Irish politics discussion thread

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/26/opinion/26krugman.html?_r=1&hp

reported on rte1 news.

election of a new govt will not fix the problem, but we need new decision makers. cowen and lenihan will not countenance an new options now, they're more concerned with consistency than competency or rational weighing-up of alternatives.

ps- i want a new govt to 'countenance' any and all options, including, if not default, then the very real option of retracting the bank guarantee to the extent possible.

krugman otm otm otm ffs

cant believe the extent to which the debate is being stifled in this country, with people all to willing to repeat what they're hearing from a very small group of highly self-motivated individuals who were mainly responsible to begin with

anything higher than 4% on the fraud imf bailout is disastrous, not even taking into account that the whole imf thing is disastrous.

i think our tigerrogance kinda prevented anybody from believing the ramifications of what was happening until recently. The boom was such a seemingly instantaneous thing that it seemed that the decline would be like turning a light off and when it wasnt everybody believed it had sortof um, gone away a bit leaving us some stuff we could grumble about. Now it kindof feels like the bottom has completely fallen out. its like the pacing is all off and i dont really know how im supposed to feel about it at any given moment?

less of the 'we' talk, tbh. don't let yourself get dragged into that, unless you have an offshore account or 1m+ pension.

the decline was like turning a light off, which was a part of the problem (though not as large a part of it as FF insist- underlying bank/property issues were not going to be defeated by any length of a slow decline)- 'soft landing' was the phrase of choice back when things were still good.

the bottom hasn't fallen out until FF have definitely bound us to the IMF loan and closed the door on any possibility of negotiating a settlement with the banks/bondholders. that is close, and seemingly inevitable, and crazy that we're letting it go ahead in the circumstances. it's like letting the nazis sit in judgement at nuremberg.

how you're supposed to feel now- well, imo, the media are still sugarcoating this.

worse, they're still censoring the debates imo.

jeez, i'm the irish morbs aren't i?

now now youre not THAT bad

yeah, but i mean i'm 20 years or w/e younger. if we have to put up with fg/ff as the irish dem/rep covering the same narrow band of ides/outlooks for the next 20 years, i'll go insane.

we all will

homer simpson: "Default! The two sweetest words in the English language!"

vincent browne show killin it right now. kathleen lynch in particular throwing out CSO figures. some fat young dude shouting her down.

“As Ireland can no longer ensure the solvency both of its sovereign [ie State] and of its banking system, Europe must choose between two contagion risks. Put an end to Dublin’s suicidal promise to make whole its banks’ senior creditors and risk a wave of bank failures. Or keep the Irish State on the hook for private losses and risk an even more virulent spread of sovereign troubles. This should be a simple, brutal choice: many banks cannot survive a sovereign default. This is a time to strengthen sovereign defences and prepare for bank restructuring [ie let the banks take the hit.]”.

financial times still seems to think it's an option. but nobody in our dail believes so. i guess jackie healy-rae knows best.

not that i think it'll come to it, because nmost of our 'independents' are ff floaters, but lucinda creighton will abstain on the budget vote just because she's been slapped down with all of the other bruton followers since the leadership challenge? christ, she's poisonous, and that strikes me as both wrong (most importantly) and politically incredibly naive (she will de facto be the person that allowed the roughest budget in memory to go through, regardless of whether any revamped one would have been significantly different).

two different challenges afoot on whether the govt have the power to enter into a binding 4 yr plan with the IMF. they claim it's not inding anyway, so n'yah. i think we can all accept that if we borrow any significant proportion of the moneys negotiated for, we'll be bound so tightly we'll be phoning brussels/berlin for permission to flush.

lol this is gonna suuuuuck

Nearer home, Mr Healy-Rae said he had got a firm commitment for a new community hospital for Kenmare from the Taoiseach last Wednesday.

He also got “a good enough commitment” from Mr Lenihan for funding for the €100 million bypass for Tralee, the biggest road project proposed to date for Co Kerry.

Sob.

we need, and i'm serious here, the public execution of healy-rae.

via omar little https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koY6kXhQDQo

real talk

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2010/1223/1224286171110.html

damn

not that it's a huge thing in 'the grand scheme of things'

but it's a fucking disgrace

somewhat burnt out/jaded since the imf deal/budget passed without any trouble, but fuck's sake that's so wrong

how has that cunt clung on for this long anyway

he's not a cunt hes a surly brat

and he's clung on by pre-empting every putsch with a meeting, then declaring at that meeting that he's not quitting and sure why would he his continued success is in the country's best interests shure and, amazingly, this has washed so far. he's managed to make that work at least three times, between challenges from opposition, coalition partners and internally within his own party

he's essentially in charge of the country because he's refusing to go.

idk

he gives every impression of being a cunt

clarification- lately, yeah, he's a cunt. but only because none of this is anything to do with him and why is everyone blaming him, and then he gets cranky and acts the cunt. generally he's just yer average accountant, got no soul, kinda hates everyone, but mainly just wants left alone kind of thing

clarification- the 'none of this is anything to do with him' is imagined internal debate. he's as much to blame as pretty much any individual in the state for the way things are going to go.

you are rather humanizing him here

rip in advance big man

not rip, rih

i dont mean to humanize him overmuch, but i mean looking for a being of pure evil in charge of the govt of a small island nation is a bit silly, haughey's dead years.

idk about haughey, doesn't strike me as evil tho

very depressing how long he's clung on without much effort really being made to put in some honesty/credibility. he's smothered any real movement for change i think, or at least delayed, frustrated and oppressed it for long enough that the damage is so endemic to any future govt/movement that there's no real point getting excited or debating options anymore.

haughey not evil, or cowen not evil? xp

neither

haughey is a being of the purest evil, violence, greed and spite. he's a wonderful character to have lurking just far back enough to be relieved none of his hobgoblins inherited his drive or competence.

i don't get the impression that cowen is so to singularly responsible for this situation that you can pretend some other fuck wouldn't have made the same errors, and in any case was presiding over a culture of panglossian stupidity and a coterie of incestuous politicians/lenders/developers

latter is a risk of a small country i guess -- at the highest level, everyone knows everyone

i mean seriously, haughey's big daddy pollitt in terms of where FF really started to go wrong, the shits in charge since are Goopers

damn i'll take yr word for it about haughey seeing as he was one yr local bredrin

thought of him as just a sort of slimy machine pol

xp

i think it's more than fair to claim that the incestuous nature of the political system over here has been perpetuated and deliberately encouraged by those who held power, that the outcomes were forseeable, predicted and ignored for personal gain/glory, and that ahern, cowen and now lenihan have consistently made critical calls in other than the national interest as a result of the type of political machinations that they choose to engage in.

he's fairly blameable

xp i've thrown muck at the plaque on his house, which is as politically active as i get tbh

Despite his professed desire to fade from public attention, retirement was anything but smooth for the former Taoiseach. A series of political, financial and personal scandals tarnished his image and reputation in his later years. In the late 1990s the public were shocked to hear revelations about his extravagant private life — Haughey owned racehorses,[31] a large motor sailing yacht Celtic Mist, a private island and a Gandon designed mansion.[32] Haughey was severely ridiculed and criticised when he was found to have embezzled money that was a subvention to the Fianna Fáil Party; money that was from central Government's taxpayer's funds for the operation of a political party and spent large sums of these funds on Charvet shirts and expensive dinners in a top Dublin restaurant, while preaching belt-tightening and implementing budget cuts as a national policy.[33]
In May 1999, Terry Keane, gossip columnist and once wife of former Chief Justice, Ronan Keane, revealed on The Late Late Show that she and Haughey had conducted a 27-year extramarital affair.[34] In a move that she subsequently said she deeply regretted, Keane confirmed that the man she had been referring to for years in her newspaper column as "sweetie" was indeed Haughey. The revelation on the television programme shocked at least some of the audience, including Haughey's son, Seán, who was watching the show. Haughey's wife, Maureen was also said to have been deeply hurt by the circumstances of the revelation.
The McCracken Tribunal in 1997 first revealed the payments by businessmen to Haughey, and also revealed that he had held secret offshore bank accounts in the Ansbacher Bank in the Cayman Islands. Haughey faced criminal charges for obstructing the work of the McCracken tribunal.[35][36] His trial on these charges was postponed indefinitely after the judge in the case found that he would not be able to get a fair trial following prejudicial comments by the then PD leader and Tánaiste Mary Harney.[37]
The subsequent Moriarty Tribunal delved further into Haughey's financial dealings. In his main report[38] on Charles Haughey released on 19 December 2006, Mr. Justice Moriarty made the following findings:
Haughey was paid more than IR£8 million between 1979 and 1986 from various benefactors and businessmen, including £1.3 million from the Dunnes Stores supermarket tycoon Ben Dunne alone.[32] The tribunal described these payments as "unethical".[39]
In May 1989 one of Haughey's lifelong friends Brian Lenihan, a former government minister, underwent a liver transplant which was partly paid for through fundraising by Haughey. The Moriarty tribunal found that, of the £270,000 collected in donations for Brian Lenihan, no more than £70,000 ended up being spent on Lenihan's medical care. The tribunal identified one specific donation of £20,000 for Lenihan that was surreptitiously appropriated by Haughey,[40] who took steps to conceal this transaction.[41][42]
The tribunal found evidence of favours performed in return for money — Saudi businessman Mahmoud Fustok paid Haughey £50,000 to support applications for Irish citizenship.[39]
In other evidence of favours performed, the tribunal reported that Haughey arranged meetings between Ben Dunne and civil servant Seamus Pairceir of the Revenue Commissioners. These discussions resulted in an outstanding capital gains tax bill for Dunne being reduced by £22.8 million. Moriarty found that this was "not coincidental", and that it was a substantial benefit conferred on Dunne by Haughey's actions.[43]
Allied Irish Banks settled a million-pound overdraft with Haughey soon after he became Taoiseach in 1979; the tribunal found that the lenience shown by the bank in this case amounted to an indirect payment by the bank to Haughey.[39]

this is ignoring the embezzlement of exchequer funds to buy weapons for the IRA in the late 60's, but I'm sure there's more learned individuals around can fill in whether that was a more sympathetic impulse at the time or not.

In May 1989 one of Haughey's lifelong friends Brian Lenihan, a former government minister, underwent a liver transplant which was partly paid for through fundraising by Haughey. The Moriarty tribunal found that, of the £270,000 collected in donations for Brian Lenihan, no more than £70,000 ended up being spent on Lenihan's medical care. The tribunal identified one specific donation of £20,000 for Lenihan that was surreptitiously appropriated by Haughey,[40] who took steps to conceal this transaction.[41][42]

tho that liary cunt and his spawn can fro too tbh

yeah but insofar as cowen is a placeholder for some other second rate accountant with above average schmoozing skills, would another have done much differently? guess the critical call was the bank guarantee but as you said last time we went through this, it was a panic move to forestall a total collapse

thing about haughey/ahern is how small-time they were with their venality, happy to skim off a few grand here and there in between the big thieving

bank guarantee is lenihan's baby. cowen's portion of blame runs mainly from his terms as minister for finance with responsibility to regulate and change what he knew to be a rotten inherited system, and his refusal once the slide started to deal honestly, openly or fairly with the elected body of the dáil or the country as a while- or probably even his own finance dept and other state bodies, i'd imagine.

i'm not convinced that we were always going to get a second rate accountant (solicitor, tbh iirc?) if he didn't get in, but seeing as he did, let's make sure he carries some can for his (and our) troubles.

is schmoozing skills are significantly below average, and although he's considered highly intelligent (or reported as such) in terms of his analytical skills etc, his interpersonal/communications instincts are chilled below zero.

lots of govts did do a lot differently, if we're only talking from bank guarantee call onwards

did some skimming about haughey and the ira

apparently he was given money to provide assistance for nationalist families in the north, tried to buy guns from some ex-nazi

probably not one of his bigger sins

bit of a stink of military dictator in waiting about it, i've always thought.

did ireland have enough military to stage a coup?