2011 a year of hope

make your mark?

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/glanceview/138285/australians-cheer-in-2011.glance

Re: Make your Mark-

Let’s hope the fallout from the Australian floods, including restricting supplies of coal used for power generation and steel production worldwide dosn’t do down one of the few performing “western” economies left in the world and tip us all into a massive Depression for ten years.

I’d like for this year to be one where the rot stopped, the drop halted, the gloom and doom merchants were rebutted comprehensively by a resurgent economy and those committing economic treason against Ireland [élite deviant bankers, politicians and economists] were dealt with severely.

I can dream, can’t I?

ONQ.

slightly offtopic but liked this at the riai for their 5×10 event
http://www.riai.ie/news/article/call_for_presentations_5x10_event/

Also, the following words and phrases are forbidden:
‘Recession’
‘Green shoots of recovery‘
‘The Economy’
‘IMF/ECB’
‘Bottom of the market’
‘We’re all in it together’
‘Value engineering’
‘Wow Factor’
Any TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms)

The only Green Shoots should be those terminating all the Green Party Ministers.
Still, I’m heartened to see a certain degree of realism/humour creeping into the RIAI.

But I’m more than heartened – excited even – to see the new inclusiveness being offered.

“THE RIAI Healthcare Design Committee is calling for any RIAI Members and others who are interested in participating in the next event entitled 5×10, to be held at 8, Merrion Square at 4.30pm on Friday 21st January 2011.”

My Bold.

No doubt we’ll see a whole plethora of Architects Alliance of Ireland Members strutting their stuff.
As for me, I’d love to present my plans for 2011 but then I’d have to kill those present to keep them sekrit!

🙂

ONQ.

PS I see I’m now a Senior Grasshoppah – sorry – Member again – all praise to the jewel of your lotus, Old Master Clerkin.

@onq wrote:

Let’s hope the fallout from the Australian floods, including restricting supplies of coal used for power generation and steel production worldwide dosn’t do down one of the few performing “western” economies left in the world and tip us all into a massive Depression for ten years.

Whilst the Australian floods are a real tragedy and probably the first example of climate change doing an Aussie boomerang with the carbon returning to the point on earth from where it came; with a lot of interest; I wouldn’t be too worried that a flood in Queensland will sink the global recovery; all that happened was that the hot money on the ASX transferred to the Bovspa in Brazil who produce a similar amount of steel and coal to a lesser degree. Initial estimates place the flood damage at $1bn US; trailers on stilts damage a lot less severly than masonery homes with plaster finishes. Of a lot more concern is the steady rise in oil prices which combined with governments needing to raise duty to balance the books has the capacity to slow struggling economies down a lot further.

Also, the following words and phrases are forbidden:
Any TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms)

That is certainly going to happen; RPA, NRA, HSE, SoD, HIC (head in cupboard)

@onq wrote:

The only Green Shoots should be those terminating all the Green Party Ministers.

Certainly failings among the Greens but also some genuinely positive measures. Here is one – albeit a very simple straightforward initiative which should have been done years ago:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0105/1224286779803.html

Fair play to Ciaran Cuffe. I was speaking with him a few days after his appointment and I suggested that something as simple as this was the type of decision that the Govt/public service should have very little problem making. Too often there seems to be this overwhelming sense of inertia among the public service. In fairness to him, he agreed about the measure (a very important one for the growing number of cyclists in the country) and here we are a few months later.

Its not all bad news from the Glasrai 🙂

And, pray tell, what is the initiative ?
(not all of us have Irish Times subscriptions…)

You dont need a subscription….its a free site.

Bikes can now be taken onboard all off peak Irish Rail and DART services. The Govt is working with the RPA to facilitate bikes on Luas.

Perhaps they’ll stop all this small minded thinking and build a nice clear double glazed dome over the city to keep off the snow and rain and focus all the precipitation into the reservoirs with little crystals in the mix to regulate the solar gain and generate electricity to power the city, plus minimise our heating bills.

We could all cycle everywhere all the time then, no worries about being frozen, wet through or too hot.

Too ambitious? Think of the taxes we’d have to pay the Greens then…

ONQ.

@PVC King wrote:

2. That Nama hold an architectural competition to redesign the external cladding of the Anglo HQ skeleton on North Wall Quay; with a view to getting it off the skyline as a symbol of hubris and get it income producing to pay down the debt its intended occupants landed us with.

What have I missed?

Forgot to say this earlier –

I think you may have missed the point that a state of the art glazing system lies ready for collection in a German Factory.

If memory serves, this was according to Paddy Traynor, of Traynor O’Toole Architects which firm I understand designed the building before they went under.

IIRC he was on a radio programme a few months back and pleaded for someone to organize for this system to be put in place to preserve the work already done.

Without the “ANGLO” Logo, obviously…

ONQ.

@StephenC wrote:

@onq wrote:

Fair play to Ciaran Cuffe. I was speaking with him a few days after his appointment and I suggested that something as simple as this was the type of decision that the Govt/public service should have very little problem making. Too often there seems to be this overwhelming sense of inertia among the public service. In fairness to him, he agreed about the measure (a very important one for the growing number of cyclists in the country) and here we are a few months later.

Its not all bad news from the Glasrai 🙂

Stephen like you I was also a student of Ciaran at DIT; he is a smart guy, has very strong presentational skills and unlike the historical traiblazers of the party like Maire Mullarney he understands markets and the greater global game and the need for the green movement to work from the inside to effect real change.

The only issue that Ciaran ever promoted on this board that caught my attention was his very catchy- ‘Join the dots campaign’ of linking the two disparate Luas networks.

What we got from the Green Party in Government was

1. A motorway to Tuam with a design spec of up to 50,000 AADT and probable AADT of as low as 5,000 at one section of it
2. A metro project that may cost €3bn but only have a maximum intra journey demand level of 3,000 passengers per hour under the moderate i.e. likely growth projection; when Luas can carry 6,000 per hour.

One of the reasons why 2011 is a year of hope for me is that Ciaran and the Lenihan Bros he lodged with for the last 4.5 years i.e. the most economically destructive era in the history of the state will be gone. If the Greens had of stayed out it would have been a mere 2 by-elections to Head in Cupboard Bertie being chucked out and that would have been a long time before Lenihans gauranteed the unsubordinated anglo debt and then left Anglo to keep making bad loans unmonitored. Then the Greens could have joined a more suitable coalition that would not have built motorways to Tuam at the expense of the Dart Underground.

The other reasons are that the caravan of negative media coverage has moved on away from Ireland’s problems and the data coming out of the US indicates a very strong recovery is gaining traction there to compliment China, South Asia, India and Latin America; Ireland is very well positioned to take advantage of the opportunities this will create; earnings on the S & P are forecast to hit an all time record this year driven by IT, Finance and Healthcare, 3 industries we are disproportionately weighted in; once the ministerial clowns exit stage left confidence can start to grow again.

Deleted repeat post.

I have to agree with PVC King here.
The Greening of Fianna Fáil was what led me to support them in the last election.
Like most people I wanted to see the economy continue, and I beleived that the Green’s would restrain the FF excess.

Like everyone else who thought this – I was wrong.
The Greens have achieved litte except ramping up the requirements for insulation and energy saving.
This is a front-loading of cost onto the price of any building in the middle of a Recession – a short sighted strategy.
Worse, they have single-handedly committed us to Carbon Neutral homes by 2013 which I think is totally unworkable.
Even Europe, which still has a functioning building industry, isn’t scheduling this sea change to occur until circa 2018.

Moralistic, pseudo-principled, clever, and yet the Greens don’t seem to have a clue.
Instead of reining in FF’s excesses, once they had their little fiefdom/s established, they looked the other way.
They will go the way of the PD’s at the next election, survived by perhps Ryan and Gormley, but no-one will touch them now.

I believe this is a pity, not for the Gormley’s of the world, but because like you I have formed a very favourable impression of Ryan.
His work with Jeff Colle yin Construct Ireland to devise a funding method that pays for upgrades through utilities bills was good out of the box thinking.
Unfortunately having been tainted with the FF hubris and incompetence this time around, it may be a while before he sees a cabinet seat again.
Still, he’s young, interested and intelligent and I wish him well.

Cuffe I am afraid may follow him into the widerness – eager to hold power and make a difference, teh circumstances of the bank bailout and its consequences over the next ten years may have utterly destroyed their political credibility.

As for Gormley, well, he brought in the Building Contorl Act 2007 and you all know where I stand on that ham-fisted half-attempt to regulate architects while disenfranchishing graduates, and allowing everyone else to provide archtiectural services – no signs of joined up thinking there.

If the man had one shred of accountability and any political nous, we’d be having an election this week.
OTOH, ony a total asshat would have waited until now to act, given his knowledge of what has gone before and then ignored any kind of regard for the safety of the electorate by suggesting we hold and election in the middle of winter.

“Conspiring and corrupted” – staying in bed with FF after September 2008

or

“simply stupid” – thinking January was a good time to spend a load of money getting people out to vote.

– you chose.

ONQ.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/letters/2011/0108/1224287034550.html