1. How many hectares of agricultural land is there left in the World today?  And how many tonnes of food can they produce?

2. What are the World population trends over the last few hundred years?

3. Ireland´s boom was on the back of a high tech industry, which we are no longer competitive in, and therefore there will be no building or advancement in any way until we are competitive again.

As an example, the boss of a high tech company that employs 2,000 people has the following options:

Ireland 2,000 people x Average 40K p.a. = €80,000,000
Abroad 2,000 people x Average 10K p.a. = €20,000,000
Annual saving on labour alone = €60,000,000

There was a time when the Polish, Indians etc. weren´t educated well enough in English and modern tech systems, but that day is over, and I know of two girls working here in Lanzarote as doctor´s receptionists & secretaries for some doctors in the United States.  When you go to the surgery in the States you are greeted by these Secretaries *on a screen* – from Lanzarote!

And now to the *Options* I suggest we have:

1. We control imports, and therefore stop these cheaper manufacturing companies exporting their produce. 

2. We become as competitive as them, and work for the same salaries, which will in turn drop the price of everything we buy, be it food, houses, holidays, cars, etc.

3.  We try to come up with new manufacturing ideas and produce products nobody else is manufacturing.

The young people today will have to pull off a massive stroke of genius if they want to hold on to the living standards they have had until recently, or else simply settle for an awful lot less than they were used to.

My own two sons and all their friends finishing college this year are going out into a very different world to the one they grew up in.  It´s been changing so fast in the last couple of years, I don´t think any of them fully understand it.

It´s one thing to start out your career when everything is still going down and will continue to do so for a good few years yet.  Then you are in a situation where your expectations are constantly changing downwards, and that is very demoralising.  There is nothing wrong with starting at the bottom, and even better when everything is climbing, but there is also nothing worse than watching everything going down around you.

The positive side to all of this is that any of these young fellows starting off in life will either accept a much lower standard of income, which will mean cycling to work instead of driving, not going out socialising, not going on foreign holidays etc., etc., or those who will find a way to get ahead but using a different way of thinking completely, will be fine.

My fear is for those who cannot accept the world as it is changing and will not or cannot do anything about it, but I also know that those that do survive by either accepting the change or doing something about it will be far stronger people than those of us who survived the 80s recession, and will live much better lives after we get to the bottom of this cycle.

Just as sure as the highs of the late 90s and early years of this decade were never higher, its my opinion the lows over hte next few years will be worse than anything seen in the 80s.

There are always fantastic opportunities in recession times, but it´s a hell of a lot more difficult to find them.  Most of the serious wealth was created in recessions, but you have to think in a completely different way during a recession.

I have loads and loads of grat ideas which would work during recessions, but I am too busy and happy making sure that Charlie´s Bar is, and stays, the best bar in Lanzarote, and keeping the hide & skin business in Ireland competitive, to have time to do much else.  And funny as it may seem, for a “clown” who left school at 14 years of age, most of my ideas are based around technology, simplicity and hard work.  I would love to see somebody else making some of these ideas work.  Sometimes all you have to do is look at the exact opposite of what others are doing!

As regards Charlie´s Bar and its competitiveness in recession times, I have seen people in Ireland paying €30 per head to watch a lot worse acts than us at Charlies.  I feel we would be offering really good value by charging €10 entry on the door and then we could sell drink cheaper – but that simply wouldn´t work.  We are all very conscious at Charlies of making sure we offer people value for money.  We work extremely hard to make sure we are the best, and we all live fantastic, but simple lives.  We are very lucky that we love what we do, because you simply couldn´t do it if you didn´t…

So far in 2009 and looking forwards into the year, Skin & Hide spent 3 days a week in January learning & rehearsing Damien Dempsey´s songs, and it was well worth it!  Now they are straight into the same for Sharon Shannon in two weeks´ time.  This is, of course, as well as playing 6 nights a week.  Then we will have one or two meetings after Sharon´s gigs and we will thrash around ideas between us all for making & arranging approx. 10 new songs.  We will rehearse them once a week through March and April.  We are lucky to have Jon Kenny over for the last week of April.  Then we close for the middle two weeks in May for annual holidays.  From 1st June through to the third week of September, we will have no rehearsals and will play 7 nights a week at Charlies, and one early wedding gig as well.  Also in September, a great band from Cork “Bog the Donkey” will give Skin & Hide a week off, and then Skin & Hide will play again 6 nights a week through October and November, and we will put another couple of new songs together during those months. 

2010 will be much the same, except I am working on one or two extra interesting projects, which we might just pull off with a bit of luck.

Hard work, competitiveness, a belief in what you are doing and a lack of greed will pull any business through any recession.  I HOPE!!!

Cheers.
Murphy

The truth about why we are so deep in recession is simply because we haven’t had a leader since Haughey.  Like or dislike him, and I would have serious issues with him, but he understood one thing – and that was that when things are bad, a leader must be positive and drive and push forwards, and when things are good a leader must try to slow the ship down, especially when the good is based on false foundations and expectations.

Since he has gone, Bertie fuelled the hype, or at least did nothing to slow it, and now that the bubble has burst Cowen is slowing things, just as he should be driving forward.  To be fair to Bertie, he brought peace to the North and was very popular on the World stage, which helped us a lot, but he was too nice to some of the wrong people – which is costing us now.

The letter that Ben Dunne wrote in the Independent is fantastic, simply because it’s so real, and it’s he should be Taoiseach. One of the things that he wrote was that we should ask ourselves: “What’s the worst that can happen here? How do we deal with that eventuality, and how do move forward knowing the answers to the first two questions?” I have always made my business decisions based on those very same questions.  What he is saying is that instead of dribbling bad news everyday as it comes out, we should throw it out hard and fast so that everyone knows where we stand.  And believe me, regardless of how bad that is, people respect and feel much more comfortable when they know the truth.  Now everyone is wondering how bad it is instead of how we fix it.  Give people the bottom line and get on with whatever we have to deal with – with a smile…

Check this out.  The closest bit of realism I have read in a long time…

Click here to read the article “FitzPatrick ‘addicted to money’ says Ben Dunne”

Just added!

A great rendition of Damo doing “The Irish Rover” together with Barry Murphy and Skin & Hide, plus “Bad Time Garda” and “Seize the Day”, all here:

www.youtube.com/charlieslanzarote

Enjoy!

Here is a serious question that I want to answer for myself, and I simply don’t know the answer to:

Why do I read newspapers????? HELP!

I remember some years ago that somewhere, somebody started a “good news channel” and it went bust very fast.  Why do we wallow in negativity?  Is it that when we read that there has been a disaster, a murder or an economic credit crunch, it makes us feel better because we have escaped, or because we are part of it, and we feel better to know that there are others in the same boat?  Probably so, because if we hear good news that others are doing well, it makes us feel bad as we ask ourselves “why are we not doing well, and what’s wrong with us?”

What a f*cked up way of thinking. Any time I saw someone else doing well I always thought “how are they doing that, and what can I learn from them?”, but it seems that a lot of people feel better bringing others down to their own level instead of bringing themselves up to others.

A slight example that happened to me today was when I parked a minibus outside a certain bar (which has mainly a daytime trade) with Damien Dempsey posters on the window, and the owner told me to move it as I was taking custom from his bar.  I moved it when he threatened me with the police, even though I had every right to put it there, but I’m too smart to waste time arguing with certain types of people – in case I would become one.  I did point out to him that I had brought about 500 people over the week to Lanzarote by bringing Damien here to play, and that his bar was benefiting from those same 500 people.  His reply was that I didn’t bring Damo here but Magners did, and he knew it for a fact.  While I appreciate Magners´ help and support with the *Magners Irish Sessions*, this gentleman was very wrong with his facts and assumptions.  When I heard him speaking like this I decided that there was no point whatsoever talking any further to someone who knew everthing, and I simply drove away.  A typical example of trying to bring someone else down instead of trying to bring yourself up.  I was even thinking to take a picture of his bar and put it up in Charlies as a place to visit, just to prove the point, but decided that he wouldn’t understand, and while I accept that things are difficult here in Lanzarote at the moment, I can’t understand how trying to shoot each other in the foot is going to help anyone, or all of us.

Anyway, back to my newspaper problem – here are the headlines of The Examiner today. And you tell me why I bother reading them, because I’m f*cked if I know why!

1. There has been a sixfold increase in the number of murders involving knives in the last 5 years in Ireland???

2. Brian Cowen is telling the Irish people that they will have to accept a 10% reduction in living standards because of the global economic crisis???  I presume he means a 10% drop in financial living standards – which is only financial.  I would question that there will be a drop in living standards outside of financial, and would hope that people think the same as I do and that, believe it or not, there is more to life than simply money.  Also, I notice for the last few months that every article that they write about Brian Cowen has the same miserable face picture of him with his head down in despair.

3. The next article is about who owns the rights to the photo used in the election campaign of Barack Obama.  So now all we have to talk about or discuss about the most powerful man on this planet is who owns these rights, and he has only been in office a few weeks!  This leads me to think either he is simply a boring leader or The Examiner editor is a p*sshead who doesn’t have a f*cking clue and couldn’t be bothered to find something intelligent to print.  I hope the latter is the case.

Either way, my question is simple: “Why do I bother to read the newspapers?”  HELP!

Photos are now up in our Photo Gallery.

And here´s a bit of eye and ear candy for you from last night – Damo playing the fantastic “Maasai” together with Skin & Hide…