How do you make the medicine go down? With a spoon full of sugar of course. Watch me explain on video here Last year when I found myself speaking into a vacuum about debt and austerity in Ireland, I decided to use the one weapon at my disposal, the one thing the banks could not take from me – namely my pen – and I wrote a trilogy that has at its core the harsh human cost of our economic tragedy. And I say tragedy because most of what has happened to Ireland was so unnecessary. I can guarantee that in all the reviews of 50shades there is not one mention of the collapse of the American banking system. Whereas in the reviews of my humble trilogy there are loads of references to the social and economic landscape that is Ireland today. So, if you fancy the idea of reading about Ireland in recession, spiced up with some very naughty bits (for people cannot live by recession alone) then I think it would be a very good thing to buy and read my books. Telling the truth through fiction (and naughty bits) seems like an honourable thing to do. […]
Continue readingTag Archives: debt
Irish public should not pay for sins of the banks
First published by The Irish Independent on 30/09/2014 http://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/irish-public-should-not-pay-for-sins-of-the-banks-30547742.html It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in debt for a thousand euro is worried, but that when a man is in debt for a million, then the bank is worried. Or it used to be like that. Now the odds are that someone has to be in debt for a multiple of that amount before anyone loses any sleep, least of all the banks. Actually, it is least of all the banks – the new rules of capitalism mean that while bank debt is socialised, bank profit is retained for the few. How very convenient for them but, of course, it was always like that when it came to those too big to fail. We live in very different world financially and the Irish have been hit the hardest in this recent catastrophe. Sometimes we forget that there is a global financial crisis and we are only a tiny cog in the middle of it. The sad part is, like the new breed of capitalism, we have also been subject to new rules, sucking up 42pc of the Eurozone banking crisis debt. Given that we are a […]
Continue reading
Coming out
It is wonderful to see mental health issues being talked about in the open. Last week on television, footballing brothers, Ian and Gary Kinsela, launched 32countyjerseys in memory of their brother Jonathan and in aid of Pieta House. Another Dublin footballer Paul Flynn said talking about mental health was pivotal to dealing with it. If he had a hamstring injury he would go to the doctor, so why not a mental issue? This is a huge step forward. The TV3 interviewer Aidan Cooney, being a man of a certain age, said that talking about mental health was very much frowned upon when he was growing up. No one would dare say they felt under the weather or needed a hug. It could be misconstrued in a number of ways, and none of them were welcome. A couple of years ago, I was involved with a Twitter-based initiative called #Depressionhurts run by the admirable Norah Boran and Alan Lavender and through the programme people shared their stories of mental health issues. It was the first time I came across the term ‘the black dog’ which has since become a keystone in describing depression. I remember vividly one man wrote about the […]
Continue readingDirty Girls and Dirty Debt
There are 800 skeletons of small children found in a septic tank in Tuam, Co Galway. This horrific discovery was first made back in the 1960s by two small boys but nothing was done, no investigation made, not even a graveyard instituted. It was left to a local man Padraig to try and create a small memorial and sadly he passed away last week. It was left to local historian Catherine Corless to try and provide a proper and fitting response. The babies were looked after in a Bon Secours institution, called ironically The Home, from 1920s to the 1960s The babies were all born to unwed mothers; mothers who were thrown out of their family homes to give birth to their bastard children in an institution. If their babies survived they were often forcibly sold into adoption with suitable parents. The death toll of these children was four times the national average. The girls were often forced to work as indentured slaves as a punishment for their crime of having a child out of wedlock. Some pregnancies would have been as a result of violence and perhaps rape. Some would have been as a result of ignorance of contraception […]
Continue reading
Debt is the single biggest issue of our century – Primetime Monday 19, 2014
Debt is the single biggest issue facing the Irish people this century both on a national and European stage. When history comes to be written the issue of debt in our time will be as big an issue as the famine was in the 19th century. And ironically, the misery caused by both – the deaths, suicides, emigration and homelessness – are utterly preventable. We know that we hold 42 percent of the debt from the banking crisis in Europe. We also know this is wrong, that this is an unjust debt, an odious debt. The current government was voted in three years ago with an overwhelming mandate to renegotiate this debt but they did nothing. They did not even ask for a single cent back. This is why I want to go to Europe to right that wrong. Why should you send me to Europe? I have personally felt the impact of austerity in a real and painful fashion. Last year the banks repossessed my home, my business failed and bailiffs called to my door. I tried the Insolvency Service but I was too broke. I was forced to go bankrupt. But as I hit rock […]
Continue readingDebt is Divisive
Debt is Divisive If you prefer you can listen to this essay here in part I, part II and part III – in total it takes less than ten minutes to listen to all three recordings. Let us be very clear about this issue. Debt is divisive. At the risk of being inflammatory, it gets the same level of mixed emotion as the R word. Depending on your perspective, and level of solvency, it can be a very dirty word. Debt is genuinely divisive. Where the needle turns is when the system breaks down, as it has done on an international basis. We are now living in unchartered waters where the rules have changed and the language is polarised. We need to understand what debt is, how we got into it, how we get out of it – and how we deal with debt when the system is broken. And we need to do this without the rhetoric of hate, shame and scapegoating. Nobody said debt was easy but it doesn’t need to be so hard. And it doesn’t need to cost life – no more please. Let’s consider debt. In the good ole days, getting into debt was a […]
Continue readingIt is that simple – really!
History is littered with examples of ordinary people making the impossible possible Think Rosa Parkes and the civil rights movement Think of that student in front of the Tank in Tiananmen Square Think of the little boy and the Emperor’s New Clothes (ok he was fictional) Think of the power of someone who has nothing to lose and everything to gain Think of me and give me your vote on May 23rd I have changed the law. I can do so much more. Send me to Europe to ask for our money back. Ralph Waldo Emerson: ‘You have not failed until you have quit trying.’ Visit An Uncomfortable Truth documentary here
Continue readingDebt, Survival and Hope – please view and share
My friends at SETV asked me if I would talk to camera about my journey so far in debt. I know I am only in the middle. I have not finished my journey. I am still in hock to the banks for more than €1million, my home is repossessed, my business gone, my possessions sold save for a ten year old American Fridge Freeze from my old house, and while that is very good at keeping food cold, it is less reliable as a place to live lol 🙂 I have learnt one thing on this journey, which is far from over, that while worries may assail us on all sides, it is also vital to live even as we struggle. We will not get back the years that debt may steal from us, so the only alternative is to live like crazy, seize the day and love, and breathe, and hope, and be. Always be. This is for anyone dealing with debt. God bless! xx View VIDEO here and please let me know what you think 🙂
Continue readingMy week on @Ireland – my parting message
What an amazing week. I will write about my lovely time as the curator of the @Ireland account tomorrow but I am running out the door now and so I just want to ask people who follow the account to look at this presentation I did on debt, survival and hope. http://bcove.me/i68kpnpg or click on the icon on www.SouthEastTelevision.ie This is a talk I did with SouthEast Television called I wonder – about debt,survival and hope I really put my heart and soul into this. I think it is important. I am passionate about not being ashamed at failing financially. Neither should you be – if you have the misfortune to be down on your luck. God bless! Remember – This too will pass…
Continue readingThree things I learnt at Trailblazers
The first is that I am not afraid. I wanted to rise up from my seat in the upper Special Criminal Court house and call it out. Colm O’Gorman was speaking. It felt a bit like the eponymous Jeffers’ book: Feel the fear but do it anyway. My heart pounded and I wanted to stand up and call it out but it wasn’t my time and maybe I had confused my emotion with a film from Hollywood. But I felt it very strongly. The second is the level of propaganda promulgated by the status quo. When Ross Maguire spoke he talked of giving ordinary home owners a break, a time out. He wanted a dignified mechanism that could be implemented without the mortgage holder having to beg for help or worse not been listened to at all. Terms such as debt forgiveness and moral hazard are used by …bankers. How dare they? The purveyors of Usury should not be allowed to dictate the ethics of our society. For that is at the very nub of this problem. We are a society of individuals who have come together to create our world. Service providers, such as finance houses, are there to […]
Continue reading