With apologies to Mr Sachin Tendulkar, but there's another little master on the block, one that we've known about for a while. But with Ireland's recent epoch making Grand Slam you have to look through the superlatives and realise that Declan Kidney's management has been the main difference from this rugby team going from perennial bridesmaids to the real thing.
Yes, notwithstanding Mr O'Driscoll's sudden return to form and the additon of some new blood like Rob Kearney. This season's grand slam has been about the inexorable Munster like tenacity of victory by sheer self-belief and determination to win.
This all-pervading confidence is infectious, up to the point that even the Irish, the most self-defeating nation on earth actually believed that we were going to win the grand slam. Let's not say that we thought that the class act of Stephen Jones was going to miss his last minute kick, just that the day would give just rewards to the better team.
So Mr Kidney, thanks for the grand slam, which in your modesty you'll diffuse the gratitude to anyone but yourself. But I recognise a master when I see one.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Water Charges
So, on the way back home in the car and all the talk was about water rates. Mary Wilson was conducting a not-too-brilliant conversation with Joanne Tuffy from the Labour party and Oisin from one of those ecological do goody goody NGO's.
All rather frustrating, I don't see the solution as being particularly taxing so to speak.
In relation to taxes, people are looking for two things. They want fair taxes based on ability to pay, and they want transparency on where those taxes go.
For example the taxes we pay for the roads infrastructure and all the associated costs is a fraction of the revenue the government used to generate through VRT, fuel taxes and road taxes. While there has been a huge improvement in our road structure recently it really only brings us up to a base minimal standard. All the other taxes raised have been used for a variety of other forms of public spending.
So when we tax the public for water charges, we need to show that all the income is used exclusively to do the following:
1. Reduce the amount of water households use. The waste of water in this country is enormous, because rather like a free bar people abuse the privilege. The only way to stop the abuse is to charge people for it. Personally I'd estimate you could reduce water usage by 40% with a direct tax.
2. Improving the infrastructure. So we lose 30% of our water through leaking pipes etc. It'll cost a lot to replace and fix these, and you'll never be able to cure it, but you could cut this water loss in half. Infrastructure also refers to supplying meters to every house and giving discount vouchers for people to purchase water butts.
3. Improving the quality of water. Because of our unique heritage I think we should be aiming to have the best quality water in Europe. Why do people need to buy bottles water if the tap water provided is of a better quality. Remember Dasani?
So how do we implement this tax? Fairly?
You'll need some independent expert to come up with a formulae where you enter in # number in the household and their ages. This will give you a quarterly amount that they should be consuming. Now take 10% off this volume. Every unit that the household goes above this volume realises itself as a direct water tax.
For the poor, pensioners and the like, add 10% to their volume and tax them only if they exceed this inflated amount.
Will this raise enough tax? I don't know, but it's a start one feels. But here's the beauty, once you've paid for the infrastructure and purification you can drastically decrease the taxation on the public, because all you're paying for is the maintenance of your water systems.
But you're still left with all the measures needed to reduce the wastage.
If I was in government I would be talking to the UK to set up a joint water pipeline to pump all our excess water into southern Europe. Because we know that water in the 21st century is going to become a very valuable commodity.
My suggestion would be for our high quality purified water should be sold on a commercial basis to southern EU countries and the proceeds used to deliver heavily subsidised water to Africa using the same pipelines.
What's not to like?
All rather frustrating, I don't see the solution as being particularly taxing so to speak.
In relation to taxes, people are looking for two things. They want fair taxes based on ability to pay, and they want transparency on where those taxes go.
For example the taxes we pay for the roads infrastructure and all the associated costs is a fraction of the revenue the government used to generate through VRT, fuel taxes and road taxes. While there has been a huge improvement in our road structure recently it really only brings us up to a base minimal standard. All the other taxes raised have been used for a variety of other forms of public spending.
So when we tax the public for water charges, we need to show that all the income is used exclusively to do the following:
1. Reduce the amount of water households use. The waste of water in this country is enormous, because rather like a free bar people abuse the privilege. The only way to stop the abuse is to charge people for it. Personally I'd estimate you could reduce water usage by 40% with a direct tax.
2. Improving the infrastructure. So we lose 30% of our water through leaking pipes etc. It'll cost a lot to replace and fix these, and you'll never be able to cure it, but you could cut this water loss in half. Infrastructure also refers to supplying meters to every house and giving discount vouchers for people to purchase water butts.
3. Improving the quality of water. Because of our unique heritage I think we should be aiming to have the best quality water in Europe. Why do people need to buy bottles water if the tap water provided is of a better quality. Remember Dasani?
So how do we implement this tax? Fairly?
You'll need some independent expert to come up with a formulae where you enter in # number in the household and their ages. This will give you a quarterly amount that they should be consuming. Now take 10% off this volume. Every unit that the household goes above this volume realises itself as a direct water tax.
For the poor, pensioners and the like, add 10% to their volume and tax them only if they exceed this inflated amount.
Will this raise enough tax? I don't know, but it's a start one feels. But here's the beauty, once you've paid for the infrastructure and purification you can drastically decrease the taxation on the public, because all you're paying for is the maintenance of your water systems.
But you're still left with all the measures needed to reduce the wastage.
If I was in government I would be talking to the UK to set up a joint water pipeline to pump all our excess water into southern Europe. Because we know that water in the 21st century is going to become a very valuable commodity.
My suggestion would be for our high quality purified water should be sold on a commercial basis to southern EU countries and the proceeds used to deliver heavily subsidised water to Africa using the same pipelines.
What's not to like?
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Champions League
A bit of a conundrum this. I can imagine Sepp Blatter choking on his cheese board last night as Liverpool made Real Madrid look like Blue Square opponents, come to think of it, that's a bit unfair on the Blue Square.
With Chelsea sneaking in against Juve and Man U + Arsenal holding the upper hand it's not reaching too far to presume that there will be 4 premiership teams in the last 8. It's well known that Mr Blatter doesn't like the premiership format of loadsamoney clubs and this will only harden his attitude to return to the days of limiting the foreign players on the playing surface.
I don't think this is necessarily fair on Arsenal and Man U who have strong policies on recruiting cheaply when the talent is cheap and nuturing them to fruition. On Liverpool whose transfer policy is plainly daft and on Chelsea and now Man City, he may have a point.
The interesting part is that while the Premier League is head and shoulders above the other leagues - not necessarily in entertainment - and the teams are slaying their opponents in the Champions League, it's obvious that the format is broken in contributing to the national team.
I really can't see England ever winning another World cup or a Euro one for that matter.
As such, maybe Mr Blatter has a point.
With Chelsea sneaking in against Juve and Man U + Arsenal holding the upper hand it's not reaching too far to presume that there will be 4 premiership teams in the last 8. It's well known that Mr Blatter doesn't like the premiership format of loadsamoney clubs and this will only harden his attitude to return to the days of limiting the foreign players on the playing surface.
I don't think this is necessarily fair on Arsenal and Man U who have strong policies on recruiting cheaply when the talent is cheap and nuturing them to fruition. On Liverpool whose transfer policy is plainly daft and on Chelsea and now Man City, he may have a point.
The interesting part is that while the Premier League is head and shoulders above the other leagues - not necessarily in entertainment - and the teams are slaying their opponents in the Champions League, it's obvious that the format is broken in contributing to the national team.
I really can't see England ever winning another World cup or a Euro one for that matter.
As such, maybe Mr Blatter has a point.
Monday, March 9, 2009
The Spirit Level
Just came across this review in the Sunday Times on a book called :
Perhaps not too surprisingly those countries or States that have the widest disparity of incomes also have the highest levels of social problems, and not just amongst the poor. The evidence also suggests that those in middle income brackets suffer from stress leading to depression and other illnesses.
Examples of unequal societies are the UK, most of the US and Portugal. Examples of more equal societies are Scandinavian countries and Japan.
The recommendation seems to be a higher level of taxation for those on higher levels of income or a legislation to restrict a maximum income. It's all rather interesting stuff, the current banking crisis affecting the world clearly shows that the liberal greed system endemic to western capitalism doesn't work.
Surely we are looking at clinical solutions based on solid evidence and this book would appear to offer a motion for change. The review in the Times by John Carey is here
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article5859108.ece
The authors also have a website here
www.equalitytrust.org.uk/
It usually takes a long time for ideas like this to filter down to our politicians, but in this instance let's hope they make a exception.
The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
In essence the authors of the book, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have come across a killer set of statistics. They compared incomes in the top 20 countries in the world as well as the 50 States and used this against social problems evident in those countries such as drug abuse, shortened life spans, murders, teenage pregnancy etc.Perhaps not too surprisingly those countries or States that have the widest disparity of incomes also have the highest levels of social problems, and not just amongst the poor. The evidence also suggests that those in middle income brackets suffer from stress leading to depression and other illnesses.
Examples of unequal societies are the UK, most of the US and Portugal. Examples of more equal societies are Scandinavian countries and Japan.
The recommendation seems to be a higher level of taxation for those on higher levels of income or a legislation to restrict a maximum income. It's all rather interesting stuff, the current banking crisis affecting the world clearly shows that the liberal greed system endemic to western capitalism doesn't work.
Surely we are looking at clinical solutions based on solid evidence and this book would appear to offer a motion for change. The review in the Times by John Carey is here
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article5859108.ece
The authors also have a website here
www.equalitytrust.org.uk/
It usually takes a long time for ideas like this to filter down to our politicians, but in this instance let's hope they make a exception.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
The Irish economy
We're in pretty big trouble here. There's so much crap flying around it's difficult to isolate the issues. Broadly speaking there are two main problems, a spin off problem based on the first two, and a solution that resolves one but not both.
Problem #1. The Bank Crisis.
So our banks are the same as everybody else's. While we were not effected by the sub-prime problems in the States nor the kind of corporate greed of credit default swaps, we just had greedy bankers giving away truckloads of borrowed cash to an increasingly heated property market.
You can't blame the government for this with one exception, regulation. Who regulates the regulator? When you consider that outside agencies such as The New York Times were pointing the finger at Ireland's lack of fiscal governance, you'd think someone up high would take an interest in it.
The most damning thing is potentially still out there. From what I can see it appears our ex-financial regulator, civil servants within the Central Bank, and certain Irish banks like IL&P and Anglo-Irish actively colluded together to lie to the Stock exchange, outside investors, and the Irish people.
So either someone in the government was aware of this and should be sacked, or else nobody was aware of it and so were therefore merely stupid and incompetent. As you may be aware, being stupid and incompetent is not a sackable offence in this country, just look at our current Tanaiste, Mary Coughlan.
Problem #2 The balance of payments.
Look guys, what goes up must come down. I don't think any country in the world that has gone through a property boom where prices doubled or tripled hasn't gotten away with the fabled 'soft landing'. The prices will always crash.
For the last 12 years we have had a government with Plan A. Make revenue from property sales. Plan B was when people sold their house and made lots of money they would buy nice new shiny 4X4's and give themselves lots of nice things they really didn't need. So the government had the VAT and VRT revenues lining their pockets.
Plan C was to give most of this money away in tax cuts (so they would get elected) and tax breaks for the wealthy, or at least those of us who could afford accountants.
Plan D was to create lots of jobs in the public sector and pay them whatever they wanted and under any terms and conditions, without any benchmarking on trivial things like skill, ability and value for money.
Because there's no tomorrow is there?
So now we have a situation where the government have to borrow €55m every day just to keep the show going because they, and they alone, have wasted the opportunity to make us into a fiscally responsible country like say Germany.
I've yet to hear anyone from the government apologise for ruining our economy. When you consider that our current Taoiseach was the minister for finance for 4 of the more recent years, the buck has to stop there.
It's said that you get the government you deserve. Are the Irish that bad a people?
Problem #3 The spin off
There are two organisations that give countries and financial institutions credit ratings by their clinical and expert perspectives. One is Moody's and the other is Standard & Poors. As it stands at the moment, they consider us to be the riskiest country in the EU zone to give credit to.
That means we're riskier to lend money to than Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece. No offence to Greeks but your country is a basket case, and apparently we're worse. Being riskier means it costs more money to borrow and the cost of insuring that money is higher too.
Why is this? Well it's a combination of problems #1 & #2. But critically, it's also a commentary on how the government are handling the crisis and how much confidence they have in our banking and regulation system.
Yes, we're that bad. Don't take my word for it, take the word of the market. And as we've seen over the last few months, time and time again the government have been wrong, and the market has been right.
The solution. But only for one
We had a finance minister who some time ago thought it would be a good idea to save a bit of money for a rainy day. His name was Charlie McCreevy. He was exiled from Minister for Finance to EU Commissioner some time ago to be replaced by the wonderfully short sighted Brian Cowan.
Charlie, and I'm not a fan as he's as much to blame as Mr Cowan, decided to put away and invest 1% of GDP every year. This fund was worth (even after a woeful year in investments) about €20 billion at the end of 2008. This, and only this, is keeping our heads above water.
In itself it would be enough to resolve our banking crisis. In itself it would be enough to reduce the chronic tax burden and enormous cuts we are going to experience over the next 4-5 years.
But it can't do both.
It just shows what could and should have been done over the last 12 years.
There's no point saying that we're learning from our mistakes, these kind of errors only happen once a century.
So that's it, we're screwed.
Thanks Fianna Fail.
Problem #1. The Bank Crisis.
So our banks are the same as everybody else's. While we were not effected by the sub-prime problems in the States nor the kind of corporate greed of credit default swaps, we just had greedy bankers giving away truckloads of borrowed cash to an increasingly heated property market.
You can't blame the government for this with one exception, regulation. Who regulates the regulator? When you consider that outside agencies such as The New York Times were pointing the finger at Ireland's lack of fiscal governance, you'd think someone up high would take an interest in it.
The most damning thing is potentially still out there. From what I can see it appears our ex-financial regulator, civil servants within the Central Bank, and certain Irish banks like IL&P and Anglo-Irish actively colluded together to lie to the Stock exchange, outside investors, and the Irish people.
So either someone in the government was aware of this and should be sacked, or else nobody was aware of it and so were therefore merely stupid and incompetent. As you may be aware, being stupid and incompetent is not a sackable offence in this country, just look at our current Tanaiste, Mary Coughlan.
Problem #2 The balance of payments.
Look guys, what goes up must come down. I don't think any country in the world that has gone through a property boom where prices doubled or tripled hasn't gotten away with the fabled 'soft landing'. The prices will always crash.
For the last 12 years we have had a government with Plan A. Make revenue from property sales. Plan B was when people sold their house and made lots of money they would buy nice new shiny 4X4's and give themselves lots of nice things they really didn't need. So the government had the VAT and VRT revenues lining their pockets.
Plan C was to give most of this money away in tax cuts (so they would get elected) and tax breaks for the wealthy, or at least those of us who could afford accountants.
Plan D was to create lots of jobs in the public sector and pay them whatever they wanted and under any terms and conditions, without any benchmarking on trivial things like skill, ability and value for money.
Because there's no tomorrow is there?
So now we have a situation where the government have to borrow €55m every day just to keep the show going because they, and they alone, have wasted the opportunity to make us into a fiscally responsible country like say Germany.
I've yet to hear anyone from the government apologise for ruining our economy. When you consider that our current Taoiseach was the minister for finance for 4 of the more recent years, the buck has to stop there.
It's said that you get the government you deserve. Are the Irish that bad a people?
Problem #3 The spin off
There are two organisations that give countries and financial institutions credit ratings by their clinical and expert perspectives. One is Moody's and the other is Standard & Poors. As it stands at the moment, they consider us to be the riskiest country in the EU zone to give credit to.
That means we're riskier to lend money to than Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece. No offence to Greeks but your country is a basket case, and apparently we're worse. Being riskier means it costs more money to borrow and the cost of insuring that money is higher too.
Why is this? Well it's a combination of problems #1 & #2. But critically, it's also a commentary on how the government are handling the crisis and how much confidence they have in our banking and regulation system.
Yes, we're that bad. Don't take my word for it, take the word of the market. And as we've seen over the last few months, time and time again the government have been wrong, and the market has been right.
The solution. But only for one
We had a finance minister who some time ago thought it would be a good idea to save a bit of money for a rainy day. His name was Charlie McCreevy. He was exiled from Minister for Finance to EU Commissioner some time ago to be replaced by the wonderfully short sighted Brian Cowan.
Charlie, and I'm not a fan as he's as much to blame as Mr Cowan, decided to put away and invest 1% of GDP every year. This fund was worth (even after a woeful year in investments) about €20 billion at the end of 2008. This, and only this, is keeping our heads above water.
In itself it would be enough to resolve our banking crisis. In itself it would be enough to reduce the chronic tax burden and enormous cuts we are going to experience over the next 4-5 years.
But it can't do both.
It just shows what could and should have been done over the last 12 years.
There's no point saying that we're learning from our mistakes, these kind of errors only happen once a century.
So that's it, we're screwed.
Thanks Fianna Fail.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
MMO's and WoW
Greetings,
So for the first post I reckon I should talk about something that's been a ridiculously large part of my life for the last 3 years. My good RL mates played EQ and then Guild Wars, so when I finally got a Dell that could had a half decent graphics set up, I pressurised them into picking an MMO that we all would play.
WoW
I also hooked a few more friends into this (I can be very persuasive). Luckily no-one got divorced, I think we all got close at some point, at least those of us who are married with kids. Needless to say following my own 'I'm an individual' traits I did things very differently to everyone else.
I started off as a NE Priest, a good choice as it turns out as healing classes appeal to me. This is old WoW and I quit at level 52 as the alternative was divorce. A compromise was for me to stop playing with my RL friends and jump ships to the Horde (Hellscream EU).
I have to say I had a great time of it. Horde on HS seemed to be a little more mature, and a reasonable stint on The Lost Souls guild had great benefits in teaching me the trust and tenets behind the weird and wonderful relationships that people have online and the politics that go with it.
After my year in exile I headed back to my RL mates. I didn't fit in with their very large guild so I found another more my size in Cheese n Crackers Co. There followed my most enjoyable moments in WoW doing Karazhan etc with some lovely people as a resto shaman.
I wouldn't say I was any good, I never intended to be someone to look up to in WoW, I guess I'm more a social gamer than anything else. Things didn't work out though, so I went back to my RL mates running a Thursday night raid scene.
It is more fun with your mates, no doubt about it. I guess because we've known each other for years before MMO's means that any criticism and bitching never amounts to much thank God.
Sad to say that me and WoW went our separate ways in February. I bought but never played WotLK. I was levelling up a toon on the achievements system from scratch, got disillusioned when Blizz made some changes and lost heart in TBC, I always hated Hellfire Penninsular. I guess it was bound to happen at some stage.
So, so long WoW, thanks for the memories. I shudder to see time /played and think about how many languages I could have learned, diplomas earned, good deeds completed.
But, it has been a major part of my life and I don't regret it.
So for the first post I reckon I should talk about something that's been a ridiculously large part of my life for the last 3 years. My good RL mates played EQ and then Guild Wars, so when I finally got a Dell that could had a half decent graphics set up, I pressurised them into picking an MMO that we all would play.
WoW
I also hooked a few more friends into this (I can be very persuasive). Luckily no-one got divorced, I think we all got close at some point, at least those of us who are married with kids. Needless to say following my own 'I'm an individual' traits I did things very differently to everyone else.
I started off as a NE Priest, a good choice as it turns out as healing classes appeal to me. This is old WoW and I quit at level 52 as the alternative was divorce. A compromise was for me to stop playing with my RL friends and jump ships to the Horde (Hellscream EU).
I have to say I had a great time of it. Horde on HS seemed to be a little more mature, and a reasonable stint on The Lost Souls guild had great benefits in teaching me the trust and tenets behind the weird and wonderful relationships that people have online and the politics that go with it.
After my year in exile I headed back to my RL mates. I didn't fit in with their very large guild so I found another more my size in Cheese n Crackers Co. There followed my most enjoyable moments in WoW doing Karazhan etc with some lovely people as a resto shaman.
I wouldn't say I was any good, I never intended to be someone to look up to in WoW, I guess I'm more a social gamer than anything else. Things didn't work out though, so I went back to my RL mates running a Thursday night raid scene.
It is more fun with your mates, no doubt about it. I guess because we've known each other for years before MMO's means that any criticism and bitching never amounts to much thank God.
Sad to say that me and WoW went our separate ways in February. I bought but never played WotLK. I was levelling up a toon on the achievements system from scratch, got disillusioned when Blizz made some changes and lost heart in TBC, I always hated Hellfire Penninsular. I guess it was bound to happen at some stage.
So, so long WoW, thanks for the memories. I shudder to see time /played and think about how many languages I could have learned, diplomas earned, good deeds completed.
But, it has been a major part of my life and I don't regret it.
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