Tis long passed time to riot, long passed time! There 166 buffoons in the Dail that haven’t a smidgen of sense on real life outside of their state cars and clinics and big salaries and another 80 odd psuedo lords and dukes in an ‘upper’ house in pinstripe suits who have less than that. They sicken me when I see them in their over upholstered talking shop. There needs to be an overhaul of the whole system from top to bottom. Get rid of the Senad to begin with, reform the Dail to 66 TD’s, that’s still more than 2 per county. Cut and cap salaries in Banks and such institutions like Universities. Drag out all the dead wood in the HSE and other civil service departments, put them on a leaky ship and cut them loose off Aran Mor. That would be a start. If we hadnt to pay all those cling ons and big winded wasters then less revenue needed. For every surplus TD there in the Dail we’d pay 3 trainee teachers or 2 teachers and a Garda. For every waster TD that is a teacher and holding his/her teaching position open for him we could make one want to be potentially valued teacher permanent. For every ex ministerial pension paid to a sitting TD we could staff A&E properly in a busy hospital or keep it open in the first place e.g. Nenagh, or maternity dept in Monaghan.
I repeat - its passed time we riot!
People having a pop at dole birds and public service inefficiency is a bit ridiculous considering it was the banks primarily worldwide that caused this recession through their corrupt self serving practices. Its the likes of Seanie Fitz and Fingleton that should be hung drawn and quartered and sued by the government.
A recession is a good time to make the public service more efficient though.
A super efficient public service is a pipe dream. Trying to measure how efficient a public service is very tricky. Its had some disastrous consequences in the UK
I know someone who teaches over here and some of the shit that passes for teaching is disgraceful. They hand out answers to the kids before tests, suspend noone etc just so the stats going to the regulator Ofsted are good. The quality of teaching and learning is an afterthought. I know someone else who is an ambulance driver. There is some target i dunno 15 mins or something for response times. He reckons there is some disgraceful carry on with some hospitals not answering 999 calls if its not within a reasonable time zones.
some crowd on news reckon the government should at the most rise low tax rate 1% and 4% for the higher band…
text tax is stupid… i for one give meteor 20 a month and get free msgs to all meteor numbers along with free calls to them while other sign up to get free messages to everyone
Things have changed since that budget NCC, unfortunately for the worst…Don’t think you can hold FF accountable for the global economic crisis
Don’t see what the problem is with a one or two cent text tax. Good idea in principle. Abolish free texts if necessary.
And how about taxing everything over 200k or 250k at the very most at a penal rate, something in the region of say, 100%. No one person needs that kind of money.
I fooking notice paying it.
Ya but you’re a man about town with your finger on the pulse. I’m talking about the majority of the mopes in this country.
Ben knows the score :rolleyes:
I know there are some fecking tools in this country, but I really don’t think the majority of people are so absolutely clueless about this stamp duty.
Cigs rumoured to be going up to 10.:rolleyes:
no harm
not enough!
they should be put up to this at very least
In my opinion the government should be trying to get more people smoking. It is a massive revenue earner. Of course there are long term consequences but when we have to deal with those scientists will have invented a cure for everything.
€10 a pack of fags is going to make less revenue for the government in the short term I would think. More people will either turn to smugglers or give them up totally or smoke less packs per week, stupid idea to push the duty up that much when the government needs more money in the coffers.
Eh don’t think you thought that through.
If loads of people give up smoking then there’s a huge health benefit for the country and consequently a massive reduction in public expenditure.
Smuggling is lower here than in countries with a far lower duty on cigarettes, e.g. Poland. That’s not a good enough reason not to impose taxes anyway.
It makes absolute sense to put a punitive duty on cigarettes IMO.
[quote=“KIB man”]People having a pop at dole birds and public service inefficiency is a bit ridiculous considering it was the banks primarily worldwide that caused this recession through their corrupt self serving practices. Its the likes of Seanie Fitz and Fingleton that should be hung drawn and quartered and sued by the government.
A recession is a good time to make the public service more efficient though.
A super efficient public service is a pipe dream. Trying to measure how efficient a public service is very tricky. Its had some disastrous consequences in the UK
I know someone who teaches over here and some of the shit that passes for teaching is disgraceful. They hand out answers to the kids before tests, suspend noone etc just so the stats going to the regulator Ofsted are good. The quality of teaching and learning is an afterthought. I know someone else who is an ambulance driver. There is some target i dunno 15 mins or something for response times. He reckons there is some disgraceful carry on with some hospitals not answering 999 calls if its not within a reasonable time zones.[/quote]
Yeah that’s a huge problem in the UK.
On another example you had this crazy drive for efficiency with Railtrack that resulted in huge compromises to safety. Some things just aren’t that easily measured - education being a good example as you’ve pointed out.
You can’t just introduce efficiency measures for education. It’s far too subjective an area to be evaluated by tables but that’s what the morons clamour for. Everything has to be presented in an easily digestable list.
Ya jesus long term benefits should be discarded straight away 
Smugglers need money too…
[quote=“therock67”]Eh don’t think you thought that through.
If loads of people give up smoking then there’s a huge health benefit for the country and consequently a massive reduction in public expenditure.
Smuggling is lower here than in countries with a far lower duty on cigarettes, e.g. Poland. That’s not a good enough reason not to impose taxes anyway.
It makes absolute sense to put a punitive duty on cigarettes IMO.[/quote]
In fairness that’s long term thinking Rocko on a budget that is going to be focused on getting as much money through the coffers now! Majority of people paying duty on cigarettes today will probably not darken a hospital door for many years to come when the recession will be over.
Also the fact that every one in four cigarettes smoked in this country is done so illigally suggests that smuggling could get worse if the duty rises signifigantly. Majority of smokers are from working class backgrounds with jobs in the likes of the service industry where they work with a lot Polish and other Eastern European nationals. The opportunity to buy on the black market isn’t that difficult!
I do agree with your point about health in general though, of course it would have long term benifits.
[quote=“therock67”]Yeah that’s a huge problem in the UK.
On another example you had this crazy drive for efficiency with Railtrack that resulted in huge compromises to safety. Some things just aren’t that easily measured - education being a good example as you’ve pointed out.
You can’t just introduce efficiency measures for education. It’s far too subjective an area to be evaluated by tables but that’s what the morons clamour for. Everything has to be presented in an easily digestable list.[/quote]
Good to see you speaking sense on some matter Rock
School tables might give grannies the hots on Joe Duffy but its a very bad thing. I know there are some absolutley rubbish teachers out there but how do you get rid of them. 3 year contracts might be the job and give the principal of each school responsibility to hire and fire. But that also leads to a culture of concentrating solely on high results and forgetting everything else like the majority of kids that will never get A1s, sports, helping troubled kids etc