Author: Philip Lane

Eurovision and the Euro Crisis

The Montenegro entry addresses the crisis: video here; lyrics here.

Latin Scholarship, FT Alphaville and Promissory Notes

Here is the FT Alphaville take on the promissory notes saga, along with a nice selection of Latin expressions.

New CSO GDP/BOP data

The national accounts release is here; the BOP release is here.

  • 2011 real GDP growth is +0.7%
  • But 2011 nominal GDP growth is less at +0.3% (deflation still an issue for GDP deflator)
  • 2011 real GNP shrank by -2.5%
  • Q4 data sees small fall in GDP, larger fall for GNP.
  • Small current account surplus for 2011
  • Cumulative errors and omissions in BOP for 2010-2011 of euro 19.5 billion

Tiny Plays for Ireland – Guest Post by Gavin Kostick

Gavin Kostick writes:

Last September Philip Lane was kind enough to let me announce the launch of Fishamble: The New Play Company’s “Tiny Plays for Ireland” on the blog.

The call for submissions with The Irish Times resulted in over 1,700 entries – a word count of over a million. The Irish Times tell us it is the largest creative writing response they have ever hard.

I read the lot, so I had in my mind for a while there a snapshot of the concerns, hopes, fears of the Irish Times reading public at least.

The response and the quality was so overwhelming, Fishamble decided to do two productions of two complete sets of plays. You can read more about the process here.

The first production is now up and running at Project Arts Centre, and the early reviews are in.

The whole project was, in part, influenced by this blog and the comments section, where different characters, voices and perspectives jostle with each other.

Posters, readers and commenters might be particularly interested in coming on the nights of either 28th or 30th of March when I’ll be chairing a free post-show discussion on issues arising from the plays and you might meet the odd person familiar from the blog. Please feel free to say hello.

The show really is selling out (full each night so far) so book in advance here.

Perhaps the kindest comment after the show so far was words to the effect of “it’s like an attempt to take the pulse of the Irish nation – I’m pleased to see we still have one.”

Blanchard on Greece

Olivier Blanchard provides an assessment of the challenges facing Greece in this IMF blog post.