Bah.

More bad news.

You start to think you're a state, then you definitely are a state.

Within a few short hours, the Irish Government will announce it's financial targets for the next 36 months, Budget 2008.

I have a few hopes for this year's important budget.

1. Let's see a readjustment of the Stamp Duty thing, for the following reasons:

Stamp Duty on new houses is charged by the Government at a rate of up to 9% of the price of the property. There have been calls to abolish this before, as it does not make particularly reasonable sense to charge 9% of the price of a house to simply change the ownership documents, when it is not unusual for houses to sell for over €1m.

This issue has been under scrutiny for a long time in Ireland, under various guises (example). Up to recently, it was suggested that any cut in this tax would encourage auctioneers and developers selling a house to increase their selling price in proportion to the cut in Stamp Duty, leaving the property costing the buyer exactly the same as before any cut, in real terms.

However, given condition of the property market in Ireland at the moment, I do not thk anyone is in a position to increase the selling price of a property.

So let's cut Stamp Duty back to a nominal charge per transaction, and have a reduction in actual cost prices of property by this amount, giving a much needed psychological boost to the house buyer and encouraging continued prosperity in the construction sector.

2. Carbon-type Taxes

Let's have a sensible scheme to achieve a cut in transport related carbon, which is producing emissions which are growing at a faster rate than any other sector of the economy. We need something reasoned and positive, which will encourage people to think about the way they travel, and not a blanket rise of car taxes, as has been speculated.

It makes no sense to increase car tax on larger engine sizes, as people will pay up and pollute happily away.

So let's have a points based system, taking into account factors such as vehicle age, fuel, weight, enigne technology (such as particulate filters, hybrid drive trains, stop-start system if fitted), annual mileage, number of vehicles in the household and the purpose the vehicle is used for. If the system allows people to save money by choices they make I believe it will lead to positive change.

George Monbiot
Tuesday November 27, 2007
The Guardian
Article here

It sounds preposterous: 3 million new homes in England alone by 2020. My instinct is to fight this project. It threatens Britain's countryside, the character of our towns, our water supplies and carbon targets. Today the housing and regeneration bill, which will help to implement this building programme, has its second reading in the House of Commons.

Where should we stand? Is the housing crisis as acute as some people have claimed? Or has it been whipped up by the House Builders Federation, hoping to get its claws into the countryside? To find out whether these homes are really needed, I asked the charity Shelter to take me to meet some of the people it works with in London. I had no idea. I simply had no idea.

Reading this article I was filled with a mixture of sadness, hope and a bit of builder's buzz.

Amid the stories of vulnerable people living in truly miserable conditions, the overwhelming message is that these houses need to be replaced, and fast. Not just upgraded, but replaced with more than one house for every one torn down.

(While schemes like this in Kildare are a help, and a more frequent occurrence in Ireland due to local authorities reappraising their housing "stock" with the help of GIS systems and databases, it is hard to fix that which is fundamentally wrong in the first place. It cannot be economical to update houses built 40 years ago to acceptable modern standards.)

That's what building is about, the excitement of taking on an enormous challenge, making it happen, getting the work done, nearly getting it right, making a few quid in the process, and bringing new buildings to people who need them.

More than two good things happened today but here I am going to address just two events:

1. Found a bonus tub of Neapolitan, the best ice cream ever conceived by man, in the freezer.

Happy days.

2. I go for lunch quite often with a colleague who admittedly is quite a bit up the salary scale from me. However my colleague always insists on buying lunch for us both, and are rather clever in creating diversions to allow this covert payment to take place. But today I was the faster and got to pay everything during a hastily announced restroom trip. Score!

I was reminded of these wise words this evening, as I struggled to find a clean, reasonable crisp shirt to wear tomorrow. How much of our lives are taken up with the most mundane repetitive tasks? How many great things are left undone, how many great thoughts are left unthunk?

It's in a new light I'm seeing things like laundry, doing dishes (as I am presently living without a dishwasher... I say living in it's most general sense, as without a dishwasher I am as alive as a small snail), and putting out the garbage.

While these events and their completion bring a certain sense of hunter-gatherer satisfaction, and that was before I began timing myself doing the ironing and setting up a benchmarking scheme for the proportion of my rubbish that goes into the recycle bin, is it not when idle that the most profitable thoughts are formulated and the most creative plans are put into action? I wager that Bell (or Meucci, depending on how you like your history) spent many hours sitting on his arse doing nothing, and with no intention of doing anything, before the telephone was invented. It certainly wasn't on a Tuesday evening in the half-hour after he hoovered the hall and before he cleaned the microwave.

So leave aside an evening to think, plan and scheme.

Here's to going to work in a smelly, crumpled shirt, with half of last night's dinner hanging off your unshaven chin, and filing the most creative expenses claim ever.

To kick things off I want to get an answer to something. I was walking down by my local wildlife park the other day and photographed a goose-type animal I've never seen before.

Any ideas what it's called or where it's from?

Welcome readers,

This is a project I've been meaning to embark on for a few years, but better late than never.

I'm a young construction professional occasionally working in Ireland's vibrant and wonderful construction industry. During this time I have inhabited and possibly worked in a variety of roles - general operative, delivery boy, truck counter, setting out engineer, site engineer, resident engineer, cowboy and tea-boy.

As I write, it seems Irish construction has begun to collapse around us, with bad news printed in every newspaper, every day. Perhaps this is a good time to begin documenting our times, along with my memories stretching back to around 1995, when it all began.

So this blog is a chance to muse on the construction sector in Ireland, my experiences past, present and future, and various misguided observations on the world and it's atmosphere, land and oceans, the global economy and the day-to-day lives of those who wear yellow jackets to make a living.

Enjoy!