Slugger O'Toole

In Episode Six of #CargoOfBricks, Mick speaks to Eric Lonergan who, with Mark Blyth, in #Angrynomics critiques how populism exploits the vacuum between democratic politics and unregulated markets, and those markets and the real economy:

• At the crux of the book, anger is one of the most powerful agencies within politics just now. It takes two forms: moral anger as in the witness of injustice and an improving agent within society and the second which acts as a tribal identity regulator.

• As mainstream politicians have 'biased upwards', listening to the voices of the elite, rather than the poor, angry, frustrated, or distressed. Populism has moved into that gap to give such folks a public voice. And meaningful policy choice gets lost.

• However, Governments can redistribute wealth to those who don't have it and use targeted low-interest rate loans to enable the private sector to drive an ambitious Green New Deal and enable governments to regenerate our starved public services.
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Much food for thought for the new Irish government. Get a copy, preferably from your local bookshop (like No Alibis Books in Belfast) or, if you really have to, Hive, Amazon or some other online space.

If you are (still) really passionate about democratic politics, you'll enjoy this very important book. Meantime, see you next week. You can subscribe to Cargo of Bricks, Slugger TV, and our other podcasts on Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts or Spotify.

In episode five of Cargo of Bricks podcast, I spoke to Tina McKenzie who is the current chair of the FSB in Northern Ireland as well as CEO of Grafton Recruiting and honorary consul to Finland about how business had coped with the lockdown.

Subjects included:

• The fact that there was no time to plan for the massive disruption that lockdown would bring, that businesses had some big decisions to make without a lot of guidance from government in London or Belfast. It was a leap into the unknown.
• But working from home has forced a radical rethink of how her business operates. Outputs became the key focus, and as outputs held up people relaxed. And new rules were brought into to protect the tricky work/life for people working at home.
• In terms of politics, COVID has made people more flexible in their thinking. They are willing to trust politicians to show similar leadership on Brexit, and to take tough decisions in health and schools to free up cash for investment elsewhere.  

David McCann is joined by commentators Julie-Anne Corr Johnston and Tim Cairns to discuss how Northern Ireland is coming out of lockdown and what sort of economy we will emerge into, as well as the fallout of Dominic Cummings’ trip to Durham on Boris Johnson’s political currency. Edited by Alan Meban.

Many sectors in Northern Ireland are facing a skills shortage. In this podcast I chat with Ellie Francis about how this will affect the economy.

In this week’s episode of Cargo of Bricks, as the draft programme for government finally emerges nearly five months after February, Dr Theresa Reidy and I talked through the blocks and difficulties that have had to be overcome to get a sellable deal back to their parties

The main points we cover: 

• The ideologically committed Greens have take harder line in the framing of the draft programme than either Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil, making their more distinctive and is harder for their two larger coalition partners to usurp and claim as their own.
• WAs Sinn Féin take on, for the first time, the constitutional role as leader of the opposition, will come a challenge to develop an even greater pallet of solution based, and a need to get on top of internal operational matters that have drawn poor publicity in the past.
• In an era of "two Taoisigh", will Micheál Martin and Leo Varadkar's 'spikey pragmatism' see them through? Nothing tests a government like 'events dear boy, events'. And what will happen to the first when he steps down from the top office?

Andrew Hill is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at St. Philip's College in San Antonio, Texas. In this podcast we talk about the recent race protests in America, inequality and the upcoming S Presidential Election.

In this week’s episode of Cargo of Bricks, I’m talking with Professor Gary Murphy of Dublin City University about last February's tumultuous general election and the dilemmas facing the now five-month-long process of government formation.

In it, we dissect:

• How Ireland's swing from right to left, illustrated by the collapse in the Fine Gael vote and Sinn Féin's unanticipated great leap forward, has nullified Micheál Martin's long-held ambition to lead a non-SF, left-leaning coalition government.
• The political purgatory now facing the two traditional enemies of the southern state as they face up to the possibility that they may never see power again if they don't do the last thing many of their activists want to see and govern together.
• And through all of this despite taking his party to the unprecedented success of 12 Dail seats the Greens leader, Eamon Ryan faces a last-minute defenestration as leader by his deputy, Catherine Martin, who is also the party's chief negotiator. 

In this week's episode of Cargo of Bricks, I'm talking with Graham Brownlow who is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at Queens Management School in Belfast about the economic effects of Covid 19, and what he thinks our response needs to be.

Some of the themes we talked about include:

• Rise of internet-based giants like Amazon poses huge business case challenges for local retail calling into question its capacity to continue providing services to local communities, leading to downward pressure on commercial rents...
• Northern Ireland's economy remains disproportionately reliant on low waged and low skilled workers who are suffering disproportionately during the crisis by taking on higher health risks and a more uncertain future.
• Belfast, not Derry, is the outlier in terms of economic performance, so the recovery plan must invest long term ambitions to overturn demographic and geographic imbalances through early years learning, clean budget planning, and infrastructure.

David is the founder of Founder Aurora Prime Real Estate Ltd. He was also the chair of CBI NI as well as the MAC Belfast. Amongst his previous roles was the Chief Executive of Titanic Quarter Ltd. While his background is in business and finance, he also has a keen interest in the environment and social justice. 

This week, Slugger Editor Mick Fealty spoke to Ian Parsley whose frequently updated blog you should definitely put on your reading list for its incisive analysis of many aspects government, and most recently for his coverage of Covid 19.

In it we cover:

• How Northern Ireland was lucky to get Stormont back to work on time
• How the UK's and the Republic's efforts compare with the approaches of other European countries
• Why honesty in the shortcomings of our initial responses is key to learning how to better respond to a second wave.