Walled Garden

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Did anyone here ever suffer the embarrassment of authorising your ebooks, to two different Adobe ID’s?

I can’t believe, that I managed to do this. I searched all over my email inbox’s for something from Adobe, to say, I had an exist Adobe ID – and could find nothing. So I created one yesterday afternoon to authorise a new downloaded eBook. But it turns out now, that my existing collection of eBooks, which were on an older laptop system, were all authorised to a previous Adobe ID, which Adobe themselves had never emailed me about, to inform me that I had it!

Big hint – it’s one thing to shoot yourself in the foot for your own stuff – but I would hate to suffer the embarrassment, of telling an important client of mine, I had done this to his purchased eBook collection! People have so many different digital reader devices now, that chances are, if they already have an eBook or two, they already have an Adobe ID. It would surely make live easier though, if Adobe would generate the odd response email, to the purchaser, to remind them.

It's really awesome how well connected are the 'user-specific' flash advertisments with google search and You Tube. I was shopping on line for a comb binding machine - a real nuts and bolts, physical piece of old world hardware - to bind my A4 reports.

Then I visited one of my favourite YouTube channels this minute, and I noticed the flash advertisement in YouTube was selling me one of the same comb binding machines, I was shopping for on line, over the weekend.

I guess, my major hang up at the moment, is the fact, that when I need to purchase a license for various items of software from Adobe, Microsoft etc, and what annoys me in a major way, is you have to track back and recall the Microsoft Store ID, or the Adobe ID - in order to take up where you left off, in buying your software online.

I have described briefly the 'linking up' that Google Inc., can do between its Google Images search, and the YouTube channels I watch, and the ads present for a vendor called Euro Office.

It's sort of the same thing with Microsoft Store. They want to keep you inside some kind of 'walled garden' all of the time.

When I purchased a full license for a Microsoft ware, in 2010, I had to create some kind of Microsoft Store ID, which I had forgotten I had. The rule that Microsoft have, is that your Microsoft Store ID, ties up to you Windows Live login.

It so happens that the e-mail service at my college, Limerick Institute of Technology, is hosted by Microsoft, in some kind of LIT student hotmail web client.

It followed, that when I purchased a full license for Microsoft wares - which had nothing at all to do with my university at Limerick in Ireland - and was purely for my own business usage, my Microsoft Store ID, I have now discovered is the same as my Limerick Institute of Technology student e-mail address!

The worst thing about all of this effort by Adobe, Microsoft, Google and so on, to 'lock you in' to some walled garden online space, is that when you proceed to buy something like an eBook at some time in the future, and do not synchronise it up with your original eBook authorisation Adobe ID - then you can't use two eBooks that you purchased at separate times, from the same book publisher, on the same computer system, because they are authorised to two different Adobe ID's!

The Limerick Institute of Technology e-mail address for my Microsoft Store ID, is the typical example. After a couple of years, one moves away from an institution and no longer has access to that Windows Live ID!

It's all very strange, very cloud-like, clever like, and not at all satisfactory in my humble opinion.


Brian O' Hanlon


Sub note: Technical Support


I received this recommendation, from one of my usual sources of computer technical advice this week:

"Most companies who run these locked in [Adobe ID, Microsoft Store ID, etc] systems will allow, if you get angry enough at cust-serv, you to transfer titles between accounts".

I love this idea, of needing technical support to put all of your split digital identities back together. All the king's horses, and all the king's men, . . .


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Ladder

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The state jobs agency FAS, in Ireland was criticised a lot in the media over the past number of years. But like a lot of things in Ireland I think we have it all backwards.

The state jobs agency FAS, was criticised because it tried to take manual contract cleaning staffers and depict them in expensively created promotional videos, becoming semi-conductor technicians and rocket scientists. This is what I think we have gotten backwards, here in Ireland.

Our problem in Ireland, is not taking manual labour and trying to reinvent them as skilled knowledge workers. Our problem rather, is that our skilled knowledge workers end up becoming manual labourers, or at the very best, in our periodic ‘boom’ times, they graduate to the level of trades persons.

You speak to anyone in the regional urban centres in Ireland. They will tell you about a succession of employers down through the generations, who have come and left again. It saps the will out of the people who inhabit these urban centres and surrounding hinterlands. It saps the life out of them.

I remember, at one stage I was a manual labourer and I had all sorts of ambitions to become an expert technician in semi-conductor technologies. I am sure I could have achieved that goal also. Ireland isn’t a bad location to get on a ladder, and make something of oneself. However, I do recall an instance in 1998, where I was mixed cement plaster and putting it in a bucket for a plastering tradesman.

We were high up on a scaffolding, which collapsed. It was prior to the time when health and safety was taken as seriously as it should do in Ireland. We got talking about life in general, as we tried to get our wits back following the accident (we all escaped un-injured thankfully).

The man told me of the two successive computer companies he had worked for in the city of Limerick. We talked about aspects of computer technology, engineering and management of projects in the high technology area. Then we both mounted back up, on a re-built scaffolding, and started throwing sand and cement at a wall again.

A couple of years later, I had obtained a job working at Dell computer corporation in Limerick city, and quite liked it. The scale of it, and management of such a massive labour force in one place.

The point of my telling the story really, is to say that the man I had crossed paths with for that brief scary moment in 1998, was heading in the opposite direction to myself. He had been in the high-tech knowledge economy in the 1980s, and was headed back towards manual labour.

I was trying to move up the ladder at the time. We both met for a brief and sorry moment, on the same ladder as it were. The modern knowledge economy landscape, is one such that, resources be they human, industrial, logistical or otherwise, do fall out of use very quickly. There is a worldwide crisis because of that.

In 2010, I watched a documentary on Irish television in which they looked at the lifes of ex. Dell employees from Limerick city. One man, who was vocal on behalf of the ex. workers of the plant, explained his neat idea to get into business for himself. He was going to install timber decking features to the backs of peoples' homes.

I wonder to myself, how many times has that cycle occurred in Ireland now? I mean, since the earliest days of industrialisation in Ireland. Have we ever spoken to the various generations of workers, who were discarded at one point or another from the system? Have we asked them as a collection of people to describe their experiences?

I wrote a short blog over the summer time about an interesting character in the field of management consulting, I have been reading for quite a while now.

Mr. VanPatter of Humantific is one ex practitioner from the architectural profession, who has a fairly good handle on the times we live in, and the kinds of challenges posed by the kind of economy in the 21st century.

My simplistic way of looking at it is, each economy today has to learn how to recycle its own human resources many times over. We simply don’t have the luxury any more in 2011, of hoping that another job on the not-so-well-built scaffolding we emerge for ex. transistor engineering staff, to occupy them throwing sand and cement at a wall, and hoping they don’t fall to their deaths in the process.


Brian O' Hanlon


Other Reading.


Blog entry, Recycle.


Sub Note: Smart Economy


A commentator at the Irish Economy blog wrote,

Conditions today in the highly educated, high tech market are quite frankly brutal. The days when a 3 to 12 month course would ensure re-employment are gone. I thank my lucky stars that most of my working life was in a high demand era.

I think it should be a priority though, in the coming years, that we change focus a little bit from the old fashioned FAS emphasis of taking people from the lowest, and raising them up. What needs to be addressed is those who are already up on the ladder, and how to keep them there. None of this sounds very good in speeches though.

It is like what the American legal professor, Elizabeth Warren says about the problems facing the middle classes. No one wants to do proper research in that area, because there is a natural assumption that the middle classes are boring and stable. Hence, the fact that very intelligent and aware people, get caught out in assuming that all of the cliches are correct.

As a nation, we spent a lot of money on agencies such as FAS, which had very mixed success. And I wonder if we could have made a lot more progress, had we taken a deep and detailed look at the high tech sector jobs, and how people in that area manage their careers over decades.

I am trying to keep this brief. But I would like to write a few words in relation to the smart economy. It is unfortunate in a way, that someone such as former Taoiseach Brian Cowen became the sales personality for this particular initiative.

Because I think the smart economy banner could be extended to become quite a good umbrellas policy for many disparate state agencies to coordinate themselves by. After all, this is the challenge of running a state at any time, in any context. How to find an intelligent way to coordinate the disparate efforts of so many.

I would simply relate the idea of a smart economy, to the idea as applied to the electrical smart grid for instance. I recall attending a lecture by the deputy chief executive in charge of Ireland's electricity network a couple of years back.

His main point was to emphasise, that Ireland's grid had become increasingly smart down through the years. In that, it becomes more self aware, better able to diagnose its own faults and so on. It helps those who manage the system, to get to the problems faster and figure out a strategy without too much confusion.

I believe, that if we look at the resource of skilled labour in Ireland, we need to add an extended time dimension to the equation. That is, children who move away from education in their 20's - we simply cannot allow those people to drift through their 30's, 40's and 50's - without some audit of the demands the enterprise environment places upon our human resources at different times.

I always get back to the generation who built the new semi-state companies for Sean Lemass coming out of the 1950s, and in the 1960s. Those people have retired at this stage, but are still around and available for interview. We aught to interview those people. We aught to do the same with the generations of 1980s, in various sectors.

In short, we should look at all sectors in the economy. We aught to interview folk from different generations in all sectors. We aught to build up a picture. The smart economy in my opinion, is one such that it is made more self-aware, and perhaps better equipped to respond to unfolding events.

My greatest fear though, is the conveyor belt of the Irish economy is one that disposes of large portions of labour at one point or another, and is so wasteful it tries to dispose of the same for good - and replace again with fresh young graduates from the bottom.

One could imagine in that case, why people who make their way to the top, in Ireland, realize the significant possibility they are due for disposal. This one inform a lot of decisions that are made by those who work at the top. It creates an unnecessary level of risk for those who have made it.

They could easily find themselves out in the cold, too quickly and this is the major source of the power of the trade unions in Ireland. And in turn, it takes away a lot of the legislative and policy making discretion from the government executive. The pressure upon them also, is not to change.

Not to try to make too many adjustments, for risk of unseating too many, who have worked too hard, to get to a certain level.


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Breakfast Roll

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David McWilliams came out with an expression, in a recent radio panel discussion. He spoke about the Irish people being wonderful patriots, but not the best citizens.

The Irish were never afforded an opportunity to become the kind of citizens that they should be entitled to become. The economic boom period of the Celtic Tiger in Ireland, did not provide that opportunity either.

The Irish were always, a nation of pilgrims, who had to look for an angle to survive. The angles were usually construction based, small and opportunistic. You could view it in Darwinian terms, as like those creatures should scurry along the ground, underneath the radar.

It was one thing, to engage in bottom feeding in the 1950s-1980s in the United Kingdom. It was a brutal Darwinian shake-down, that occured when groups of Irish left their home parishes, to 'make good' for themselves abroad.

We all know many stories, of the Irish man or woman, who made good against the odds. I am in my late 30’s, but I am not too old to recall the very stagnant times of the early 1990s in Dublin in Ireland. I would attend jobs fairs and seminars about the construction industry I was working in.

There was an expression that gained some traction in the middle 1990’s, to describe a phenomenon, of how some of the Irish began gradually to trickle back into Ireland to work in construction again. They were called, The Irish in London, back in Dublin.

The principal thing we have worry about in such a small country such as Ireland, is that a tipping point can be reached very quickly. That is, the point at which the youngest, most energetic and most entrepreneurial citizens become active and collectively decide to perform a certain task.

When the Irish are in London, the tipping point cannot be reached as soon. The collective the Irish need to integrate with, is larger.

The Irish abroad can throw enormous energy into their enterprise. They carve out a space. They contribute forcefully and postively to the energy which defines a time, a place and a level of economic activity.

It is like certain sporting occasions, where you sense a certain kind of atmosphere or synergy, between the various supporting crowds.

In larger countries, the energy which the Irish bring into the equation has benefit. But in the 2000s in Ireland, we tried to achieve the same, on our home turf.

That was a major problem.

There were no boundaries in which the ‘bubble’ of economic energy and activity could be confined. It is pointless trying to regulate the Irish on their home soil. The achievement which the Irish have shown all over the world, time and again, to success, is to get over or around the regulation. To circumvent it.

Why should the Irish behave any differently on home soil?

The bubble expanded, and expanded. The Irish prime minister's phrase summed it up. The boom is getting boom-ier.

I recall, very vividly, in the mid 2000’s, my occupation was to ride shotgun in the passenger seat of a vehicle which drove around the midlands of Ireland. The property developer who drove the vehicle, had obtained finance from an Irish bank, and was a raw recruit from the Irish concrete industry.

It felt like one of those Vietnam war movies. Where the grunt soldiers, have to suffer because of a bad platoon leader.

He drove to various sites of football playing fields in towns around the midlands of Ireland. Large open areas of space, alongside centres of population. We rolled into those villages and towns, in our large SUV vehicles.

Equipped with folded up maps, satellite navigation and mobile phone contact numbers of local estate agents. They were like the informant network, who would leak intelligence about sites worthy of investigation.

In the early days of the Irish state, the prime minister Eamon De Valera waged a kind of economic war, with our nearest neighbour Great Britain.

In the 2000's, it felt like we waged economic war on our own inhabitants.

My job was to point a camera out of the window of the automobile, as we sped past various ’sites’. Such was the speed of operation and the fervour to build-and-flog projects, which today have become Irish ghost towns.

A wasteland legacy of breakfast roll man, and our internal economic conflict.

I would like to leave readers with an observation. In the absence of a natural ‘containment’ - as is the case for the Irish in London - when we ramp up our economic activities here in Ireland, we need to find some way to impose constraints upon ourselves.

We need a rules of engagement, to put it quite bluntly.

One could look at the labour supply, as a possible control nossle. The amount of construction specific labour, that is made available at any one time in the economy.

There are many who arrived home to Ireland from abroad during the 2000’s, who were shocked at the amount of Irish enterprise that had become specifically tied up in the construction sector.

Surely there is an index, or a reporting system of sorts, that one could use to monitor this.

At the present, Ireland is seeing its resources leak out. The real possibility is we will find ourselves dealing with inflation, owing to lack of resources to do anything.

Lone opportunist individuals, building themselves high-tech carpentry workshops in the middle of no where. Then selling the workshop for half nothing, and going to the southern hemisphere. That is far from being a optimal use of investment. But that particular story repeated itself frequently in Ireland.

Too small, too opportunistic and wasteful.

Every breakfast roll man for himself, is not the way to build a stable platoon.


Brian O' Hanlon


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Big Boot

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Michael O'Sullivan writes at the Dublin Review of Books.

At a broader institutional level, the design of a cross-department, multidisciplinary education programme for senior civil servants may be one way of developing necessary technocratic skills.

This would arguably encourage better coordination across departments, a vital process that could also be enhanced by a “one country” office that would work to coordinate departments and state bodies on specific projects.

I would like to try to expand on Mr. O’Sullivan’s sentences.

Take a subject like energy policy in Ireland. I have read countless papers, views, comments on the subject over the past number of years. I have met many individuals working with this subject in some way or another, in some capacity or another. I have travelled to, attended and soaked up the conversation, lecturing and teaching of all kinds of voices, groups and interests in relation to the energy policy question.

But most of all, in my attendance of so many different events, so many different groups involved in some way with national energy generation, or conservation policy in Ireland - the one thing, that I believe struck me most forcefully about it all - was the apparent lack of a coordinating function, which aught to be performed by a departmental branch of the permanent Irish government.

The reason, this lack of a coordinating function was always so apparent to me, is perhaps, because it takes enormous effort and understanding to cross so many boundaries, and obtain the input from such a diversity of points of view. But that is really, where the leg work needs to be done. Otherwise, what we witness in the area of energy generation and conservation policy in Ireland is a whole lot of discreet, independent efforts - and huge loss of benefit from resources - and duplication of efforts from so many different angles. A huge lack of communication, from one side to the other side, of a large network of associations.

If the state isn’t able or willing to position itself in the middle, and on the spot, as things happen, as things roll out - then it doesn’t happen. No one does it. It remains, a maze of different cultures, divisions, niches and sub-cultures, operating in isolation. Each sub-division could be enhanced in its effectiveness several fold, if we could learn how to assemble the whole picture together, in some way, through a state effort of sorts.

I think that Mr. O’Sullivan’s sentences attempt to convey this notion. We often look to the Irish state to ‘do something’. To become, the driving force. The reality is, there is plenty of driving force, all around us. The problem is, it is pulling in twenty or fifty different directions at once, in the total absence of any coordination function being performed by anyone. The truth of the matter is, we don’t require an Irish state to become a driving force, of any kind. But we do require, the Irish state to provide some helpful coordination of resources, effort and time-line-ing, at some level in the system. That would be the biggest pay-back of all, for our taxation Euros.

There is a phrase from Cybernetics, which comes to my mind. The governor, is the element, which if removed, the system goes into disarray and collapses soon after. It doesn’t have to be a very elaborate device. But it is required to be present, doing the right thing, at the right time. This is the model of how the Irish state aught to be involved in the affairs on the island of Ireland. But we haven’t learned how to do it, like that, so far. Most of the time, the Irish state enters into the fray using it's hob nailed boots, or not at all.


Brian O' Hanlon


Sub note: Enterprise development.


What happened over the course of the last few decades in Ireland, is that we became extremely educated as a population. But unfortunately, we have no experience in Ireland of managing such a resource, because in the times that minister Michael Noonan and others were at school, hardly anyone got a high level education.

A basic education is what was available. What we have in Ireland in the 2010s, are armies of educated people, and no body in the country looking at how the same, can be utilised as a resource. The multi-national companies from abroad can come into Ireland, and visualise the situation they are presented with. They are able to assess much more quickly, than our own state boards and departments, the human resources that are available and how to organise them efficiently.

You look at our higher level education system. There are 17 institutes of technology, dotted around the place in addition to the national university institutions. And who knows how many smaller colleges and centres of higher level training dotted around in between the above. You look at the think tanks, the focus groups, the professional bodies, all doing their own thing. All trying to crack open the same types of problems, from their own angle.

But there is no wide angle lense available. There is no one tasked at the moment, with the basic job of understanding how ‘A’ relates to ‘J’, and then relates to ‘W’.

This is the outcome, of a situation, where the Irish state, newly born - is able to generate the resource of the educated population - but then, does not know or understand how to organise it. Look at what we do with the medical professionals we train for instance. I recall listening to historian Tom Garvin’s description of Sean Lemass, and his earlies policy initiatives to manage industrialisation better in Ireland.

The historian, Garvin, offered the example of a shoe making factory in Dundalk. There was a similar one situated somewhere in Cork. Both factories had been producing and working away independently for decades. But one was not even aware of the other. These were some of the early findings made in the department of Enterprise under Lemass, when they began to look at the question of how to organise the industrial capacity in Ireland.

In the 2010’s, we are in a very similar position with regards to knowledge and innovation.

During the year 2009, I was briefly involved for that 12 month period in at least a dozen bodies, and various events which happened and sought to enable enterprise to happen, in the energy conservation and generation market sector. I can tell you one thing. It took me only 12 months of burning through my own shoe leather, and funding most of the fieldwork research myself, to gain a comprehensive overview of the different groupings and sub-currents in this innovation sector in Ireland.

I recall, having a conversation with someone from Enterprise Ireland, or one of those state bodies about the lack of coordination efforts. I know, that I did not bump into any state employed persons in my travels during 2009. That was, at a time when Ireland found itself in one of its worst economic nightmares of all time. But the impression, I got from the state body, was that they didn’t appreciate my invading their territory. It was their job, to gain this magical overview of things. It was their job to come up with the comprehensive strategy document.

It wasn’t my place to point out some of the interesting opportunities and connections which aught to be made. It was strange.

If I had had the resources, I could have made connections even further afield, with work going on in other countries, involved in the same sector. In fact, many folk did travel here to Ireland, and those people I did meet here in Ireland. They kept asking me, where was the coordination and public representation at many of the events and meetings? How did all of the activity happening in such small discreet groups in Ireland feed into something larger? The problem was, it didn’t. The problem isn’t getting better either. It is getting much worse.

One often wonders how venture capitalists make their margin. How do they spot opportunities? How come they have a monopoly on luck, when it comes to seeing the future? The Steven Jobs or whoever it is. The answer is very simple. It would be difficult for venture capitalists not to succeed. Because so few other people have their eye on the ball, and can see how it is happening. No one else, will burn the required amount of shoe leather.

The energy that we threw into property development in Ireland, and such was the focus from the financial industry. It is a pity, there isn’t a small bit of the same given to enterprise. Ireland would be in a quite different league then. We all talk about multi-nationals investing in Ireland. The very least important part of what they do is invest. Very often, all they do is coordinate efforts and resources in ways we never learned to do for ourselves. We don’t even give it an honest try.


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Enterprise Policy

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[ Draft in progress ]


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Niche Readership

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A commentator at the Irish Economy blog wrote,

If you think your implied jeremiad against economists

[ break ]

applies to Krugman, I’d be interested in seeing some details — and documentation.

I would like to ask a simply question. How many visitors to economics blogs, were indeed, readers of Paul Krugman’s work, prior to 2008?

Lets ask the question, how many visitors to the economics blogs, prior to 2008, would official claim to be avid readers of material by Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, Roger Lowenstein, Michael Lewis, Kenneth Galbraith or many others?

The fact is, quite few would openly claim to like reading an economics book, or an economics history book. What I mean is, the interest in that subject material was confined to a niche.

Then what happened in 2008? Let’s ask that question shall we?

I would relate it to the subject of property investment. I recall as a young teenager in the early 1990s in Dublin city in Ireland, I began to study a course known as Architecture.

At that time, it was no popular. Ireland had emerged into the decade of the 1990s, from a decade of the 1980s, which saw a lot of problems and very little solutions. But by the year 2000 and beyond in Ireland, it appeared that Ireland suddenly had a solution to everything.

In fact, we were supposedly a shining example to all the world. I was personally shocked by the fact that so many young, intelligent graduates from universities in Dublin came out in the 2000’s and tended to believe in all the hype.

I was suspicious. But what did that matter?

I was old school, out of date, and not trendy enough. Not willing to take a chance. Reach for the stars. Ireland had all the solutions, and anything else was officially un-cool.

Part of that idea, that a little country such as Ireland was invincible and possessed an solution to everything (even though it was all rotten to the core inside), was tied up in the subject of property investment.

Guess what? Everyone was an expert in property investment.

Everyone read newspaper articles, and watched programs on TV, and chatted in cafes and bars about property investment. Everyone had become an expert, and everyone had an iron in that fire. Or if they didn’t, they had some scheme to get an iron in the fire.

It’s easy to criticise banking institutions in Ireland today, in the absence of the social context that led directly to the property development in Ireland. But the fact was, much of the demand for the same, arose from the aspirations, beliefs and ambitions of the youngest, brightest and most able graduates from the universities in this country.

This leads me back to my point about Paul Krugman.

Essentially what has happened in Ireland in recent years, is that group think of one kind, has been replaced by group think of another kind. The brightest, the youngest and most able people in Ireland today, are all experts on economics and on figures such as Paul Krugman.

Where is that going to lead I may ask.

I was a frequent visitor to the Paul Krugman, or economics section of the bookstores in Dublin city, over the period of the 2000’s, prior to 2008.

However, I would say I was a lonely visitor to the same section. Not many folk in Dublin in that period when all the machinery of the Irish property boom was working full throttle, would even claim to have set foot in the Paul Krugman section of an Irish bookstores - much less, have an opinion about what he wrote.

But suddenly, that has all changed in Ireland.

Now, everyone wants to shout over everyone else, to claim how much of Krugman they have read, and understand, and can add to.

Now, like in the days of property boom, we are in the days of an economics bookstore boom, and everyone wants a piece of it.

Former Taoiseach, Brian Cowen liked to use a phrase, punching above our weight. I don't know what we are to do about this overly competitive streak in the modern Irish psyche.

My fear is that, by the time we are done, it will have been the ruination of the Irish as a people.


Brian O' Hanlon


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Change

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Michael Hennigan commented at the Irish Economy blog site,

For example tarring bankers and developers as greedy and egotistical may bring some satisfaction but how do most people behave in a system with limited accountability; the absence of concern for conflict of interest and weak/selective enforcement of rules?

Four years after the onset of the credit crunch, has Ireland embraced change or is it more satisfying to focus on failures elsewhere?

The distinction which should be made, is between an area where change is forced upon individuals, and other areas of the economy, where change is something folk deal with only in the abstract.

Change, as a word incorporated into text in brightly coloured strategy documents.

When I think of Irish leaders of the late twentieth century - McCreevy, Ahern, Harney - what springs to mind is the brightly coloured, policy brochures about change and a minister's smiling face beside it in the photo opportunity on the steps of a government department.

The document tried to speak, as the minister tried to smile. Should it be the opposite way around?

The cult of the Sunday morning radio chat show panel, to discuss in detail the glossy new brochure.

The payment of public relations companies to make sure the launch of the policy document fits seamlessly into the news cycle, to gain maximum benefit for the reigning political establishment.

The public launch. The logo that cost a million bucks. The minister for ‘X’ with their big wide smile.

The politics of celebrity. The cult of personality.

The coffers full of over flowing cash reserves, to pay the private sector consultant for the glossy cover and the catchy sounding title.

The title which politicians must learned to fold their tongue around.

The text which incorporated the word change.

Then we discover what happens in the chamber of parliament is hardly anything at all. Change management, is that which can be facilitated between one bar stool and another, in a drinking lounge.

The question we need to ask:

Was the outcome of all our documents, and photo opportunities, to dilute the meaning of words such as change, as perceived by those in Irish society?

The words have been vetted, they have been tested, sanded down, polished and varnished.

But has society in Ireland developed an immune system, to shut out the words?

Has change became a de-valued currency, in our state?


Brian O' Hanlon


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