I find the pyjamas hype pretty sickening. I have a job. I consider myself lucky, actually. I could quite easily be out-of-work; could quite easily have never found my way to the job I have, which I enjoy a lot. I teach here at Maynooth. I get up every weekday morning and either head off to work, or work at home. I don’t have any pyjamas, so Ireland’s cold climate forces me to shower and get dressed. Good for me. I can feel very proud of myself. Now, if I work at home, I don’t need to dwell upon how I look: I’m at home; it’s casual day every day at home. And if I go out, well, I do happen to put a jacket on and normally some jeans but it’d be an odd day when I put on a shirt, thank you very much (collars aren’t for me). So anyway, off I go. Down to the shops. Spend some of my earnings. Pump the economy with some cash. Do my bit; wear my Green jersey, if you will. Oh the joys.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ve ever seen any under/unemployed people out and about wearing their pyjamas. But you know what, even if I did, who am I to say anything? I’m working and I get paid. I’m not finding it soul-destroying to look, but never find work in a harsh economy. It’s not me who’s had my CVs or letters or phone calls ignored. I don’t have kids at home I struggle to feed, clothe, entertain, or convince that there’s a reason to do well in school. I don’t watch my partner or pals or neighbours head off to work while I enjoy what the executives at RTE or TV3 deem worthy daytime television. It ain’t me who’s seeing cuts to what Irish society in its wisdom (or, to be fair, what the government we’ve chosen, or to be fairer still the Troika which the last government in their wisdom brought upon us) thinks is a viable social welfare payment.

The upshot, then, is this: I don’t think I have the right to go around criticizing anyone for wearing pyjamas, least of all people who are at the cutting edge of the sharp cutbacks and the rigid austerity we’re seeing in Ireland. If someone wants to wear pyjamas, good for them. And if that means they wear them in a dole office, then so be it. Social welfare or unemployment benefit is and should be a right in this country. Those who suggest it should be reserved for people who dress in a particular way (or what next? smile properly, stand up straight, bow their cap the right way, m’lord?) should be opposed. This sort of attack on working (or so-called ‘middle’) class people who are only claiming what’s due to them is unjustified, divisive (and, let’s face it, in many instances, extremely sexist). It’s an unhelpful distraction from the actually existing circumstances people are facing in this country (and beyond) each day.

But not only do I think people should be allowed to wear whatever they want when engaging with the public service, I don’t buy into the idea that every person on the dole needs to be constantly, incessantly, obsessively out looking for work; ready to work, out there job hunting; non-stop forcing down the unemployment figures. Unemployment isn’t high because people are wearing pyjamas and failing to go out there and fill 450,000 vacant positions. The under/unemployed people in this country did not cause the crisis. And as things stand, it isn’t up to them to solve it. So expecting people to endlessly look and be ready for work, particularly in the current context, is simply unrealistic. Worse still, this sort of ideology around welfare and its ills borders on sadism because, with a few exceptions perhaps, people who spend every living minute of their life on the dole looking for work simply run the risk of doing themselves serious psychological damage (rejection, rejection, rejection?; failure, failure, failure?). Why are we making this an expectation? Why indeed? Isn’t the thing about the pyjama hype that certain people or sectors of society are shocked to discover that the industrial reserve army aren’t doing their bit to restore profits and accumulation? It’s almost as if the unemployed are supposed to actually stand all day long outside offices and factories holding signs saying ‘we want work, we’ll do your job for lower pay’ – - would this help employers drive down wages and would that bring back the boom somehow? So the idea that some people might actually be wearing pyjamas, might not be applying sufficient pressure on those with work, well, it’s as if they’re not wearing the Green jersey in addition to wearing pyjamas. The cheek of ‘em.

Anyway, rant nearly over. Let me end by saying to those in work who think they’re on to something with their anti-pyjamas tirades: Good for you for having a job; good for you for not wearing your pyjamas around the place. But don’t go round telling us what you think everyone else should wear. Rather than attacking someone out of work, why not re-direct your energies elsewhere? It’s not as if we don’t have more important things going on.

Alistair Fraser

Eoghan McCarthy and Rob Kitchin

Eoghan McCarthy and Rob Kitchin

Public private partnerships in Ireland: Failed experiment or the way forward for the state?
Rory Hearne

Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) have come to public attention in recent years in Ireland with the impact of toll roads, the collapse of social-housing projects and their use in the provision of schools, water/waste water treatment plants, hospitals, light rail and other public infrastructure and services. This book provides a ground breaking and unique analysis of the development of such PPPs internationally, with a detailed focus on the rationale behind their introduction and outcomes in Ireland. The detailed evidence outlined from the author’s extensive research (including interviews with senior central and government officials, private sector, community and trade union representatives and the Irish Minister for Environment) highlights the important role PPPs are playing in the implementation of privatisation and neoliberalism.

The book also provides considerable practical lessons from individual PPP projects. It is therefore an essential read for students, academics of politics, economics, sociology, geography and policy practitioners in Ireland, and further afield. It is of considerable interest to anyone concerned with the progress of Irish society, its economy and public services and governance internationally.

Contents
Introduction
1. Public Private Partnerships
2. The welfare state, neoliberalism and Public Private Partnerships: the international experience
3. Trends in the historical development of the Irish State, public services & infrastructure
4. Outcomes of the Grouped Schools Pilot PPP Project
5. Spinning the wheel: The regeneration of Dublin’s inner-city estates through Public Private Partnerships
6. PPP outcomes in Ireland
7. The twenty first century Irish State, services and infrastructure

Former Sphinx factory in Maastricht which was used as temporary park in November 2011.

As I have alluded to before with relation to the example of the half-built Anglo Headquarters, the bringing together of different projects also served to highlight some important questions about the long-term impacts of such endeavours, and particularly those that are now more embedded within mainstream planning practice. Terms such as ‘meanwhile’,  ‘in between’, ‘slack spaces’ and ‘pop-up’ are all now firmly embedded within the lexicon. Given the commitment shown to various projects, there is no doubting the motives of those involved. However, it still seems important to question whether such activities will have long-term impact on our relationship to the built environment or not. It would seem like a lost opportunity if such initiatives discussed above were to wane at the first sign of an upward swing in the property market.

Some pointers towards the long-term potential of such initiatives are given in the documentary Grown in Detroit, which was featured within the NAIM exhibition. Linking the educational welfare of teenage mothers – living in the archetypal post-industrial city, Detroit – with the emergence of the urban farming movement within disused suburban lots, the documentary evokes the potential for a new urban future. It is one that in re-adapting vacant land seeks not for temporary solutions but re-embracing the land as a resource for this generation and perhaps the generations afterwards. Grown in Detroit gives an insight into the means by which the connections can be made between education, productivity and land-use in ways that remind us of what creative processes can initiate when viewed outside what Martha Rosler recently referred to as Richard Florida’s ‘gospel of creativity’, which has so dominated urban policy agendas of recent years.

Philip Lawton

Brookings provide an interesting interactive map – click on below image to link to it.

A more detailed profile of Dublin can be found here that outlines the principle changes in with a summary chart below.

Rob Kitchin

 

Given that a very large chunk of the banks over-lending went to developers to build property, it seems only fitting that someone has literally constructed a house out of defunct money.  Though the next logic step seems to be to set fire to it and hope that the troika will dose it with water then lend us some replacement bricks.  Or perhaps we can persuade Mr Buckley to donate it to the nation so that we can pay back the Anglo bondholders?  Most art sells for way more than the worth of the original materials used to create it, so by that logic the Anglo bondholders would be getting much more returned to them than their original €1.4 billion investment.  And they get a house  into the bargain.  Sounds like a viable plan to me.

Rob Kitchin

Based on the @IMFDublinDiary Twitter feed and stories in The Mire, The Eighty Five Billion Euro Man is a satire/farce, starting with the IMF’s first visit to Dublin and ending just a few weeks after Enda Kenny took office as Taoiseach. It covers a whole range of different events and parodies both the civil service and leading politicians. The story is told mainly through dialogue heavy scenes that work well to capture some of the absurdities, ironies and tragedies of the bailout and subsequent political shenanigans. There is a lot to like about the novel. Some of the scenes are very amusing and the caricatures of some politicians are particularly well done, for example, Brian Cowen, Mary Coughlan, Brian Lenihan, Michael Noonan and Joan Burton. However, the plot is a little uneven, with the tail end of the book, in the lead up to the election and afterwards, notably weaker (partially because it starts to stray too far from the situation it seeks to satirise – especially Mulhearn running for election). The level of satire also varies a little and whilst it is very amusing at times it’s never quite as biting or cutting as it could be, and it doesn’t have the sophisticated wit and cleverness of a political satire like Yes, Minister. Given the in-jokes, I’m also not sure how easy it would be for someone unfamiliar with Ireland to follow some of the scenes. That all said, The Eighty Five Billion Euro Man is a recommended read for anyone who is interested in the crash in Ireland and the government response. It’s an amusing read and provides a counterpoint to the dry journalistic accounts that have dominated the shelves to date.

Rob Kitchin

Ireland housing affordability

It is clear that Irish house prices have fallen dramatically over the past four years, decreasing by 46% nationally and 54% in Dublin according to the CSO.  There is no doubt then that houses are becoming more affordable in comparison to median household income (which has not fallen to the same degree).  Nevertheless in the case of Irish data, it would be really useful to be able to see the exact source of the median house price data used given the absence of detailed property price register and various estimates of present house prices (DECLG, CSO and Daft.ie are listed at the end of the report).  DECLG reports that average new houses for Q4 2010 (the last reported data) as €238,551 and for secondhand houses as €349,393; for Q4 2011 Daft.ie has average asking prices as 159K for the inner city, 211K for north city, 217K for south city; €215K for north Dublin county; €177K for west Dublin county; and €322K for south Dublin county – all but two areas are above the median Demographica house price of €178,000 for Dublin as a whole.  These sources though seem to be using averages rather than medians.  The household income seems to tally with SILC data for 2010, though that provides a national snapshot and is not disaggregated to cities.

The extent to which Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford are now considered affordable, or indeed some of the most affordable cities outside of the US in the 8 countries surveyed, might seem fanciful to many.  There’s no doubt that housing has, however, become a lot more affordable in recent years given the extensive drop in prices, and Demographica’s data reflects this.  The data suggest though that there is still a little way for prices to fall before all areas become classed as ‘affordable’, but that an idealised bottom may not be too far off (assuming median incomes hold up and that Demographica’s data is a true reflection of median house prices).  The extent to which the wider public agrees with such sentiment and how access to credit, weak demand and oversupply plays out will probably determine where prices level off.

Rob Kitchin

Free Registration at: geography.department@nuim.ie
Conference details and list of speakers here.
For further information, contact: chris.vanegeraat@nuim.ie