Great stuff out of treaty exile and sid here I’d vote for the two of ye if ye ran but two things
1 I agree with treaty exile the blame for the current situation lies at FF door very little to do with the EU
2 Are we still fucked lads
And a third as I’m at it what will the IMF do if the arrive, Half the public sector? Half social welfare? Stop all tax breaks? Raise income tax?
I guess, from my own experience, I know no-one that was not caught up in the buying of houses or the downloading of budget calculators every December from 1993 to 2007 to see how much more they were going to get in wages.
The government do have to take alot of the blame. I agree. They prostituted the nation out to the banks and now we’ve caught a dose.
Yours etc,
GSH.
spot on TC
afraid so
sounds like a good starting point. although the most damaging tax breaks have already been handed out, and have a typical lifespan of 10 years. don’t see how it’s possible to claw those back. telling someone they have to pay tax they’ve previously written off against a property tax break or hotel construction sounds good on paper, but would be very difficult to enforce. NAMA may help in that regard.
Thats the problem. I’ve said it already that instead of Ireland, who are a bright lot of people, working for themselves and doing their own thing, we’re desk jockeys for these MultiNationals. The country is now depending, as you said, on these companies to survive.
Schools are engaged in churning out more and more fodder for these companies. 200 graduates joined Earnest and Young recently. This is meant to be fantastic news. What will happen is that they will be paid rubbish, have to do whatever they are told, and in 2 years they will be let go.
I would like to see more indigenous industry.
I would like to see the country be a socially more involving place to live. At the moment towns empty every morning as poeple head to their desks for 10 hours and then home again in the evening. I would just like to see towns taking care of their own, villages having their own people working for themselves. More craft etc. Why do we need to be a country of slaves?
Yours etc,
GSH.
in order for that to happen, we need to either start consuming what we ourselves produce, or producing what we choose to consume. better get on to Ford and tell them to open up that factory in cork. motorola and apple better fire up the production lines too. we’re simply too small to be a self-sustaining economy GSH. we lack both the raw materials and the industrial/manufacturing base to pull it off.
the indigenous industry idea is a good one though, it highlights the unseen victims of the tiger, namely all the SMEs that could have used credit as a source of investment to expand were crowded out by amateur property speculators. although i disagree that we need more craftsmen. if there’s one thing (apart from houses) we have in abundance, it’s craftsmen.
Your an idealist GSH.
People have to fund their lifestyles. Nice house, Nice car, 1 Holiday a year etc…
The average couple in their 30’s has at least 1000 euros a month to come up with before even feeding themselves. (Mortagage/Car Loan/Sky/Electricty etc).
You wont get that sort of money raising a few hens, fixing a few puntures or making a few cuckoo clocks.
If you choose to live with your parents and bring your wife in under the same roof as your mother then thats a differnet story!
I hope your not suggesting those cuts are a good think screwing the old, the unemployed, the sick, the young is not an option in my opinion one small cut I would suggest in the interest of a bit of fairness is all education funding for private schools but outside of that I think €5 or €10 is enough to take off social welfare, I hear people talking about welfare sponger but I have to say I don’t know any of em I see a lads that used to have jobs now struggling to pay mortgages and rare their kids
Capitalism, globalisation and mechanisation has decreed so. In a hundred years time or so the concept of the job may well be made largely redundant as everything is 100% mechanised or done on computer. This is the logical end goal of capitalism. “Progress” is not always for the betterment of society.
I kinda half agree with ya on the multinational thing but if you take a look at the late 70’s, 80’s and early 90’s we were not as a country producing enough jobs for the population and the led to mass emigration. In the early 90’s when the multinationals came in it was needed, however what was also needed was for us Irish people to learn from them and develop our own multinational companies but we didn’t do this. How many of us would be still in the country if not for multinationals that came in the 90’s? How many of us would be in the positions they are in because of the experience they got in these multinationals? So to me they were needed, Can you remember what jobs there were before the multinationals came? It was up to us to make something of the mutlinationals being here and to move on and become less dependant, instead we didn’t do that, instead we put all our eggs into a JCB and started a building boom. Anyone that had a craft gave it up for the lucrative job of putting up studded walls. Yes it would be lovely to get a crafts man to build you a chest of drawers, it would also be lovely to get a plumber or electrician to come out and to do something for you without you having to take out a mortgage. So by right we should all now be working in large indigenous irish companies but we never moved on and became more and more dependant on multinationals, in fact we are multinational addicts.
Going forward I would love to see FF and FG consigned to the history books and new modern parties come in in their place that are not based on civil war politics. Maybe this will happen if the IMF come in. I would also love to see us grow up as a population, to start becoming more dependant to start building our own multinationals, to become more accountable not only in work but also in our own personal choices and I would also like to see us give up this crazy keeping up with the Jones that most people in this country engage in.
Well the unfortunate paradox is that the only hope of easing our dependence on MNCs also requires them sticking around, for a while at least. When we start to produce medium sized firms that are competing internationally we can send them packing, but that hasn’t reached the level needed just yet. Regarding the second part of your argument that scenario can never arise in our political and economic framework and never will. The sentiments you express were articulated by both anarchists and communists over 200 years ago but I doubt you’d agree with either of them.
sorry TC, got a bit flippant and was lost in translation.
I meant to say that I reckon that’s where they’ll start, but the measures will cut deeper than what you’ve mentioned.
we need to bridge a gap of about 16bn. that’s 12bn to cover the structural deficit, in effect just undoing what Biffo did with his spending spree prior to the 07 election. add in a few billion for interest payments and you’ve balanced the books.
whatever cuts or taxes are necessary to achieve that, is what will be imposed on us.
the other side of it is to lower costs. in greece, they broke up the haulier cartels.
here, it’ll be minimum wage, social welfare, PS pay, medical and legal costs.
I’ve said it before that one of the most galling things about the property boom was the amount of investment poured into ghost estates that should have been used to finance start ups that could have changed our economy. Seeing young guys with revolutionary software finding no investment here so heading to California where they’ll find it no problem, and seeing the investment they needed disappear into an empty housing estate in Longford that now has to be paid for by the taxpayer. Criminal.
so the doctors, judges and solicitors might get a cut too that only makes me feel a bit better as the mrs is a dentist, well if your bringing down costs I suppose it allows for more cuts so that’s not too bad altogether
One of the major issues emerging form this and any discussion I’ve seen on the political and economic culture which created this awful mess is that being in the Anglo-American sphere of influence seems to be at the root of a lot of the things we do. Sid touched on it when he said we should/could have adopted a continental European style tax regime which lends itself much more to sustainable development once a country reaches a certain stage. Of course it’s entirely possible that the window of opportunity to do that has now closed, and that stimulus needs override any calls for wider reform. Either way it’s important to ear in mind that should we endeavour to politically distance ourselves from Brussels we will increasingly fall under the spell of Wall St and London. Ultimately I think there is a broader need to align ourselves with the type of societies we want to become.
[quote=“Kinvara, post: 518357”]at least[/b] 1000 euros a month to come up with before even feeding themselves. (Mortagage/Car Loan/Sky/Electricty etc).
You wont get that sort of money raising a few hens, fixing a few puntures or making a few cuckoo clocks.
If you choose to live with your parents and bring your wife in under the same roof as your mother then thats a differnet story!
[/quote]
I don’t think it’s progress that the average house needs to be pulling in a big wad of cash every month to just get by.
However, I do think that Ireland does have the resources we need to be able to export and support ourselves.
I think we sell ourselves short when it comes to fish/oil/gas/wind energy/wave energy.
Ireland should be the fishermen of europe.
Ireland should be able to export oil/gas.
Ireland shoudl be exporting electricity to Europe.
The Irish people sell themselves short at every juncture in business.
Too few people believe that we are too small, but I don’t agree that have small resources.
The issue is that the powers that be sell our resources for shiny mirrors, beads and whiskey.
Yours etc,
GSH.
I find it very annoying the way ye are going on about indigenous industry, we have a massive farming sector that is producing big time in the country hour of need, there have been massive fuck ups in the sector too firstly the way the product is marketed just when people are beginning to think about what they eat, grass fed beef, low dioxin in milk why cant one of the department lads fuck out to china and sell it the most lads I know are only mad to produce more milk and meat but we have limits placed on us a we are in a beef shortage and another has been forecast
I’m not going to say the farming sector is great there have been some huge fuck up in the sector, we bowed to the EU to get handy money, and lads were blackmailed into over investing in farm infracture
Where is shannonsider I might need a bit of back up here !!
Some good food for thought there.Italians adopted a system called ‘Localismo’ which is a pretty self explanatory term to describe the local businesses - in many cases family businesses that were set up that were indigenous to each town and village.They got significant help from the ‘casa per il mezzigiourno’ which pumped investment into the disadvantaged areas of the south and provided them with an infrastructure.The project was a huge success.
While Ireland does not have the natural resources to be able to be self sustaining and is dependent on direct foreign investment, I would like to see a return of the Co-ops that were such a huge success and provided a lot of employment with many spin-offs also benefiting.
Ironically it is farmers who are probably the most innovative in this current mess.I see it first hand myself.They join together to increase their buying/bargaining power and can successfully secure a better price be it at their local creameries or buying forestry for the rural and enviromental protection scheme grants.
I have nothing against farming but does it have enough jobs in it for the people of Ireland. To me what should be happening is that we should be the hub of farming, we should be developing better ways of farming, better machinery and producing that machinery and shipping it all over the world but this hasn’t been done, we carry on as normal until some American company comes out and says this is the greatest thing since the wheel and then we all jump on it. I also blame the government, they will throw money hand over fist at any foreign investment but will give hardly nothing to any Irish Innovation.
I agree with GSH that us Irish people sell ourselves short all the time. Maybe it is from been beaten down over the centuries but we need to grow some confidence and start marketing ourselves better. Only this morning I heard the Irish Chief exec of Quantas on the radio, we have the talent, we have the skills but we dont have the belief and confidence and this is holding us back.
DUBLIN -(Dow Jones)- Ireland’s Finance Minister Brian Lenihan Thursday said the government would make budget cuts of EUR6 billion in 2011–double the amount previously expected–as it fights to control its huge budget deficit.
The budget cuts, announced in the government’s economic and budgetary outlook 2011-2014, will bring Ireland’s budget deficit in 2011 down to between 9.25% to 9.5% of gross domestic product.
Ireland’s budget deficit is expected to reach 32% of GDP by the end of this year.
A Ministry of Finance spokesman said the budget cuts will be a combination of spending cuts and tax rises in the ratio of 3:1.
The government said late last month that it would need to make budget cuts of EUR15 billion over the next four years in order to reduce the country’s budget deficit to 3% of GDP by 2014, as previously agreed with the European Union.
The government has said these budget cuts would be significantly “frontloaded” in 2011.
By Ainsley Thomson and Paul Hannon, Dow Jones Newswires; 44 20 7842 9318, ainsley.thomson@dowjones.com
(Quentin Fottrell contributed to this report)
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 04, 2010 12:53 ET (16:53 GMT)
Copyright © 2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
I agree with a lot of those sentiments turfcutter but the common agricultural policy has us over a barrell.They are always on about butter mountains and all that lark.I know there was a trade mission to china a couple of years ago in which there were Kerrygold and other agri-business type figures involved and it is only now that the benefits of that are being felt.There is huge potential in this sector though and we are not milking it half enough.Excuse the pun.