Mario Rosenstock is a comedian and impressionist, and creator of TodayFM’s Gift Grub.







*****













Here’s something about the Chinese economy.









China’s ‘investment’ in real estate makes Ireland’s property obsession seem breezy and carefree. Just before our crash, 12 per cent of our economy was house-building.







Even if Chinese GDP figures are true, then their reliance on homebuilding is double our peak. (If their GDP is overstated, it’s worse.)







If China crashes, it will shake the world. China holds trillions in dollar and euro reserves, and US sovereign debt. China is not a democracy, but its leaders are sensitive to public opinion, and deeply paranoid about preventing unrest.







If threatened, the Communist Party is likely to pull investment from anywhere it needs to, to keep their internal economy going, and keep their population working, not protesting. But with ghost cities, and one quarter of the economy building more of them, something has to give. But when?















Maybe now.







Shanghai is China’s largest stock exchange. The Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) Composite has been in freefall for nearly a month. That crash – nearly 30 per cent of the peak – has put the values back a year or so, but it shows no sign of slowing.







No matter how unthinkable, China’s building boom must end sometime, just as ours did. There is no reason to hope that it will be a soft landing. 









I suppose that I’m not the only one talking about the Chinese economy, and its potential to take the rest of the world down with it, if it collapses. But the thing about what I wrote there, is the ‘maybe now’ bit. Because I actually wrote that in July 2015. That’s more than eight years ago.







I remember in about mid–2009, when the property myth in Ireland was still just barely believable, but only for the really gullible, I heard one journalist on the radio, who had been preaching the soft-landing gospel of the time that was becoming untenable, refer to David McWilliams, who had been a lone voice warning of the instability of the property market, they referred to him sarcastically as ‘having predicted all 10 of the previous one property crash’. They were trying to argue that the property crash was not a real thing.







Now, I think that sort of comment was totally disingenuous, but the point is not necessarily wrong. If you keep predicting something that is at least not impossible for long enough, then odds are eventually that you will be proved right, not because you are Mystic Meg, but because most non-impossible things happen sooner or later.







But I think it’s unfair to characterise David McWilliams like that, at that time he was pointing out obvious contradictions, such as the proportion of our economy dependent on building, and the unsustainability of that, as well as of the impossibility high prices of accommodation. He wasn’t so much Mystic Meg as Capitan Logical, pointing out that predictions from others were just physically impossible.







That brings us to the China problem. People have been predicting the end of their long boom for years – including me. Does that mean it can continue forever? Well, no, obviously. One of those supposed Chinese anecdotes fits in well here. I’m not so sure of their cultural appropriateness, or even if it’s pure orientalism, but you’ll see the relevance.







A poor man does a favour for the emperor. </itunes:summary>
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<title>Here’s How 168 – Mark of Empire</title>
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<description>Ben Habib is one of the deputy leaders of Reform UK, the new name for The Brexit Party founded by Nigel Farage. I misspoke during the interview, I wrongly said that Reginald Dyer, the butcher of Amritsar, was Jewish. I should have said that Edwin Montagu, the Liberal MP and Secretary for India, who did […]</description>
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<itunes:subtitle>Ben Habib is one of the deputy leaders of Reform UK, the new name for The Brexit Party founded by Nigel Farage. I misspoke during the interview, I wrongly said that Reginald Dyer, the butcher of Amritsar, was Jewish.</itunes:subtitle>
<itunes:summary><![CDATA[

Ben Habib is one of the deputy leaders of Reform UK, the new name for The Brexit Party founded by Nigel Farage.













I misspoke during the interview, I wrongly said that Reginald Dyer, the butcher of Amritsar, was Jewish. I should have said that Edwin Montagu, the Liberal MP and Secretary for India, who did not support Dyre, was Jewish, and the resulting campaign against him by Conservative MPs (in support of Dyre) had a strong and explicit antisemitic element.







Ben’s claim that the then Brexit Party, for which he was an MEP, provided a majority of the non-white or ethnic minority members of the 2019 European Parliament doesn’t seem to be correct; a Reform Party spokesperson clarified that they meant that all British MEPs provided a majority of ethnic minority members of the EP. The EP told us that they don’t collect this information, but reporting here and here indicates that isn’t the case, and the Brexit Party had the lowest proportion of ethnic minorities among its MEPs, of all Britain-wide parties although that isn’t a really valid comparison given the small numbers involved.













Notwithstanding all that, I think Ben’s wider point is valid, that while it is imperfect like any country, the UK has a relatively good record on race relations compared to many continental European countries.







*****







John will be 40 next April, or he would be, if he lived. But he didn’t.







He died.















He died of 28 stab wounds, which he suffered shortly after his birth in 1984. Neither John’s parents nor his murderer have ever been identified, though we can guess that there may be some overlap there given that, a short time later, his newborn body, partially decomposed, was washed ashore, with 28 stab wounds, near Cahersiveen.







But the fact that his parents and/or murderers were never identified didn’t stop some people from jumping to conclusions.







At about the same time, 80 km to the north-east in Abbeydorney, also in Kerry, there was a woman who had what was known at the time – this was the 1980s – she had a reputation.







What that meant was she came from a poor farming family, they didn’t have much education, and she had a boyfriend. Who was married. To someone else. That sort of thing that would get you a reputation in rural Ireland at the time, and not a reputation that would do you any good.







It certainly didn’t do Joanne Hayes any good and, when it was observed locally that she was pregnant, I think we can conclude that congratulations and best wishes were not the first things that came to the minds, or the lips, of many of her neighbours.







When it was evident that Joanne was no longer pregnant, and there was no sign of a baby, that surely drew attention. When the John’s tiny, murdered body was washed ashore, 80 km down the coast, it was probably reasonable to ask questions. Confirmation bias is a powerful thing. The gardaí arrested Joanne and her entire family.