Our Glorious Leaders

Wall St Journal "Anti Lisbon"?

The only reason I can think of to vote YES is the chronic incompetence of Irish politicians. Maybe direct rule would be "better" .

So far the debate here has focused on everything other than the contents of the treaty. Both sides are making extraordinary claims regardless of evidence or even comment sense.

The arguments can be summarised as follows;

PRO: "If you vote NO we will be kicked out of Europe"

CON: "If you vote YES we will lose autonomy"

In effect, dammed if we do, dammed if we don't.

Meanwhile, the Wall St Journal has this to say;

Ireland sucked on the teat of EU regional aid for two and a half decades without discernible effect. By the mid-1980s, it was still a poor country by European standards, but it was also facing a budgetary and debt crisis. It was only when it started on a campaign of supply-side tax cuts slashing marginal rates along with capital gains and corporate income-tax rates that the economy took off.

[snip]

Brussels always treated Ireland's fantastically successful tax policies with rank suspicion, accusing it throughout its boom years of "tax dumping" and "unfair tax competition." There are plenty of governments on the Continent, not least France's, that would love to rein in Ireland's ability to attract investment through supply-side tax policy. Handing Brussels greater potential power to influence Irish tax policy would be tantamount to surrendering the keys to Irish prosperity to Brussels for all time.

link

Makes the point nicely

Negative Equity in Ireland

It's pretty bad here, but I didn't realise this bad.

And it looks like negative equity is here for some time. According to the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), those who bought a house in 2003 will have to wait another four years before they move out of negative equity, while those who bought close to the peak in 2007 will have to wait until 2030.

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Child Abuse in Ireland

It's been a couple of weeks since the Ryan Report into Child Abuse by the Catholic church in Ireland has been released and I'm still not sure what to say about it.

I mean, clearly the religious orders are evil and perverted, but I don't need to repeat what thousands of others have said, albeit, with a little more tact.

But clearly something is deeply rotten in Irish society, how else could "we" have let the religious torture and rape children for over 50 years without anyone cruing "halt!"? It absolutely beggers belief. I've heard this described as "Ireland's Holocaust" meaning Irish people should feel the deep sense of shame and embarrassment that many German's still feel over the actual Holocaust. I think we certainly should. Trouble is, I don't really see that happening. Instead a vague uneasyness and a shirking of responsibility has set in. It was the religious. It was (a lot) of bad apples. It was in the past. Let's give the victims money and hope they shut up.

For me this had been a disastrous couple of weeks for Ireland. Not only did this happen, but the churches where full at the weekend.

link via jkeyes

Catholic Church in Ireland

View more OpenOffice presentations from damienmulley.

What 'clerical abuse' actually means

One of the most powerful bits of television ever seen in Ireland played last night on RTE's Questions & Answers as a victim of clerical rape speaks his mind

They Giveth with one hand ...

... and take back with two others;

The local lootocrats often say that no one goes in to politics for the money - HA!

FIVE junior ministers will be sacked tomorrow and walk away with a "golden parachute" payment worth up to €53,000 each.

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Erin Go Broke

I've been a long time reader of Paul Krugman of the New York times so it was kind of distressing to have him use Ireland as a "worst case" scenario.

“What,” asked my interlocutor, “is the worst-case outlook for the world economy?” It wasn’t until the next day that I came up with the right answer: America could turn Irish.

It goes downhill from there;

Meanwhile "Country Third" Tanaiste of Ireland mumbles a response

A different take on income tax

Seeing as yesterday the Irish government robbed us all to pay for theirs and other mistakes here is a different take on income tax.

I don't really agree with it, but its food for thought;
(certainly how taxes are spent is a huge issue)

An income tax is inconsistent with the historical definition of freedom. Today in America government has a claim on every person’s labor, just as feudal lords, the government of that time, had claims on the labor of serfs and nineteenth century plantation owners had on slaves.

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The Cowen Paintings

Wow, what a cofuffle the above paintings caused last week.

There are some great posts here about it and I haven't too much to add. I just want to post one of the painting of the 3rd best paid leader in the world.

Two reasons why Tesco suck!

Food shopping in Ireland can be a frustrating and expensive business.

The big 3, Tesco, Dunnes and Superquinn, have all taken big hits recently as consumers cut back, switch to the discounters (Lidl & Aldi) or go North. The solution has been typically Irish - bambozel everyone with marketing. Here are two choice examples;

Make it confusing
Pretend you have discounted

I am still trying to decide which I find more offensive, the above or Dunnes Stores "the Difference is ... we're Irish" strategy.

Ireland Win 6 Nations 2009

Wonderful! Really really wonderful

Food related humour

ice cream ireland have a nice post about themed ice cream flavours for the recession;

two of my favourites are;

6. Newry Cream-in’ it

7. Cowan Fudge-in’ it

I'd buy 'em.

I've blown an outrage fuse

More spooning at the top in Ireland.

10 mystery men where given around €300 million by Anglo Irish Bank to buy shares in that bank;

THE IDENTITY of the 10 investors who were given €300 million in loans by Anglo Irish Bank to support its share price last year has emerged as a key political issue with the Opposition intensifying pressure on the Government to justify the decision to nationalise the bank.

Anglo Irish Bank has now been nationalised by their buddies in Fianna Fail; So what's the story with those loan's?

It emerged last night that Anglo Irish has decided not to pursue the 10 investors for the €75 million in security they offered for the €300 million in loans from the bank, because of legal problems with the loan agreement. The bank will confirm it has written off the loans in its annual report, to be published on Friday.

Banana Republic's around the world must be shaking their heads in dismay at how badly Ireland has tarnished the bad reputation of "Banana Republic's".

link

Ice Cream Ireland

Because I spend so much time on this blog just bitching about how crap everything is you might not know there are things I actually enjoy in life and one of them is cooking.

This Christmas my wife brought me an ice cream maker which necessitated the need for an ice cream recipe book and my google searches turned up a gem -The Murphy's Ice Cream Book of Sweet Things - written by two American brothers living here in Ireland who have set up their own ice cream business. The book is fantastic and many of the recipes from the book (and more) can be found on their blog which I browse to every week or so.

But here's the rant - Ben & Jerry have paid google.ie so that a search for “ice cream ireland” will display their site before/above http://icecreamireland.com as a “sponsored link".

It's a fairly petty thing to have done in my opinion (and the Murphy's) and I hope it fails and don't forget to check out their site if you like ice cream.

All of them must go!

Naomi Klein has an interesting article here about the current financial situation and I couldn't agree more, even in the mist of the greatest crisis since the depression they are still talking about "reform", while in actuality, handing money over to the criminals who destroyed the system in the first place.

This is however, the first time I've heard Ireland described as a "basket case" ... just wish it wasn't true.

But Latvia's troubles are indeed special: the very policies that allowed the "Baltic Tiger" to grow at a rate of 12 percent in 2006 are also causing it to contract violently by a projected 10 percent this year: money, freed of all barriers, flows out as quickly as it flows in, with plenty being diverted to political pockets. (It is no coincidence that many of today's basket cases are yesterday's "miracles": Ireland, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia.)

Also, Michael Parenti, nicely sums up just effect these bailout's are having;

Worse still, the ensuing multi-billion dollar government bailouts are themselves being turned into an opportunity for pillage. Not only does the state fail to regulate, it becomes itself a source of plunder, pulling vast sums from the federal money machine, leaving the taxpayers to bleed.

So in typical "Irish leadership" (a phase sure to become an oxymoron) our dear leaders handed over €7 Billion to the crooks last night the very week it emerged Permanent TSB secretly transfered €7 Billion to the now nationalised Anglo Irish Bank in order, one assumes, to make it's books look prettier. That wasn't Cosy Capitalism, it was full on XXX Rated Capitalism where the boy's swap and share everything and anything and the party never ends.

Only now the government (a.k.a the Mom) has accidentally walked into the room catching her favorite son doing things she never even imagined whereupon she promptly turns on her heel, leaves the room and pretends nothing happened. Later when her son comes down for tea she act's like he has just arrived in, rambles on about the neighbours and hands him money so he can have a good time when he's out later..."He's such a good son you know"

Eircom will disconnect Internet users after three unsubstantiated copyright claims

More dispatches from the Banana Republic:

from BoingBoing

Eircom, a major Irish ISP, will now disconnect its users from the Internet if they receive three unsubstantiated copyright infringement claims from the record labels. The record labels are vowing to hold other ISPs to the same deal, wh‎ich is part of a court settlement in a lawsuit against Eircom. The UK has just rejected this measure, and initiatives to spread this across the EU and the US have died as well.

Irish Times.

So much for "innocent until proven guilty".

Welcome to Animal Farm

The entire country is in meltdown but doesn't stop the public sector unions from having a hissey fit.

More than 9,000 members of Siptu's Dublin Health Services branch voted overwhelmingly in favour of industrial action this afternoon over the proposed cutbacks in the health service.

[snip]

“The decision to ballot for contingent strike action arose out of a clear and provocative public statement by a senior manager in the HSE to the effect that health workers were inefficient, too expensive
and inflexible”, said Siptu health sector organiser Paul Bell.

These guys are so insane "statements" are driving them to stikes!

What happened to union protecting workers rights and conditions? Now they have moved on to protecting their feelings?

22 years of social partnership has resulted in a real life Animal Farm where the "partners" now bicker over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Nationalising Anglo Irish Bank

Two very different views here on the imminent nationalisation of AngloIrish Bank, the first from Morgan Kelly (professor of economics at University College Dublin.)

Facing the imminent collapse of the national financial system, the Government needs to perform a ruthless triage. The worthwhile banks need to be maintained by any means necessary, including nationalisation, while Anglo Irish and Irish Nationwide must be allowed to collapse.

What began as farce has turned swiftly to catastrophe. Last September the Government casually decided to give a small dig-out to some developer pals by guaranteeing the liabilities of Anglo Irish Bank. This spiralled into a proposed nationalisation that would saddle Irish taxpayers with Anglo’s bad debts, which could easily exceed €20,000 per household, and starve the other, worthwhile, banks of the capital they need to survive.

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The second from David McWilliamns (future teller & gure)

[snip]there is only one thing the Irish government can do to retrieve the situation. It can quarantine large diseased chunks of the Irish loan book in Anglo. In effect, it can turn Anglo into a financial skip, throwing into the bank all the bad debts of the other banks.

Bank of Ireland and AIB, although they like to hold their noses and look down on Anglo, might actually have a worse bad debt position than the nationalised orphan. This is because, in an effort to catch up with Anglo, the big banks accelerated lending at the top of the market from 2005 to 2008. So they need the financial skip as much as anyone else.

It would be unwise to allow them to get off the hook by throwing all the bad debts into Anglo. Brian Lenihan should raise a huge bond on the international markets to finance the bad loans.

link

I'm not an economist so I'm really in the dark as to what the answer here is, all I know is, in this Banana-republic, none of those responsible for this fiasco will ever be held accountable ...

Pirate retires

Oh wait! I ment chief executive of Bank Of Ireland retires..

Two things really stood out for me, one;

In a statement this morning, Mr Goggin said he was “very proud” of his 40-year career with the bank.

I suppose this is like Darth Vader being very proud of his service aboard the Death Star

and two;

Mr Burrows said the bank was “well-placed” due to the support of the Government through the guarantee scheme to “play a full part and in a wider context and to rebuild value for its stockholders”.

Even after the sucker Irish government bails out these guys their the primary focus is still on "stockholders"!? I realise the Irish state (AKA the Irish people) now owns a large part of the bank but this isn't due to clever financial wizardry on the part of the government, it's because (they claim) they had no choice.

So how about Mr Goggin if you got down on your hands and knees and begged forgiveness from the Irish people for your part in almost bankrupting the state?

How about admitting the the entire system you championed is hopelessly corrupt and should be discarded.

How about not retiring, but resigning - immediately?