Business interests advocate a yes vote

Those big bad damn business interests that provide jobs are taking us ordinary workers for a ride! [/Higgins]

ei.sdraob wrote: »

could be worse

http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/

You'd think they'd have put a less scary picture on the front page. Old men wearing black and red. Good call lads!

ei.sdraob wrote: »

i wonder do they intend to replace the tricolor with this


hmm i scrolled down and lookit here

http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/cillmhor.jpeg

I'm hoping that one day someone will be able to explain where these figures of €180 billion or €200 billion or €300 come from. The nearest I can find in real life is less than 5 billion.

sdonn wrote: »

€180 billion? Can't be any truth in that figure surely?

meglome wrote: »

I looked it up and foreign boats have taken more fish out of Irish waters than the Irish boats have. Although the share the Irish boats take has steadily risen since we joined the EU. The total value of the catch landed by the foreign boats is about 4.7 billion euro since 1973. (Click show tabular data).

And as for our farmers, the EU props them up. To suggest the EU is screwing them is bull****. Irish farmers 71% reliant on subsidies

Now the EU have given us 41 billion euro for free since 1973 (Page 19). I don't seem to be seeing the 'screwing' here.

meglome wrote: »

Now I'm no expert on fishing but I can use simple logic.

The Irish landed catch since 1973 is 2.4 billion and the landed catch by foreign boats is 4.7 billion.

The Spanish landed catch since 1973 is 2 billion euro and the catch landed by foreign boats is 2 billion euro.

Now the figure of 200 billion euro that's quoted is 83 times more than all Irish fishing boats have landed since 1973, which (and to put it mildly) seems unlikely. Now as I said I'm no fishing expert but this value of 200 billion seems to have no basis in any reality that I can find.

Since this figure is so often quoted maybe someone can find out where it came from?

That's the best I can do on the subject.

Rosco1982 wrote: »

Yes it does worry me.

It would worry me a lot less if we could directly elect the Commission.

What exactly have they done that worries you so much?

meglome wrote: »

I'm hoping that one day someone will be able to explain where these figures of €180 billion or €200 billion or €300 come from. The nearest I can find in real life is less than 5 billion.

The process goes roughly like this - we start with the traditional claim that "foreign vessels are taking 2 billion a year from Irish waters". This has a long history:

Dáil Éireann - Volume 478 - 30 April, 1997

Written Answers. - Fish Stocks.

148. Mr. H. Byrne (FF, Wexford) asked the Minister for the Marine if his attention has been drawn to the £2 billion worth of fish which is taken from Irish waters by EU boats each year and that Ireland's share from Irish waters is £100 million; if his attention has further been drawn to the fact that Ireland has 16 per cent of EU water and only a 2.9 per cent quota, with a 2.5 per cent fleet; the proposals, if any, he has to redress the balance to somewhere near equity; if he will provide funding to update and upgrade the fleet; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11567/97]

The Minister (a Fine Gael one) on that occasion replied that the maximum estimate was in fact closer to £700 million, with the Irish share being £139m.

Trevor Sargent repeats the same thing more or less word for word 4 years later in 2001, attacking Fianna Fail this time:

The members of the fishing community constantly remind me that the fisheries have suffered because of our membership of the EU. It has been said many times that £2 billion worth of fish was taken out of Irish waters by EU boats every year and Ireland's share is about £100 million.

And so on. Interestingly enough, the figure becomes 2 billion euro, as opposed to punts, when the currency changes. It ought to have become €2.5 billion, but it doesn't, because it's not a real figure. It's a verbal 'factoid' which has repeatedly been shown not to be the case, and which has never been demonstrated as true at all - literally, not ever. Nobody has ever pulled up figures that add up to £2bn or €2bn of fish.

What happened to that figure is that it was multiplied by the convenient figure of 35 years (since we joined the EU) to give another nice round number of €70bn.

A journalist called Prendiville got hold of that figure, and decided to multiply it to give the "value to the economy", which included his estimates of a notional processing industry and so on, resulting in a figure of €200bn. He claimed his "catch data" came from Eurostat, but Eurostat do not produce a figure for Irish waters - their figures are for the "North-East Atlantic", which covers Irish, French, Spanish, Portugese, Belgian, Dutch, German, Danish, Swedish and Finnish EU waters, as well as Icelandic and Norwegian waters.

Other people have simply multiplied that figure again, on the basis that "surely these are low estimates". They're not, of course - indeed, they're not estimates at all. They're completely notional figures with no attachment to reality, which derive solely from opposition attacks on whoever happens to be the Minister for the Marine of the day.

cordially,
Scofflaw

ei.sdraob wrote: »

Declan Ganley is chairman of Rivada and "chairman" of Libertas

who have large contracts with US military (190 million+ euro) [/URL]

/

Anybody know the value of Intel contracts with the US military? I'd say they'd piss on Ganley's.

Scofflaw wrote: »

Quite possibly - on the other hand that's far from Intel's only, or even major source of income. You should probably try the "they're getting off anti-monopoly cases" line instead.

amused,
Scofflaw

Hardly, many posters are slagging off Ganley about his connections to the US military. If Intel share the same contacts/values/greater value of transactions that's one major attack against him taken out.

The amount of suspicion about the US on here is majorly ironic/odd/funny given Ireland's habit of kissing America's ass.

dresden8 wrote: »

Hardly, many posters are slagging off Ganley about his connections to the US military. If Intel share the same contacts/values/greater value of transactions that's one major attack against him taken out.

It's not really. Firstly Intel makes no attempt to hide the fact that they sell to the military and secondly they're involved in this race because they think it will help the economy and therefore them whereas Ganley is going on about the interests of the Irish people, how we need to keep our commissioner etc, very unselfish and patriotic it seems.

We know why Intel cares so much about the treaty passing but we don't know why Ganley does. He's giving us reasons why he doesn't like the treaty but they're mostly not true so those aren't his real reasons. There is some other reason why he doesn't want this treaty that he's not telling us. Given that, the source of his funding and the vested interests he tries to play down become relevant