Irish politics discussion thread

yeah "trick" was used alright in "whisht". this could be factored into your football theory on our distrust of trickery.

It's all going into my master's application, once i can narrow it down to a single discipline, i'm scouring the unis to see if any of them offer that mythical topic 'footballing philosophy'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dUd6mH7hRmo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2PtsSKE4mY

just watch one then the other

That Masters sounds like something DCU would do.

This 25 reminds of the 'cards' storyline in Blackadder.

Lol @ jackeen. A badge I wear with pride. On my anorak. To Bohs matches. After pints in Fagans.

Is it me or does this not seem like the worst deal in the world?

Depends on what you mean by 'not'

you could be neither nor, like me

The seanad is a great argument against the seanad.

but likewise the dail i spose.

there are ppl in there voting in legislation that dont see the benefit of paying 31bn over 30 yrs vs 18 or w/e, even at much lower rates, in the midst of crippling recession and forever railing at austerity. they cant see beyond a credit union loan metaphor, let alone as far as concepts like npv of cash, the govt multiplier, keynesian spending, pick yr justification for arguing that today was a good day- idk would i be more cynical to believe they're pointscoring or that they're as stupid as they look.

Loads of people seem to think that way, this idea that we should pay the debt as quickly as possible or it's somehow disturbing that we still have national debt in 40 years.

I understand the anger element but I don't see what their actual logical point is, I mean, should we fuck ourselves even more just on a point of principle? That'd probably make things even worse for our children's children.

I plan to do a McGough on my children and be a burden anyway. Now they will just have to factor this in. No big change.

Straightforward critique of McAleese Report here from humanrights.ie

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2013/0208/breaking57.html

i can only thing of wallogina that's more than 25% cunt, and yet as a nation here we are

The counterfactual scenario by which the Government simply declared that the promissory notes would not be honoured would likely have triggered a full-blown sovereign debt crisis. After all, the scheduled payments under the promissory notes were owed to the Central Bank of Ireland under the ELA facility.

The rules of this facility are that losses have to be made good by the national government, so that non-payment of the promissory notes would simply have increased the effective level of Irish sovereign debt by the same amount.

Given this sequence, any attempt by the Government to unilaterally reduce the face value of the debt would have been interpreted as a type of sovereign default. Furthermore, it is implausible that the reputational impact of an attempt at a selective non-payment on the liabilities owed to the euro system could have been contained, in terms of relations between Ireland and other European governments and the risk-averse element of the investor base for sovereign debt.

The ability of the pillar Irish banks to use Irish sovereign debt (or Irish government guarantees) to avail of cheap euro system funding would also have been severely impaired under this alternative scenario, since the credibility of the ECB in preserving payment discipline across the euro system would require it to tighten eligibility criteria and collateral rules in relation to Irish sovereign instruments.

For these reasons, any decision to renege on the promissory notes could only have been in the context of a wider decision to seek sovereign debt restructuring, which would be a radical break from the current economic strategy. (The wider debate on sovereign debt sustainability will doubtless continue to run.)

this stuff isn't really simple, but here's a decent rundown of why (i) doing the ecb deal wasn't 'accepting' the 31bn promissory note as sovereign debt (as it was this anyway in all the ways that mattered long before FG took power) and (ii) why the SF-backed plan to default on this debt would very likely be catastrophic.

i'm on record itt railing against the state taking on these debts, even in the face of everything crashing down around us, but that option must be three years or more ago now- and it was shaky then at best, it was just that we had fuck all to lose really.

i'm not sure why there's all of a sudden a revisiting of the issue now, after three years of hard progress towards recovery (yesterday being not the smallest step on that route). strikes me as partisanism of the most blinkered type, and as easy to see through as anything.

I was against it too. Still am philosophically but pragmatically it's ours now as I just don't know that we can separate it out anymore. It's no longer a case of "We'll bursht the euro lads" but a simple fact that we can and must prepare for the future where this will need to be paid again.

I genuinely haven't an idea re. Croke 2.0. The Dublin Bus thing is interesting but not relevant (structures involved, purpose of entity, etc.). It does set something of an interesting precedent if the LRC findings are upheld by both sides. I've a wonder how relevant it is anymore.

As a side note, I believe Mary Lou McDonald doesn't sleep! She's on the radio again. Also on the radio is Varadkar. I thought he had been banned from talking to the meeja due to his curse of terrible soundbites.

Maybe it's the history of SF that causes me to distrust their policies (or nicely nicely act) but there is a real disconnect with reality behind some of their policies. There is also the fact that they separately came up with an austerity budget that again affected the lower paid. It's like they develop some form of amnesia (not just in relation to where the missing are - old joke) about what they've promised/said.

Also this whole Daly thing is just getting odder. At least it's gone to Ombudsman. I genuinely wonder though how effective that body is, like do the Guards talk to them at all?

This craic of 'she wasnt drink driving' is a quare way of reporting that she was indeed drink driving

https://twitter.com/GerryAdamsSF/status/302734470690242561

WTF

should have gone to the cinema as well, bride of tiocfaidh's on

Thats p much illegible stuff, wish he'd tioc it in tbh

Tioc Norris

not bad, not bad

Can't wait to get home and change my display name. #saturdaynight

Rip not_marty_whelan

He's only getting going, believe me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOQyl7ZpoH8

A very good speech by Kenny. I particularly like the clapping the public gallery at the end. Now, I suppose we need action as well as words!

Youtube though: "Clare Daly and Wallacea [sic] are a disgrace." what does that have to do with this!?

Needs said every chance tbh

Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton has accused protesters who heckled her during an event in Dundalk today of sullying the reputation of the town.

is this even possible

she seems to be a very bad politician, can we say this? joan burton seems to be very bad at most aspects of the job of being a politician.

awful. how did she get elected? she has zero charisma. an awful person for all to see.

found out (social welfare) bill

I have time for her but yes, that wasn't great. Iran Dundalk has an awful contrary rep. Surely they were only bolstering the reputation, not sullying it...

I know it's early but I find I'm already worried about budget.

Instead of 'Iran' I meant 'I mean'.

huh i dunno it kind of worked for me

be worried about the budget. we've gotten very blase about the aul 'billion' as a figure but it's a long fuckin way to chop multiples off an economy of our size in successive years. to use a clumsy metaphor- the first year is the easy and kind of obvious stuff; get off the bus a stop early, cut down on the desserts, climb the stairs to work. the bulk of it is in slowly changing up yr habits over a longer time. the last couple of pounds (jaysus remember the pound lads?) is lol lettuce soup and black tea. we don't need to get to that last stage if we can handle the second stage like grownups and don't force europe to send us to the fuckin priory.

if the public sector deal emerges (and it looks pretty likely tbh, don't mind the guardmanning displays) and they pluck up some courage to means test those social welfare payments that as yet haven't been that'll go a long way (and things that, like the property tax, both badly needed doing in any case- which isn't something enough people are saying about this govt imo, that the cuts have been applied in a manner that has shaped a very faulty system into something a little more logical).

if they can dampen expectation of an eased budget after the ECB deal (and guess who has already tried to fuckin scupper that?) and force this one through it'll have been some achievement over three years imo. probably see them fucked out at the next election, of course, but one can only serve as one is permitted when the population is a pack of cunts i spose.

Yeah, all of that but also USC, etc. employers getting twitchy, we're getting secretly expensive to employ again...

none of the economies we should be striving to emulate are cheap to employ people in though. and none of them are low-tax.

i swear i'm not a leftie, but these are p much indisputable facts unfortunately.

I grew up with high tax over 50% - even on paper round. I have seen incredible benefits however I would not have faith in current (or previous) government to use the taxes properly. In fact, thanks to USC, I'm probably nearly as high and no, every day we're shown how mismanaged it all is. I'm not talking about Croke or public service pay as a whole but things like HSE, infrastructure, etc.

Are we tho? Im every day on luas and bus, ive no complaints of them at all, and the pieces of dub i see arent all pretty but theyre clean. My brother had a p serious bike accident in oct and was discharged after plastic surgery and a cat scan two days later at a cost of 120 quid. Etc etc.

Who's going to bat for this week's cute hoor technical groupie?

miriam lord assassinates him in the (hateful new website btw) times. She's capital g great.

Who's going to bat for this week's cute hoor technical groupie?

miriam lord assassinates him in the (hateful new website btw) times. She's capital g great.

I love her. Passed her at a rally and she has a real imp-ish smile!

For Ming I have nothing. Think he's badly placed now but it does seem like total hypocrisy.

That said he has nothing on 'that's not me on the tapes with me on them meeja witch hunt' Lowry.

Reading a lot about IT redesign. Seems badly thought out. Quite Irish (sorry!) to test something 'live' as it were.

Self hate is no hate

Read the article. Quite vicious I thought.

Re-design is all over the place.

I know this isn't political per se but I do think RTÉ are going a bit over the top with papal coverage.

shower of jesuits themselves of course

I thought Rabbitte was being taken to task for their anti-catholic slant.

You cant please all of the steeple all of the time huh

Okay. Lowry. Why? Just... Why? He must be an amazing local TD. Is there not a consequence to all this nonsense?

never mind that, mchugh otm re that fuckin clown mcgeever

look, you'll not understand this, but the more a rural national figure gets lambasted by the establishment/media/whatever totem, the more of a 'fuck you' shoulderchip attitude will grow locally towards dublin.

this is regardless of rights/wrongs or the damage done to the country as a whole or to the area in specific.

i hate irish ppl so much most of the time.

I say you wont understand it, i obv dont understand it but it is an observable fact. "didnt he get the roads done" as if technicians weren't designing and laying out roads through the NRA via EU funding from 9-5 every fucking weekday in their local council. As if the electoral area would be traversed by nothing but fuckin monster trucks without the local gombeen crook. Despair of the fuckin lot of them.

Fair play to Gilmore, though

huh

i wouldn't have predicted that. interesting to see how it develops from here- unions would like to think this was a govt-breaker but i doubt that v much (tho that of course will depend heavily on how said govt deals with this knockback)