Ireland November 2010 - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Three views for you into the state of Ireland today, in plenty of time for taking account of for whenever you might be developing themes for Irish parades, festivals, and events in 2011:
1. Great Things About Ireland. For a newspaper feature, Shane Hegarty of The Irish Times, asked on twitter what - notwithstanding the current problems - people thought was great about Ireland. The article highlights 50 but there are thousands more if you care to browse back on twitter at the hashtag #greatthingsaboutireland. For a more commercial slant on how great we Irish are, you could also have a look at the new advert for Dublin Airport’s brand new Terminal 2
2. Ghost Estates of the Irish Property Bubble A google map of Ireland showing rather a lot of empty property developments in the Republic. Note the impact on lesser populated areas like counties Longford, Carlow, Roscommon and Louth - and high tourist rural destinations such as Killarney and the Ring of Kerry, West Cork, and well, everywhere. Places like the Dingle peninsula in Kerry and the very north of the Inishowen peninsula in Donegal are not untouched.
3. Live Blog of Debt Crisis Updated every minute is a feature in The Guardian, a newspaper of our nearest neighbour, on a crisis that in Ireland we are hearing wall to wall coverage of across all media. If you have the stomach for more of this stuff there is an infinite amount of it appearing every second on Twitter under the hashtag #bailout
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
Over the last few months I have gained enough knowledge of this to feel I missed my calling in high finance. It’s amazing stuff, a billion here, a billion there,
I think I understand the whole scenario from property development over-heating to
bad banking practices. I get the idea of how this happened but……..
One QUESTION, over and over again.
SENIOR BONDHOLDERS - Who the hell are they, where do they live and
are they actually REAL people or just the unseen that no-one can explain.
The Irish have only themselves to blame for the current fiscal crisis.
During the “Celtic Tiger” years (2000-2007) the average citizen revelled in material goodies like 42-inch plasma screen TV’s, 3-foreign holidays a year, flash cars and 110% mortgages on McMansions.
They didn’t give 2-shites whether the bankers, developers and politicians were robbing the country blind, because they were wallowing in “instant gratification”.
Now, many are weeping and complaining about havving to live on €200 per week dole money + child benefits + Single parent allowance + free medical care + 50-cent perscriptions.
Boo-Hoo culchies, you wanted it and you deserve it.
Bogsidebunny - On a point of information I should point out that the “Celtic Tiger” years were not 2000-2007.
The phrase was coined in 1994 and referred to the high growth rates that continued until 2001. Rates then dropped to 1% - nothing tigerish about that economy.
The resurgence of 2003-2007 was sometimes called “Celtic Tiger 2″ but its growth rates were well below those of the original tiger years and what is generally considered to make economies tigerish.
The rest of what you say is a mixture of inaccurate, irrelevant, and just plain rubbish.