Summary: <br> Professor <a rel="noreferrer noopener external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Nida-R%C3%BCmelin" target="_blank" data-wpel-link="external">Julian</a> <a rel="noreferrer noopener external" href="https://twitter.com/nida_ruemelin?lang=en" target="_blank" data-wpel-link="external">Nida-Rümelin</a> is is a Professor of Philosophy and Political Theory at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He was the State Minister for Culture of the Federal Republic of Germany under Gerhard Schröder. <br> <br> <br> <br> <a href="http://blog.hereshow.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Julian-Nida-Rumelin-scaled.jpg" data-wpel-link="internal"></a><br> <br> <br> Professor Nida-Rümelin, along with dozens of other prominent Germans signed a <a rel="noreferrer noopener external" href="https://www.emma.de/artikel/open-letter-chancellor-olaf-scholz-339499" target="_blank" data-wpel-link="external">letter</a> in <a rel="noreferrer noopener external" href="https://www.zeit.de/2022/27/ukraine-krieg-frieden-waffenstillstand" target="_blank" data-wpel-link="external">Die Zeit</a>, a leading German newspaper, about the Ukraine’s war against the Russian invasion, under the headline Ceasefire Now. In the second part of this series we will hear an opposing point of view from the international relations expert Jessica Berlin, that will go up on Thursday. <br> <br> <br> <br> *****<br> <br> <br> <br> During the 1980s and 1990s, it cost up to 44 pence per minute to make a call from a landline in Ireland to a landline in Britain. I’m going to give you a minute to absorb just how huge that cost was, compared to today. 44 pence, that’s 56 cent in new money, 56 cent per minute.<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> At the time, you could have bought two ice-creams for that, that would cost you about €2 each now, so in terms of purchasing power, that 44 pence per minute could easily be translated into €4 per minute now, and Britain was the cheapest international destination to call, everywhere else was much more expensive.<br> <br> <br> <br> In the early 1980s, British Telecom had been privatised, and competition was being brought in, first for businesses and then for home phones, and prices there were dropping sharply. The same was happening across the western world. In one 18-month period, Eircom, as it was, increased their prices three separate times in 18 months.<br> <br> <br> <br> Think about just how crucifying those costs were for any business trying to export, not to mention to families of people who had emigrated, counting out the seconds that they could afford to talk to their loved ones.<br> <br> <br> <br> It was nearly 20 years before Ireland to caught up and allowed competition. Eircom had their finger stuck in the dyke, but the floodwaters of competition were lapping ever closer.<br> <br> <br> <br> At some point, one enterprising business set up a service whereby people in Ireland could dial a Newry number, relatively cheap to call, but across the border and outside the control of Eircom, and then dial in an account number, a password and an international number into an automated system and call internationally much cheaper.<br> <br> <br> <br> Eircom responded to this glimmer of competition by reprogramming their entire network to block calls to this Newry number, and started a game of cat-and-mouse whereby the service tried to switch to new access numbers faster than Eircom could block them.<br> <br> <br> <br> If any private business behaved like this now, they would be lucky to avoid the worst of publicity on Twitter and Liveline, and could well be prosecuted under the Competition Act. And now, calling landlines in Britain or most of the rest of the world is functionally free.<br> <br> <br> <br> I was reminded of this when I heard the kerfuffle about AIB’s plans, hastily scrapped, to make 70 of their branches cash-free. You could go in and get a mortgage, apply for a loan or whatever but not withdraw or deposit actual notes or coins.<br> <br> <br> <br> AIB,
