Todays the day that we celebrate all things Irish.

As I said this time last year, maybe we can take a few minutes today to consider how we can support and develop our country into the days, months and years to come as well.

In the past year, I’ve written a fair bit about buying Irish. In the same time frame, we’ve seen some other developments on the “Buy Irish” front – such as the Love Irish Food campaign and the more recent Think Irish campaign.

With all this in mind, I’ve put together a “Buy Irish” resource page . This new page will bring together all of the posts I write on buying Irish here on ValueIreland.com as well as links to various other “Buy Irish” resources such as newspaper articles and links to other campaign websites.

More Related ValueIreland.com Posts:

• March 17, 2009 -- Happy St. Patricks Day
• March 9, 2010 -- Consumers Association Chief Executive advocates buying British, not Irish
• December 11, 2009 -- Readers E-mail – Irish Attitudes

I wrote about the Global Irish Economic Forum back around the time it was hosted, Diaspora, schmiaspora! How about the chickens who came home to roost?.

I wasn’t that impressed back then with what it was supposedly intending to achieve or the methods it was going about its task, and upon reading the status report which is now available on the Forum website here, I’m not seeing anything that can convince me that my original scepticism was misplaced.

For a great review of this status report, you should read this blog post from Dr. Constantin Gurdgiev, Why Farmleigh report falls flat.

At the moment, apart from these regional meetings referred to Dr. Gurdgiev, the most developed idea so far seems to be the Global Irish Internet portal being worked on by John McColgan. There’s a post over on Bock The Robber that covers that idea – Riverdance’s McColgan Comes Up with Internet Portal Idea.

The conclusion drawn by Dr. Gurdgiev:

What Farmleigh report does well, then? It shows a deep degree of incompetence and insecurity amongst the political and bureaucratic masters of Ireland Inc. It’s comprehensive lack of new ideas, lack of departure from the status quo are frustrating, especially since we know – many of those who were at Farmleigh last September really do have good ideas.

There’s those words again – the “status quo”.

More Related ValueIreland.com Posts:

• October 29, 2009 -- Christmas is coming – and the scams are warming up
• October 8, 2009 -- Are you interested in Irish culture? How would you define it?
• December 19, 2008 -- Top Tips for Irish Consumers from Bock The Robber

Yesterday was World Consumers Day. Personally, I wouldn’t have known about it except for someone forwarded to me a Consumers Association of Ireland press release sent out last week marking the occasion. I didn’t get it as they seem to have removed me from their mailing list for some reason.

As an aside, from the release I see they’re starting to use the old “truly independent” tagline from ValueIreland.com as well – they used to be plain old independent. You’re hardly “truly independent” however if you’re depending on a Government subvention every year to survive, and where some of your board members rake in directors fees from many state and semi-state organisations and quangos.

This is the Press Release:

CAI mark Consumer Rights Day with re-launch of Website WWW. THECAI.IE

The Consumer’s Association of Ireland (CAI) re-launched its new look website today and in doing so set out its stall in celebration of World Consumer Rights Day 2010.

Dermott Jewell, CEO of the Association, said that “The CAI, as a truly independent consumer Association, struggles to survive at the best of times. In times of recession it becomes almost impossible. We are hoping that consumers, by visiting the site, will see what we are about and support us in supporting them and their families.

We know – and guarantee – that any one becoming a Member and supporter will save the cost of their subscription and more through our recommended independent product tests and money and lifestyle advice. That – what consumers need – all day every day! Jewell concluded.

World Consumer Rights Day has its origins in former US President John F. Kennedy’s declaration to US Congress on March 15^th 1962 of the 4 basic consumer rights:

The right to safety;

The right to be informed;

The right to choose and

The right to be heard.

“Consumers by definition, include us all. They are the largest economic group, affecting and affected by almost every public and private economic decision. Yet they are the only important group… whose views are often not heard.”

The site is a definite improvement over the previous incarnation – much clearer and somewhat easier to navigate.

Head over there and check it out – they are now providing access online to their back catalogue of product testing reviews from their Consumer Choice magazine – available at €96 per year.

If you head over there now, you can get 12-hours free access to the membership areas of the site – get a look at some of those product testing articles maybe.

This new site, and the above press release, seems to indicate the renewal of the annual efforts to boost what is a consistently falling membership base (according to the most recent accounts lodged with the Companies Office).

Unfortunately for the Irish consumer, the CAI, despite it’s slogans and aims, is no longer a consumer advocacy organisation. Can anyone remember what their most recent “campaign” was? And I don’t mean a reactionary soundbite on the radio.

I believe it’s three years now since a significant chunk of work was done to identify campaign items that the Association would stand work on.  I have not seen a single proactive measure coming from the Association in that time – despite there being some pretty good ideas on that campaign items list.

As was raised at the last AGM I attended – 2008 – it’s clear that the CAI is now no more than a magazine publication organisation that charges a ridiculous €96 per year subscription  - exactly three times that of Eddie Hobbs Your and Your Money magazine.

It’s interesting then, that as per the press release above, they “guarantee” that you’ll save at least €96 per year by subscribing to their magazine. One wonders what the small print is on that guarantee – “or your money back?” I wonder?

I can guarantee you a €96 saving right here and now, but you already know what I’m going to say now.

More Related ValueIreland.com Posts:

• March 9, 2009 -- Revenge of the Consumers Association of Ireland?
• March 9, 2010 -- Consumers Association Chief Executive advocates buying British, not Irish
• October 21, 2009 -- Survey shocker – groceries still more expensive down south!

This video, from YouTube, is apparently the first ever episode of Dempseys Den. The jumper (I can’t call it a woolly jumper as it’s a linen/cotton mix) is another Heritage Knitwear design.

Every jumper made by the company had a 3-digit design number, and every colour had a different 3-digit code as well.

From this mornings post, I don’t remember either the style number (though it could be 721), or the colour number. In the video clip below, I think the style number would have been 664 – and the colour was 201 white.

Growing up, one of my main jobs was to pack the jumpers into plastic bags before they were packed in boxes and dispatched. Every swing ticket put on every jumper was hand written with the style number, the colour number and the size. You pack a few thousand jumpers into bags you get to remember these things – and become very adept at folding clothes.

The pattern on the jumper Ian Dempsey is wearing below is a nautical theme, with the blocks of colour intended to represent sailing ensign flags. I believe the ensigns used on this jumper actually represented the message “check me out and my lovely jumper”.

More Related ValueIreland.com Posts:

• March 11, 2010 -- Remember the mad jumpers on Dempseys Den? A 1980s entrepreneurs story

I’ve written in the past about the fact that as I was growing up, my parents ran their own business in Mayo.

The company, Heritage Knitwear, made “woolly jumpers” – a term at the time that my father really despised.

And any of you who were fans of Dempseys Den in the late 80’s and early 90’s may be familiar with some of the products made thanks to Ian Dempsey. He even wore a Heritage jumper on the first day of broadcast for the show – video to follow later.

The company specialised in a type of knitting called “intarsia” – a technique that was very labour intensive, but which allowed very distinct patterns and vivid colour combinations to be produced.

Working in a family business

As I was growing up, my sister and I spent every summer, and most weekends, working in the family business. I think that working in a family business gives you a particular type of grounding when it comes to approaching work in later life. As it’s a family business, you very quickly learn that the “buck” stops in only one place and fosters a strong sense of responsibility for ensuring things get done.

My sister used to be sometimes upset that people would have the opinion that just because you were the bosses daughter, or the bosses son, that you got an easy time. We can both attest to the fact that there’s nothing further from the truth. We can tell many tales of late nights and early mornings finishing off orders for dispatch when it was just the 4 family members left behind finishing off the job.

My parents retired from the business in 1999 having sold on to someone else, but unfortunately since then the company has closed down. The labour intensiveness nature of the manufacturing process ultimately meant that cheaper overseas competition made it impossible to compete.

Small Irish company sells to the world

Over the years Heritage Knitwear made woolly jumpers for some of the best known fashion labels in the world including Ralph Lauren, Paul Smith, Aquascutum, Macys, Paul Stewart, Saks 5th Avenue, Nortstrom, Liberty, Gieves & Hawkes, Harrods, Lands End and the J.Peterman mail order catalogue of Seinfeld fame.

Apart from that, a couple of generations of Mayo kids grew up being kept warm by Heritage jumpers. The only problem for my folks was that the jumpers were so hardy wearing, the different generations were all wearing the same woolly jumpers, handed down from one family member to the next.

1982 vs 2002 – Investment turns selfish

One of the key points I’ve written about before here when referring to the family business focused on the fact that Heritage Knitwear was set up in 1982 – a period so bad economically that some people think we’re returning to similar times now.

In 1982, when my father wanted to make a change in order to set himself up, ultimately for retirement, but also to put his kids through college, he set up a business, and hired an average of maybe 20 people per year for 17 years. In meeting his ultimate aims, he provided employment in a small town with the knock on benefits that had.

For me, the great disappointment of the years of the Celtic Tiger, and the legacy we’re left with today, is that when many people went to set themselves up for retirement, they resorted to buying non-productive (socially), almost selfish, assets such as property, or stocks & shares.

When it comes to “enterprise” in Ireland today, many people don’t actually appreciate what’s needed, or what’s involved – they lost touch during the Celtic Tiger. And for anyone who’s left that understands enterprise, there has been such a huge destruction of wealth held in those non-production selfish assets of property and stocks and shares, that there’s very little money left behind now to support fledgling new enterprises – either through investment or as customers.

More Related ValueIreland.com Posts:

• March 11, 2010 -- A clip from the first ever Dempseys Den – bright jumper included

I wrote a fair bit last week, and yesterday as well, about the new ideas generating campaign that’s currently ongoing here in Ireland – Your Country, Your Call.

I’ve tried to portray my own thoughts, particular in the first post – Yet another idea generating campaign – can we see some actions sometime maybe?

Coincidentally then, that it was only last week that I came across this article on the Harvard Business Review Blog – Having Ideas Versus Having a Vision. According to the author of this article:

One consequence of a decade focused on idea generation is ideas are now more easily accessible, which has also made idea generation less of a differentiator in competition than it has traditionally been.

…

What is in short supply, I’m afraid, are visionary thinkers who will be capable of making sense of this abundance of stimuli — visionaries who will build the arenas to unleash the power of ideas and transform them into actions.

This, I believe, is where the disconnect between these ideas generating campaigns, and the real world as we’re experiencing in Ireland at the moment, exists.

As I pointed out in the previous posts, Ireland at the moment is not short of ideas, and at a macro level, we’re also not short of the cash that could help develop those ideas.

What is damagingly wrong is that there isn’t sufficient vision amongst those who control the government purse strings to see where the money rightly needs to be spent.

More Related ValueIreland.com Posts:

• March 5, 2010 -- The Real Problem with Idea Generating Campaigns
• March 4, 2010 -- Ideas Campaign and Your Country, Your Call – deja vu all over again
• March 2, 2010 -- Yet another idea generating campaign – can we see some actions sometime maybe?

I had to read this recent story in the Evening Herald, Lidl bargain sets Irish stores meaty challenge, a few times before I could finally grasp what was going on.

First of all, I couldn’t understand how the Consumers Association of Ireland would be so desperate for newspaper coverage (measured monthly as a KPI for the organisation) that they’d be quoted welcoming the introduction of a new bargain price “roast dinner selection” to Lidl outlets throughout the country.

Then we discover that the welcomed new bargain meal is actually a product of the United Kingdom, and Mr. Jewell expects there to be queues of shoppers down the street waiting to buy a roast dinner for €1.99.

I can’t imagine the CAI deputy chairman, Michael Kilcoyne, would have been be too happy to hear about Mr. Jewells comments, particularly as only that week he had to deal with 140 of his union members in Galway losing their jobs at the Irish wholesaler Musgraves, suppliers to many competitors of Lidl.

I suppose it’s the perennial problem for Irish consumers. Do you buy Irish, frequently at a higher price, with the aim of supporting Irish businesses and industry, or do you follow the price and buy the cheapest products possible?

More Related ValueIreland.com Posts:

• February 3, 2009 -- Does CAI mean “can’t agree internally” or “confused and incoherent”?
• October 6, 2008 -- Consumers of Ireland – come together for the cause!
• March 15, 2010 -- What did you do for World Consumers Day?

I’m very happy to report that ValueIreland.com has been nominated for a 2010 Irish Blog Award.

I’d like to very much thank all of you, the readers, for the support and feedback you’ve provided me here over the past few years.

It gives me a great kick just knowing that there are people interested in what I have to write, so this extra recognition is icing on the cake.

More Related ValueIreland.com Posts:

• February 14, 2009 -- Consumer News Weekend Short Stack
• January 24, 2009 -- Weekend Consumer News Short Stack
• January 21, 2009 -- Nominated: Best Specialist Blog – Sponsored by iQ Content

Over three days last week, I wrote about this years ideas generating campaign, Your Country, Your Call. And yes, I have been somewhat critical of how the campaign is organised and how it promotes itself. The 3 posts are available here:

I haven’t been the only critic, but still and all, the campaign has taken hold, and at the time of writing this, there are over 1900 suggestions submitted to the website. Personally, I’ve reviewed most of the summary text of the submissions made. Unfortunately though, I don’t believe there is yet the “truly transformational” idea that the organisers are looking for.

However, despite some of the pure drivel that is in there, I do think that there are a number of ideas, or themes of ideas that if combined together, could provide what could make a difference to the country.

Any of you on Twitter may have been following the #YCYC hash-tag where loads of people are picking out some of the more outrageous suggestions submitted to the website – and there are some doozies.

It’s also becoming more obvious, particularly in recent days that some people are just having fun with the site and submitting what they know are ridiculous suggestions for the fun of it.

Fair enough – just like the gaming of BenDunne.com when he provided free advertising – if you’re going to open up a website to unmoderated submissions, you’re always likely to get that kind of activity. According to whomever is behind the Your Country, Your Call twitter account, they’ve only deleted 5 submissions in the first week because they contravened their terms and conditions – despite the fact that there’s a difference of approximately 250 between the latest submission ID and the actual number of submissions available on the website.

In fairness though, I guess it’s quite hard to try to weed out the plainly ridiculous suggestions as you’d be unlikely to tell if someone was being unfortunately genuine, or if someone was having a laugh.

What I’d love to see though, even from the many skeptics out there, is for everyone to review the existing suggestions submitted again to see if the bones of a single great comprehensive idea could be compiled from the many smaller and incomplete ones – build the “truly transformational” idea from the thinking (sometimes incomplete and off the wall) that’s been done already.

Personally, I have seen three distinct threads of ideas submitted that align to some ideas I’ve been mulling over myself recently. I’m currently drafting together the bones of those ideas, with the stuff I’ve been working on myself. While any individual ideas might not win the prize outright, it’s possible that a combination of multiple peoples thinking would have a better chance (assuming we’re not stepping on the toes of the incumbents).

It’d be great to see others do this kind of data mining within their own spheres of expertise, just in case there’s a bunch of smaller ideas worth bundling together into that “truly transformational” one.

More Related ValueIreland.com Posts:

• March 10, 2010 -- Idea generating campaigns disconnect – Having ideas versus having a vision
• March 5, 2010 -- The Real Problem with Idea Generating Campaigns
• March 4, 2010 -- Ideas Campaign and Your Country, Your Call – deja vu all over again

When I first read about the aims of the countries current idea generating campaign, Your Country, Your Call, I was particularly drawn to one particular aspect. It’s contained in this section, taken from the About page on the YCYC website:

The goal is to pick two truly transformational proposals so big that, when implemented, could secure prosperity and jobs for Ireland. Proposals that could help change the way we do things, allow businesses to grow, employment to be created and prosperity to flourish.

“Truly transformational”

It’s not about growing more trees along the motorway, or gathering rainwater to sell abroad, or even to give Irish passports to the Irish Diaspora and bring them home on holidays on free Aer Lingus sites.

They say that they’re looking for something massive – something that will change Ireland for the better, for good.

A noble aspiration. However, if you really consider what might be needed to change this country at the moment, in my first post in this series, I touched upon why this is really unlikely to come to pass.

Idea generating campaigns, I said, are “where the general population are invited to submit their ideas to an elite group of people who will cherry pick what suits them and ignore everything else”.

Insiders don’t want change

I’ve described these elite as “incumbents” – David McWilliams would call them (himself included) “insiders”. But whatever you call them, and whomever they are, they are the people who were running this country, and running the businesses in this country, during the time that we rose spectacularly and descended even more spectacularly over the past 20 years.

Why then would these people entertain any ideas that come from the general public that would disturb the status quo that exists in Ireland?

For example, as is touched upon in several suggestions on the YCYC website, the most “transformational” change we could probably implement in this country in the morning would be to change the current government, possibly even doing away with Fianna Fail completely. Why not even use the €100,000 and the momentum of this YCYC campaign to create a new political force for our generation?

A new start? Hardly likely

But turkeys don’t vote for Christmas. The Dail could make a significant transformation change to how this country is run for free by instituting the much called for political reforms, but we’re not seeing that any time soon either.

How about bringing about “transformational” change by retiring off all the “incumbents” who got us to this low point? The Government has already failed to do that in the Banks, it’ll never happen in the Civil and Public Service, and despite so many promises in the past, it’s not even happening with the countless quangos set up over the years (in fact we’re setting up new ones rather than getting rid of others).

But that’s not the end of it, the current problems encountered by developers are unlikely to result in any of these being completely removed from the picture? Just as the Corporate Enforcer wouldn’t move against insider dealing in DCC, he’s unlikely to take action against any developer who so badly runs a company and who so wrecklessly incurs debt as to endanger the country, never mind their own companies.

Why nothing will really change?

This YCYC campaign will pick a panel of people who will, without doubt, be a panel made up of “insiders” and “incumbents” – the very same thing happened with the Ideas Campaign – see their Advisory Council members here to refresh your memory.

In fact, they’ve already started by picking David Byrne as Chairman of the Judging Panel – Senior Council, former Fianna Fail appointed Attorney General, former Fianna Fail appointed European Commissioner, and Chancellor of Dublin City University.

These 12-18 members of the judging panel will come from positions and backgrounds as insiders and incumbents where it will be plainly obvious that they will not actually want to see a transformational change the size of which is actually needed to turn this country around.

It won’t be in their own interests, or the interests of their buddies and political contacts to see the “transformational change” that could change how this country is run, how it does business, and ultimately how it looks after all its citizens, not just the insiders and incumbents.

More Related ValueIreland.com Posts:

• March 10, 2010 -- Idea generating campaigns disconnect – Having ideas versus having a vision
• March 4, 2010 -- Ideas Campaign and Your Country, Your Call – deja vu all over again
• March 2, 2010 -- Yet another idea generating campaign – can we see some actions sometime maybe?