Ground Zero

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This is the new TCD biosciences building. You're in Pearse St. at the junction of Sandwith St. looking towards the Westland Row and Tara St. intersections.

I pass here regularly and have been keeping an eye on the site since it was a ground level car park. It now looks more or less finished, but you never know what lies behind a new building façade these days.

Clearly, the intention was to let the ground level to some sort of retail activities. No doubt the rent from these was expected to offset some of the mortgage/loan service costs.

So far this has not worked out and the ground level windows and doors have huge, very lifelike, photos behind the glass, depicting a newsagent's, a coffee dock, and something else I can't quite fathom.

It struck me to wonder yesterday if these images had in any way been customised to the locality they were now displayed in. So I had a quick look at the magazine shelves to see if there were any Irish publications on display.

Divil a bit. A panorama of globalised civilisation? They all looked American (USA) to me.

And the newspapers? Those that I could see and identify were American: Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and the Arizona Reporter.

Then there was the coffee dock. The newspaper was something called Arts Entertainment. Certainly not one of ours. But, wait a minute. There is something odd about the girl's t-shirt.

Indeed there is. She is wearing it inside out. The photo is not reversed as the menu and newspapers are OK. So what is this then. The t-shirt is for College Heights Christian School, which has a catchment area in four US states and gives a first and second level Christian education. Did the shoot director figure this was too specific for the stock photos he was shooting and ask her to turn it inside out? Intriguing.

But there was a limit to the globalised input. One of our own, with blue paint and brush, had gone around obliterating invisible nipples. Well, some of them, anyway. Yes, the paint is on the outside of the glass!

And again. Maybe John Charles was right about Trinity after all and Maria Duce should have been given freer rein in its day.

It's a wonder our graffiti person left the bra strap showing, but then there's no accounting for taste.

Company Profile
Update 23 June 2016
I passed this way again today and, thankfully, most of the ground floor units are occupied.

You will remember this one from above, and the miracle is ...

... four years on, one blued nipple still survives.

Piggybank

I got a most evocative stocking present on Christmas morning.

A piggybank.

Now these were designed in the past to encourage thrift.

"What's thrift?" I hear you ask.

Well, it was a pre Celtic Tiger virtue which meant you saved some of your income for a rainy day, or a family emergency, or to buy something you couldn't quite afford yet.

The piggybank always had a zero or positive balance.

It has, unfortunately, been replaced by the credit card. These, contrary to what their name implies and unlike the piggybank, always have a negative balance. In fact if you have more than one of them they can add up to an exponentially negative balance. They should more appropriately be called debit cards, but then we already have debit cards and they have a positive balance, don't they? Very confusing.

But that is all for another day.

Back to the piggybank.

My new one is well suited to saving in a period of reduced income. It is no bigger than a table tennis ball, so it can quite adequately cope with the likely volume of savings.

In fact, the deposit slot at the top will accept nothing greater than a 20 cent piece in €urocurrency.

It also has a withdrawal hole on the underside which is normally bunged up lest any savings leak.

However, when you get to the stage of withdrawing your meagre savings, you find that not even a 1 cent piece will pass through the hole.

So, to get at your savings, you just have to break the bank.

QED.

Bottled?

An icon for today's Ireland?

A moment in the slow death of the Irish Glass Bottle Company building, Ringsend, Dublin.

The site is now at the centre of the burst property bubble and is raising massive issues of governance in the state, state-sponsored, and private sectors.

Don't Bank on It

"The liquidator's report to the High Court said bluntly that the bank had been 'operated and run by the directors with scandalous disregard not only for the Companies Act but also for the Central Bank Act'. According to liquidator Paddy Shortall, possible offences included bribery, conspiracy, corrupt transactions, falsifying or destroying books, publishing fraudulent statements, making false returns to the Central Bank, concealment of property and obtaining credit by false pretences. On foot of his report the Garda Fraud Squad was called in but no further action was taken against Gallagher in this jurisdiction"

The Builders, pps 32/3

Sounds familiar, but it is not about Anglo Irish. This was Patrick Gallagher's Merchant Banking which collapsed in 1982, twenty six years ago.

And there has been no shortage of other implosions over the years, both in this country and abroad, which underlined the need for rigorous, conservative and cross-border supervision. ICI (1985), Savings and Loan crisis (1980/90s), BCCI (1991), Enron (2001), to name but a few.

But the country was becoming bewitched by the Celtic Tiger and it's hubris knew no bounds.

The Celtic Tiger, insofar as it represented genuine economic advancement, was the product of a number of sensible polices over previous decades, including investment in education, strict (albeit intermittent) control of the public finances, joining the EU, attraction of multi-national industries from abroad, and developing an indigenous entrepreneurial sector.

Unfortunately, the financial sector, or at least a large proportion of it along with property developers, lost the run of itself. It was subject to "light regulation" and was, inter alia, advancing megabucks to speculative developers and 100%+ mortgages to ordinary housebuyers. The state itself was becoming accustomed to a lavish income stream, much of it generated by excessive property values and ultimately dependent on mega-loans from abroad.

The country was firmly in hock to the bubble. The system could only continue to work as long as property values kept rising at a sufficient rate to keep householders in positive net equity and to sustain the enormous gambles being taken by the developers and the banks.

Now that the bubble has burst, the country is burdened with repayment of these loans at a time when "private" real estate values have tumbled and public sector income is massively reduced.

And the public sector is stuck with servicing a settlement pattern which has been effectively determined by a crowd of cute hoors rather than sensible long term planning. The Kenny Report (1973) made recommendations aimed at taking the corruption out of land zoning and ensuring that any increase in land values as a result of zoning accrued mainly to the community. These recommendations were sacrificed on the altar of the absolute rights of "private property" by successive governments hiding behind the constitution. It cannot speak well for our democratic system that one party (FF) has been in power for 80% of the last half century.

Some of these thoughts flashed through my mind the other day when I noticed the sign on the pillar of the headquarters of the Bank of Ireland in Baggot St. I wondered if, in its current straitened circumstances, the bank might ultimately be obliged to take down the sign and lease the space for the very activities it now prohibits.

God forbid.




Previous posts:
Blogging against Poverty Bloody bankers et al.
Blogging for the Environment Perverse incentives in the economic system.
Crock of Gold Pardon the somewhat optimistic conclusion!