Yesterday I had a long conversation with a friend about an apartment in Santry. Here’s why. It has an asking price of 125KE and it is a two bedroomed apartment in one of the Northwood blocks. What I have known about Northwood, hitherto, is that the prices paid for apartments in Northwood were the back end of completely irrational. Nothing against Santry, nothing against Dublin 9. Let’s face it, most of what was built in Sandyford was never worth the money paid for it either.

Anyway, assuming there was room to negotiate on price, here is a two bedroomed apartment in a reasonably okay area for around 100KE. Maybe 110KE if you’re really lucky. Current calculations suggest that the rent for two bedroomed apartments in Northwood (I’ve just checked on DAFT.ie) is around 1000E. This is above, by the way, what the DSW is willing to fund for people requiring that type of accommodation.

Currently, if you buy an apartment for 110KE with a mortgage of around 90KE, you’re looking at repayments of around 550E. When you compare that to the rent commanded, from an investment point of view (and for the first time since about 2001), this is not actually off the wall. Remember for most of the 2000s, new landlords were getting less rent in than they were paying in interest on the mortgages. This was because capital appreciation was all the rage.

I’m not interested in property for investment but I also have to look at it in the following context: provided I was happy to live there for at least 10 years, and wasn’t going to get hooked up to someone or have children or god forbid develop any more storage intensive hobbies, it would make far more sense to buy that apartment than rent it all other things remaining equal. This is not something I have seen too often in the last 10 years.

Now, I have other related issues regarding apartments. I don’t know what the parking is like; I don’t know what the build construction is like. I have one friend who reckons anything built since about 1998 can be forgotten about unless it was a self build. There may also be issues regarding kitchen space and certainly I would be making certain concessions regarding gardens and private parking. Plus there is also the grand piano issue. But if I were 10 years younger – and this is how these things should have been 10 years ago – it is not actually a bad move provided there are no issues with a) management companies b) sinkfunds and c) structural integrity  of the apartment complex itself.

We have a long way to go before I will believe that the property market in this country is even half way rational. But this is the direction we need to be heading in: that two bedroomed apartments are actually affordable to a reasonable salary. One swallow does not make a summer, and all that.

However, the net result is I am looking at the market a little less jaundicedly lately. I may buy this year. I may not. I may cash in all my chips and do a round the world trip. After all, the whole being sensible concept in this country has been tossed up and down on a sea free of tranquillity. I think what people need to learn is to recognise what makes them happy and not necessarily what society expects of them.

I’m sick of bad news. I realise things are far from perfect, and that I am going to have to pay for fixing the economic things that are perfect but in the name of all that’s holy, you need to give me something to continue living for.

There’s a scene in the second Lord of the Rings movie where they’re lining up for another battle with the Orcs, and a youngster asks Aragorn if there’s any hope they’ll hold out against the Orcs. “There is always Hope”, is Aragorn’s response. Enda Kenny is no Aragorn, and frankly, he’s not instilling much hope in me.

This is utterly disheartening. I have a local FG and a local Labour TD. Neither of them give me any hope for the future. If I have any hope at all, I draw it from some of the people around me; and interestingly enough, mainly the older people. People like my parents for whom the Emergency and the rations, and the 1950s are memories, not chapters in a history book. They have a different view on how bad things are versus how bad they could be. It’s rather educational.

I’m particularly irate and stressed lately because I am surrounded by a lot of deeply cynical and negative people. I wish, for example, that people demonstrated some thoughtfulness towards others. That they did not take pleasure in other people’s disappointments because it suits them to do so. That they started being positive about their lives rather than being negative about other people’s lives. That they stopped feeling they are qualified to decide who has the right to aspire to what.

I want to live in a country where there isn’t this feeling that people are lesser beings for being less economically successful. Where people don’t feel the need to decide what other people’s priorities should be. Where working people are supported in being working people. Where people who want houses to live in are not screwed over by people who have more houses to live in than they need. Where everyone is equal before the law.

I want to live in a country where mostly, it’s not scary to walk the streets. Where people don’t need drugs to give them some illusion of pleasure against the reality of pain. Where I can count on my health service enough not to have to pay for additional private health insurance. And I spend quite a bit of my time trying to work out how to create that reality around myself.

But I can’t do it on my own and when I see my local representatives standing up and taking credit purely for pretending that they are creating jobs, for adding more flatrated transaction taxes, confiscating pension funding and not showing me the future they are building with all this, why should I buy into it? This is not visionary. It’s reactionary, it’s stupid and it’s blind. You can’t create a load of jobs by creating government paid internships. Where is the innovation? Where is the can do attitude here.

I moved back to Ireland in 1999. At that stage, it was a country with a future. Right now, it’s a country with a past.

Right now, I’m learning to make my own bread. Our politicians don’t see the practical or the metaphorical value of this.

I really don’t now how to unblind them.

I have friends living in the Alps who laugh in the face of 10 snow days. I have friends who laugh in the face of -10 C temperatures. But I live in Ireland and on average, the main cities get a trashing from the cold once every 30 years or so.

Last year, I was not prepared. Last year, I did not have Yaktrax. This year, I have the wherewithal to get myself from the house to the bus stop without requiring a musical sound track and a team of 9 judges checking out my triple Axels and assorted pirouettes.

As I am prepared, I am convinced that while it might freeze, the chances are my life will not grind to a halt courtesy of some white stuff.

Also, I am feeling lucky.

I’m very disappointed. I realise that the role of President of Ireland is largely ceremonial and PR based with a little light power thrown in in terms of referring bills to the Supreme Court for a constitutional check but Christ almighty this country needs something. Someone to stand up and cry out One Man, One Vision that we can actually recognise as a country we want to live in.

It’s not a big house, it doesn’t have a private garden and to my knowledge, based on what I know of the estate, it doesn’t have private parking either. It’s not semi detached; it’s one of four in a block. This will cost you 1000E per month, such is the wishful thinking of the landlord.

The biggest problem this country has right now is the cost of doing business here and living here. When I look at what I have, and what it costs me to live here I really and truly have to question the wisdom of staying here. The biggest expense I have every month is putting a roof over my head. I can’t live on my own if I want to have any sort of a garden, but to have that garden I get utterly shafted. In a city that isn’t short of property.

I earn enough to be paying high tax. Being single, I am paying disproportionately more tax. I want this country to grow but there is no way that can happen until it actually costs less to live here. To put a roof over your head.

Not one politician in this country considers reducing the cost of accommodation to be a good thing. They’d find it a good deal easier to create jobs if the cost of living and working in Ireland was lower. There’s a chance they wouldn’t have to steal from our pensions, for example.

So, Michael, here’s some ideas.

Deal with the fact that accommodation is too expensive in this country. Face up to it. And kill that problem. Rents should be at least 30% less than they are in this godforsaken twobit city. Houses should be half the asking prices they are still looking for. Murder that market as fast as you can because the sooner you do, the sooner you might get some economic and retail confidence back.

Oh wait – you can’t do that because to do so would probably drive a stake through the hearts of our vampire banks and we can’t be having that, can we?

I love this island. I hate this nation sometimes.

Why are we so bad at languages? There’s no mystery there. Most students in Ireland take up a foreign language for the first time when they enter secondary school at age 12 or 13; by this stage most of their counterparts in other EU countries are already well ahead – even fluent – in a second language. The lack of any oral component in Junior Cert foreign language exams compounds the problem. It should all begin much earlier, of course, at nursery or primary school. But just 15 per cent of primary-school children take a modern European language – and only in fifth and sixth classes.

There are two questions which get raised almost every year with regards to the Irish education system: why are we so bad at maths and why are we so bad at languages.

Declaration of Interest – language grad with a background in translation and interpreting and international administration.

We are bad at languages – to a great extent – because we are lazy. Yes, we start too late. I’m not sure we need to start really early in the primary system – we really need to concentrate on basic literacy and numeracy at that level (and we’re really not fully up to scratch there. I don’t see any real need to start a foreign language before the age of 10 but I don’t think we should really be starting any later than 11 either. So the 15% of primary students who get it in fifth and sixth class are doing well.

But a key impediment to getting Irish kids to do well in languages very often is “sure everyone speaks English”. Our radio stations rarely if ever play any foreign pop music. When I was fifteen or sixteen there were two French songs in the charts. When I was about 25, there was maybe one Spanish song in the charts. There are musicians producing fairly decent pop in French, Spanish and German. They’re not typically performing at the Eurovision.

There is a lot of scope to improve media access for teenagers to foreign languages – I think TG4 gives us France24 from time to time and most cable providers have Euronews in a bunch of languages. In my view, even if you start at 13, there’s no excuse not to be reasonably competent in a foreign language at the age of 18. The opportunities are there; DVDs can be orders with English subtitles if they are in French, or with French subtitles if in French. I learned a lot of French from watching Beverly Hills 90210. Sad to admit it, but still….Radio is available online. There are millions of sites appropriate for teenagers available in French and Spanish and German.

Put simply, the opportunities are there. I don’t think it’s only that we start learning late. I think we just can’t be bothered.

I can remember, some years ago, going to a hen party and bailing at around 1 or 2 am – which is way late for me anyway – so that I could get up the following morning to go surfing. I live in Dublin. Surfing is not something I get a regular chance to do. Everyone else thought I was nuts to get up to go surfing, into the cold wet sea. None of them had ever surfed before. I don’t think any of them have tried since. Anyway, when I got back up from the surfing, a few of them had surfaced enough to go to the hotel to get coffee where they do a roaring trade in post-surf hot chocolate (in my experience) so I met them there. They were all utterly shattered, completely hungover, and complaining about how tired they were. I must have been their worst nightmare because I’d just be surfing, along with how utterly great that makes me feel – just the pure wave catching action, even if I fall off the board immediately, changes my life – and I was in great form. Plus, I wasn’t hungover because I hadn’t been drinking because I knew I was getting up early to go surfing.

I know people who regret their hangovers. But no hangover is without an element of choice.

I was out late last night. Not too late – something like 1.15 when I got home. But I was tired, and I am still, this morning, very tired and I’m not running on all cylinders at all. I knew this would happen but occasionally my life does crash into people for whom socialising means going out for a drink and staying out late. But that whole scene slows me down a lot and I really don’t like it. I remember when I lived in Belgium, it didn’t really happen all that much. You want out at a reasonable hour, like around 8, and you were at home at a reasonable time – 11 or say 12 at the outside. And you got a lot more done. I went swimming and skating on Saturday or Sunday mornings, I read a lot more, I did a lot more cooking, a lot more shopping. I got far more done in my life rather than recovering because I’m so shattered. And this is pure tiredness – I wasn’t drinking so I don’t even have a hangover to contend with.

I don’t know. I need coffee right now. Maybe it will all be a bit clearer after breakfast.

Three of my strawberry plants are flowering. I think this means I might get some fruit out of them if some lardlife insect or bird doesn’t steal them first. Slugs are having a go at the leaves of the others. [insert swearword].

This morning, I woke to two pieces of news. Seve Ballesteros died overnight. As he was the first golfer I had ever heard of, and he had a passion largely absent from the boring Anglo Saxons, I feel some loss here in the way I felt a loss when Ayrton Senna exited the grid also. I never knew the man but the world was better for his existance. Certainly the world of golf was. He was one of those who give colour to the canvas of reality.

The other piece of news is that Morgan Kelly had written another piece for the Irish Times. I skimmed through it on my phone and it failed my a) is it going to make me angry and b) can I change anything about the world on its basis test. Last week I got into an argument with Constantin Gurdgiev on twitter because I didn’t agree with his conclusions absent his ability to defend how he drew them. When someone tells me that something measured badly, I like to know what they were being measured against. I don’t believe he had anything other than data. This morning, it was Brian Lucey. He was a bit surprised because no one had commented on the Irish Times story. It was well before nine when we had this conversation and I was only awake because I had been woken by work concerns. I pointed out it was early, Stephen Kinsella suggested the mods weren’t in yet.

I’m not really clued in on how the Irish Times manages comments on its stories because I don’t comment on Irish Times’ stories, mainly because I’m done with opinion – to a greater or lesser extent – in Irish newspapers because by and large, it’s generally not worth the emotional grief. Remember the Irish Times saw fit to pay Sarah Carey, John Waters, and, until some altercation, Kevin Myers (and then the wretched Independent foisted him on us). Opinion in Irish newspapers is at best, hit or miss. I’ll come to Morgan Kelly in a moment. Anyway, Brian pointed out the mods in Irish Economy were up, the mods in the PropertyPin and Politics.ie.

So I’m going to explain something briefly, albeit longer than 140 chars. If you are a registered user of The Property Pin or Politics.ie, you do not need to be premoderated. So the mods don’t actually have to be up. For Irish Economy, it’s a wordpress site, like this one, and I moderate the first comment from any computer, but after that, if you don’t clear your cookies, you’re generally in if I’ve okayed you. I imagine Irish Economy is not so different. If the Irish Times premods everything, fine – I doubt it however. I just think that most people hadn’t actually read the bloody thing yet and for the most part, those who were commentating on the other three sites were doing so because – to some extent – the formats on those sites are different; they are more interactive and less “Letters To The Editor” than the Irish Times. There’s some closer similarity in operation between comments on Irish Economy and comments on Irish Times but there is also a vastly different readership.

Anyway, so to Morgan Kelly’s piece. It does not make for pleasant reading, depressing if you like. If you actually are on a day off today, are operating under the naive perception that there is damn all you can do to immediately reverse the economic mess the country is in, then I strongly recommend you don’t read it. I woke up to a discussion on twitter about how the medicine was necessary but that it would kill the patient.

In my view, that makes it completely unnecessary. If we’re going to wind up dead anyway, we may as well go somewhere and enjoy ourselves. It didn’t get better. Stephen Kinsella will write an article for Monday’s (I think) Guardian having checked some figures which I think is a fair response.

Morgan Kelly’s reputation is – as far as the wider world is concerned – based initially on his projection that Irish property prices would fall by about 70% at a time that the property industry itself was still promoting the concept of a soft landing. He was massively and unjustifiably reviled for that. He is turning out to be not so far wide of the mark. Whether he is right on this occasion is open to debate – I think it’s hard to be certain because – differently this time – it’s not a purely economic matter. In one respect, you could argue that it’s nothing other than a huge political football and the sad and tragic reality is that no matter how much you think you know about political horsetrading, the simple fact and reality is that no one – not one person in the entire world – knows enough of it to be certain that they are describing actual reality.

So comments along the lines of “you need to know reality” to back up the feeling that you have to flagellate yourself and read Morgan Kelly’s frankly depressing column this morning are completely delusional. Morgan Kelly may know more than you but he doesn’t know it all. And reality – as people have been finding out day after day, year after year, has a horrifying habit of being ever so slightly different to how you thought it was and how you thought it would turn out. People can make all the assertions they like; but the world is awkward.

In this respect, key issues are being forgotten. We need urgently – I mean really urgently – to look at financial regulation in this country. No one is actually writing about this that I can see. The vast majority of people in this country have no faith in the financial system at present and are engaging with it only by necessity. To get around that, we need some form of New Deal not unlike FDR’s efforts to start rebuilding the US after the Great Depression. There is not one single economist coming out with this effort.

You have to remember something. If economists can really fix things, we wouldn’t be in this mess. We wouldn’t be in this mess because they could have prevented it 10 years ago when people like me said “you know, we haev a bit of a problem here”. If Morgan Kelly has any impact right now, following this piece, it is not because he has impacted on the economy, it is because he has impacted on people’s perceptions. But a lot of people are not equipped to critically assess what he is saying. Most people that I see pushing the “you have to face reality” argument on Morgan Kelly’s piece are doing so on the grounds that he is validating what they want to believe.

The world economy is actually completely screwed up at the moment and anyone who assumes that Ireland’s problems, self inflicted though they are with banking crisis and rather stupid decision not to rein in the property market, can be looked through without considering that is just wrong.

Both the UK and the US have been frantically printing money to sort out their mess. The US hid it under some sort of special funding vehicles, the UK called it quantitative easing. Neither worked exactly as designed. Europe hasn’t been wholly immune to this either. China is facing into a massive property bubble for all their denials, and most of their markets are contracting. There is more political unrest in the world than usual (not that it’s ever free of it) and a key foundation stone of the major – read supposedly wealthy – economies – namely easy access to energy – is in trouble. Because human beings are resourceful, I have no doubt that short of a meteor strike, we will work our way around these issues like we always do. Otherwise we might as all commit suicide and I’m not quite ready to do that yet.

In the meantime, there are no quick and easy solutions to the problems in Ireland. Morgan Kelly’s suggestions are alluringly easy in theory and on paper. Involving the cuts they do however, they are, from a practical point of view, impossible. That makes them effectively useless.

From what I can see, most of those rushing to push the piece don’t want to recognise this reality. They want to recognise the reality that he describes, but not the reality that what he is promoting is essentially impossible. It is nothing even remotely approaching a new deal.

So I get irate when people suggest to me I am not dealing in reality because I am at least a level of reality beyond them again.

In the meantime I don’t run the Irish Times, nor am I a member of the Government. Richard Bruton, my local TD, has never canvassed me and there is nothing I can change on the macro level. So I work on the micro level, and I deal with what I can do to improve my life. Some of those things are essentially very simple. Some of those include watering my plants and seeing that this year, for the first time in my entire life, if we skip all the herb plants I bought and raid for flavouring means, I am growing my own food.

When I was driving home, however, I noticed one positive effect it had on life here in Ireland. It got economic chaos, suicide, murder, gangland war and general bad news off the front page of the Evening Herald.

I never buy the Herald. It’s hard to want to when it seems to concentrate on the soap opera of Dublin gangland – I have no care who all these people are, only that if they are breaking the law, they should be in jail or doing community service. Not providing the city with unlimited heroin and cocaine anyway. Giving them nicknames is almost Dickensian.

I didn’t buy it today (habit is hard to break really) but it was nice that on the front of it today, there was a picture of a happy couple, being happy, not being one part murdered, maimed, raped, kidnapped, or hammered at a party somewhere.

We both had pancakes – mine came swimming in maple syrup – and smoothies – which were top notch smoothies. Terrific breakfast. Way to start a day off; I might yet do it again.

It’s a lovely café and might turn into my favourite in town.