https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUIq0OspRXo
eature=related
He isn’t getting any because he is in hiding and he is letting the others take all the flak. If he really believed that none of this was his fault he would be on every single news program and radio station from here to eternity giving his tuppence worth, but the fact is he knows that if he sticks his head out of the hole he is hiding in it will likely be shot off. To me Bertie, Cowen and McCreevey should be marched down O’Connell street in shackles for what they have done to the country.
What did they do?
Lord Bannside* believes we should unite the country under the crown of Her Majesty. Best idea I’ve heard all year, at a stroke unifying the country, adding our debts to the British treasury and allowing us to win medals at the Commonwealth Games. Hopefully the Brits would close ‘Grattan’s parliament’ (for good this time) and cunts like Jackie Healy Rae, John Gormley (seems to have disappeared in the last week) and Fianna Fail would then be discontinued. I see very few downsides besides some minor semantics.
*The artist formerly known as the Rev Ian Paisley.
FFS.
I suggested this myself yesterday. Provided we have a decent stock of SMLEs stowed away we can play out the most glorious chapter of our history once again.
This is the examiner’s front page for those who missed it:
simply not true.
stats here. factor in our GDP being artificially inflated and our public expenditure of 48.1% of GDP for 2009 is not very, very low.
there is no replacing the construction taxes.
the bubble was the problem, and unwinding the artificial jump in expenditure and revenue is the solution.
recreating a once-in-a-lifetime boom based on cheap credit and non-existant regulation, in order to boost tax revenue is, frankly, nonsense.
our expenditure is what is unsustainable. you can increase the tax take, but you’ll never increase it sufficiently to bridge the current gap. I’m not playing the man here, and I’m not arguing for an ideology.
income tax, VAT and excise / corpo tax comprises about 27 of our 31 bn in taxes. (11:11:5 approx. split)
by all means get rid of tax breaks, cut the cinderella rule, clamp down on tax evasion by the self-employed and eliminate welfare fraud. but it won’t be enough.
Anyone know what’s to become of the individuals who tried to cheat Nama out of billions as revealed yesterday? - http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2010/1119/1224283711522.html
Unbelievable that after everything that’s happened they were still willing to try this. Is there any hope of these fuckers going to jail?
First of all, it’s our legislation. The bank guarantee scheme was emergency legislation introduced in the Dáil to protect everyone. The converse can apply with new legislation.
Secondly, of all the equality only exists if there is a winding up of the institution. It doesn’t apply anywhere else.
Thirdly, this isn’t a uniquely Irish problem but the current interpretation seems uniquely Irish.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/971c7582-e529-11df-8e0d-00144feabdc0.html
[indent]This is why, regrettably, we are unlikely to see similar “liability management” for senior debt. Ireland’s leaders remain convinced they cannot force a haircut on senior bank creditors any more than on depositors or holders of Irish sovereign debt. They are mistaken.
Senior debt ranks equal to deposits under insolvency rules. But a government can selectively bail out depositors of an insolvent bank in exchange for their pari passu claims on its estate, as the UK did with Icesave depositors. The equivalence of private and sovereign debt is a creature of Dublin’s imagination – though increasingly one of its making: the government has far too promiscuously expanded its legal guarantees of bank liabilities.
Markets are still uncertain how much of the Irish banking sector’s bloated balance sheets the government intends to stand behind – but they know it cannot stand behind it all. Speeding up promised legislation on special resolution authority would delimit Dublin’s contingent liabilities once and for all. It should do so – to safeguard its own creditworthiness and to show that indentured taxpayers can be freed. [/indent]
There are various arguments on both sides of the debate but it’s not true to say that there is an irretractable guarnatee given to senior bondholders that puts them forever in parity with depositors.
amen to that. the deposit guarantee (100k) only applies once a bank has been wound down.
deposits and bonds can be equally haircutted, and the government will then step in to make the difference up to 100k for all deposits. at least that’s what I always assumed the deposit guarantee was for.
whichevere arsehole (Trichet?) it was that told lenihan we couldn’t have done that deserves whatever’s coming to him.
How about the millions NANA have paid to “advisors” already. Why the fuck do these cunts need advisors, employ the fucking advisors to be NAMA in the first fucking place.
[quote=“SHANNONSIDER**, post: 518776”]
Lord Bannside* believes we should unite the country under the crown of Her Majesty. Best idea I’ve heard all year, at a stroke unifying the country, adding our debts to the British treasury and allowing us to win medals at the Commonwealth Games. Hopefully the Brits would close ‘Grattan’s parliament’ (for good this time) and cunts like Jackie Healy Rae, John Gormley (seems to have disappeared in the last week) and Fianna Fail would then be discontinued. I see very few downsides besides some minor semantics.
*The artist formerly known as the Rev Ian Paisley.
[/quote]
:wub: B)
A Gene Kerrigan article from 3 years ago. Read it and weep.
[
[size=“3”]Why Bertie’s little sulk just doesn’t add up
[/size]
By Gene Kerrigan
Sunday March 04 2007
WHO IS Paul Appleby and why is Bertie Ahern so annoyed with him?
We’ll answer the first question, but we wouldn’t dare venture an opinion on the reason Bertie got huffy last week. All we know is that Mr Ahern got remarkably touchy when Mr Appleby’s name was mentioned in the Dail. And his little sulk will cost this country uncounted millions of euros.
Who’s Paul Appleby? Mr Appleby is to corporate crime what Domestos is to germs. At least, that’s the theory.
He heads up the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE).
He was appointed by Mary Harney in November 2001. The PDs in government may have been a disaster for health, education and transport (among other things), but Mary Harney genuinely disapproves of corporate crime.
For the past three decades, Ireland has had more fiddles than a violin factory. [b]Various investigations have shown that many of the family fortunes and business successes of today were built on fraud. Elite business people, huckster hoteliers, bankers and Cabinet ministers arranged the tax fraud that suited them best. Major decisions on where we live and how long it takes us to get to work were made on the basis of bungs and backhanders.
[/b]The lackadaisical government attitude to white collar crime became so notorious that over the past decade many of the most controversial characters in the global insurance business made their way to Dublin.
In April 2005, the New York Times wrote of the “light hand” of corporate regulation that encouraged such people to gravitate to these shores: “Dublin has become known in the insurance industry as something of the Wild West of European finance”.
When corporate crime flourishes, customers are ripped off, shareholders are cheated. The State is defrauded, increasing the tax burden on the rest of us. Honest businesses go to the wall, undercut by competitors who take illegal shortcuts.
[b]Over the past five years, Paul Appleby and his small number of staff have sought to clean things up. Like a dose of Domestos to corporate germs? Well, given the size of the ODCE, more like a wipe from a cloth slightly dampened by Dettol.
Mr Appleby has just 36 employees, including six gardai.
[/b]
In 2006, they cautioned 900 company directors, examined 556 cases of questionable loans totalling €244m (that’s when directors use a company as a piggy-bank). Around €160m was immediately paid back, and €48m in loans was referred to the Revenue for investigation.
There are now 680 directors restricted from company involvement, and over 1,600 have been disqualified. Among the most high profile of those currently in legal battle with Mr Appleby and his staff are the Bailey brothers, of Planning tribunal fame, welcome guests at the Fianna Fail fund-raising tent at the Galway Races.
The ODCE is currently chasing about 400 directors through the courts, while 130 individuals have been convicted. (I’ve no idea how many of them have experienced the delights of the Galway races.)
After three years in business, having demonstrated what can be done, Mr Appleby applied for an increase in staff. He waited, and waited. Last week, through a Freedom of Information request, RTE dug out correspondence in which Appleby said his resources are “wholly inadequate”. Because of the volume of work, the intricacy, the need for specialists, without resources there’s inevitable delay. Delay means cases collapse. White collar criminals know every wrinkle in the law in which they might find refuge - they can afford battalions of lawyers to search for loopholes.
Without an ODCE staff increase, cases will be lost or dropped. And cases that should be launched are simply left untouched.
Mr Appleby applied for 20 more staff, including four gardai. This request seems based in logic, requesting people with particular skills for specific jobs that need doing.
Only when the matter became public, two years after the request was made privately, did the Government say they’ll give the ODCE four new staff. And there’s a promise that there’ll be another four - one of these days.
In the Dail, Bertie Ahern became waspish. “It is not that Mr Appleby’s work is not considered important . . . it is a question of prioritising the placement of staff.”
Bertie was indignant. “He has 36, so it seems extraordinary that he could want another 20.” The fact that the staff are needed to get the job done seems irrelevant. “One would not receive such an increase in any department,” huffed Bertie. “He will have to wait his turn.”
His excuse was that he has increased the number of labour inspectors, as part of the latest social partnership agreement. So, the ODCE can’t have more staff. Strange reasoning.
Labour inspectors deal with the rampant exploitation of workers, of which the Irish Ferries and Gama scandals are merely the most visible. This has nothing to do with the ODCE. It’s like turning down a request for urgently needed fire engines on the basis that we’ve had an increase in the number of ambulances.
The ODCE, said Bertie, “can wait a few more years if the staff are required”.
Is it because Appleby is doing a bad job? No, the ODCE is an outstanding success.
Is it because the ODCE costs too much?
Well, the latest accounts, for 2005, show a budget of a rather modest €4.5m. Of that, just €1.8m is salary and allowances. Of the €4.5m, the ODCE spent €2.9m, and handed back €1.6m to the Exchequer. (Why not spend the €1.6m on much-needed staff? They can’t, without a government okay. Which Bertie won’t give.)
Remember that €48m in questionable loans referred to the Revenue?
The Revenue will certainly extract more than €2.9m in tax liabilities from that - so the ODCE has in that one move paid for itself several times over.
Is it because Mr Appleby is trying to skip the queue and must “wait his turn”? Not at all. The agreement on more labour inspectors (if that was at all relevant, which it isn’t) was endorsed by the unions and employers just last September. Mr Appleby applied for his staff in May 2005.
[b]What’s going on?
As RTE reported, shortage of staff means that “a substantial number” of investigations into corporate wrongdoing “will not be pursued”. We can see that certain types of business people might want that, but not the Government, surely?[/b]
We’ll forgo millions from chancers. They’ll continue to break the law.
Their freedom will encourage others to try it on. Without doubt, some major scandal will eventually be uncovered, leading to another tribunal - more millions down the drain.
Where’s Mary Harney? Well, she disapproves of corporate crime, but she’s ideologically tied to cutting public service numbers - even when it costs us money. Go figure. Besides, these days the PDs instinctively kiss Bertie’s bum.
So, we have a successful public service outfit, cheap to run and saving the State millions. It has waited two years for the staff increase it needs to do its job. And the Taoiseach gave the Dail a ludicrous excuse for why appropriate resources will be withheld for, in the Taoiseach’s words, “a few more years”.
[b]I’ve thought about it and thought about it and - well, maybe you can explain why the Taoiseach finds it acceptable that “a substantial number of investigations into company executives suspected of corporate wrongdoing will not be pursued”.
Damned if I know.
Of course, I could put two and two together and make a wild guess. But, sure, you could do that yourself.[/b]
- Gene Kerrigan
Kerrigan is a decent journalist.
Why he writes for the Sindo, fuck knows!
By the way, why do we have a budget in December?
By the time that the financial projections seep down to the various State Bodies then we are well into the early stages of next year, which can’t help them for a planning point of view?
Can’t read that link in work but I accept that public expenditure as a percentage of GDP and GNP has grown. However our spending per capita is low, our employment levels are low and our historic spending as a percentage of GDP is low.
Unfortunately our revenue has collapsed. I’m not suggesting we don’t need public spending reform and some level of cuts but we need to sort our tax as a priority. We had a historically low tax income, the lowest among the established EU countries, and that has fallen away completely.
I hear gormley said the IMF’s arrival is a good thing
I would welcome reunification.
This lad saw the bust before I even knew there was a boom