SEVERAL OF MY AMERICAN friends have moved back to the States because the Irish economy has changed dramatically in the past three months. Business analyst Damien Kiberd places a lot of blame on the Irish finance minister under the headline "Lenihan has dug us all into trouble." Kiberd is scathing. "Lenihan's obsessive belief that the State should pay all the cost of supporting a banking system, whose problems have themselves been magnified by his actions, has brought the state itself to the verge of bankruptcy. He has ignored what should be the first principle of any government: it is that the duty of political leaders is to preserve the state." Today, Irish sovereignty lies with EU/IMF taskmasters who have set up a payback schedule that will penalise an unborn generation.
NASA satellite Terra snapped the two images I use in the first minute of today's clip. The satellite shows the freezing conditions that book-ended 2010.
