Irish blogs – guiding me through the recession

I work in a large financial services institution, so talk of the ‘r word’ is strictly forbidden.  (For the record, the word is RECESSION people, and refusing to say the word won’t, despite what some idiots may say, make it go away).  Anyway, the Irish blogosphere is all abuzz with chatter about various aspects of the downturn, so I thought I’d try to pull a few of these together to give a rough dummy’s guide to the recession.

The natural reaction when times are tough, is for the belts to be tightened a little, and sure enough, Irish bloggers are testign themselves to see how well prepared they might be for tougher times.  Lidl Treats has embarked on a €50 challenge, trying to feed two people on €50 a week, shopping only in Lidl.  Now personally, I’d rather gouge my eyes out with a spoon than shop in that hell-hole, but nevertheless, it’s quite an impressive challenge.  In other belt-tightening news, I am just two days from my month of hell – attempting to limit my discretionary expenditure for the month of August to just €500 (including all food, ciggies, socialising and travel).  Needless to say, I’ve thoroughly emptied the bank account in advance of this appalling month, but I’m feeling quite optimistic about it all.  I’ve got a few TV series’ downloading at the moment, and I have tonnes of study to do during August, so all going well, I’ll be able to stick to my very strict budget.  edit – through Lidl treats, I also came across Deborah’s blog, which is definitely going to be somewhere I’ll be nabbing recipes from.

Fortunately, to assist those of us who are enduring  or preparing to endure periods of self-imposed frugality, Conor’s excellent blog helps us keep an eye on prices, without even having to buy the Irish Times (speaking of which, their decision to go free online has easily saved me €30-40 a month, though I still buy the Saturday version to peruse over a coffee in Lemon Jelly, and I nick the Friday version from work to keep an eye on any interesting jobs that come up!).  Unfortunately, at a time when the state should really be providing extra funding to groups such as the National Consumer Agency, to provide regular price comparisons (such as their recent comparison between prices north and south of the border), and throw a spotlight on prices across the country, the Government are instead considering their abolition (more on that anon.).

The tool I will rely on most during August, will be the advice and opinions of Irish bloggers.  Gastronom and Grannymar are always good sources of recipes I can pilfer to make cooking at home a little more palatable.  Twenty and Grandad will keep me giggling for the month.  Úna, Dermod and Jim will give me all I need on music, theatre and music news respectively (and an invitation to the opening night of An Ideal Husband will even save me from having to pay for the theatre!).  Daithí will mostly make me scratch my head, and sometimes smash it off the desk, but I still wouldn’t miss his blog for the world!  RedMum’s gorgeous photos will make me wish I had artistic talent.  The Dublin Free Event Guide will help me find fun things to do when I get really sick of sitting at home alone, draining the dregs of whatever booze I have left!  And of course, Damo will provide me with links to enough websites to spend the entire month looking at.  Oh, and finally, my mate Conor is flying out of the country on Thursday to spend 8 months or so in Asia, so I’ll also be wistfully following his journey, and hoping that his trip acts as a motivating factor for saving money!

I’m sure there will be countless other bloggers either cutting their budgets, or advising people how to cut their budgets over the coming months, and I’ll try to include these as I find them.

Leaving individual crusades to one side for a moment, there are also a number of bloggers examining the downturn from a more macro-economic point of view.  First up is the excellent Notes on the Front, which has changed temporarily to incorporate the ‘Recession Diaries‘ – shorter entries than normal analysing downturn-related news items as they arise.  In a similar vein, the Cedar Lounge Revolution, Maman Poulet and Mulley’s Fluffy Links are increasingly featuring analyses of various aspects of Government policy in this area (or links to such in Mulley’s case).

I’m very tempted to include a long rant about the disastrous policies being pursued by the Government to get us out of this black hole, but I won’t.  However, there is one area which I feel it would be irresponsible not to comment on, and that is the proposed abolition/amalgamation of various agencies.  I can understand the political need to be seen to clamp down on unnecessary expenditure during difficult economic times.  However, some of the groups being targetted for shitdown/amalgamation are very important for a number of reasons.  During a recession, one of the biggest concerns is always rising poverty, which makes the proposal to abolish the Combat Poverty Agency truly bizarre, and more than a little scary.  Nice to see that evil bitch Hanafin having a positive affect on another Department, after criminally failing to resolve issues with our education system.  Equally, the Equality Authority have played an exceptional role in representing minorities since their establishment, and Suzy rightly points out the dangers of the proposed (and very odd) merger of the Equality Authority, the Irish Human Rights Commission and the Data Protection Commissioner.

Preventing public waste is important during a downturn, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.