Episode one - with real, live contributors is here!

I'm going to try to list all the sources that I reference in the show on the web page of each show, more or less in order.

This is the record of the meeting of Fingal County Council (http://meetings.fingal.ie/mgAi.aspx?ID=8978) where almost every councillor present - including all Labour Party councillors present - voted against allowing people to have a referendum on having a directly-elected mayor for Dublin. They formulated the vote as supporting a referendum at a later time, which they were aware was not provided for in the legislation, and would mean that no vote could be held.(http://blog.hereshow.ie/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/PodcastCover1-150x150.png)

In the section on Credit Unions, I talk about an episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, where the ex-Daily Show correspondent exposes the payday loans 'industry'. Every episode of that show is fantastic (https://www.youtube.com/user/LastWeekTonight/videos), I'd highly recommend it.

I know it's unbelievable, but here are UK-based payday loan companies offering loans with interest rates of 993% (https://www.wizzcash.com/payday-loans/) and 1,509% APR (https://www.wizzcash.com/payday-loans/). Watch the Last Week Tonight episode to see how these companies are, unsurprisingly, wildly profitable and base their whole business model around around trapping people in cyclical borrowing.

This is the Sunday Independent article that reports credit unions planning to offer €100m in loans to parents' of house-buyers to circumvent the Central Bank's requirements to save up a deposit before buying a house. I'm not a lawyer, but it strikes me a home-buyer reporting the proceeds of such a loan as being their own savings on a mortgaged application is obtaining money by deception, a criminal offence.