Irish politics discussion thread

yes otoole is a bandwagon jumper, not a prophet, but he writes with good clarity and the right amount of anger imo. Better late than never.

i guess what i'm getting at is, did our govt do things other govts wouldn't have? like were they outstandingly incompetent?

A lot of people said in the years since the dotcom bust that the public finances had become worryingly dependent on transaction taxes related to property and on taxes relating to the construction sector generally. These people said that if there was any fall off in construction or a correction in the property market then the public finances would be in serious trouble. The Government seesm to have ignored these people. Is this what you would consider incompetent?

'these people' would have been known as 'experts who are not direct beneficiaries' in other countries, imo.

one thins that we haven't fixed or even begun to address is the ease with which the issues, and i mean the really big issues, become clogged or clouded in public debate. tribunals, the dáil, police investigations, there's never any clear outcomes, nobody in ever in a position to give a straight answer, it's always oddering aul mary tanaiste left holding the boring even herself with 'he's not in today, sorry' or 'i don't have that information to hand'.

i don't even work in the model of diligence and efficiency that is the irish private sector, but my first performance at a meeting that mirrored the typical govt minister's showing to the dáil would see me up to my neck in shite. but there's never any issue around this.

i feel that bertie made this a prevalent mode of avoidance, but that may only be because i didn't directly experience haughey nor his forebears in action. too subtle a tactic for charlie, perhaps.

fintan o'toole very good on last word, although good ideas on how things should be run if we could start from scratch is maybe the equivalent of marking helen keller in the hurling final.

free

fucking

cheese

quick meechawl, point me twards rosslare and i'll be off sure

wtf is this

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/irish-to-get-free-christmas-cheese-2126721.html

that's ~12g per capita afaict

what will u do with that?

treat it with cáis-ion i reckon

6bn fiscal adjustment next year, and they claim they wont be hitting public sector wages. they will, of course, but not til they get the budget through safely. re-negotiation of croke park agreement before march i think. not a bad thing, from a non-personal perspective. but without tax increases across the board, prob will cause havoc with unions/IR disruption.

Budget won't get through. I'd nearly put my house - negative equity and all - on it.

double or quits kinda thing?

ff are too well versed in the arcane art of the political promissory note to not get this one through.

if lenihan were a well man, i'd anticipate a speculative failure followed by a heave, but they'll put all their eggs in cowen's basket until forced to stop. martin vs lenihan in new year, maybe after public strikes hit.

Maybe..

Given that the only thing that maintains order in FF is the ability of the party badge to get the wo/man whose natural station is Town Councillor elected to the Dail, the fact that it is now a liability means the likelihood of said chancer discovering a conscience - read 'pretext' - and voting against cuts in Welfare/ pensions/ upping college fees in order to give themselves a head start in the battle for the one possible FF seat in a constituency where they could normally depend on two, seems to me to be approaching 100%.

oh yeah, self-interest will kick in at some stage, but really the individuals in FF are so unlikely to get in at any level in coming elections means that, for now, better to hold on to diminishing power together and try to bluff with 'hard choices for the country' line- maybe there's truth in that line, but given the track record of most of these ppl it's coincidental rather than conscience.

could be biased here given my local ff tds- calleary (idiot, party man) flynn (corrupt, party woman (even when not in the party))

flynn as a local td...jesus. i'm not even sure who the ones where i grew up are now since gv wright drove his car into a person

he drove his own car? small time motherfucker imo

Speaking at the launch of the “Reinventing Government” document in the Morrison Hotel, Dublin, Mr Kenny and enterprise spokesman Richard Bruton said fundamental change was needed to ensure State services are protected and the economy is put back on track.

“The public sector has a key role to play in rebuilding Ireland. We believe that the vast majority of public servants do an absolutely vital job and recognise that many public servants feel they are being unfairly targeted as a result of a crisis they did not create," Mr Kenny said.

Among the actions that Fine Gael is pledging is the abolition of more than 145 State bodies and companies including the dismantling of the HSE and Fás and their replacement with more cost effective alternatives; the saving of €5 billion through tackling waste, duplication and inefficiency

gobshite man speak with forked tongue imo

Just in case any of you were still clinging to a few tattered shreds of hope:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/1108/1224282865400.html?via=mr

Kelly was right about the property crash when all around were predicting 'soft landings' - I fear that this unwaveringly grim prognosis may be similarly accurate.

God that article is enough to make you want to cry. Is there a mass exodus yet?

People are leaving certainly, and recent immigrants are returning home in some numbers, but the safety valve really isn't there to the extent it was in the '80s. Where can you go?

A lot of people have moved over here (London), but I think it's stopped a bit as far as my experience is worth anything. There seemed to be a big spike of people moving a year or so ago, but now maybe whoever is still in Dublin that I know is staying.

There are jobs in somewhere like London, for definite, but I'd hate to be just out of college or something, unthinkable.

^^^^

And worse if you're just off a building site, and that's all you've done since you were 16.

The cheese thing is just killing me. Somebody told me this weekend that it was literally every Irish citizen that would receive their free piece but that appears to be somewhat exxagerated.

the cheese thing - they distribute free cheese every year to the po', but only this year did they decide to shite on about it in what proved to be a counterproductive manner.

It's so quintessentially Irish. The country is fucked but never let it be said you can't have a nice melty cheese sandwich...

canada, australia, btw.

My dad feels things are begnning to look up in the states too.

yeah loads of people i know are in australia. less in canada but heard a bit of that on the rise of late...

yeah. Know people that are gone both ways, depending on how things go here at my next contract renewal it could be a ting.

The ravers of the early 1990s are the parents, managers, editors, largely responsible adults who will spend the next decade or two at the coalface of a recession.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2010/1108/1224282859372_pf.html

two decades!

we're so fucked i'm kinda high thinking about it

tbh i only think this is all funny now

― plax (ico), Wednesday, March 24, 2010 12:54 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

tbh it's funny now.

tbh it's not going to be when the crash comes, and we get to look back on this last decade like americans in the 1930-40's looked on wall street in the 1920's

― DarraghmacKwacz (darraghmac), Wednesday, March 24, 2010 12:55 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the crash comes?

― nakhchivan, Wednesday, March 24, 2010 12:56 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

when the crash comes.

― DarraghmacKwacz (darraghmac), Wednesday, March 24, 2010 12:56 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

do people in ireland expect it to get drastically worse than it already is?

― nakhchivan, Wednesday, March 24, 2010 1:02 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

tbh relatively ireland aint that bad, yet, its not the 80s or even the early 90s but i mean

― plax (ico), Wednesday, March 24, 2010 1:04 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think it'll get iceland in september or so.

― DarraghmacKwacz (darraghmac), Wednesday, March 24, 2010 1:05 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

jesus

― nakhchivan, Wednesday, March 24, 2010 1:06 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

there's still a huge amount of property overvaluation propping up the banks. foreclosures haven't started with gusto yet, but they will before long. the govt were criticised about predicting a 'soft landing' for the housing market instead of a crash in early 2008. that criticism was wrong- we're in the middle of our soft landing.

― DarraghmacKwacz (darraghmac), Wednesday, March 24, 2010 1:07 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark

tbf, i was wrong- it is funny

may those german bankers be clement with you all

don't even know what to think about it...thought i wasn't patriotic but our country in the absolute shitter makes me feel sad.

true irish patriotism isnt sadness, it's pugnacious denial and eventual violence

well let me rephrase to "thought i didn't give a toss about our country either way"

deal with landlords all day every day, had an absolute peach on today- moan moan moan rent gone through the floor, moan moan moan tenant gettin the house for nothin, moan moan moan put my heart and soul into that house, do everythin for her, moan moan what? no i dont know the address, i'm not sure of the rent and sure how do i know if it meets the standards i've not been there in 7 years, i have an agent for that sort of thing....

it's a pleasure, sometimes, to come up against property speculators in a negotiation setting. though there are those you feel for.

nobody ever mentions that, even though the value of property has nosedived (but not crashed, yet), there are hundreds of thousands of families that have made huge money on property speculation, still getting good rent, second and third houses long since paid off, good equity in their own and other houses. but regardless of nominal value, these properties cant be sold now, and when they start to go it will be like the top of a rollercoaster headin down, it's gonna be carnage when the equity still supposedly in these properties goes go zero or minus figures. that's when the country will just clear out and we'll see the public anger really explode.

otoh it might all be ok, who knows eh

might wait for everything to collapse, go to some bankruptcy auction and buy a big delapidated house in the west of ireland and just chill / post to ilx / drink / be sad

read that kelly piece too....pretty dreadful prognosis but hope he's wrong

his prediction of a hard right anti-traveller party seems a bit baseless tbh...like the new world order has taken over and they'll be sending their soldiers back in time to kill john flynn-connor

yeah it does seem a bit of a peripheral thing to inspire some volkisch far right movement.....anti EU sentiment could get nasty but then barroso & chums don't live in firebomb friendly caravans parks in cavan

re: buyin big ol' house- yeah, if the permanent contract comes my way next year (fat chance) i'll be thinking about buying somewhere that's not a shithole, just to have a decent place. assuming a public sector permanent job is worth a gamble from the banks at that stage though.

the traveller thing jumped out, alright, but tbh when people really start to hurt, it's them or blackafricans (it's all one word, for some reason?) that'll be first in line, then irish unemployed, then who fuckin knows really.

eastern europeans in between , obv

wonder if there'll be a boom in poland/latvia/wherever with returning emigrants presumably looking to settle?

if we all chipped in, this has mad potential as an ilx retreat imo

http://www.daft.ie/searchsale.daft?id=492300

Achill Island is accessable only by road and offers all necessary amenities such as pubs, restaurants and shopping facilities

prioritised by a local imo