Is there room for another political party?
There is a very different tone to RTE’s advertising these days. Apart from exhortations to buy a TV licence “brought to you from the Government of Ireland”, there is a plethora of state or semi-state advertising covering a vast spectrum of campaigns from “Your Mental Health” and sexual harrassment to winter windscreen wiper maintenance, from […]
NDP is a smokescreen for political incoherence
The Government’s published national development plan is, in reality, a smokescreen for complete incoherence in their different parties’ approaches to many hugely important issues. The idea that various component parts of the so-called plan will have to compete among themselves to attract Government approval, prioritisation and financing is, frankly speaking, a joke. So too is […]
Low corporation tax rate is about pragmatism not inferiority
I have to politely differ with opinions recently published here on the issue of Ireland’s corporate tax regime. I do not think that we have a comparatively low corporation tax rate because we suffer from any national inferiority complex. Nor do I think that we collectively fetish-ise that regime. Still less do I think that […]
A rail feasibility study is always good for a positive headline
These pages used to accommodate intermittent comical pieces in which Myles na gCopaleen posed as an exasperated steam engine savant and generously handed out highly amusing technical advice to railway operators, engineers and engine drivers on optimal operation of mainline steam locomotives. I hope I am not becoming a bore on the subject of government […]
Trump, like the Taliban, may be on way back in
In a year’s time, the US will be facing into mid-term congressional elections. If the Democrats were to lose their narrow majority in the House of Representatives and/or their razor thin majority in the Senate, President Biden’s term in office might well be converted into a one-term lame duck presidency paving the way for a […]
Fall of Afghan government may have merely brought forward inevitable
Before we rush to judgment on Joe Biden’s US military evacuation of Afghanistan, it is worthwhile putting what has happened in context. In particular, the US and Taliban had concluded a formal agreement in February 2020 at Doha, during Trump’s presidency, which embodied a clear US commitment to withdraw all NATO forces from Afghanistan in […]