Irish politics discussion thread

because the train is on the tracks now so theres nothing anybody can do

well, lets be fair.

The opposition have had no say in the vote for nama, i believe that labour opposed the guarantee.

They have consistently been denied the info to which they are entitled, even throughout calls for them to support a corrupt and defunct govt in the national interest. That in itself is a fair insult.

They havent been a great opposition, but the manner in which they've been stymied and kept in the dark this past two years, and in particular the last week where cowen and lenihan are just outright lying, is not only discourteous but edges on subversion of the way in which our democracy is meant to function.

When they get cowen and lenihan in a dail debate - rare enough- it's probably a lot to ask to at least get a public direct hit to the tune of 'this is your fault, not ours. There are no good options. We're not in this together.'. it's all they've been left, it's all true, and it's probably the most they can do to get ff out or under pressure. I'd rather they'd realised that game and played it from day 1, back in sep 2008.

You can bet ff will in opposition, and with far less justification.

it's a lot to ask for them *not* to go for the direct hit, sorry.

Just want to say that in all of this, the charity single of the aul triangle from hansard and dempsey may well be the final straw that breaks the back of law & order in fair erin. Ear poison

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2010/1117/1224283516687.html

can't think of anything i hate about ireland more than this sort of utter shite. now isn't the time to resort to the national pastime of slapping ourselves on the back cos we have tayto crisps and "everyone knows everyone", jesus, bit of national rage would be far more appropriate.

― I see what this is (Local Garda), Wednesday, November 17, 2010 2:13 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

Absolutely OTM.

The country that can't bear not to be special.....

even if it's just to be hated from the Danube to Thames.

o good heres david mcwilliams.

'a bakery owner in kilkenny is worried matt. Lets forgive all mortgage arrears'

Sound, yeah, dave. richard curtis is looking for someone to soften his characterisations a bit, you might take a look.

the charity single of the aul triangle from hansard and dempsey

ah ffs i am fucking raging at this, thank fuck i'm not home till dec 21st.

are you ragin at the concept or the execution- cos if you've not heard it, it's worse than you think.

i've not heard it but the concept enrages me. i hate both of those bastards. don't fuck with that live in germany youtube version ever. only rivalled by dad having it as his too much booze anthem...

yeah classic booze anthem, german cikusenspiegel whatever is definitive for sure, they've tried to improve it by dempsey freestylin i think. it's hard to say wtf they were doing tbh.

rapping, ffs. one of my friends loves dempsey and always plays a song of his at weddings or get togethers, it would be grand apart from him being a doctor and this adding to his heroic upstanding young man loved by gfs and parents mystique.

nah, not rapping. just singing to his own time with bells on.

ach, bad enough being 'that guy' w/out being a fuckin dr with it like

i know...he admits it's all a front himself too. one time my friend's dad was really hammered and just walked up to him and said "YOU.....i know your game".

fuckit, played that game myself at times, but then i'm not a dr

Wish my rep was worth ten fucking million

During the six day hearing, the court heard Mr Kinsella had sleep walked naked up to the door of Ms Corcoran’s bedroom three times during the night before being told to go back to bed by Kenmare MD Michael Carvill.

Mr Kinsella, who was prone to sleep walking, had been drinking earlier and was on medication and was not wearing pyjamas, the court heard.

I've come to the opinion, considered opinion, mind, that the courts system in Ireland from district up to this level and beyond, is pure fucking stupidity.

finally just sad and scared btw

With respect to that libel judgement, the award was made by a jury of 12 brave and decent Irish citizens. O Tempora! O Mores!

ey t cheer up, the sharp shock will not, unfortunately, be short, but it's very necessary. two years from now a multibillion bailout that puts economists in charge wll have been A Good Thing imo. two years ago, we could have done with it.

it's a terrible pity that the suffering will fall disproportionately relative to blame and ability to absorb it, but you live in hope that we learn and change as a country. you kinda have to, i think.

To adapt a football chant:

90 years and we learnt fuck all...

Why would we start now?

maybe i'm in an unusually optimistic frame of mind, but now that the inevitable has started to happen after being foreshadowed for 2 years and damn near guaranteed for 6 months, the fact that there will soon be strong, logical and unbiased, uncorrupt & untainted-by-dirty-politics decisions coming from a central source is at least something to be thankful for.

the puling lies of cowen, lenihan and roche this past week ought to finally force even their remaining supporters to admit that we're better off without irish govt than we are sticking with the ones we've had for the past 15 years or so.

a word on corporation tax- imo it's symptomatic of the short-cut cheat mentality of the irish political class, and if we can trade it in now to earn some credit with europe, we should do so. if there are firms in ireland that only remain here because they get away with contributing less than their fair share to society, they're best out of it. as a quick-fix strategy for a country without modern business infrastructure, it worked and worked well. the failure to build on its success and the importance we placed on multinational profit-skimmers keeping us working is one of the larger faults in a largely faulty ff regime.

tear it all down

ps i dont really give two runny shits for irish sovereignty. national central govt that dismantles local decision making in the way we have since jack lynch in 1977 isn't worth crying over.

Agree on the sovereignty - the irony of the IT asking this morning what the men of 1916 would be thinking was fantastic.

What i don't get is all this whinging about sovereignty coupled with the 'line in the sand' attitude to our corporation tax rate, as if that were part of the glorious heritage of our patriot dead, instead of being the financial equivalent of the red light on a brothel window for MNCs looking for a cheap - and temporary - extra- national bed for their profits.

i think the IT editorial even nodded to that, yeah

i cant remember who it was, maybe john bruton?- but his argument was (paraphrased) 'i don't think that the EU want us to do anything to effect the only tax that is consistently over-delivering'.

yes, but at whose expense? pretty much the rest of the EU i think, looking at all the multinational european headquarters based here atm.

it's classic irish cute hoor politics, the corporation tax rate. i think i might actually loathe it.

ps i dont really give two runny shits for irish sovereignty. national central govt that dismantles local decision making in the way we have since jack lynch in 1977 isn't worth crying over.

sovereignty is being mistaken for like...national identity or national pride, or irishness. totally otm in your words there. if there's any meaning in being irish it transcends economic decisions. it's not that it's not important that we can run our country, just that actually being irish can't really end or be taken away. nationality is an idea at the end of it all i suppose.

yeah- it's part of you, assuming it means anything to you at all. i'd be very glad if my compatriots could not run the nation we co-inhabit into the ground, but if that is the case then by all means import expertise. don't change how i feel about the way sally o'brien would look at ya or anything, kind of thing

if there are firms in ireland that only remain here because they get away with contributing less than their fair share to society, they're best out of it.

They do contribute 10% worth of taxation though, and employment. If Facebook/Google left I don't think there would be much net benefit to the country.

if they left.

we have a lot more going for us that the rhetoric bigging up the corporation tax would have you believe.

particularly now, with graduates flying out of university into a much more competitive jobs market. the fall in labour costs alone over the past two years has probably eaten into a lot of the difference a 2% Corp Tax rise would make.

we'd still be well below EU average at that, native english speakers, well educated, gateway to europe, what have you.

i'm tryin to stay positive here, i'm usually the black morass of despair itt.

lots of doublespeak around the EU/IMF/Whoever not having the power to 'force' us to raise it tho- they don't have to 'force' us to do anything, nor do they have to 'give' us a couple dozen billion quid. the most galling thing about a lot of this is the stupidity lenihan and cowen seem to take for granted in the electorate.

mind you the electorate haven't given them any discouragement there for the guts of two decades so.....

Fine Gael deputy spokesman for finance, with responsibility for public expenditure, Brian Hayes said he had no regrets about telling former minister Frank Fahey he was talking “a pile of s**t” when they both appeared on a radio programme yesterday morning.

Mr Fahey, speaking on Newstalk’s Breakfast Show, told presenter Ivan Yates, Ireland was in a “pretty good position”, the State’s sovereign debt was in a “good situation” and the Government had handled the economic crisis well.

brian hayes otmfm, but really he should have thrown a few slaps as well

skip buddle buddle buddle and head for about 14 mins.

not everyone want to hear the opposition oppose/attack, but tbh it should have been this and nothin but this level of face-chewing from lab/fg this past two years.

i'm near enough the stage where i'm now worried that taking on these loans from the bailout fund could be another bank guarantee all over again, as per prof kinsella in the last minute of this clip. haven't had a chance to realy read about the conditions/intentions for this money, but if we're talking 20-90bn at 5% a year, and all that's planned for it is to go to the banks/bonds, then that's insanity. we should lock the ferry ports and close the airports if the IMF try to land with that level of suggestion, it's practically the irish taxpayer rescuing a crisis hit euro through more FF credit-card economics.

sorry, link

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/1118/economy1.html#video

its not so much about money. its the way the country just feels like its crumbling.

well yeah, but society, or whatever you want to call it, has been wearing thin because of grab grab for a long time now. money papered over that for a long time. when the money goes, it uncovers an awful lot of ugly stuff in the political system.

WELL THAT ALL SOUNDS LIKE PRETTY FUCKIN GOOD NEWS THEN, THANKS FOR KEEPING US UPDATED.

i hope lenihan is dying. i hope the other cunt sharply follows suit. 15% approval, dead on its feet and they're locking us into 90bn of debt to cover investor debt. unforgivable, incredible.

a british journalist has to ask cowen how much blame he holds, how ashamed he is and if he'll step down.

irish media is rotten to the core.

VINCENT BROWNE YOU ARE MY HERO is trending on Twitter. Srsly it's easy pickings for these dinosaurs to just turn up and rant and rave at the taoiseach. If any of them were doing their jobs they'd have done it when it mattered.

not sure what you are getting at there, sure VB has been carrying on like this for years?

What did he do?

Vincent Browne? He asked Brian Cowen how much further debt is being incurred - which Cowen refused to answer. He also asked him to accept the blame for the whole mess, which of course he was never going to do. RTE cut away during the questions, plus their coverage was at the usual abysmal standard.

a british journalist has to ask cowen how much blame he holds, how ashamed he is and if he'll step down.

irish media is rotten to the core.

― Goths in Home & Away in my lifetime (darraghmac),

Aha, thanks! - xp

cowen didnt answer a question he didn't like. lenihan didnt answer a question he didn't like. they repeated their statements every time they were asked about resignation, their credibility, their authority to bargain on behalf of the country, and whether or not they lied to the country all last week.

personally, i have no problem with these questions being asked. yes, they should have been asked every day since sept 2008, but these two guys haven't made themselves very available for direct interview, and they just ignore every question they wish to avoid. the standard of accountability is contemptible, laughable. the opposition are as much to blame for this standard as anyone else, ever since b ahern was allowed mumble his way through the late 90's and beyond without ever once answering a direct question in our parliament.

yeah i don't have a prob with them being asked, i dunno, just the cheerleading i guess. it shouldn't be something to praise v browne for...

v browne has fallen a long way but tbf to the dude he's been asking the right questions all along- just that nobody listend to the crazy old bastid anymore

why did cowen etc extend the guarantee to all bank liabilities in the first place or whatever? i remember them doing this and it being seen as courageous or s/thing

sorry i'm a bit entrylev wrt the eire clusterfuck

that is not entrylev, that is the U&K current question that failed completely to matter as a result of today.

yeah but i can't even remember the stated reason at the time

i think it was just to forestall blind panic, like everyone would see the cast iron guarantee of eire plc and be reassured the whole house of cards was secure

apparently people who invest in banks shouldn't ever lose money, and a guarantee on deposits only or to the tune of some such wasn't an option.

basically, the four bank chairmen told the minister for finance that it was necessary one weekend, and he went with it. even after it was clear that they'd been persistently feeding the govt false info, he kept renewing it. last month saw us pay c.55bn to bondholders on behalf of the banks, that's where the crisis came from- the ecb said enough was enough and we had nowhere else to go come spring, when our current reserves run out.

xps, yes, that washed until you can send in some goon accountants to go over every fucking detail and make some actual decisions. two years on and the imf are doing that now.

http://imgur.com/O4FEM.jpg