Ever wonder how you can change the world without changing the way you live?

Well some very bright young Trinity graduates might have just come up with the solution by creating a loyalty card for charity.

“While studying at Trinity Conor Leen became more aware of the issue of inequality and how as a society, not enough is being done to tackle issues like food poverty. To address the problem of world hunger and to make a positive impact on society Connor and 5 of his fellow Trinity classmates set up the social enterprise Stampify.” @collegetimesct

“Stampify is a social initiative that allows users to donate meals to help fight world hunger by completing a Stampify loyalty card with loyalty stamps from partner businesses,” CEO and founder @ConorLeen

These “partner businesses” are basically coffee shops and they’re everywhere. This is a social movement that can make a difference and any barista can sign up. Basically if you fancy feeling like Bob Geldof and George Clooney at the same time make sure your coffee comes with a Stampify card.  

To use Stampify, you simply pick up a Stampify loyalty card next time you get a coffee and start collecting stamps on it. It’s better than putting a stamp on those regular selfish “freebie for me” cards that you eventually end up using as a filter for your rollies anyway.  

“Chances are that if many of us emptied out our wallets, out will fall three or four half-filled loyalty cards.” @JOEdotie

The main benefit is that you can then mix-and-match loyalty stamps from different cafes to complete the card, before returning it to any of them, feed a child for a week, and feel like Bob Clooney for the rest of the day.

“To provide meals to fight world hunger, we have partnered with international aid charity Mary’s Meals. For every completed card, partners make a donation to Mary’s Meals which is used to feed a child for a week.” @stampifyireland

“For every completed card, a child will be fed for a week in their place of education in some of the world's most deprived countries .... For now the initiative is aiding children in countries such as Zambia, India and Malawi.” @Independent_ie

​Bank Of Ireland have felt the wrath of the angry Irish twitterati over a recent advert which attempts to normalise the out of control rental and property market in Dublin. The advert is part of a campaign which also published a post on the BOI blog which unintentionally mocks the state of education inflation in Ireland.

The protagonist, Orla, who leaps through the hoops of the Irish education system studying digital marketing, finds herself as a highly skilled employee in of ‘the world’s largest airlines’. Unwittingly she moves back home to live with her parents as the accepted norm, as a joint income is not enough to secure a deposit in a growing housing market in Ireland’s capital.

The advert highlights a lot of problems in socio-economics in Dublin and tries to work the old angle that paying rent is dead money, but it’s angered middle class first time buyers who are faced with a harsh reality that owning a property in 2017 is near on impossible for a couple with parental accommodation available, not to mind a single worker in their mid twenties who has no alternative but to pay rent at something close to €1000pm, and that’s probably sharing a house with a couple in their forties, a convict, and the crayon magician who you’re not sure works or just draws the dole and steals food from McDonalds.

Presumably the blog post will be taken down, so for posterity I’ve made a copy. Angry we must be until we realise we need radical change, the conservative parties must be replaced. We cannot support the upper half of a two tier society who profit from housing bubbles and extortionate rent rates.
 
Orla grew up in Sutton on the north side of Dublin. She studied Marketing at college then launched her career in digital marketing and now works for one of the world’s largest airlines in the area of ecommerce. In order to save up the deposit for a home, Orla and her boyfriend gave up their rented apartment and moved back to their separate family homes.

I studied marketing at college then went into the digital side.
I studied at DIT in Dublin on Aungier Street so I stayed living at home when I went to college which was great because it was so convenient and that kept the cost of going to college down.

I started off in an Irish start-up, an architectural company, where I got to experience a bit of everything.
I was there for two years then I left to go to start another marketing role that was solely focused on digital. I worked there for three years and then moved to my current role earlier this year. I’m in my current role just over 8 months now.

Two years after graduating, I moved out from home to live in Portmarnock, which was only 15 minutes away, to live with my boyfriend.
We wanted our own place. We were both in our careers a couple of years by then and both had the money to move out but didn’t want to move too far away from family and friends. We got a 2-bed apartment in a good, safe area with plenty of amenities so we ended up staying there for four years. We only moved out just after Christmas.

My boyfriend moved back to his parents and I moved back to mine.
That gave us the opportunity, from January 2016, to get the MortgageSaver account, start saving and to kind of chip away at the deposit. As much as we loved having our own place it just made so much sense to move home and see how much we can save. We’re both very lucky to have such supportive parents who understand how difficult in can be to save a significant deposit amount.

We’re trying to save a decent amount each month.
It was easier to move back home separately because we each live close to each other anyway and work at the same place so it just made sense. We both knew that if we were really going to make a stab at saving a significant amount this would be the best way to do it.

I am back in my old bedroom at home.
Our parents have been fantastic, it nearly broke their hearts that we paid nearly €40,000 over four years to rent when we were only just down the road and now that’s pretty much what we need to save now to buy a house. They are happy for me to be home because they know that the money I’m saving will be going towards something long-term. Obviously it was great to have our own space and to be able to entertain but when we can see just how much we can save I don’t even miss the apartment. I just see it as dead money.

We only started officially saving for the deposit at the end of January 2016 but we’ve been able to save more than we thought we would be able to.
We never considered the savings you can make on small things. Even though we contribute to the upkeep, it does work out cheaper living at home.

I quit the gym but I had to set a goal for myself. Exercise was always my outlet so I signed myself up for the Dublin Marathon instead…
…and I said to myself I’ll just be a runner for a year. Cancelled the gym membership and saved €45 a month and just ran – it’s free. It’s really hard! I’m taking on a lot moving home, a new job, saving for a home and a marathon. I don’t do things by halves! It’s my first ever marathon. I’m following a weekly schedule of distances and times.

Next year we have eight weddings to go to.
Two abroad and the rest at home here in Ireland. They are close friends and family. Events like this are a great break from the working week and a chance to get a break away too.

We’ve always said we want to buy a house rather than an apartment and I suppose that’s maybe a real Irish thing as well to own your own house.
We initially thought will we buy somewhere small and short term and get on the property ladder then buy something bigger but then we said why not just bite the bullet, do this once, go through it and buy the ‘forever home’. Maybe it takes longer to save but it’s worth it in the end.

We want to live where we live now within a 6 km radius.
Where our parents live would be out of our reach in terms of affordability. We said what kind of new builds are happening in Swords, which is still very connected, it’s not far from where we both work and there’s value there.

It’s hard to get the balance of a new development in a good location
Because all the villages, say Swords or Raheny, are so established that the new builds are outside them not in the villages themselves. I don’t want to have to drive to the shop for a pint of milk and want to have the option to walk to the local for a few drinks without having to get a taxi home. Looking to the future when we do have, hopefully, our own family, I don’t want to have to give my kids lifts everywhere either.

We’ve started the approval process now and have gone to the banks.
I’m conscious of our ages if we’re going for say a 35-year mortgage then I want to speed it up as much as possible so we don’t go over our retirement ages. We probably rented for too long. But we wouldn’t be able to save the amounts we’re saving now two years ago.

We’ve actually gathered all the paperwork. And that’s like a labour.
It’s exhausting! Of course it has to be done, and I get that completely, but it’s annoying! We’re lucky that we don’t have to give notice, we don’t have to get out of a lease or sell a property to buy. It’s very difficult for people our age to rent and save a decent amount each month while still maintaining a certain quality of life.


The entire mortgage process was very new to me! I didn’t even know why I’d even need a solicitor when I first met the bank about a mortgage.
It’s daunting because you feel like you don’t have the upper hand because you don’t know the process. I’m not young but I felt young and naïve when I went in to the bank. There’s a lot of jargon I wouldn’t be familiar with. What if we came into money in 15 years’ time? What would the charges be to pay it off and what kind of a mortgage would we need to have if we did want to do that?

In my circle of friends, it’s been great to get advice from those who have gone through the process recently.
I try to get as much information out of them as possible. You can ask them anything because you don’t mind telling them you don’t know. And then I’m also conscious not to bore my friends to death talking about interest rates when they’re not looking to buy and couldn’t care less.

I’ve started going to viewings of new builds and I find that daunting too.
We’d usually go on a Saturday morning and afternoon and there could be up to 15-20 people there. Couples with parents – they mean business! We’ve seen a number of houses so far. I do fear investing in a property and then seeing one that I love more. Another fear would be if in five years’ time if the market took a dip, would we lose a lot of value when the property won’t be a new build anymore?
​
Going back home was actually easier than I thought it would be.
I have a new-found respect for the Mam and Dad. I mean I won’t leave the lights on at home now. When I leave a room I turn out the light. I know now how much it costs to run a home and the sacrifices they’ve made. I have a totally different perspective now.

It is widely agreed that globalisation has bought immense benefits. But it is also recognised that these benefits are not equally distributed.

Last week’s Apple decision demonstrates the complexity of the issue of distributing the benefits of globalisation. The Irish Government, faced with a windfall of some €13 billion, appears to have sided with the world’s largest and most profitable company against the welfare of its citizens.

It was believed once that countries initially became more unequal as they became more prosperous, but that all would then benefit from globalisation. This theory, which was correct at the time for the US, is wrong.

The fact is that globalisation brings increasing inequality. Soaring inequality can only be addressed by governments, and increasingly only by governments co-operating internationally.

The dilemma of the Irish Government is whether it acts to increase or reduce inequality by siding with its citizens or with corporations. The issue is far more complex than this, but the Apple case brings to a head the unequal struggle between unchallenged, powerful corporations and sovereign governments trying to represent their citizens.

It is unequal because, to date, governments have sided with corporations and, in Ireland, we appeared to gain from that tax strategy. But growing inequality and corporate tax avoidance on such a scale has brought the issue to a head.

Apple has staggering cash reserves, but it still borrowed a huge amount in order to offset the interest against taxation. It and most multinationals no longer believe in paying tax. For them, tax is a business cost, not a payment for public services.

Apple’s iPhone, in particular, has several key features that were invented in publicly funded labs – which were supported by taxes.

With globalisation, transfer pricing has allowed companies to easily avoid taxation with the assistance of their “professional” advisers – the Big Four accounting firms.

Until multinationals begin to see tax as a legitimate, lawful and morally responsible payment for public services, then international tax avoidance on an industrial scale will continue.

Up until now, the EU’s directorate-general for taxation negotiated with the Big Four and multinationals on taxation issues. But it took a wildcard –commissioner Margrethe Vestager – to seriously disrupt these cosy chats when she made the Apple ruling.

The EU now looks as if it may be finally working for its citizens!

Tax avoidance cheats us out of funds that could be used for the public benefit. It is out of control. And wherever you find tax avoidance, you are likely to find the big accounting firms.

These firms have had a major influence on policymaking in taxation. The partners and their professional organisations, which they dominate, have pursued an anti-tax and particularly an anti-progressive tax policy at every opportunity.

Thus another issue raised by the Apple case is whether there is a revolving door between the Irish Revenue Commissioners and the Big Four?

The Government has a real moral dilemma. It must act in the interests of its citizens. The Irish State has demonstrated that it is not powerless in the global economy. It was able to rescue all of its six banks and most of its developers, and it put the economy back on course, albeit with some external help.

The EU has now shown multinationals that such levels of tax avoidance, while legal, will no longer be tolerated.

The Government should do what is morally correct: take the money and invest it in an ambitious capital programme, not on day-to-day spending. It should also develop a sustainable industrial policy that is no longer dependent on the uncertainty of the tax avoidance industry. Ireland has much more to offer.
​
Most multinationals, including Apple, invest here for many other good reasons and will continue to do so. If governments cease their “tax wars” and big companies begin to pay a fair tax on profits, inequality will also decline. We should warmly welcome the Apple ruling.
 
This article was written by Paul Sweeney and published in the Irish Times on Monday 5th September (originally titled ‘On Apple tax, State must side with its citizens’). Picture by Rod Clement – Australian Financial Review

We sometimes laugh at our ‘first world problems’ without actually realising what a privileged society we live in. This speech by 91 year old Harry Smith is an absolute inspiration that really makes you reflect on our recent history, where we’ve come from, the everyday comforts we most often take for granted, and what exactly the public health care system means to us.

'I came into this world in the rough and ready year of 1923...it was a bleak time and it was an uncivilised time...if I close my eyes I can smell the poverty that oozes from the dusty tenement streets of my boyhood...I can remember extreme hunger and my parent’s undying love for me. In my heart I can still feel my Mum and Dad’s desperation as they tried to keep our family safe and healthy in the slum we called home...but the cards were stacked against them because common disease controlled our neighbourhood and snuffed out life like a cold breath on a warm candle’s flame...sadly rampant poverty and no health care were the norm for the Britain of my youth. That injustice galvanised my generation to become after the Second World War the tide that raised all boats...but my heart is also with the people of the present who because of welfare cuts and austerity measures are struggling once more to make ends meet, and who’s futures I fear for. Today we must be vigilant, we must be vocal...my life is your history and we should keep it that way.' Harry Smith