Martin Meenagh blog

Somewhere in time--well, ninety-six years ago to be precise--the Irish rebellion happened. By some strange synchronicity, I notice that the anniversary was welcomed by headlines such as 'Ireland Meets Austerity Targets' and 'Ireland Proves Itself to Germany'. Ah well. Still, in faith I know that resurrections happen. Still...

I wrote about the News International scandal and what it would reveal nearly two years ago. It's one of those moments, like Dallas, or Watergate, or Mary Meyer or David Kelly, when you glimpse the skull beneath the skin of the West, if you have the courage to look at it. The one thing that struck me, though, today, hearing of Rupert and James Murdoch's testimony, is oddly enough another echo from the sixties; If You Remember News International, You Weren't There....

Currency Unions After the Euro The world is full of currency schemes. SDRs, Khalijees, East African Shillings, Ecos, ASUs, and Tasman Dollars currently follow stages of gestation and quickening which would trouble St Thomas Aquinas, for example. There;s nothing, after all, that wrong with a currency union per se. I live in one; the purchasing value of the pound in London, the North, and the various parts of Cymru-Kernow varies, both between the regional areas and with regard to the Isle of Man, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, which all technically issue their own currency. I suppose since regional inflation is a given, regional real interest rates differ, but there is no mechanism for the difference to be expressed beyond regional differences in unemployment and government spending. From a London perspective, the thing seems to work reasonably well. You would have thought that the eurozone's ongoing crisis had poisoned the well of any less national schemes, but the world seems to h...

The Speech the Chancellor Should Have Given on Budget Day Mr Speaker, our budget this year takes place in a changed economic environment. It is now clear that we live in a global economy which has so fundamentally changed from its previous form that we would do well to call it 'globalisation 2.0'. In this new dispensation, a series of imbalances compete with periodic, oil-based contractions to reorganise global and national economies. It is clearly the case that cheap oil, by which I mean oil at viable prices, which can be extracted relatively easily, is a thing of the past. Though prices may fluctuate, and though there are clearly reserves that will last for centuries, oil is now found at depths and temperatures and in ways that stretch technology to the limit, and which invite ecological disasters. We, on the other hand, in the UK are lucky Mr Speaker. Not only are gas and oil fields still producing for export--with a combination of English and Scottish technology and integra...