The Irish government move to guarantee deposits in Irish banks has generated a lot of commentary. In particular politicians have thrown their hands up in the air and waffled about the exposure of the Irish taxpayer to a vast financial risk. I’m going to start by saying that I’m not an expert on banking. I generally only have a passing casual interest due to having worked for around 7 years at a software company supplying solutions to banks (back office systems, internet banking, integration and middle office type stuff mainly). That is, I was involved in the software side and not core financial activities.
Many people seem to see this as the government opening up the taxpayer’s wallet to dole out cash to the banks when it’s really an insurance at best and an exercise in shoring up confidence in the banking sector. The last thing that was needed was for Irish depositors to get the jitters and start transferring or pulling deposits. This kind of a run on a banks liquid assets would lead to the likes of the Northern Rock scenario. The Central Bank of Ireland subscribes to policies of the EU Capital Adequacy Directive and similar for financial institutions. This gives rise to various rules around an institutions liquidity for example. One of these is that a bank has sufficient liquidity to cover 90% of liabilities arising over 8 to 30 days which is more conservative than in other countries. This requirement does tend to guard against a cash run like that which affected Northern Rock and the aim of the government’s guarantee would surely be to allay depositor fears so that we don’t see a run on deposits which would threaten a bank’s solvency. It’s all about confidence and the feel good factor not cold hard cash.
I’m happy to be corrected and put back in my place if commenters wish to do so 
Another one of Sabrina Dent’s awesome designs: Circus Vegas. Wouldn’t you just love to be able to come up with designs like her?
This made me a laugh quite loudly: (not quite sure of the etiquette of ‘reblogging’, so you’ll have to follow the link for the whole thing )
Vidya: So what are you cooking?
Charles: Oh, spaghetti with this tomato-and-stuff sauce.
Vidya: No, what is it called?
Charles: I don’t know, I never really looked. I could go get the book if you really want.
Vidya: Go on, I want to know.
Charles: OK, it’s… er… spaghetti puttanesca.
Vidya: You realise what that means, right?
[From The Pasta of Ill Repute]
Good ol’ Evert is at it again with another cool idea (following up on the excellent OCC BBQ is a tough one) with his latest idea for a Co-working/techhub/start-up center. It’s a cool idea and I could see it working for lots of different types of companies, particularly sole-traders and small office setups. The benefits of mingling in this sort of environment seem to be many from basic social interaction and business networking to perhaps shared purchasing power even for those who just use it as a day office, once or twice a week.
It’s funny to see how ‘failwhale’ has entered the lexicon of so many web users. I know it’s harsh to put the boot in like this but the reality is that Twitter has some major issues that need to be taken seriously by those behind it but also by a number of its users. I remember when there were lots of people being vocal about ditching Jaiku in favour of Twitter. Now it seems like it was a mere veil to move to Twitter because they preferred it and just didn’t know why! There’s nothing wrong with that per se, as long as you can admit that it’s personal bias. Anyway, the stability of Twitter has improved but there are still serious issues there and I can’t see how buying Summize was a bright idea other than in a extend, embrace, extinguish kind of way. Twitter has inspired some fantastic apps though - look at Twitterfone.com so it’s not a useless endeavour as there’s a sound requirement for a site like Twitter. However, microblogging in a Twitter sense needs to be nimble and having the ‘exchange’ go down frequently just doesn’t work.
That went surprisingly well which probably goes to show how idiot proof this cookie mix is. Brownies will be up next, though maybe not today as I think the sugar rush might be too much for me Heading over to http://www.spicendipity.com will get you a look at the various mixes.
What one earth is Gay Mitchell on about? I really mean, what is he on about because there doesn’t seem to be any reason given in the article …
“I don’t think that any independent analysis of RTE’s performance would show that they performed in a way that was fair and balanced in terms of providing a public service.
“I don’t think they meant to be unfair, but I certainly do not think they were fair.”
Note: This has been sitting in my drafts for awhile and given that Ryan is supposed to make an announcement today I thought I’ll post it as is and then see how wrong I end up being shown to be
Damien Mulley does a great job digging various things up with his FOI requests and as usual, his latest one is interesting reading. Read that post for the main thrust of what this request brought out. My post is mainly a whining rant, partially related to that post, on some other bits I noticed in the returned document.
If you read the document that’s linked in Mulley’s post, you’ll see that it consists of a lot of the usual guff that such documents are always padded with. There are the usual gems though:
“The NBS objectives are integral to the Economic and Social Infrastructure Priorities set out in Ireland’s National Development Plan 2007-2013, namely ‘To promote the availability of competitive broadband services and to achieve nationwide broadband coverage by the end of the Plan period.’“
It’s truly scary to read that the target for completion of national broadband rollout is 2013. This is at shocking odds with what Minister Ryan said on RTE’s Prime Time some time ago; that national broadband would be achieved by the end of this year (2008).
It never occurred to me before that you could possibly lose creativity. I understood that it could be stunted, for example when one experiences ‘writer’s block’. However I didn’t think it was permanent. I’ve come to the realisation that I may have permanently lost a portion of my creative abilities. It seems a strange notion, you’re used to the fact that ageing will result in certain mental faculties diminishing; memory, speed of the thought process and so on. However, losing the seemingly abstract faculty of creativity is just weird and very unexpected. What has brought this on is having realised over the space of around 1 to 2 years, or more, that I seem unable to come up with anything in visual/graphic design anymore. Going back a couple of years and merely thinking about the content of a website would have rich visualisations flitting around my head. Not so anymore. Wonder if anyone else has experienced this?
As an aside, I’ve decided to try and blog every day now as creative exercise in the hope that there is no further diminishment!
It’s always interesting to see the stupid things people can do with a car. Thought this was quite inspired; blocking the pavement for pedestrians and the entrance/exit of Supermacs. The car was there for at least 10 minutes, several people went out on the road around and another car pulled up behind it. People clambered out of Supermacs past it.
