Looked at a bit more closely the kernel of the story appears to centre around Limerick City Council buying up semi-ds in order to temporarily house residents of Moyross as their own homes are refurbished; the single most outrageous sentence categorises all these families as ‘problem families’ - recalling John Copper Clarke’s great line from Beasley St about ‘their only problem (being )they’re not someone else’…….. seriously, have a look. The classs war goes overground from the enemy side.

Did I say 5pm. I mean 10pm when he goes home to log on again with his laptop to reply to that fucker in San Fran that was asking about tomorrow’s delivery.

He will in general toe the line. For he or she knows that his/her own bonus and chances of getting to the next level depend on it. Even if she gets to the next level, say a head of business unit. Power in society is still not advanced all that much. The son of a TD who pulls his wire all day would still have far more power. Or the daughter of the Master of the local hospital.

I’m struggling here to delineate where the line lies between real power and merely, low level corporate power.

I suppose if our friend becomes VP or CEO of a reasonable size company and starts to play golf (or otherwise network) with slightly more powerful CEOs then that would constitute real power. Entering the clique so to speak. Arrivé!

Ok, I feel bad for talking too much about beer. In terms of power, once you get into the non-unionised service sector jobs, a middle manager is not likely to hold that much more power than any person whom he manages.

That is, he/she has little, if any power to side with his lesser-paid companions when threatened with the prospect of his job -and those of the rest of his workplace- heading south. That is, he’s as fearful as the rest of ‘em. Sure, he can do a Spartacus, but, he thinks, it won’t do any good, because real power interests -in many cases, real power is not concentrated in Ireland, a consideration your analysis appears to omit- will see to it that either a) he is replaced with someone more compliant, since most of these roles are easily replaceable; b) the generalised demands for better conditions get met eventually with a decision to accelerate the transfer of his production to China, India, Eastern Europe, or wherever.

“Having watched the last episode tonight i still think it shouldn’t be dismissed on the basis of a materialist analysis alone.”

Donal, again, I’m not dismissing Prosperity because of some aesthetic reading of the drama, I’m highlighting it because it falls with an historical lineage of Irish portrayals of the poor / working class - a lineage that goes back over a hundred years. either way, Prosperity was peripheral to my post, as was that fucking breakfast.

Yes, Galway’s Berlin years have nothing on Bowie and Eno. But on reflection, perhaps a beer or three before a performance might have put a bit of zest into his otherwise soporific flute-playing.

I heard that Nicholas Cage story too. My favourite celebrity ‘alcoholic’ story was working class hero James Galway. Some years back on TV he made startling revelations about how his drinking nearly ruined his life. He recalled the mad times with the Berlin Phil, where he could end up drinking two, even three pints of beer a night. Crazy bastard.

The guys stomach was in no shape for food.

Now maybe the character in Prosperity wasn’t as far gone. On a side note I remember hearing that in order to reherse for his part Nicholas Cage decided he needed to go somewhere where a lot of drinking gets done. So he got on a plane to Dublin. However, Nicholas Cage is kind of recognizable and there wouldn’t be much change of mixing comfortably with the regulars in Grogans of a saturday night. So instead he sat in his hotel room and ordered up booze from room service. Or so I heard. It’s probably just another apocryphal tale.