Fair enough if that is what you believe but the talk of voluntary redundancies and natural wastage is a joke really and canāt believe they have been allowed to get away with it. I do go along with wtb in that to my eyes there does appear considerable element in FG who are taking pleasure in inflicting these cuts which undoubtedly will have devastating impacts.
James Reilly was handing out pencils to school children in Donabate in north county Dublin today as way of gathering votes. He seemed to think there was nothing wrong with that when confronted.
Thatās actually exactly the type of attitude Iām talking about. FG have been in power for just over two years of the last 24 so itās hard to imagine the current generation can have too large a track record of breaking promises. Yet you assume that they are deliberately misleading the electorate on this. Now youāre obviously entitled to your beliefs, but itās too cynical for my tastes. Maybe Iām just too naive, but I think they deserve a chance in Government before you assume they are just lying about something.
Do you honestly believe FG can implement all cuts they have promised without destroying lives? Their ratio of cuts to tax increases will hurt the rich more than the poor. That isnāt speculation but reality. Cuts affect poor more than they do the rich. Iām not talking about FGās past (though granted they have a lot to be ashamed about in regards to the north and going along with the vast majority of FF policy) but the future.
Some of the translation is a bit weird. Kenny mentioned 150,000 jobs there which was translated to 100,000. Rabitteās mention on the size of the fishing waters was changed too.
First of all, you did imply in your post above that they were lying about not planning to implement compulsory redundancies. Maybe youāre right, but as I say, Iād like to at least give them a chance in Government before assuming they are lying.
The verb destroy is emotive, but Iām aware of the fact that cuts hurt lives. Iād actually prefer to see more of a balance of tax increases. I certainly think that people like me (childless on a comfortable middle income) should be contributing more, so Iām certainly considering voting Labour but Iām concerned about them for two reasons. 1. Iām a committed Europhile and Iām put off by the anti-Europe rhetoric. 2. I donāt like the idea of stretching out the period before we aim to get back to balanced budgets any further than it already is.
Iāll do a bit more reading at the weekend to decide. Iād consider voting Green too because theyāre a party I have a lot of time for, but it would be futile gesture in my constituency so canāt really be arsed reading their manifesto.
I donāt think anybody believes that cuts can be made in such a way as to hurt the rich more so than the poor, if you want to put it in those terms.
That doesnāt change the fact that a deficit of 19 bn requires quite a lot of cutting. I donāt think that you can bridge more than half that gap through taxation. If a political manifesto shows otherwise Iāll consider it. Until then Iāll vote for the party that seem to have the most realistic approach.
In an ideal world, Iād let the shinners deal with the banks and the blueshirts take an axe to the quangos. But theyāve ruled out coalition as far as I know.
Ned OāKeefe thinks thereās gonna be a military coup. He was always a strange one.
While the winds of change continue to blow furiously across the Arab world, outgoing Cork TD Ned OāKeeffe has warned that Ireland might be next.
Mr OāKeeffe (whose son Kevin is standing for Fianna Fail in the Cork East constituency) has warned of the very real possibility of a military coup.
According to a report published in todayās Evening Echo , Mr OāKeeffe said āThe situation has become so bad that an Army coup is a real possibility.ā
Blaming Taoiseach Brian Cowen and Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan for hastening the possibility of a military takeover, Mr OāKeeffe issued the following warning:
āOur political system is going to fail further. The two Brians have made a right mess of the country and I see the real possibility of an Army coup.
āPeople thought I was mad with all the things I have predicted through the years, but I foresaw the economy collapsing due to lax regulation on building housing estates and unwanted shopping centres.ā
Harking back to another era and the reign of Charles J Haughey, Mr OāKeeffe said:
āSo what if Charlie liked nice women and a few extra nice shirts? He was the best leader we ever had.ā
Were there rubbers on top of them? Might alienate FGās ageing rural conservative vote if they heard the prospectivbe Minister for Health is handing out rubbers to schoolchildren.
I think that the public sector badly needs reform. Leave aside the areas of education, health and justice (the front line areas), the ācivil serviceā is mainly a joke of an organisation with overpaid staff doing fuck all.
A couple of things I would do:
Get rid of flexitime or at least monitor it more effectively. Iām sorry but the civil service isnāt there to work around picking your kids up from school, it should be a proper job with proper hours.
Do away with this notion of budget based on last year spend plus or minus a %. Management in the public sector should have to justify every single penny that they are looking for - the text book āzero based budgetingā. The current āuse it or lose itā situation generates ridiculous amounts of wastage.
Attempt to phase out the current structure of scales and grades which is effectively based on length of service. This will be extremely difficult granted given the highly unionised nature of the sector, and also the given the fact that it is hard to measure āperformanceā in the publci sector. However must public sector bodies have strategic plans which are supposed to be measurable so maybe try to link it into that in some way.
Look at the number of State Bodies that are out there and trim them substantially. For each State Body that exists, you must have a Board, generally a website, a building, and that is if you only have two employees working in it. Crazy.
I think thereās a difference between abolishing flexible hours and abolishing flexitime Farmer. I donāt see why people should be compelled to work ānormalā hours just to conform with other organisations. I do think that flexitime introduces concepts of clocking up 15 minutes here and there to get days off and that should be looked at, but itās not unique to the public service.
Unlike FG the last thing Iād be trying to cut is the workforce. I just donāt understand the logic behind their āJobsā campaign and the employment cuts they want to make in the public service. Employee expenses, salaries for top earners, mileage rates should all be cut before they look at putting anyone onto social welfare. And thatās just from HR expenses.
Conform is probably the wrong word, but it is important to correlate business hours across the economy as much as possible I find. In my line of work, it can be quite frustrating for someone to say that they are off at 2 when you are relying on them to get the job done. Also, many take random days off, with most taking at least a day off once a week! How do they get away with it - lack of monitoring of the flexitime system, and apparent lack of interest by management of such practises and acceptance of the nature of the sector. That is a load of shite.
I think that the workforce should be cut if it leads to a better functioning public sector. I would not advocate keeping the same level of staff just for the sake of keeping them in employment. That ultimately doesnāt do anything to solve the problem.
Youāre right though, top earners are paid a ridiculous amount of money for the work they do. Then there are those on lower pay levels getting screwed all the time with the pay cuts. That is comepletely unfair.
This is the crux of the matter, people keep rabbiting on about pay and job cuts to the public sector but probably donāt realise that an awful lot of the staff in their are on 25 - 28k and have been hit very very hard by pay cuts and levies. The thing with these staff as well is that they are mostly the younger staff who joined in the past 4 or 5 years and these are the staff the public sector needs to retain, not drive away. Newer members of staff will always be more open to change of work practice, entitlements etc. The people the need to weed out are the ājob for lifersā who despite never doing anything more than basic clerical work are now on 40 or 50k a year just purely because they have been carrying out the same inefficient work practices for the past 25 years.
Seriously, I think I speak for the majority on this forum when I sincerely hope you are never in a position to make a decision in the interests of the country. Such conservative horseshit. It shouldnāt matter a fuck if the person is on flexitime or working from home as long as the job gets done. Flexitime suits those with families and women which is what a modern workplace should be aiming for. If you could point to a single bit of research that suggests those on flextime are less productive than those no doubt like yourself who go in early and leave late, then you might have a point.
The public service needs reform do doubt. How many data Centres does the public sector use in Ireland for example, how many servers in them can be virtualized that would be proper savings. Admin staff should be able to work across
departments- 2 days a week in Health, 2 in Justice etc.
