Hard times? Let the economists argue over their forecasts; even let Mary Harney talk us into a recession with her desperate efforts to talk us out of one. Liveline (RT╔ Radio 1, Monday to Friday) has been bringing us the best and most depressing economic indicator of all: pyramid schemes - bleedin', eejit-filled pyramid schemes - are back in Ireland in a big, big way. Try talking your way out of that.
We first heard about the Pyramid Revival happening up North, around Bangor, and we might have been inclined to take it for one of those sweet Norn Iron throwbacks, along the lines of soapbox preachers and pipe-bombs flung at little girls. This time, however, the Northerners were the trendsetters - more along the lines of . . . uhm, wait, we'll think of something . . . voting Sinn FΘin? - and the schemes have swept South.
Indeed, to hear Liveline, there does seem to be a North-to-South geographic factor at play, with callers describing early pyramids in places such as Monaghan, then in north Co Dublin. There are apparently villages and suburbs where you can't walk to the shops without hearing a series of animated conversations about who's in and who's winning.
The era of the entrepreneur-hero, it seems, is over, and our excitement about money is generated by the beneficiaries of mad multiplication (beyond even the dot com bubble), be it scammy or just lucky. In the latter category, Dave Hickey - he of the pesetas that mushroomed magically into pounds by way of mistaken currency symbols - talked to Gerry Ryan (2FM, Monday to Friday) on his mobile, somewhere in Spain, coyly unforthcoming about how big a bite he's taken of his mutant, bank-grown carrot.
Back on Liveline, Joe Duffy sure wasn't making heroes of the pyramid winners. Instead, he was boning up on maths to explain why these schemes are bound to spell financial disaster for the majority of people who are caught up in them. Some callers roamed further into the realm of ethics to suggest that the pyramid-toppers were no better than thieves.
That didn't stop a number of other callers from coming on-air to extol the virtues of the pyramid (or whatever they chose to call it - the "airplane" was one version that swept the emigrant community in Boston in the 1980s). One self-described winner even insisted that the pyramid need never collapse, with everyone a winner into eternity. I don't think you'll find a lot of economists becoming engaged by the intellectual merits of that argument.
Despite the best efforts of Joe and the team, some poor and soon-to-be-poorer saps are going to be attracted to pyramids by exactly this sort of programme, convinced they've got the wit and the connections to be among the lucky few. And all the tales of spiralling debt and busted-up friendships couldn't happen to them, sure they couldn't?
'Twas far from get-rich-quick that most Irish people were residing during the "Emergency" in the early 1940s (though no doubt there was, as always, a tiny minority that was able to whip up black-market fortunes based on scarcity). As this week's Radio 1 documentary, This Island Nation (RT╔ Radio 1, Wednesday), pointed out, this State was only spared dire shortages of life's basics thanks to the bravery and persistence of the Irish merchant marine.
Plying limited and dangerous trade routes in and out of the isolated and neutral Free State, Ireland's merchant fleet lost no fewer than 150 seamen. So much for neutrality - except that the sailors honoured that concept gloriously by rescuing more than 500 people of all nationalities in the course of their seafaring duties.
Brendan MacMahon's documentary was a real historical eye-opener, with articulate survivors and historians talking about the poor and belated provision that the young State made for sea freight - until, at the late date of March, 1941, the Government formed Irish Shipping. "The prices were horrific at this stage, because everyone wanted ships - ships were scarce. And they had to pay some terrible prices for old wrecks of ships."
The story of the State's respect and recognition for the sailors after the war is no more admirable - "forgotten" would be about the nicest description you could muster for their service and their families. However, between the twin pillars of State neglect, before and after the Emergency, there was a genuinely glorious edifice of courage built by the men themselves in wartime.
However, even then the State posed difficulties. When men were lost, the Government was slow to confirm the deaths - loath to blame any combatant nation - and as a result widows were left uncompensated and children hungry.
The complications of death certificates and wartime sensitivities can't help but remind today's listener of New York, where, somewhat bizarrely, the official death toll from the World Trade Centre atrocity keeps on falling, on its way, says the New York Times, to about 3,000.
That's roughly half the figure many of us have fixated on. On Making Terror, Breaking Terror (BBC World Service, Friday, repeated next Monday and Tuesday) we heard a tape of Tony Blair talking of "7,000", and I don't imagine he or anyone else is going to start issuing corrections and clarifications.
The exact number is, of course, of little relevance, except rhetorically; September 11th is not a lesser crime because 3,000 fewer people died, though we're entitled, I think, to be quietly grateful that this is the case. The over-estimated death-toll was certainly no conspiracy to inflate the horror, but it might be a salutary lesson in the risks of trying to pretend we can pin-down certainties in a hugely complex and chaotic situation.
Righteous certainties are what Making Terror, Breaking Terror opened with - from Blair; from Bush ("No national aspiration, no remembered wrong, can ever justify the deliberate murder of the innocent. Any government that rejects this principle, trying to pick and choose its terrorist friends, will know the consequences."); from Giuliani ("We're right, and they're wrong, it's as simple as that.")
But then came presenter Allan Little, asking the uh-oh questions: "Was Osama bin Laden a terrorist when he was fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan? The Russians thought so. Is an armed Kurdish insurgent a terrorist when he's in Turkey, and a freedom-fighter when he's in Iraq?"
In the first programme of this informative and by-no-means soft-hitting series on terrorism, Little met the father of a Hamas suicide bomber, a 22-year-old art student. "The day he blew himself up, I was talking to him about the exams he was going to be sitting . . ." Such Hamas bombers actually make a video that, once they've done the dreadful deed, is shown on Palestinian TV, then given to their families. "I'm really proud of Ismail," the father said. "It's better than getting killed out on the street. He's a martyr . . . for God and for our people."
This programme didn't shy away from terrorists who commit horrible acts. It dealt with three historically brutal groups who nonetheless enjoy considerable grassroots support: the movements associated with Hamas, the Tamil Tigers and indeed the IRA have been viewed as having integrity compared with more "moderate" politicians, and also deliver real service to their communities - which have been likely themselves to be victims of state violence.
The programme concluded that military defeat of such movements is virtually impossible.
Sophisticated journalism like this doesn't lend itself to supporting politicians' certainties. Can we have more of it, please?
Meanwhile, fans of politically independent public radio the world over had some tentative reason to rejoice this week, when the despised national board of the Pacifica radio network in the US agreed voluntarily to dissolve. This opens the way, pending close reading by lawyers, for a democratic revival at stations such as the devastated WBAI in New York and KPFA in Berkeley. All this comes after open and organised rebellion by thousands of listeners, who pay for the stations with their "sponsorship" dollars. All in all, good news so far, and a mark of the limits of our public-service radio - with an idea of democracy that stops at Liveline.
hbrowne@irish-times.ie