The 18 hour Taoiseach.

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Today, we’ll be talking about the Irish government and some very recent tariff affairs but trekking to that fire-side contemplation and destination by meandering along the wild Atlantic way.

Steve Jobs, Genius & Asshole.

Saturday evening, I was driving around the country roads, aimlessly enough, and half listening to podcasts, when a portion of one caught my attention. The subject of the conversation was Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple. The guest in question was Kevin O’Leary, who many may know today from his appearances on big, US business media platforms and also the US version of Dragon’s Den, where he picked up the nickname Mr. Wonderful.

But, in the early 90s, the Canadian business-man and TV personality was, in fact, a producer and supplier of software to Apple and Jobs.

Back then, it was a CD driven software environment and O’Leary’s business produced plenty of student and educational software packages for Apple. This specific era in question was pre the creation of the iPod and iPhone, and before Microsoft and Windows 95 completely re-modelled the personal computer market and world as we knew it. A period when Apple was experiencing its first exponential growth phase and the internet was shuffling laboriously on-line.

I used to work for Steve Jobs in the early '90s, making all of his educational software....Steve would say, and by the way not a nice guy, not a nice guy. He would say to a roomful of people:

'Kevin, I don't give a shit what the students want or what the parents think or what anybody thinks. It's what I want. They don't know what they want until I tell them what they want'.

And I said: " Steve you sound like such an asshole, you have no idea what that sounds like "

And he said " No, no, that's how it is, Kevin. Now, are you making money with me?

Am I your fastest growing OEM. Have we not been wildly successful and continue to be?

And I said " Yes, that's true, Steve.

" Then fucking shut up and do what I say "

- Kevin O’Leary, on Diary of a CEO.

Let’s pause here for a moment to reflect on this sliver of O’Leary reflection about Jobs. and try out an exercise in our minds. Re-read the above piece of dialogue but substitute Steve Jobs’ name for overall US corporate and EU sovereign interests in Ireland, instead. Then, obviously, imagine Kevin O’Leary is the Irish government.

Cuts pretty close to the bone, I’d say.

Now, in the last twenty four hours, the US and EU choreographed a trade deal. I say choreographed, as it seemed Trump barely needed to get out of his Scottish golf-cart to negotiate it. Today, headlines across the Irish media are of the 15% tariff agreement reached between the two trading blocks. Although, I suspect, the devil may well be in the detail as the finer points of the deal filter out over the next weeks and months. Suffice to say, though, this trade deal will have a sufficiently devastating effect on Ireland Inc. for the foreseeable future. Specifically, I want to draw readers attention to the official response from Taoiseach Martin to the trade news. It was swift and suitably comical.

The agreement achieved this afternoon in Scotland between Presidents von der Leyen and Trump is very welcome.

It brings clarity and predictability to the trading relationship between the EU and the US – the biggest in the world.

That is good for businesses, investors and consumers. It will help protect many jobs in Ireland.

- Taoiseach Martin, 27 July, 2025. Full Statement here

There are a number of ways to interpret this segment of the Martin statement but let’s try something a little off-beat, and return to my opening paragraphs and a personal observation, I omitted, about O’Leary.

Kevin O’Leary, on the balance of probabilities is not Mr. Wonderful at all but an ass-hole.

A one percenter.

On a related point, and based on extensive anatomical research, most marine biologists agree that the blue whale has the largest anus in the known natural world.

So, simply enough, if O’Leary is an ass-hole then Steve Jobs was an ass-hole of blue whale proportions.

The one percent of the one percenters. Which is probably why in this interview O’Leary seems to both abhor and marvel at Steve Jobs in equal measure. Now, contemplated in this fashion, Ireland’s main, widespread political problem is a rather odd one to consider. We have not a single ass-hole in government to represent the people against the oppressive waves of assholery assaulting the nation.

EU Commission chief, Van der Leyen, is an ass-hole for the European elites.

Trump’s is an ass-hole for MAGA. Or at least, he seemed to be until the day before yesterday.

One of the problems Ireland faces is we don’t possess an ass-hole to stand up for the nation. Martin & Harris are not ass-holes but something far more dangerous to Irish society. Vacuous, virtue-signalling survivalists without a hole between them to take a shit for themselves or anyone else. To remain in office they simply require about 10-15% of the population to make plenty of money. And make it, in an early 90s, O’Leary type fashion.

The Martin statement above celebrates the wonderful clarity and predictability the EU/US trade deal brings to Ireland. That clarity has provided an oil painting of the Cliffs of Moher in our near future. Yet, this new-found unblinkered vision still involves Martin encouraging everyone in the country to continue jogging towards the edge of the Cliffs.

While, the trade-deal might be a welcome development to those of us who believe the expansion of the Irish economy needs to hit hard on the brakes immediately, it is most certainly not good news for consumers or business or the economy in general. In short, the globalist Taoiseach is lying to the globalist Irish foot-soldiers who vote for the Fine Gael’s, Fianna Fail’s and Sinn Fein’s of this world.

The statement is wild, insane propaganda.

But, let’s get back to Kevin O’Leary and Jobs to see if we might learn anymore about ourselves.

" And here's what I learned (about Jobs). Look at how wildly successful he was.

But here's why.

There's a concept that he understood that very few people focused on back then, in the early 90s, of signal-to-noise ratio.

What was so brilliant about Jobs, that I tell every CEO now...his vision of signal was the top 3 to 5 things you have to get done in the next 18 hours.

Not your vision for the business next week, or next month, or next year. Just the next 18 hours you're awake.

You are going to get those 3 or 5 things done that you have deemed critical for your mission. They must get done. Today.

Anything that stops you from doing that is the noise"

Now, problematically, as it pertained to Jobs weird psychology, noise could be framed as: a family bereavement, kindness, an employee illness, empathy, a car crash, or half an hour’s sleep at night.

But, the psychology undoubtedly made billions in profits and continues to do so long after his death.

For the quote to fit Irish psychopathy, though, we must invert the words above. In Ireland’s dystopian landscape, noise is the new signal. In essence, this government focuses on the three to five pieces of noise they must fart through their smiles ( they don’t have ass-holes remember) into a helpful media environment in order to get through the next 18 hours of government.

This seems to be the grand plan of 2025.

18 hour Government cycles.

Press releases announcing record breaking house building figures actually translate, on the ground, into the following picture below. Basic, two bedroom box apartments changing hands at 2,400 euro a month.

There is no long term, or medium term. Hell, there is no short term thinking. All that exists is gargantuan levels of noise peddled by the sectors trying to survive the consequences of their own actions and inactions.

Whether the noise be news revealing that president of the Irish pandemic, Dr. Tony Holohan, might now be running for the presidency of Ireland come November, or that former US president Barack Obama is set to receive the freedom of Dublin city in September; the goal is the same. Mass production of noise.

Why?

To keep large chunks of the country in constant digital friction with one another lest anyone begins deciphering the frightening signals leaking out of the arse of all these air-balloons of noise.

It’s all about survival.

Theirs not yours, obviously.

Please consider the monthly 7 euro subscription or 70 euro annual subscription for anyone that can afford that option below.

Readers can make once off contributions to my work - by clicking the link —> Buy the author a coffee. ☕️

Donations also accepted via Revolut app to 085 1214347