Oh and yeah I’m all for legalizing drugs. Freedom of choice etc.
[quote=“Garda Sean Horgan”]
And with that, all credibility was lost…
Yours etc,
GSH.[/QUOTE]
Yeah the alcohol industry has only gotten more extreme since prohibition…:rolleyes:…the reality is that the policy of greater state power has failed yet the right wing wants to plough ahead with it anyway. The concern isn’t just that the current system obviously doesn’t work, it’s even more so the fierce resistance to even being open to considering alternative strategies. Again this would seem strange if you didn’t realise that the right is worried more about state power than reducing drug usage.
There is no current system though.
3 questions:
Would you think that Ireland, as a country, would be better off legalising Cocaine and Heroin?
Do you think that that crime would go down as a result (direct and indirect)?
Do you think that Irish culture/society would not be adversly affected?
Personlly I think legalising hard drugs would not be good for Ireland.
Yours etc,
GSH.
[quote=“Garda Sean Horgan”]I would like to see more prisons and all druge users being sent down.
[/QUOTE]
Right.
On one thread you are advocating large public sector cuts and here you want more prsions, presumably with prison officers, to put the lad who smoked a joint away.
Good logic there.
So many people in Ireland talk out of both sides of their mouth. The Government should be putting more resources in, yet we need to slash spending in the public sector.
It might just work, there could be heavily cut cocaine being sold down in Lidl, and then better stuff in M&S for special occasions. Might just work 
Smoke 'em if you got 'em.
Superquinn could sell those delicious little buns they have with a Fr. Ted theme. “They’ve got cocaine in them!” Could be a marketing slogan.
The Welsh Rugby team could market their own brand of heroin, called “Chasing the Dragon”. Loads more clever little marketing slogans to be written I’d say.
[quote=“farmerinthecity”]Right.
On one thread you are advocating large public sector cuts and here you want more prsions, presumably with prison officers, to put the lad who smoked a joint away.
Good logic there.
So many people in Ireland talk out of both sides of their mouth. The Government should be putting more resources in, yet we need to slash spending in the public sector.[/QUOTE]
Exactly.
We take in 34billion or so in tax.
The government wastes billions on social welfare and public pay.
There are government run projects that go over budget by hundreds of millions.
I thought you were an accountant Farmer? Why not get a little creative with the cash we have.
I’ve said that we pay out to much compared to what we take in.
It doesn’t mean we can’t spend money. It just means the money has to be spent smarter and cuts in other areas makes sense. If the IMF got in here the whole public sector would have it’s wages cut by 20% on day one. All the perks regarding sickness and the silly hours many of them work (and I know guys who clock in about 30 minutes from work and then take that time to get back to the office, wasting an hour and a half of proper work time in the morning and the same in the evening).
The government can spend the tax take on what they wish, I believe they are spending it incorrectly.
There is no speaking out of the side of my mouth. I’m speaking out the front but you’re not hearing what I’m saying.
To dumb it down a bit, and I don’t want to have to do this again.
If I spend 5 euro on oranges and 5 euro on apples and I get paid 8 euro and have to borrow 2, it does not mean I can’t spend 5 euro on pears.
I just have to cut the spend on oranges and apples by either 5 or 7 if I want to keep the status quo or improve it.
One other thing, you accuse so many people of talking out the side of their mouths.
Mooney, FF.
Yours in clarifications,
GSH.
[quote=“Garda Sean Horgan”]Exactly.
We take in 34billion or so in tax.
The government wastes billions on social welfare and public pay.
There are government run projects that go over budget by hundreds of millions.
I thought you were an accountant Farmer? Why not get a little creative with the cash we have.
I’ve said that we pay out to much compared to what we take in.
It doesn’t mean we can’t spend money. It just means the money has to be spent smarter and cuts in other areas makes sense. If the IMF got in here the whole public sector would have it’s wages cut by 20% on day one. All the perks regarding sickness and the silly hours many of them work (and I know guys who clock in about 30 minutes from work and then take that time to get back to the office, wasting an hour and a half of proper work time in the morning and the same in the evening).
The government can spend the tax take on what they wish, I believe they are spending it incorrectly.
There is no speaking out of the side of my mouth. I’m speaking out the front but you’re not hearing what I’m saying.
To dumb it down a bit, and I don’t want to have to do this again.
If I spend 5 euro on oranges and 5 euro on apples and I get paid 8 euro and have to borrow 2, it does not mean I can’t spend 5 euro on pears.
I just have to cut the spend on oranges and apples by either 5 or 7 if I want to keep the status quo or improve it.
One other thing, you accuse so many people of talking out the side of their mouths.
Mooney, FF.
Yours in clarifications,
GSH.[/QUOTE]
I agree that the public sector needs reform. In fact I have advocated putting measures in there in order to clean it up - some element of performance based pay for a start.
But the public service is vital to the operating of the country. We need a proper police force, we need proper teachers and we need proper healthcare. To cut back in any of those essential services would be counterproductive, particularly in these recessionary times.
But you seem to want to slash this area. You talk about the government wasting billions on social welfare and public pay. So you want to make cuts but you are saying that the inevitable social welfare is wasted money? Since when is public pay wasted also? Some lad breaks into your house, God forbid, and there are no cops there to do anything?
What I have advocated is putting measures into the public service to allow for value for money. In fairness there are some in place already, for instances the laws on procurement, standard fixed price contracts for works etc. Our public service needs to be efficient before we throw money into it or else it would be like throwing it into a bottomless pit.
But we should not be blanket cutting in these essential areas. But you seem to be saying that we should while at the same time saying that we need more guards. ‘We are broke, why doesn’t the Government have the balls to cut the public service? We have a crime problem, why doesn’t the Government provide more guards?’
You may talk about moving money from other projects to put extra cops on the streets? Ok where from? Maybe not build that hospital? Maybe keep kids in rat infested schools? It is about priorities and throwing more guards at the drug problem has obvious knock on effects in terms of increased wages and more prsion space required. You mention put hard drug users into existing prisons - what are you going to do with the ones that are there at the moment? Prisons are overcrowded are you not aware and they will be back on the street and the whole cycle starts again. You of course will be the one giving out when someone gets off a charge because there is no space for them in prison.
[quote=“farmerinthecity”]I agree that the public sector needs reform. In fact I have advocated putting measures in there in order to clean it up - some element of performance based pay for a start.
But the public service is vital to the operating of the country. We need a proper police force, we need proper teachers and we need proper healthcare. To cut back in any of those essential services would be counterproductive, particularly in these recessionary times.
But you seem to want to slash this area. You talk about the government wasting billions on social welfare and public pay. So you want to make cuts but you are saying that the inevitable social welfare is wasted money? Since when is public pay wasted also? Some lad breaks into your house, God forbid, and there are no cops there to do anything?
What I have advocated is putting measures into the public service to allow for value for money. In fairness there are some in place already, for instances the laws on procurement, standard fixed price contracts for works etc. Our public service needs to be efficient before we throw money into it or else it would be like throwing it into a bottomless pit.
But we should not be blanket cutting in these essential areas. But you seem to be saying that we should while at the same time saying that we need more guards. ‘We are broke, why doesn’t the Government have the balls to cut the public service? We have a crime problem, why doesn’t the Government provide more guards?’
You may talk about moving money from other projects to put extra cops on the streets? Ok where from? Maybe not build that hospital? Maybe keep kids in rat infested schools? It is about priorities and throwing more guards at the drug problem has obvious knock on effects in terms of increased wages and more prsion space required. You mention put hard drug users into existing prisons - what are you going to do with the ones that are there at the moment? Prisons are overcrowded are you not aware and they will be back on the street and the whole cycle starts again. You of course will be the one giving out when someone gets off a charge because there is no space for them in prison.[/QUOTE]
I would agree with alot of that. Cut social welfare (dole) by 15% at least.
Sort out the fraud (single mothers allowance living with the fella for eg).
Cut public sector pay by 10% (not a levy - cut pay). this will mean that pensions are also cut in the welfre area. Assign penalties to projects, put proper accountable project teams in charge of projects. I know of cases, and actually it’s happening all the time, where building equipment is on site 2 weeks before a job starts and 2 weeks after it ends if the project is government funded. The pubic then pay for the extra 4 weeks of equipment rental. In some cases these jokers are renting the same equipment to multiple projects.
The HSE is a mess. It was brought to reform the health service and has just created a new money pit and things are worse. that shoudl be sorted out.
Kids need proper schools. Donabate has a secondary school of 6 or 8 prefabs in the car park of the gym.
I honestly believe, and i’m serious, that money is being wasted in an awful fashion and that the politians are too corrupt to do anything. If they do then they will be blackmailed for any wrong they did and they will go to jail or be disgraced.
Self preservation is alive and well.
I agree with alot of what you say though.
Yours etc,
GSH.
I have direct experience of this area with work and the tools are there to prevent such measures. One thing that you cannot account for is the human element of underperforming which is in no doubt related to the fact that they know nothing will happen to them if they mess up.
That is a major flaw with the public service but to categorise them all as being incompentent oafs that the Government should just cut willy nilly is grossly unfair. I have looked at many of these projects and the majority come in under budget due to the fine work of our public servants.
[quote=“farmerinthecity”]I have direct experience of this area with work and the tools are there to prevent such measures. One thing that you cannot account for is the human element of underperforming which is in no doubt related to the fact that they know nothing will happen to them if they mess up.
That is a major flaw with the public service but to categorise them all as being incompentent oafs that the Government should just cut willy nilly is grossly unfair. I have looked at many of these projects and the majority come in under budget due to the fine work of our public servants.[/QUOTE]
I also have direct experience in the area of scaffolding rental and crane hire (unusual I know) and this is the case.
You have it in one though that it is human error but in any project someone needs to manage it through the programme office and the responsibility is with the programme manager.
Costs and budget, if equipment is not being used and is there longer than necessary is not human error but fraud and they are all in on it, from the worker to the project team and the government know this but dont’ police it.
I don’t think it’s unfair to just ask for a cut of 10-15% across the board. This is happening in the private sector. Company emails are telling all employees that they have to take a pay cut of 10%.
This applies to the workers doing 60 hour weeks (with no overtime as they are in the private sector) as well as the lads acting the maggot.
Why do public sector workers want to be treated any different?
These reductions are not based on individual performance but on a company performance and recognising they need to save x% and that will be done by cutting 10% across the board.
As for your comment on projects coming in under budget, no offence to you but the project you are looking at are at a stage where the budget is already over inflated.
The probelm is at the start where they might need a crane for 2 weeks of work. The project is costed for 4 weeks plus 2 days contingency and the gets done in 5 weeks and is defined as being “done under budget”. Contingency is used up. Recently however this is beginning to change.
I’ve got 2 brothers who are chartered accountants and they know that project budgets are met because the budget is made to fit.
Naeive in the extreme there to assume that “done to budget” means that the public is getting value for money.
Yours etc,
GSH.
[quote=“Garda Sean Horgan”]I also have direct experience in the area of scaffolding rental and crane hire (unusual I know) and this is the case.
You have it in one though that it is human error but in any project someone needs to manage it through the programme office and the responsibility is with the programme manager.
Costs and budget, if equipment is not being used and is there longer than necessary is not human error but fraud and they are all in on it, from the worker to the project team and the government know this but dont’ police it.
I don’t think it’s unfair to just ask for a cut of 10-15% across the board. This is happening in the private sector. Company emails are telling all employees that they have to take a pay cut of 10%.
This applies to the workers doing 60 hour weeks (with no overtime as they are in the private sector) as well as the lads acting the maggot.
Why do public sector workers want to be treated any different?
These reductions are not based on individual performance but on a company performance and recognising they need to save x% and that will be done by cutting 10% across the board.
As for your comment on projects coming in under budget, no offence to you but the project you are looking at are at a stage where the budget is already over inflated.
The probelm is at the start where they might need a crane for 2 weeks of work. The project is costed for 4 weeks plus 2 days contingency and the gets done in 5 weeks and is defined as being “done under budget”. Contingency is used up. Recently however this is beginning to change.
I’ve got 2 brothers who are chartered accountants and they know that project budgets are met because the budget is made to fit.
Naeive in the extreme there to assume that “done to budget” means that the public is getting value for money.
Yours etc,
GSH.[/QUOTE]
You are being harsh on the public servants again though. Ok you know of some cases where this has happened but you cannot conclude that this is rife across the sector.
Yes there is a contingency there but this does not mean that it is necessarily being abused in all areas. There are many conscientious people within the public service who do their best to do things right. They also work as hard as anyone in the private sector but get tarred with the public sector brush.
As for the Government doing nothing about it? What do you want them to do? Have a Comptroller and Auditor General in place to investigate these things? Have an Audit Committee for each State Body?
Well you know what - they have.
I’ll conceed there are good people working in both public and private sector. The private sector is losing 20k jobs a month as a result of companies being unable to keep going at 2007 levels of pay and employee numbers. The work is not there at the moment. It will come back at some stage.
In the public service the work will always be there for the gardai and nurses etc, but the quango’s need to be shut down now. We just can’t afford ot keep those meaningless posts. The HSE is a mess and it is outsourcing work to over 2 dozen of these quangos.
Auditors/audit committee? These are accountant boys, not project managers. The government employees the wrong people in teh wrong positions and creates these committees which havent’ the first notion what is happening. Sorry to say it farmer but accountants are not project managers and even when it comes to Nama they are employing completely the wrong people again. Sure they need people with Banking knowledge, but not to manage, they need them for advice.
I woudl also say that people in the public secotr DO NOT work as hard as those in the private sector. Nowhere near it. I don’t buy that line one little bit.
I’m going to continue to say what I have expereinced in public sector/private sector and project management and what is fact is that I’ve seen more than yourself and seen the waste first hand for years.
Yours etc,
GSH.
Yet another public/private debate. I for one am sick to death of hearing the thatcherite/reaganite freshwater econmomics argument over and over again. ‘We need to cut runaway spending and lower taxes to save the economy’, currently advocated by no less an intellectual than Sarah Palin. I’ve news for you all. You’ve had twenty-five years of ‘your’ model, and it’s fucked the world economy up. So shut your mouths and read an alternative perspective, and for gods sake at least recognise there’s something inherently wrong in parroting the agenda of the people who steered us into this mess.
Yet another public/private debate. I for one am sick to death of hearing the thatcherite/reaganite freshwater econmomics argument over and over again. ‘We need to cut runaway spending and lower taxes to save the economy’, currently advocated by no less an intellectual than Sarah Palin. I’ve news for you all. You’ve had twenty-five years of ‘your’ model, and it’s fucked the world economy up. So shut your mouths and read an alternative perspective, and for gods sake at least recognise there’s something inherently wrong in parroting the agenda of the people who steered us into this mess.[/QUOTE]
we most certainly have not been cutting “runaway spending” for the past 25 years.
I’ll grant you the 87 “Mac the knife” budget, but we’ve been on an upward curve ever since.
[quote=“treaty_exile”]we most certainly have not been cutting “runaway spending” for the past 25 years.
I’ll grant you the 87 “Mac the knife” budget, but we’ve been on an upward curve ever since.[/QUOTE]
You fairly missed my point there. I’m thinking more in terms of Milton Friedman than Ray McSharry.
your point is that the past 25 years of american and british economic policy has brought the world economy to the current mess.
forgive me, but i’m a little less inclined to let FF off with that hoary old chestnut for an excuse. bertie tried the same crap last week, how everything would have been fine if it wasn’t for the sub-prime catastrophe. the thought that, as finance minister and then taoiseach in the greatest economic boom since the fascists ran europe, he might want to put a few bob away for a rainy day would neever occur to the fcuker.
and i wouldn’t exactly classify new labour as disciples of friedman economics. but i won’t be pedantic and quibble over the 25 year reference. i just wish friedman hung around long enough to see the end result.
[quote=“treaty_exile”]your point is that the past 25 years of american and british economic policy has brought the world economy to the current mess.
forgive me, but i’m a little less inclined to let FF off with that hoary old chestnut for an excuse. bertie tried the same crap last week, how everything would have been fine if it wasn’t for the sub-prime catastrophe. the thought that, as finance minister and then taoiseach in the greatest economic boom since the fascists ran europe, he might want to put a few bob away for a rainy day would neever occur to the fcuker.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t think that was the problem necessarily. We are dealing with fiscal policy of a country here, not individual savings. Also a bit was thrown into the Pension Reserve Fund.
The problem as I see it was the complete and utter reliance on construction as a means of economic growth. Credit terms were relaxed, houses were built, houses were bought by the sackful, everyone became richer as wages and prices went up. Of course there was no basis to it, it was based on internal demand for houses. There was nothing competitive about it either.
Once the banks ran into trouble and pulled the credit then the whole thing ground to a halt.
The basis for sustainable economic growth is competitivness - just like any other industry. We should always have been targeting indigenous industry where we have a competitive advantage.
[quote=“farmerinthecity”]I don’t think that was the problem necessarily. We are dealing with fiscal policy of a country here, not individual savings. Also a bit was thrown into the Pension Reserve Fund.
The problem as I see it was the complete and utter reliance on construction as a means of economic growth. Credit terms were relaxed, houses were built, houses were bought by the sackful, everyone became richer as wages and prices went up. Of course there was no basis to it, it was based on internal demand for houses. There was nothing competitive about it either.
Once the banks ran into trouble and pulled the credit then the whole thing ground to a halt.
The basis for sustainable economic growth is competitivness - just like any other industry. We should always have been targeting indigenous industry where we have a competitive advantage.[/QUOTE]
i think we’re 2 sides of the 1 coin here.
i’m not talking about individual savings.
fair enough, the pension reserve fund was set up (by McCreevy?) but didn’t see out the decade before we raided it.
fiscal policy certainly did nothing to alleviate the building boom. quite the opposite.
a concerted effort was made to put public money into the construction sector, mainly through tax breaks.
if the same monetary figure had been put into the NRA to build toll-free roads (Cork-Dublin and Limerick-Dublin motorways still not finished), or the Dept. of Education (see GSH’s comment re Donabate prefab school) the Govt. would have been lauded on a par with Lemass and Noel Browne when the next batch of leaving cert history texts are being written.
instead we blew it on section 23s and the like.
whether the money should have been saved or spent is a matter of opinion. what’s clear is that it should not have been spent in the manner it was.