Penalty suffered when Taoiseach hits high and wide on PR scoreboard
"A lack of respect for the dignity of the office of the Taoiseach," is a phrase from another era that I remember being bandied at journalists who dared to criticise the country's elected leader.
That sanctimonious mouthful was intended to both intimidate the hack in question and impute a shameful, semi-traitorous motivation.
However, being the elected Taoiseach of a people who only came to self-administer within the last century is a magical and privileged role and one that I have always felt that both holder and elector should cherish as such.
The bitterness of the public reaction to the collapsing economy currently means that one can almost say anything about the current Taoiseach and get away with it -- and that includes references to his appearance and scandalous nudges and hints about his mood and demeanour.
While in Britain the coarse tactics of the cheap press over the past two decades has brought about a general coarsening of public behaviour, here it seems to be working in reverse. The viciousness of the public discourse -- in buses, workplaces, taxis, blogs and radio -- is leading the media into new territories of bile.
There is little doubt that there are unprecedented levels of political anger out there, but giving oxygen to incoherent public anger is hardly crusading journalism.
Having said that, I would have to point out to Mr Cowen's media handlers that they have a duty to "respect the dignity of the office" on our behalf and rein their man in, especially in front of international TV cameras.
On Monday, CNBC carried a piece about Ireland's fall from grace to coincide with the Taoiseach's St Patrick's day visit.
To all of us feeding on the daily coverage here, the content of the piece was fairly anodyne, trotting out the usual stats about the speed of the ascent and the apocalyptic nature of the unravelling.
To be fair, the report was built around a type of "Ireland-Fights-Back" spin, which we can all live with.
Yet, when CNBC's Margaret Brennan interviewed Brian Cowen she had no problem provoking him by putting to him the old canard about the difference between Ireland and Iceland being one letter and six months.
Instead of swatting it away with a laugh and pointing out that the "joke" is itself more than six months old, Mr Cowen fell for the trap.
"Nonsense," he spluttered aggressively, before saying we were "open for business", making vague references to there being a conspiracy against Ireland from other countries on the hunt for FDI and reiterating once again that it was "nonsense".
Ms Brennan had her soundbite, and the single most important audience that the Irish economy currently needs to impress saw a testy Taoiseach treat one of the US business media's darlings like a heckler at a cumann meeting.
Ms Brennan's line of question may have been infuriating, and the Taoiseach may pride himself on being unspun and spontaneous in public, but this was the communications equivalent of blowing a penalty kick high and wide.
Corporate admen are taking the mick . . .
What do Aviva, Rightprice Tiles and Bord Gais have in common?
Well, they are just three of the companies that have been attempting to show how in tune they are by taking the mickey out of the boom.
I wonder . . . some shouty corporate voiceover telling me that we have moved from things "we thought were important" (shoes) to "things that are important" (gambolling on the beach with my handsome young family), make we want to shoot the telly.
Can't they leave us alone and suffer our misery in silence?
Qualceram share price down the sink
Last week, we pointed out that Fyffes -- one of Ireland's few quoted non-banking or building successes -- is a very pale shadow of itself following an unconvincing management strategy of splitting the company in three.
Fyffes' slide may be undeniable.
However, compared with Qualceram, another second liner, shareholders in the banana importer should be hugging themselves with glee.
On the surface of it, management at Qualceram would appear to have pulled off a coup of uncanny timing.
It sold its property in Arklow for €30m and change in February 2008.
Think of it -- €30m for a patch of ground in Wicklow.
Surely, one would think, this would result in some tangible benefit for Qualceram shareholders?
After all €30m would buy you a majority stake in Fyffes.
Or, if you were really up for a punt, it would get you a 10pc stake in Bank of Ireland. Yet, somehow, since getting that twine in their bank account, Qualceram shares have fallen from €1 to just over 6c.
Now, we all realise that buying bathroom suites isn't exactly the recession's favourite activity, but 6c?
Qualceram Shires, a more or less debt-free company that trousered €30m for a property at boom prices now has a market capitalisation of, and this is not a typo, €1.4m.
What is this company still doing on the stock market?
Sub-€10 lunch is way to go at Wagamama
We seem to have become the unofficial death notices page for Dublin restaurants -- reporting two sudden and untimely departures within the past month.
It's nice, therefore, to report some good news from the city centre mid-market. I dropped in to Wagamama on South King St the other day for the first time in six months where my old favourite of chicken ramen and a pint of fresh juice with liver clearing capabilities used to set me back the cheeky enough sum of €15.
Thanks to the recession, the same is now available for under a tenner.
You know what? If a fella could keep his job for the next few years his lifestyle could improve. . .
