Ireland

  Was it Warren Buffett who said investors should be wary of any company that decides it needs to spend huge amounts of cash on swish new corporate headquarters? If it wasn’t the Sage of Omaha then it was someone like him arguing that this is often a warning sign of a company behaving recklessly and with little regard to its shareholders’ interests. (Hello RBS!) Anyway, I thought of that when I saw, again, this sign at County Galway Cricket Club. Though there is record of cricket being played in Galway as far back as the 1830s (the original garrison game!) the present club dates from the 1970s. Recently they

All will be quiet here this week. I’m heading offline and, more importantly, to Ireland for a week of cricket. Six games in six days across three provinces is a punishing, even optimistic schedule. Then again, it can’t go any worse than it did on Saturday when my two overs were walloped for 29 runs. Anyway, see y’all next Tuesday.

Responding to this New York Times piece on Ireland’s ecoomic woes Matt Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Kevin Drum and Steve Benen echo Paul Krugman and say: See, this just shows how stupid austerity measures are. And it’s true, Ireland really is in a terrible hole and won’t be getting out of it any time soon. As the article puts it: Nearly two years ago, an economic collapse forced Ireland to cut public spending and raise taxes, the type of austerity measures that financial markets are now pressing on most advanced industrial nations. “When our public finance situation blew wide open, the dominant consideration was ensuring that there was international investor confidence

Congratulations to the subs at the Evening Herald in Dublin for this gem:

I suppose that relatively few people in England knew Alan Ruddock, who died from a heart attack on Sunday aged just 49, but in Scottish and Irish journalistic circles he was a considerable figure. As Kevin Myers reminds us, he defied the IRA as editor of the Sunday Times’s Irish edition. Later, as Stewart Kirkpatrick remembers, he was a very fine editor of the Scotsman, presiding over the paper and its coverage of the first elections to the new Scottish parliament in 1999. Later still, and foolishly, the Irish Times declined to give Alan the chance to edit the old lady of d’Olier St. Their loss. Instead he wrote a

An eyebrow-raising passage from the Pope’s letter to the Irish church: In recent decades, however, the Church in your country has had to confront new and serious challenges to the faith arising from the rapid transformation and secularization of Irish society. Fast-paced social change has occurred, often adversely affecting people’s traditional adherence to Catholic teaching and values. All too often, the sacramental and devotional practices that sustain faith and enable it to grow, such as frequent confession, daily prayer and annual retreats, were neglected. Significant too was the tendency during this period, also on the part of priests and religious, to adopt ways of thinking and assessing secular realities without

Frankly, one would be disappointed if this sort of caper weren’t being run in Donegal: A 72-year-old Donegal man who denied running an illegal public bar in his shed, has been acquitted of two charges brought against him by the County Council under planning regulations. Patsy Brogan said the bar, which has become known as The Bog Hotel near Frosses, is for private use, and while he welcomes callers, he insists he does not charge for drink. At Donegal District Court today Judge Kevin Kilraine said there was no evidence anybody was being charged money at the bar. He said the shed had been converted to look like a bar