Nov
12
Auctioning some of our Oil & Gas reserves could get us out of the present economic and social mess yet it has never been considered or discussed. No, we are just been fed the same bullshit i.e. that individual citizens have to bail out the Irish banks, which are failed privately owned companies, even though it was not their fault. Why ?
Oct
18
My proposal for removing up to 100,000 public servants is relatively straightforward although it will have to be accompanied by substantial reforms in work practices, promotion policy, pension entitlements and attitude. For example, the defined benefit, indexed linked pension scheme is simply too expensive for our country to afford for the foreseeable future. The abolition of this pension must include all public servants whether employed now, in the past or in the future. If new legislation or constitutional amendment is required to make this happen, then so be it. The fact that there are people who retired over ten years ago and are presently receiving pension that are actually higher now than their salary they were on when they left, is outrageous.
Oct
10
At the moment there are 450,000 people without paid employment out of a workforce of 1.9 million. Also consider that 460,000 of the total workforce do not compete for jobs or are in any danger of losing their jobs because they are our public servants. So, in the real world, the actual number of people available to work (or be made redundant) is 1,450,000 people. I’m sure even one of our overpaid bankers could work out that 32 per cent of the people in the “free labour market” are without jobs. That’s right folks, the real rate of unemployment in this country among the wealth-creating sectors is 32 per cent or one in three.
Sep
26
No doubt you are sick of listening to the radio, watching the television or reading newspapers and getting nothing but bad economic news.
Unfortunately, this is happening because our Government — and many of us — closed our eyes and ears to the reality of what was unfolding before the meltdown. The priority now is to resolve it the best we can and as quickly and as equitably as possible. To do so is going to require some major decisions, all of which will have substantial and far-reaching consequences for every one of us.
Finance Minister Brian Lenihan should immediately tell us what options he considered prior to the bank guarantee scheme and the implications of each. Not once, since this crisis began, have we been treated like adults and told exactly what options were considered. Instead, we were told the bank guarantee scheme is the only show in town, with no explanation whatsoever. Suspiciously, none of the other options (if any) have been discussed publicly by the Government.
Sep
10
To be published in the Sunday Independent 12 Sept 2010
On numerous occasions in the last week we have heard our Minister for finance Mr. Lenihan remind us of the necessity to continue to guarantee the banks. Not to have done so initially would almost certainly have meant the instant financial collapse for our state. Of the two options open to him (letting the banks go, being the first), guaranteeing the Irish banks was the only practical option. Well, according to those who were advising himself and Mr. Cowen on that fateful night, when the crises meeting took place in Government Buildings.
Let’s face it, this is what he was told by the CEO’s and the Chairmen of Allied Irish Banks and Bank of Ireland. And these people should know shouldn’t they? These were the same people who, we had been led to believe, understood international finance, economics and the creation of wealth. After all, the bankers were finance professionals and Mr. Lenihan and Mr. Cowen, were legal professionals. You wouldn’t go to a solicitor for financial advice nor vice versa, would you? Our representatives at the meeting (Zig & Zag) were either lied to or they were incompetent, or both. Fortunately for everyone in the room that night, we’ll never know as there were no minutes taken at the meeting. Yeah, right.
We can only surmise that the bankers put up an extremely strong case for the guaranteeing of the banks and strangely Anglo Irish bank, which they knew was in serious trouble. The problem is, Mr. Lenihan has ever told us what, specifically, the alternatives were. Sure, we have heard the warnings of “economic meltdown” and “imminent collapse of the financial system” etc etc. But so far, nobody has actually told us what these mean. What advice specifically did Mr. Lenihan and Mr. Cowen receive from the bankers? What “appalling vista” lay before them that left them with no choice but to guarantee the Irish banks and therefore a generation to economic hardship? I, for one, would really like to know the answer. I mean, how bad would the alternative have been? ./…………
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