Marking Time

• Turbulence Ahead: Pay More, Get Less
  "In Irish politics it seems that the winning formula for electoral success is to a) have a genetic relationship with the previous incumbent (preferably patrilineal), and b) be very good at running election campaigns."
  (tags: ireland politics)
• Ronan Lyons: Are Irish workers undertaxed?
  "This pattern since 2000 is important for where we are now, because a common explanation of how Ireland got into its fiscal mess is over-reliance on receipts from property taxes."
  (tags: ireland economics politics)

At the moment I’m attempting to convert my vinyl collection to digital - a weird, wonderful, sometimes embarrassing, and sometimes plain frightening trip back to my teenage years. In the pile I came across The Tenement Year by Pere Ubu which brought back memories of the albums they made on the Fontana label. I didn’t know they had been remastered and re-released so I wandered over to Amazon and got three of them for €20. Magic.

Here’s a live performance of Breath from the Cloudland album. I love the energy and the joy of the performance. This is what rock music is all about. RIP Jim Jones, the wonderful guitarist who died in February.

• NYTimes.com - PAUL KRUGMAN - Erin Go Broke
  "And the lesson of Ireland is that you really, really don’t want to put yourself in a position where you have to punish your economy in order to save your banks."
  (tags: ireland economics politics)