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The CSO data today showed why people did not want change
"Average weekly earnings were €955.49 in Quarter 3 (Q3) 2024, up 5.3% from €907.10 in Q3 2023"

How much house will €955.49 per week buy?

FF have 43 seats. Compared to peak FF that is down at least 30. I suppose the main beneficiaries of FF downsizing would be independents and SF.

https://www.paddypower.com/gaelic-games/club-hurling

Na Fianna  6/5
Sars      3/1
SN        7/2
Loughrea  4/1

Great vote management by FF, pretty good by SF and a mixed bag by FG.  It's FFFG for the foreseeable future in Ireland until there's another major crash.  SF just couldn't convince enough people that they would actually change things.  They leaked votes to nearly everyone.  I'm not sure where SF go from here?  A left leaning transfer pact going into an election looks essential not as an after thought the day before voting.  I can't see Mary Lou leading them into the next election.  She's good with people but got stuck on the detail in some interviews.

A crash that brings down house prices is overdue. If the rule is that smaller parties in coalitions get shafted in the next election, a second rule is that large parties get shafted when house prices fall.


   https://www.ft.com/content/49cca8d7-7b6e-47e3-a50c-9557d7c85fc0

   Talk of bubbles in tech or AI, or in investment strategies focused on growth and momentum, obscures the mother of all bubbles in US markets. Thoroughly dominating the mind space of global investors, America is over-owned, overvalued and overhyped to a degree never seen before. As with all bubbles, it is hard to know when this one will deflate, or what will trigger its decline.

https://www.ft.com/content/6c95004a-a569-4633-9eab-88479bcbc086
 Trump's team sees trade through the prism of hierarchies of power — ie as a tool to increase America's market dominance in a world where trading "partners" are anything but equal. Trade policy is thus not just defensive, or driven only by domestic goals (such as bringing industrial processes onshore to create jobs); it also aims to suck economic activity from rivals to America, and to weaken them, say by forcing the producers of commodities in other countries to slash their export prices.

Fianna Fail haven't been able to reach their pre 2007 heights when they used to be able to reach a majority or needed a few seats from the Progressive Dems or the Greens to reach a majority. I don't see how anyone in the party can get excited about the return this time around.

Ballygunner are gone. 2 goals killed them.

Tá na Piarsaigh croí briste

What's is the draw for all Ireland series? Semi finals before Christmas?

Fianna are playing Loughrea in 2 weeks

KK are quite young. They will be back. Great to see Donal Burke getting MotM.

Putin is now launching ICBMs against Ukraine.

They might hold on to 2 or 3 with transfers

Any big names in trouble?

Stephen Donnelly apparently.

Catherine Martin and Grainne Seoighe

https://monthlyreview.org/2011/03/01/structural-crisis-in-the-world-system/

The primary characteristic of a structural crisis is chaos. Chaos is not a situation of totally random happenings. It is a situation of rapid and constant fluctuations

Five more years! Five more years!

At least Hutch will make it more entertaining.

Who is Starsky?