Far right directly targeting a seat in Dublin West. They won't get it, but it will be a scare. Quinlan as a racist towrag and was chased out of my estate with a hirl
Irish Politics
- Thread starter JakeC
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) and Imran (@Annihilate Now!) are here to discuss Amad saving our blushes in a win against Southampton as well as our now annual loss at home to Brighton. They discuss Amorim's post-match comments, revisit how mid-table we may or may not be, and discuss some transfer news.
I don't think they will do well. They did better than I thought in the local elections but that rarely translates to the generals. Fingers crossed.
This just isn't true though.
The average age of a first time buyer is 40 years old. Huge numbers of our young people are emigrating to places where they can build a better life for themselves. Most people younger than 35 who buy a house of their own, either get massive help from wealthy living parents, or have inherited money because they've sadly lost one or more parents.
The median household income today is little or no greater than the median household income of 10 or 15 years ago, but the average house price has gone from €190k to €350k. Rents have more than doubled in the same period.
People who bought houses a decade ago and longer are not the same as people trying to do the same now. I'm sorry that an entire generation or two has become accustomed to the idea that property is a legitimate means by which to grow wealth and exploit people, but that's not how countries with functional, working housing systems work. It's a rat race and will never just work itself out - it will just continue to make a smaller few richer at the expense of the rest. We don't want to be like Singapore or Sweden or any of the countries with working models - we want to be like the US with a free market, forgetting the fact that land, materials and the cost to build in the US is a fraction of what it is in Ireland.
If your property value going down means other people can afford to live properly, then so be it. If it's happening across the board then banks will have to adjust mortgages to reflect that and perhaps people can few houses as places to live in rather than to get rich quick from.
And live where?
I have a friend working as a labourer. Just back from Holland and cant find a place to live. Coach surfing as a 40 year old at the moment. Places he can afford currently are sheds in peoples back gardens. Sub letting a room in a sublet council house. Theres other stories, they're all completely fecking grim. Anything recognisable as a passable place to live are about double his budget.
Currently considering emigrating again and hes precisely the kind of person we need for construction.
That's sort of the point of building houses though. We can't say we have nowhere for people to build houses to live so we cannot build houses. Something has to be done. As someone else said, it's already raining and has been for years. Time to spend that money for once on something substantial. Housing and healthcare.
You say this, but other countries don't focus on making sure everyone can buy a home, this Irish obsession with everyone owning a home doesn't really seem suitable for 2024 Ireland. The focus should be on providing affordable places for people to rent, which allows people to either stay there in perpetuity if their earnings don't allow for home purchase, or save to buy their own home, if it makes sense for them. Encouraging this will also bring more rental stock back onto the market for sale as landlords earn less from renting.
Proposals of manipulating the price of houses to something that doesn't actually make sense vs. the costs etc. using taxpayer money, and these lending options that don't actually exist and are of 0 interest to normal lenders seems like more of a vote grab than an actual viable solution. You say 'so be it' if homeowners are impacted, but they are voters, and 'so be it' has a prerequisite of that policy actually being implemented by someone people have voted into power.
I don't know where your stats are coming from, but the median wage in Ireland is something like 42k, 15k more than 10 years ago.
I don't think it's particularly complicated, we need a lot more labourers in order to build houses, but we have absolutely nowhere to put them, so we can't... build houses for them. What do you expect to happen? Keep them in tents like in Qatar?
Where are they living now? I.e., those who could easily switch into labouring roles or significant numbers of unemployed who could also contribute. A lot of people, with backgrounds in building, generally, if in current jobs not construction related would easily switch back. Not all, but many. And many more would be brought online over a couple of years.
It's not like the laborurers are all coming from a different country. That would be some of them alright but not all.
Renting box rooms in houses with other labourers. Getting pissed off with them because they're messy, smelly, alcoholic feck ups in a lot of cases. All of them piled into a house with the owner who's openly telling them they're paying his mortgage while laughing at them and telling them they can only use the kitchen for an hour a day between x and y time.
They're extremely pissed off and looking to emigrate.
Yep. Which is why funding the feck out of a housing program makes a lot of sense. Better wages, etc. And, if that doesn't solve the problem immediately (it won't be immediate), at least the houses they're building will solve the problem.
There are plenty of trades people in this country, they're mainly working on building useless office buildings nobody wants or building massive industrial installations (intel, Eli Lilly, etc.). If we can get our priorities right, we will use some of those construction workers to build places to live. Multinationals are already complaining about not being able to attract the talent to fill their roles, if we don't sort the housing issue then they may look to leave.
They have relatively decent wages. I don't know. They eat a lot and dont cook so they pay a hell of a lot more than me for instance on food. And the alcoholism, drug addiction and all that mess means that a lot will probably be poor no matter how much you pay them. Rent is just hideously unaffordable and the standard of rental properties is dire in a lot of cases. A lot of them are going to be on the bottom of the ladder whatever you do, you just need to ensure the bottom of the ladder isn't someone's shed.
Correct.
That may be a pleasing thing to say in public, but in essence it's like saying that if NI wasn't NI then the 'country' would flourish.
And you'd have to define what you mean by flourish, because (under the common understanding of the word) it's highly improbable in the current constitutional set-up.
Yep, and not to keep repeating myself, but this is why we need to build more than 60k houses a year (that would be minimal to me). That at least frees up the HAP scheme (takes pressure of it) and allows more affordable rents. Over time, it will solve the problem. The problem is that I do not trust FFG to do it. They have created it. Don't care what anyone says.
Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your perspective) the two things probably go hand in hand.
I'd see FFG policy as 'keep doing the same thing that created the problem but throw some money at developers'.
So i agree.
It's also a good example of one of the effects of partition.Rail network over 100 years ago
Today
I assme the road network will be the opposite.
It does seem to me that when you get into a situation as fecked as ours is, the only guaranteed way of making a change seems to be stopping some things and putting extreme focus on the 1 thing that needs it. I don't see how we continue to juggle various different balls badly and make any sort of progress.
I never argued against building 60,000 houses, we obviously need to. I argued against trying to use the windfall tax to do so. We don’t even use the full housing budget every year. Money is not the problem. The way the current government handle it and their policies are the problem
I agree in part.
I did a bit of a deep dive into the modern successes of the Scandinavian countries a number of years ago; given their usual yardstick status for various socio-economic indices), and one of the underlying factors mentioned was their homogeneity. This is a contentious thing to point out nowadays but I suppose it does make a kind of intuitive sense, and the more generous and wide ranging the welfare state becomes the stricter the immigration policies become.
Are you sure? Sweden for example has had huge immigration. And the usual far right reaction, long before we did?
Yeah pretty much. It's just an underlying factor or intrinsic feature of said countries, and the only significant immigration experienced was between each other. Whether that factor or feature is the major reason for their particular social democratic political nature is another thing, but it does make a kind of intuitive sense as I mentioned previously.
In respect of Sweden, the level of immigration it has experienced is very much a recent phenomenon so the long term effects will only be seen in the fullness of time. The short term political effects have already manifested however, and it will be interesting to see if its welfare system becomes less expansive and less generous over time.
Are you sure? I spent a bit of time in Sweden and Gothenburg and Stockholm at the time, 20 years ago were much more multicultural than Dublin at the same time.
Edit from wiki "As of 2010, 1.33 million people or 14.3 percent of the inhabitants of Sweden were foreign-born"
Yeah, or at least that's what I read at the time. I've only been to Sweden once for a short holiday and this was some time ago so I'm not speaking with any personal authority or experience.
It's all to do with higher levels of social trust and cohesion, and the homogeneity referred to was cultural.
I'm not sure on the exact time period but prior to the recent boom in immigration, the foreign born population were mostly from other Scandinavian countries and Finland specifically.
Finland 1st, then Iraq. I'm not sure you're right about low immigration. I'll check it.
The point wasn't really about low immigration, it was about the likelihood of having the stricter immigration policies seen in Denmark as someone remarked earlier.
In respect of the data itself I suppose it depends what you're choosing to use as the starting point, and then what you're trying to assert about said societies as a result.
Here's a pretty detailed dive into the immigration data: https://pub.nordregio.org/r-2024-13...pter-3-the-nordic-geography-of-diversity.html
I'm not asserting anything. That'd be you.
What I meant by “you’re” is “one”.
In other words - ‘in respect of the data itself I suppose it depends what one chooses to use as the starting point, and then what one is trying to assert.’
General Election day 2024
New
He’ll be grand. RTE spent yesterday acting as if he never said it so most people won’t know about it until afterwards.
He can't lose. He is the safe face for 65 and over.
Saw this on Reddit yesterday, no surprise that RTE haven't spoken about it since. He's an utter disgrace. Anyone who votes for this guy doesn't give a feck about anyone but themselves.
He quite literally can't lose. Two of FF/FG/SF will be needed to form a coalition and FF are the only one of the three who could work with either of the other two.
Short of a national campaign where he personally punches every child in the country in the face, he'll be Taoiseach again.
Short of a national campaign where he personally punches every child in the country in the face, he'll be Taoiseach again.
I hate RTE as much as the next man but this was on Virgin Media, not RTE.
The Brits, historically speaking, a great bunch of lads. Thank feck they came over and helped us sort out the Shinners.
True, but if the Shinners misspoke on any platform or planet, RTE would let us know.
Yeah, fair.