It was the late US congressman Thomas ‘Tip’ O’Neill who said “all politics is local”. And Minister Josepha Madigan’s intervention on property tax is perhaps a classic example of this. Ms Madigan’s call for lower Local Property Tax (LPT) rates for places with higher property values, such as her Dublin Rathdown constituency, has predictably sparked […]

Has any prime minister in history relied so heavily on desperation as a force to mobilise or motivate to the extent as Theresa May? She first struck the despatch box after calling her ill-judged election back in 2017, insisting: “No deal was better than a bad deal.” She spent the next two years repeating it. […]

Apparently, one of the problems in dealing with emergency situations is that many people tend to freeze. Some are in denial about how bad the situation is. For others, fear and panic simply overcome their ability to take decisions. The result is that they end up rooted to the spot, unwilling or unable to take […]

(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. Airports across the country have begun to buckle, bringing the government shutdown into many more Americans’ daily reality. The Transportation Security Administration’s 51,000 employees were ordered to work without pay, but on this, the 24th day of the shutdown, […]

(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.) Good morning. China deepens a diplomatic rift with Canada, Theresa May braces for a Brexit defeat and sexual assault allegations rattle South Korea’s sports community. Here’s the latest: China sentences a Canadian to death A court in northeastern China sentenced Robert Lloyd Schellenberg to death […]

MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s Banco Santander lost a battle to regain ownership of its headquarters outside Madrid on Monday when a Spanish court ruled that the billionaire Reuben brothers had won a tender with a cash bid, net of debt, of 283 million euros ($325 million). Santander pays millions of euros in monthly rent to […]

Last week, in a meeting with Democratic leaders, President Trump called the government shutdown a “strike.” This was an enigmatic use of a hallowed term, although it might have simply been Mr. Trump’s confusion about the “blue flu” epidemic afflicting employees of the Transportation Security Administration, who are working without pay and registering their protest […]

(Reuters) – German commercial property group Summit Germany Ltd (SMTG.L) said on Monday that it was exploring an initial public offering of its Summit Luxco unit on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The listing of Luxco, which holds all of Summit’s German real estate business, including asset and property management operations, would be subject to market […]

(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.) Good morning, We start with a look at the Trump administration’s Mideast policies, the growing political fight confronting the president, and a teachers’ strike in Los Angeles today. Breaking Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which has been struggling with a financial crisis stemming from California’s […]

The TDs are back at Leinster House tomorrow and Fine Gael deputies in particular fear something very nasty lurking in the shadows. It could well be that fatal combination of elections and tax hikes. There is a growing view that carbon tax increases – to modify behaviour, of course – are now inevitable before this […]