Fianna Fáil
Fine Gael
Sinn Féin
Labour
Green Party
Independent/Other
Would not vote
No, I just want people to think I'm cool and alternative
Our vote was a mile off anyway!
Anyone see the Healy-Rae's on RTÉ? Dear god
One love *** One club
The Alanmc off the head prediction is we will be back at the polls in two years. Labour aint got the bottle to make the cuts needed and FG can't wait to do them.
I used to know it all, Now I'm going to school.
We're off to a flyer. Enda kenny said he rang gilmore yesterday about the new government make up and left a message on his voicemail but labour have said he must have a wrong number because eamonn got no message
Lord help us
Mick Wallace on TV3 now, Wexford jersey and all
Kenny making a show if himself here. Watching it through my fingers. Car crash telly at its best.
I used to know it all, Now I'm going to school.
Joan Burton nowhere near finance!
Wayhay!
I used to know it all, Now I'm going to school.
Kenny is a disaster for Ireland and smug with it. Sinn fein mentioned in the speeches this afternoon that part of FG's election 5 point plan was not included in their plan for government so they have already broken one promise on day 1.
Ireland is fucked because of the previous shower - end of story. Expect broken promises, the new government will have to make the best of an economy holed below the waterline through pure greed.
Hell of a job on their hands and unpopular decisions will have to be taken. The story below is a good indicator of the mess we're in. We need to be wage-competitive to attract jobs but we also need to pay people enough to get by in what is an expensive country and have enough disposable income to spend some money to revive the economy.
http://www.independent.ie/national-n...e-2573644.html
because people on social welfare are living it up?
The problem isn't how much they're getting, the problem is how much they need to survive and one poxbag moaning in the Indo because a guy turned down a job doesn't change that. his anecdotal stuff about what car he drove to the interview is fucking bullshit too. Maybe he got a loan of it
Did your man bother to check how much the lad would get on the dole? No, its all down to what he was told by peopel who don't want to work for him. Now considering one lad had already accepted the job, is no one suspicious that maybe your man is a cunt? The Romanian obviously knew what his wages were going to be before he took it, so I don't think he could argue that it was a money thing. Likewise the Filipino. The job ad would clearly have stated the wages, so why would he go all the way through the interview (in which he told his potential boss about his family etc) if he didn't think the money was OK
Did the indo bother to contact either of these people to see if any of this is true? Or did they just accept the word of one guy?
True. But how do you distinguish those that want to work and simply can't find work (and there are tens, probably hundreds of thousands in that boat) from those that don't? Cut off the entitlements of those unemployed that want to work to make the dole less attractive and you could condemn 100,000+ people (including kids) to live in poverty through no fault of their own. How is that fair? And how does it stimulate growth in the economy? Contrary to what some right-wing commentators would have you believe, there are NOT 450,000 job vacancies in the country nor nowhere near it. Somebody has to be unemployed.
We are paying the price now for a social welfare system that's been as soft as a baby's shite for years. The time to deal with people that were claiming benefit and had no interest in working was 10-12 years ago when jobs were plentiful. Would have been easy to sort out the freeloaders from the unfortunate then. Not so now. Another reason to be grateful to Fianna Fail, putting votes before the national interest.
I'd by no means dismiss the notion that the Indo took one side of a two-sided story as gospel or that this is part of a deliberate attempt on their part to create a mood for widespread welfare cuts. However I honestly believe there are a lot of people out there (particularly women I have to say) turning down jobs because they are better off not working. A woman with 2 kids renting a gaff can take home about 800-850 a quid from scratcher and entitlements if she knows what she's at when claiming. Nobody wants to see people thrown out into the street but that is clearly crazy money for sitting on your hole.
im not taking the side of the employer here im just stating my opinion that some (not all) people get far too much on the social welfare ,
Also your point about salarys on job specs is untrue as a lot of the would say negotiable and not put the salary in in , believe me dodge i know
im not sure what the correct way to sort it is , but letting people claim left right and centre is just wrong
I have neighbours who have never worked in the 7 years im on the road , they get rent money single parents money and never even look for work , their rent is 80 euro a month and have more disposable income than i could dream of . Before any says report them , i have looked into it but what they are doing is all above board , but to me its ust wrong .
the term "better off on the dole " should simply not exist
Last edited by mad dog; 10th March 2011 at 12:11 PM.
But they are still very much in the minority. You can't just simply cut everything, because then 'innocent' people (for want of better word) will be plunged into poverty
There is a gender divide Gaz, but as a parent I can tell you that the cost of childcare is atronomical. There are plenty of double earning families who's 2nd income goes soely to pay for childcare. In some cases, it is more about savings on childcare + dole being more than wages minus childcare (and of course if one member of fmily is earning, the other gets a hugely reduced rate). There are added benefits to family life etc here that I don't think should be underestimated either.
There are absolutely people who abuse the sytem, but they shouldn't be what the Social Protection debate is based on. it should be based on trying to protect as many people as possible from falling into poverty. I think the risk of pushing people over the edge in slashing Welfare benefits could be disastrous as once you're in that trap, its very hard to get out
Absolutely it should be harder to claim anything, and it should be monitored far more closely, but that needs resources (people) and the majority of people wanting a welfare clampdown also want the amount of pubic servants slashed too.
Last edited by Jimdagym; 10th March 2011 at 01:10 PM.
That indo story is nothing but an ad for his cofee company, but that in mo way changes the fact that social welfare needs drastic attention.
^^Dodge, I dont see what that has to do with anything. Either it needs to be looked at or it doesnt. People wanting a reduction in public sevice numbers can hardly come into the equation. We all know people getting far more than they should, so the minority cannot be that small.Absolutely it should be harder to claim anything, and it should be monitored far more closely, but that needs resources (people) and the majority of people wanting a welfare clampdown also want the amount of pubic servants slashed too.
Regards chiildcare, my wife stays at home because child care for two infants is more than she earns. We get zero welfare for that bar childrens allowance, so I know all about that too.
P.S. I hit "edit" on your post there dodge by mistake, but I didnt edit anything.
I havent experienced it as much back here in Dublin, but from living down in Arklow for a few years the attitude and culture was to screw the system as much as possible, and it was not a minority scenario at all. I think it was mentioned somewhere earlier, but women especially single mothers (which again is the majority in that town) milk it big time. Now fair enough in some cases it is harder to work or you earn less, but the attitude is generally "fuck that, sure why would ya bother" and to get as much money as possible. You would often here them complain how they were broke - which would mean they cant get hammered that weekend, its crazy.
Cyril The Judas
Not one person yet has said that your man that owns the coffeee company should simply offer to pay more. He's the one that's really coining it here, cos those machines aren't exactly cheap. But instead he's quite happy for his employees to be doing nixers using his vans - the exact same nixer culture that he and the Indo would be all over like a rash for evidence that people on Social Welfare somehow get too much.
Doc, you surely don't need me to tell you the number of manufacturing jobs we've lost to Eastern Europe because of our lack of wage competitiveness? It's not some right-wing or anti-union mythology, it's fact and I know dozens of people, many of them former work colleagues of mine, who've lost their jobs because of it. You could argue that these companies don't need to move out of Ireland to survive and in some cases that may be true but that's not how the world around us works - if they can recoup the cost of relocation in a reasonable timeframe in wage savings, move they will. I worked as a maintenance technician myself in my time and 28K basic isn't untypical of what somebody with that level of qualifications could expect to earn in the current climate. One of the main reasons we can't make ends meet now as a nation is that we paid no attention to wage inflation for too long.
Dodge alluded to the cost of childcare which is central to this issue. How is it fair that somebody who goes out and works for 20-40 hours a week has to pay for childcare, rent, medical expenses etc while somebody who couldn't be arsed making the effort gets all that handed to them or else at hugely discounted rates? And there is no 'system' being screwed here, it's the taxpayer. That is, all of us. All our PAYE, PRSI, road tax and the VAT we pay everytime we buy anything is paying for this.
Last edited by Gaz; 10th March 2011 at 02:55 PM.