he famously replied, “Events, Dear Boy, Events”! This last week has seen the most cataclysmic events of our time hit the citadel of capitalism that America has become. The sheer scale of the debts […]

It looks like the convicts are running the prison was the graphic description one commentator gave to the unbridled greed of the top Bankers who now face the liquidation of their banks. The removal of controls some years ago permitted ever higher risk lending resulting in the banks taking on the mantle normally worn by […]

Was it Samuel Johnston, in one of his more cynical moments, who said that nothing was certain except death and taxes? In recent years the latter has been far from certain in Ireland but it appears that that from the 15th Sept. that could all change. Faced with declining revenues new measures have been put […]