Looking around at the end of the year

Well its a funny old Christmas this year with ups and downs in the economy. For a laugh or cynical look at the current situation, you could listen to Joseph O'Connor and his radio diary from yesterday's Drivetime on RTE Radio One, it goes nicely with Frank Nally's column in the IT today.

On brighter news, 50% service has been returned to the Shannon-Heathrow route so maybe there are some minor Christmas presents. We'll ignore the loss of revenue to the region of the last number of months and the fact its only a partial return of the service and take it, however I'm sure the local Government politicans will do better in the New Year as its full service return or they're not fighting the case in my book.
Hat tip to John and Nev for the SOS photos.
Hat tip to Nev for the photo.

On a more worrying note it looks increasingly more likely that Dell will be phased down in a fashion to minimise the company's repayment of Government grants. This isn't particularly great news and it looks like this abandoned factory in Raheen may soon have more company.
Hat tip to slinky2000 for the photo.

It looks like the private sector will feel the pain in the New Year and one wonders with the ERSI report will that happen in the public sector, it should (as I've said before) but the lack of authority shown by the current Government doesn't inspire much hope in this area. All I can hope is that maybe some of the sagely advice given by more optimistic people such as Elaine will be taken and perhaps we'll have a brighter 2009.