Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Does Fortune Favour The Brave?

I never thought I'd be saying this. Bush fires in Ireland. After the driest April in memory, parts of the island succumbed to Mother Nature's warmer side, adding another element to the topsy- turvy world of climate change. Cynic or believer, these are strange times.

Once again my ignorance of national affairs has been good of late, but i managed to hear something about a jobs initiative being launched next week. The positive side of me is hoping that it offers something of a stimulus to those unemployed who are just itching to get going on something. You know, the ones who would gladly work day and night just to be given a small chance to prove their worth to the Ireland of tomorrow.
The negative side of me says there will be little by way of change when it is announced. We have 450,000 people unemployed in this country right now. A conservative estimate by me would say about 70% of those would sooner be working. Many of those have ideas. Ideas that could be fostered through a package of innovation and enterprise aimed specifically at getting the unemployed back to work. The cost? Not much more than the cost of social welfare. The benefits? Priceless. It's all a matter of will by those charged with taking us forward. The leaders will rise to the top, we hope!

There is a link below to a blog post which contains links to some of the great talent i have managed to secure for the Booker's World web series. Included is information on Brian Fortune, who will play the character of Don Booker in the series. So if you finally want a face to the character check it out.
Also included is information on Johnny Elliott who will play my other book fictional character Sonny Strange. Gerry Shanahan and ray Reilly has also come aboard and we expect to shoot the no-budget series over two weekends at the start of June.
With the book finished and a web series shot, one hopes it will be enough to make the powers that be convinced of some drive, and maybe they will accept my application for that Enterprise Allowance I sought before. It's like a kick in the gut when you're work counts for little and they would sooner pay you to do nothing than try get something off the ground. If it remains like that, the steady stream of people out of here will continue. That would be a tough day, if it came to that.

'The only way up, is out,' as Leon used to say. Sure hope he was wrong.

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Meet the principal characters for the Booker's World web series here.

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