The Other Hand

With Professor Shane O'Mara Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The US Congress is not a serious legislature Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With Nathan Johns of The Irish Times. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is ESG investing getting it right? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Will the ECB this week do the right thing? (Spoiler alert: nothing) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nathan Johns @nathanrjohns of the Irish Times discusses all of the action in this weekend's quarter finals of the Rugby World Cup.One unfancied team making the semis is ok, two reveals poor RWC seeding & planning. But Nathan convincingly argues that calibrating these things is difficult.Nathan persuades Chris that the 'technical' aspects of the game are as important as the flashier, more 'entertaining' stuff.But isn't rugby all about tries?What about the big one, the final? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The end of liberal conceits? Chris thinks there is evidence for the existence of more anti-Semitism in the world, latent or otherwise, than most are prepared to admit. In the UK, few people can quite bring themselves to believe the evidence of their own eyes and admit to the anti-Semitism present in the Labour party - at least until Starmer began to clean the stables.Everyone, everywhere, says they are not anti-Semitic but despise Israeli policies.For many that is true, genuine and honest. For too many, it's just a mantra to put a thin veil over their anti-Semitism.Chris argues that something pretty fundamental shifted in the past few days. Jim disagrees.Hard thinking and endless reading (and listening) provides few answers and reveals only questions. One (possible) conclusion is that those with certainty are not to be trusted. Three thousand yers of history count for a lot, for all sides in this conflict. Great harm has been done to and by all sides.The intellectual contortions, verbal machinations, sheer flabby-mindedness of the world's left-liberal commentariat has been a wonder to behold. They try hard to blame, of course, Hamas, but 'provide context' via a critique of US foreign policy for the past hundred years. And, of course, blame Israel. It's the old politicians trick, in grotesque form, of saying something true and then immediately following up with a complete non sequitur. F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." Well, we certainly have plenty of first rate intellectuals around the West who believe that Hamas is entirely to blame for the terrorist attacks.. But so is the US and Israel. History provides plenty of facts. Choose one - or a few - in isolation and it is easy to take sides.Policy wonks have been claiming all week that they Hamas did what they did because they wanted to derail Israel-Saudi rapprochemont. If that is true, Hamas have succeeded. But how does anyone know what Hamas wants, other than their oft-stated aim of the destruction of Israel and the death of every Jew? The terrorism of Hamas might just have been nihilistic in nature, with little or no strategic thinking behind it. Perhaps Hamas 'succeeded' beyond their wildest dreams and haven't a clue what to do next other than to keep fighting, probably to death of all of them except their corpulent generals, safe behind lines, comfortably ensconced in luxury hotels in Qatar. Probably the hotels built for the football World Cup. Nothing, nothing at all, justifies what Hamas did. What Hamas did won't justify doing the same in return.The world is heading for catastrophe if Gaza is 'levelled'. The shrivelling West is trying to hold the Israelis back. The term in international law is 'proportionality'. We won't see that unless there is another fundamental shift.Now that World's policeman, the US, has left the stage - descended into isolationism and chaos in the case of Washington DC - conflicts will be a much more regular feature of the next 70 years. The period since WW2 was, historically, a remarkably peaceful time. 'Pax Americana' is no more. The 'Global South' is getting off the fence and landing in Beijing.Slightly more mundane thoughts:The Chair of the Federal Reserve made a daft speech this week. Sentiments that we are more used to seeing coming out of the ECB.Geopolitics are disrupting the bond markets and threaten a stock market crash. The Fed's response? 'We might have to raise interest rates'.Watch what they do rather than what they say but this is, at worst, mad, at best, irresponsible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Octabuild were kind enough to host Jim & Chris for a Webinar discussing all things Budget 2024, with a special focus on the construction industry.The 8 member companies of Octabuild are Dulux Paints, Etex Ireland, Glennon Brothers, Grant Engineering, Gyproc, Irish Cement, Kingspan Insulation and Wavin Ireland’.The national housing crisis puts the construction industry at the heart of what happens next. So, all things considered, this was an extremely timely event with a focus that couldn't be more topical.This podcast is a recording of the Octabuild Webinar. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ireland's export data weakens again. It's beginning to look like a trend. And maybe the world economy is weaker than we thought.The Health Service needs more money. How many countries can say that? It's as true in Ireland as elsewhere. But the suspicion grows that you could give the HSE any amount of money and it would still have a budget hole of €2 billion at the end of the year. Any year. Somebody needs to find teh cure for fiscal incontinence.The world looks ever more dangerous by the day. Plenty of gloomy analyses are appearing that look back on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as the start of something akin to the events that began with assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in June 1914. At the very least, lots of seemingly disparate events are observed and then linked in ways that make for alarmist headlines. The war in Ukraine, Iran’s threatened war against Israel, conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Serbia might be about to invade Kosovo, the US placing two carrier groups in the eastern Mediterranean and Chinese threats against Taiwan: all of these things are, for some observers, beginning to look like a pattern. The thread - if there is one - that links most or all of these conflicts, actual or threatened, is growing American dysfunction and, in particular, isolationism of the US. One interpretation of post WW2 history is that the world went through an unusually peaceful period mostly because of ‘Pax Americana’: the US as the global policeman. Commentators such as Hal Brands of Johns Hopkins, prominent blogger (‘Substacker’ to be precise) Noah Smith and historian Niall Ferguson have all penned dark and pessimistic pieces focussing on different aspects of the threats facing the world. All agree that those threats have not been as great for a very long time. Mostly because ‘Pax Americana’ is over.History does teach us that what happens next is unlikely to have been predicted by anybody. But the more apocalyptic analysts see two obvious threats. First, the Israeli armed forces are overwhelmed fighting a three front war in Gaza, the West Bank and along the Lebanese border. Somewhere - perhaps everywhere - in that fight will be Iran. If the US gets involved, so, perhaps, will Iran’s new ally, Russia. As an intermediate possible step, Qatar could disrupt global supplies of natural gas in the same way OPEC did to oil in the 1970s - that would make last year’s spike in energy prices look like a small-scale rehearsal. The other big foreseeable threat is Taiwan. China has said, explicitly, that it will take back the Island. If it intends to do so over the next decade or so, now would seem to be the most opportune time. ‘Joining the dots’ is the favourite activity of the armchair analyst. The pictures that emerge from these exercises can be truly alarming. They could, of course, be completely wrong. But a lot of people are drawing very similar pictures. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why Ireland lost in a game of the finest of margins - really.On the numbers, Ireland and New Zealand could replay that game, deploy the same players and tactics, and Ireland would win 9 games out of 10. This was the tenth game.What about Ireland going forward - looking good, even in terms of replacing Jonny Sexton. Tight Head Prop, a massively under-rated position, could be more problematic.How is it possible that England are the only undefeated side in the World Cup? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.