NAMA in Blunderland

Come with me once again down the rabbit hole well trodden by Irish property developers and their enablers in Irish banks and the Irish state bodies.

Our hero today is Killiney solicitor Brian O'Donnell, a man who somehow managed to leverage his business in just over a decade to the point where he was buying Washington skyscrapers overlooking the White House, entire buildings in London's Canary Wharf and Stockholm's biggest office block.

Of course, the money for these nine-figure purchases was largely borrowed from banks. And now they'd like it back. Bank of Ireland is looking for around €70 million from O'Donnell and his doctor wife. But that's dwarfed by their total property debts of over $1 billion.

So far, so Celtic Tiger collapse. But what's especially hallucinogenic about this case is not only the massive amount of money that the banks leant to a lawyer and a doctor to buy skyscrapers all around the world. What's really, really straining the limits of credibility is the fact that our hero is currently on a panel to advise NAMA.

Needless to say, like all good state agencies, NAMA is spunking absolute fortunes of state money at lawyers. The agency is expected to hand over €260 million to legal eagles over the course of the next decade. That's a quarter of a billion euro of OUR MONEY.

And who are these incredibly expensive legal advisors? Well, 64 firms have been appointed to a panel to share the booty. And unbelievably, Brian 'Billion in the hole' O'Donnell is one of them.

Let us pause for a moment to catch our collective breath at this audacity.

Somehow a lawyer managed to persuade the banks to loan him not a few hundred grand for a couple of buy-to-lets, nor even a couple of mill for an apartment block, but one BILLION dollars for skyscrapers.

Then it all went tits up for property, and now the banks want their cash back and are suing to get it. O'Donnell being a lawyer, is obviously fighting it. Fighting in court is what he does well, unlike investing in property.

Meanwhile, the state via it's impaired bank loans vehicle NAMA is doing the best it can to bail out the poor developers and the banks who got burnt went property went poof.

And of course, this is inevitably a bonanza for lawyers, as all state agency activities tend to be. But the incredible chutzpah, the sheer gall of all involved to appoint a lawyer to this advisory panel, which will pocket quarter of a billion in fees, who himself got spectacularly burnt and is in debt to the tune of $1 billion on property, is staggering.

Let's go over it one more time, real slow: NAMA has decided it is appropriate to take legal advice on handling their crappy property loans from someone who themselves owe a billion bucks to the banks on property deals.

They're either mad as a hatter, or they've been chewing on the wrong side of the mushrooms. And they've obviously stopped even caring about what they do or how it looks to us poor pleb mugs who just had our entire futures mortgaged to the IMF to pay for all of this mess.

Dublin's cost of living rising

Relative to other world cities, Dublin continues to be one of the world's most expensive cities to live in.

The latest edition of the Mercer Cost of Living Index reveals that Dublin is now the world's 16th most expensive place to live, marginally behind New York.

Think about that for a sec. You're paying New York prices for Dublin living standards. Sad but true.

This is two places higher than Dublin was last year, indicating that the cost of living relative to other cities is still rising in Dublin, despite cooling house prices. Conclusion: rip-off Ireland is still alive and well and scorching the wallets of everyone in the Pale.

Moscow tops the list of the most expensive cities in the world to live - not a surprise to anyone who's tried to get accommodation there or even buy a sludgy coffee near the Arbat.

London is second, no surprise there either, and the Asian cities of Seoul, Tokyo and Hong Kong make up the rest of the top five.

In case anyone's wondering how Moscow could be the world's most expensive city, here's Mercer's rationale:

"Mercer's annual Cost of Living Survey covers 143 cities across six continents and measures the comparative cost of over 200 items in each location, including housing, transport, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment. It is the world’s most comprehensive cost of living survey and is used to help multinational companies and governments determine compensation allowances for their expatriate employees."

1916 - The Musical

Following such box-office smashes as JFK - The Musical and Jerry Springer - The Opera, now we're getting an all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza about the 1916 rising!

Here's their pitch:

Come with us on an incredible musical journey of courage, pride and determination, ‘1916’ is set against the backdrop of the Easter Uprising and political upheaval. Tracing the lives of those on the front line, the little people in the shadow of major events, this story of love and pain can only end in tragedy and betrayal.

Nice! This comes from the people who brought you Subtransmission, a play described as the 'Anti-Mary Poppins'.

Wherein, of course, a transvestite found on the internet comes to save a suburban family from hell, in case you hadn't guessed.

Inevitably, the people behind this nonsense are based in London, not anywhere in Ireland where it might be understood that a musical about the rising is a bit distasteful to say the least.

This just adds further grist to the mill about funding for the arts. All to often, it ends up actually funding arses, just like this lot.

Living in denial - The property bubble

Living in denial seems to be one of the most common pastimes these days.

In fact, it's probably the third most common pastime in Ireland today, behind slumping in front of the telly to watch CSI: Miami and slurping wine with friends while comparing the notional values of their overseas property portfolios.

I thought it might be useful to run through a few known facts that people are living in denial of in Ireland today, just as a reminder and in the vain hope that some people might snap out of their torpor and face up to some of the scary realities that await us all.
Today, we'll kick off with a biggie - the Irish property market.

Irish property prices are about to collapse, because it is the biggest bubble in the global property market bubble. Yes, people have been predicting this for years, and with good reason. It is inevitable. No, it hasn't happened so far, but that just means the crash will be more severe when it occurs, which is very, very soon.

That one bed apartment you bought within a mere hour's commuting distance of Dublin city centre (if you leave for work at 4am) will not continue to inexorably rise from the half million euros you bought it for.

The reason for this is because it is simply not worth anything like that amount in real terms.

Let's look at the fundamentals of this market. Historically, the average family house anywhere was thought to be worth approximately three times the average industrial wage. In Ireland, accommodation now is a factor of around 12 times the average industrial wage.

Also, the US property market has just tanked, and Ireland's exposure to America makes us particularly vulnerable to economic developments there.

Finally, didn't you notice that the only people talking up house prices are those with vested interests in selling them? Auctioneers (recently demonstrated on Prime Time to be utter cowboys), Estate Agents (who increasingly and quietly have been selling their own houses and renting), and newspapers (whose lucrative property sections which shrilly trumpet new developments are dependent on the advertising from those same developers).

Get out now if you can. Banks have already divested themselves both of their own property (HQs and bank branches) and of their property debt. The clever speculators left the Irish market at least a year ago.

This is a pass-the-parcel game where the last one holding the overpriced package will see it explode messily, devastating their finances and personal security.

Indications from data gleaned from popular sales and letting website Daft.ie show that more and more places are on the market longer, being repeatedly listed at ever lower prices and that a full crash is imminent.

There has never been a soft-landing in a bubble market. There wasn't one with Dutch tulips or South Sea stocks, there isn't one in the US housing market now or the London and Tokyo bubbles from previous decades, and there won't be one in Ireland now.

The market will crash, perhaps by as much as 30% in one year. If you are still in doubt, cast an eye over the excellent web analysis conducted at Daftwatch, and the informed discussions on The Property Pin.

Prices in London took the best part of a decade to recover from their crash in the late Eighties. Prices in Tokyo took even longer to recover. Prices in Ireland are more inflated now than either of those markets ever were.

If you've just taken out a large mortgage, you could be trapped in the property you've just bought for a decade or more, in order to avoid negative equity.

If you have a string of properties, each leveraged off the back of notional equity increases in previous properties, you are extremely exposed and could even find yourself close to bankrupcy like this fella.

The party's over and normal rules of engagement are about to resume, people. Which is good in the long term for all those unable to purchase their own dwelling, but very bad news for those seeking to make money by sitting on their backsides.

Seven months wasted

A Guardian journalist just spent seven months undercover as a member of the British National Party. Amazingly, he made it as high as London organiser for the party during his stint.

Splashed all over the paper's front page today are his exclusive revelations, gleaned as a result of his undercover efforts. These include:

• Members are advised not to be racist or anti-semitic
• They are told to act at all times in a way that brings credit to the party
• They use encryption software to protect their member lists
• They occasionally use false names while on party business for fear of losing their jobs otherwise, especially those in the public sector.

Is it just me, or do all of those 'revelations' seem perfectly sensible, and in some cases, admirable? I'm no fan of the far right, but from the sounds of these 'revelations', the BNP under Griffin has transformed itself from a fascist bootboy organisation into an anti-immigration party which is little further right than some Tories or PDs.

If this is the best the Guardian can do in terms of a smear job after having obtained unprecedented access to the party's inner circle for months on end, then perhaps it really is the case that the BNP of today is not the beast it once was.

In fact, to me the biggest concerns arising from the article are that the Guardian is prepared to 'out' people who are not politicians as members of a political party, and that people who are members of a legitimate political party fear losing their public sector jobs solely because of that membership.

If we're talking fascism, then publishing member lists of a political party in a newspaper or threatening people's jobs because of their political affiliations seem to be fairly fascist acts to me.

And it is very possible that the tame aspect of these 'revelations' will have the opposite effect to that intended by the Guardian - that of encouraging more people to think of the BNP as an increasingly mainstream organisation.

Of course, this is a process already underway. The BNP are gaining up to a hundred new members a week and obtained nearly 10% of the vote in recent British council elections.

There are of course major concerns with aspects of the British far right. Their policies in relation to Ireland for starters. Or the recent arrest of former BNP members in a bomb plot that was almost totally ignored by the media, including the Guardian.

But the weakness of these revelations about the current state of the party is likely to attract rather than repel people in the UK who are as concerned about the tidal wave of immigration they are experiencing and angry about the lies they have been told about immigration by more centrist parties.

And since I'm guessing that wasn't the intention of the Guardian when they set out on this undercover mission, I'd say that was seven months wasted.

Your Newsnight

Flagship BBC current affairs show Newsnight is inviting the public to vote on a series of 13 short films of 'citizen journalism', the best of which they will then show on the programme.

Whether you care to vote or not, the subjects are all fascinating, each film is only two minutes long, and every one of them is worth a viewing.

From a poor Cuban woman in a hurricane to the extent of immigration and integration in London and the now infamous video on how cocaine is made in Colombia, all the material on show is diverse, current, important and fascinating.

My vote? It's gone to this lad's succinct and searing expose of the British government's witch hunt against alleged dole fraud:

Backing Blair on public transport

Now that Teflon Tony has decided to leave Downing Street some indeterminate time this century, we can all look back in joy at the glorious work done by the lads of www.backingblair.co.uk.

No fans of the man whose legacy will be the death of untold thousands of Iraqi civilians, they have been agitating for his removal for years.

During that time, they managed to create a hilarious, close-to-the-knuckle series of flash animations about the state of British politics as they see it. All of them are worth a gander.
But my personal fave has to be this one.

The lads responsible for the music are two junior doctors from London who ply the UK comedy circuit under the moniker of Amateur Transplants.

If this is what they feel about the London Tube, god only knows what they might have to say about the Luas, Translink or, god forbid, Iarnrod Eireann.