Irish Politics

Count Orduck said:
I do find a crazy amount of responsibility-dodging overe here, just as much (and maybe even more) than I saw in the UK.

On the one hand, it can't be denied that most of your politicans take the piss almost as badly as any set in Europe (perhaps the Greeks and Italians are worse?), paying themselves huge wages and doing nothing but furthering their own agendas and lining their own pockets. Couple that with the power the Church still has over things (you want an abortion to save your life? Sorry love, this is a Catholic country) and it's a recipe for a leadership with its head in the clouds that doesn't give a feck about the plight of its citizenry.

That said, almost every person I've had this discussion with refuses to accept any personal or common responsibility whatsoever. It's always the fault of those chancers in power, who ripped off the people, then bailed out the banks. The common man and woman (and I don't mean every individual person, obviously) never did any wrong and was merely the victim... but that's blatantly not true.

Someone bankrupted themselves by taking out five mortgages on investment properties because they thought they'd make easy money... that's the fault of the banks, not them. Someone else can't afford their house repayments because they bought one much too large for their wages... again, that's the fault of the banks; they should never have been allowed that mortgage! FF ruined the country and show no remorse... well that's just typical of politicians, and you definitely can't attribute even a tiny bit of blame to the people who kept voting them in!

It strikes me that if the Irish want things to change, and of course a large percentage do, then they actually need to make those changes. At the moment, it just seems like the average person wants to shift all the blame to someone else whilst complaining loudly, but doing nothing about whatever it is that's causing them to complain!
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we're not all like that

me and the GF live in 'affordable housing' that costs us 602 quid a month in mortgage payments. We dont have a car loan or credit cards that are full of debt, nor any outstanding loans. We have between us some money saved away to put towards the mortgage if we lose our jobs etc. We hardly go out out as we have a new baby, and we're not huge drinkers anyway

Yet, it feels like we are bailing out others who have lived an extravagent lifestyle for years and lived beyond their means. How is that fair?
 
Yeah, I'm with you on this one GB. I bought a house for €160k which is a mortgage that's now around €700 p/m. I have two bangers of cars that I don't owe a penny on, I just about manage to pay the bills and I have one outstanding loan from the credit union from when I got married.

I never seen the boom from the inside, so the bust isn't actually hurting me to bad. What does kill me is the fact that I'm expected to have sympathy for those who lived outside of their means and some people saying personal debt should be nationalised. feck that!! I pay enough in taxes paying for the banks feck ups I should have to pay for the good time charlies feck ups too!
 
golden_blunder said:
we're not all like that

me and the GF live in 'affordable housing' that costs us 602 quid a month in mortgage payments. We dont have a car loan or credit cards that are full of debt, nor any outstanding loans. We have between us some money saved away to put towards the mortgage if we lose our jobs etc. We hardly go out out as we have a new baby, and we're not huge drinkers anyway

Yet, it feels like we are bailing out others who have lived an extravagent lifestyle for years and lived beyond their means. How is that fair?
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Ah GB, sorry if I offended, I didn't mean anything personally. I tried to get across that each and every person definitely wasn't responsible, but there seems to be a "collective shirking" by the general populous, if that makes any sense. The bolded part of your post is actually the people to whom I was directing my tirade; I was trying to make the point that as many of those people who lived beyond their means were amongst the "common man" as they were the politicians and bankers.

My partner is actually in the same boat as you - she bought her house having saved like a demon whilst her friends went out on the piss and on extravagent holidays. She set aside thousands and thousands of euro from her job over many years, enough to make a significant deposit on the house. The house we live in isn't amazing. It's a small, semi-detached house in an "alright" area of Wicklow Town, yet because of the boom it cost her a small fortune. But there seemed to be no end in sight and prices were just going up, so if she waited any longer it would just cost more...

Then the economy fell apart. She left her job to go back to university on voluntary redundancy because she could see the company was going under (it collapsed about a year later, making all of its remaining staff redundant). Now she and I are trying to make ends meet on a mortgage that's worth more than the house, and that's not because she bit off more than she could chew - it's just that is what houses cost, and she couldn't live in the gutter.

So there are people like yourself, GB, and I empathise with you because - in some small way - I'm in the same boat. But all around me here in Wicklow Town, I see fancy cars, brand new houses, unfinished extensions. There was a culture of excess in Ireland (and Britain too, of course) that existed during the Boom that a lot of people have subsequently been stung by. It is often (though not always) those same people who complain that it wasn't their fault and blame the government of the time... politicians they voted in.

It's not fair when people like yourself have to pay for the sins of others, I agree. And it's not just the sins of politicans or builders, but the sins of many people in the general populous, many of whom are sickeningly unrepentent about their greed now.

I moved out here not long after the last general election, and was frequently visiting my girlfriend when it was going on, so I kept a close eye on it. I was shocked, frankly, because although FF got voted out, there seemed to be so little desire for change. FG got in, despite being near-identical, and then you had things like the people of County Wexford voting in the tax-dodging Mick Wallace. It was staggering to see.
 
Pffffft don't listen to GB. He drives a gold plated Fiat Punto!
 
I didn't go cracked in the boom times either and I'm just about keeping my head above water trying to keep the bills paid but saying that I would never have been able to afford to buy my own house in the first place if there wasn't that money flying around in the first place and I reckon a lot of people would be in the same boat as me let it be them buying a house or getting one through the affordable housing scheme so I wouldn't say I didn't gain anything at all from the boom times and am now paying for the big time charlies that made a shite of the country by building them.
 
I dont see myself ever having a hope in hell of getting on the property ladder. Nope renting for me it would seem and thats all dead fecking money as you never own shit when you rent and have little to no control in creating your own home :(
 
Eyepopper said:
Too right jake, none of this is the fault of the Irish, I mean its not as if huge portions of us were pissing away the huge money that was being made during the boom on 3 foreign holidays a year while rolling up to the building site of our investment propterty in a new Beamer like the gravy was never going to stop flowing is it?

Let's take one step further into history to see who voted FF in time and time again without a care about how corrupt they were or how hard they were screwing us as long as our pockets were full.
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Well I didn't. I was one of the many people who although young at the time, was at the marches against FF, against Capitalism. Many didn't, but it's unfair to blame the people on this.
 
So since moving back to Ireland I have been catching up on all political related matters. This property tax is fecking bull shit. Have we had a good bitch and moan about it? Because we fecking should! How thick are the cnuts behind this that we pretty much get penalised for living in Dublin on council tax. Surely some dimwit should be able to figure out the best way to do it is like in the UK, calculate on size of property and any land you have. As it stands my aunt who lives down in Roscommon in a house which is 3 times the size of ours (no exaggeration), has a good few acres of land and what not is going to pay less than half of what we are paying for a 3 bed semi detached in the suburbs of Dublin. She may even get away with not paying at all I am told as they have some farm land they use down there and apparently that means you can get off scott free with property tax, is that true too?
 
fecking right you dubs should pay more. You have all the countries facilities and services and we have feck all. You're aunt in roscommon doesn't even have a hospital in her county but you think she should pay more tax than someone in Dublin. The fecking dubs are doing everything they can to ruin the country and make it uninhabitable.
 
Its the biggest load of fecking bullshit I have ever seen in my life. No way you muckers should get off with easy payments. My aunt works in the bank doing commercial repossessions and from the stories she has told me the farmers and country boyos are ruining shit just as much as us dubs. Its a load of old wank. It shouldnt be called property tax at all, just call it fecking location tax.
 
It's based on the value of your property you fecking retard. Someone with a small house in D4 worth a couple of million should pay more than someone in rural Sligo worth 100k. Even a simpleton Dub should be able to see the logic behind that. If you can see the logic behind that then clearly the only way to set a property tax should be on the value of the property not the size of the fecking site.

What a dipshit.
 
Irwinwastheking said:
It's based on the value of your property you fecking retard. Someone with a small house in D4 worth a couple of million should pay more than someone in rural Sligo worth 100k. Even a simpleton Dub should be able to see the logic behind that. If you can see the logic behind that then clearly the only way to set a property tax should be on the value of the property not the size of the fecking site.

What a dipshit.
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Yeah - location tax then.

I think you are mis-reading me or I am not making myself clear enough which could be my mistake. Im not saying that people in the country should pay the same or pay any more than those in Dublin, its right that less is paid in the country. Im saying that they divide in the cost of it is crazy! Especially with so many people in negative equity. Its far too high in Dublin in comparison to other areas, the gap in the cost is insane.

No need for the name calling, its hurtful. Sticks and stones may break my bones..but words will hurt forever :(
 
Just sell your house and buy a caravan and come live in Wicklow with all the travellers.
 
iSparky said:
Yeah - location tax then.

I think you are mis-reading me or I am not making myself clear enough which could be my mistake. Im not saying that people in the country should pay the same or pay any more than those in Dublin, its right that less is paid in the country. Im saying that they divide in the cost of it is crazy! Especially with so many people in negative equity. Its far too high in Dublin in comparison to other areas, the gap in the cost is insane.

No need for the name calling, its hurtful. Sticks and stones may break my bones..but words will hurt forever :(
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It's location tax because those houses are worth more. They're worth more as they are in an area that there are more benefits in living in. There's mansions down the country and they are paying huge property tax too. It's rightly based on the value of the home, but I don't agree with the tax in the first place as I feel it's fundamentally wrong to tax a persons residence.
 
Count Orduck said:
Just sell your house and buy a caravan and come live in Wicklow with all the travellers.
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If I was single I wouldn't think twice about doing such a thing.

When I was younger I spent fortnight with some hippy friends of mine by the banks of the river suck near Shannonbridge and it was a great experience. I'll never forget the night Fred's wife gave birth to a lovely little baby girl (Leaf) by the camp fire an hour or two after Paul talked me into putting a small little black piece of square paper under my eyelid.
 
Irwinwastheking said:
It's location tax because those houses are worth more. They're worth more as they are in an area that there are more benefits in living in. There's mansions down the country and they are paying huge property tax too. It's rightly based on the value of the home, but I don't agree with the tax in the first place as I feel it's fundamentally wrong to tax a persons residence.
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Its madness, we need to form a new party and have it voted in. The Irish Caf Party...or something along those lines.
 
The Common Sense Party Of Ireland.
 
full time garda protection? Mind you, if they keep that up they might need it.

I can only thank my lucky stars I'm not living there cos I might be stupid enough to let them know how I feel.
 
Was out today with Patrick Nulty, he's campaigning against the closure of the car park in the local cemetery on Sundays, was interesting.
 
Is that honestly the most important thing he can think of or is he paying some sort of homage to the thick of it?
 
http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0302/371755-fine-gael-tops-new-opinion-poll/

There has been a big jump in support for Independents and smaller parties, at the expense of Fianna Fáil, according to a new opinion poll.

The Millward Brown poll for tomorrow's Sunday Independent shows Fine Gael back in first place, by one point.

983 people right across the State were questioned - from 16 February up to 28 February.

Once the 28% undecideds are excluded, support for Fine Gael is down one point to 24%, while Labour drops two to 11%.

Fianna Fáil loses the top spot, dropping four points to 23%, while Sinn Féin is up one to 21%.

Independents and smaller parties, meanwhile, gain six points to 22%
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Is that really all that they survey when doing an opinion poll? I thought it would have been much much more than that.
 
Eyepopper said:
Is that honestly the most important thing he can think of or is he paying some sort of homage to the thick of it?
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It's across the road from his gaff, he got something like 17 emails about it, so he went about a petition, most of the lads in the area are, McGuinness from FF, Donnelly from SF etc.

And yeah GB, born and raised!
 
Closing a cemetery car park on the busiest day of the week for people visiting cemeteries is pretty fecking stupid to be fair.
 
Irwinwastheking said:
Closing a cemetery car park on the busiest day of the week for people visiting cemeteries is pretty fecking stupid to be fair.
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Apparently it's a huge dogging hotspot.

But it's called a security guard.
 
I've looked through Minister Varadkers Finances, and something very intersting came up.

He claimed €15,815 in car mileage in 2012, which is a little over 43 euro a day.

Yet he claims Politicians have took enough cuts.
 
jakec said:
I've looked through Minister Varadkers Finances, and something very intersting came up.

He claimed €15,815 in car mileage in 2012, which is a little over 43 euro a day.

Yet he claims Politicians have took enough cuts.
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Politicians get travel to work allowances, they get an allowance for turning up at work (think it's something in the region of €60 per day) but yet they can justify or have the neck to cut mobility allowance for people with disabilities.
 
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