In the money - huge pay hikes for all!

Jackie laughlin

Nothing very much is going to happen.

Every time politicians and civil servants get an increase, we are encouraged to let off steam about crazy salaries, allowances, etc.

On this occasion, instead of obliging the wealthy and overpaid by driving a wedge between workers in private companies and workers in state employment, how about discussing disgraceful salaries in themselves?

Now, I know the threadbare argument of how one is paid by a company owned by shareholders and another from taxes paid by all will be trotted out. The fact is that many shareholders think that "their" senior employees are paid ludicrous amounts of money.

Look, if Drumm's 450,000 + is so extraordinarily large as to parody "earn" and/or "deserve", then all such salaries are crazy. There is a managerial upper class plundering both the state and private sectors, while the people are offered Bertie as a symbolic sacrifice and diversion.

sovtek

Scruff wrote: »

/aside listening to Gerry Ryan at the moment. he unsurprisingly is glossing over it while reading out the headlines considering the amount he gets paid. tosser.

Cause he's a fat, overpaid and mediocre professional himself.

sovtek

juuge wrote: »

I've always considered it a fact that the majority of those in government would not survive a day in the private sector. That's why they are where they are.

Are you kidding. The private sector love hiring in ex government functionaries to their boards for the connections alone.

sovtek

Tristrame wrote: »

What a complete and utter example of a sweeping statement with very little if none at all basis in fact.

I have two very well known examples: GWB and Donald Rumsfeld.

brownenvelope

Surprised it took so long:

www.thecorruptionparty.com

Voipjunkie

Nice diversion on the provisional license issue as well this would have been much bigger if a couple of hundered thousand people were not more worried about how they will get to work next week.

ZygOte

brownenvelope wrote: »

Surprised it took so long:

www.thecorruptionparty.com

i always loved that fáil is so close to fail

jmayo

Tristrame wrote: »

On the other side of the coing,theres been 10 years of boom with so much money and lcd screens and 07 cars sloshing about,they will make the point that they have been doing their job reasonably but not perfectly.
They still should only have got the "inflation rise" imho and not 14%.

I'd cap the increases to what ordinary people get-Then Lets see how many of them actually opt to go to the private sector and what we are left with... I'd imagine most of them would stay put.

Oh yeah the 10 year boom, the last 5 or 6 of which is due to cheap interest rates and lots of borrowing which is slowly coming home to roost.

BTW is bertie's pay benchmarked against the Sultan of Brunei, because it sure as hell is not benchmarked against his EU counterparts :rolleyes:
No wonder he doesn't want to leave and supposedly take up an EU role, it would probably mean a pay cut.
Oh can you tellme if he is still accepting his salary in cash and stuffing it in the safe in Drumcondra ?

Looking at last election results, a lot of the younger just out of school/college brigade voted for the party that gave us all the great boom.
Nice to see they will be rewarded by having to leave their cars at home and find alternative way to work on our public transport infrastructure.

sovtek

Tea drinker wrote: »

What a country of funkwits!
WE ARE THE LAUGHING STOCK OF THE WORLD!!!!!

In fairness I think that title is more popular for my fellow countrymen. You are catching up nicely though.

marcsignal

.

Tea drinker

I signed the petition at:

http://www.gopetition.com/online/14927.html

juuge

sovtek wrote: »

Are you kidding. The private sector love hiring in ex government functionaries to their boards for the connections alone.

You are right - I meant getting into the private sector before politics - would you have little willy o'dea representing your company ? or jackie healy rea ?
You'd be out of business like a shot.

ronbyrne2005

Supposedly the Norweigan and Swedish leaders who rule similarly sized and more advanced countries (in terms of natural resources,economics,infrastructure,public services) get 125keuro each. We could hire the two of them to run our place together and still have 60k spare ! Bertie is an avaricious,power hungey pr1ck and not the "man of the people,pint of bass and an anorak guy" he and his team of advisors portray.

DublinWriter

Is it really that jaw-dropping that the democratically elected leader of a piss-pot banana-republic nation decides to pay himself more than the leaders of the world's biggest superpowers?

Ah jaysus lads, come on, rip-off-Ireland and all that. The prices of de auld Bass 'n' Chicken-Balls have been going through the roof in the Drumcondra region recently.

What's more, we'll suck up the news with our characteristic 5-minute sense of outrage then go onto whining about something else next week.

We, the bovine and lumpen proletariat have elected the government we truly deserved. Democracy has been delivered, just don't forget the tip.

Raskolnikov

I know that I have criticised the nurses for demanding more pay and lesser working hours. I retract my objections. Demand your 14%, you have my full support.

MrVostro

Surely there must be a way to stop this pay hike. After all its going to be a tough budget, so we can start by recovering these inflated salaries.

The worst part of it is that none of the opposition parties cannot step up to the plate as a better alternative either.

Look what became of the green party. No more votes ever for them from me. Was the green in that really for the green in FF all along?

Tea drinker

Absolutely.
Imagine if Sinn Fein tried giving themselves this raise: cue mass hysteria in the nation instigated by the indignant opposition parties! Criminality,
stealing, crooked politicians etc.

These incompetent cunns on drugs don't give a crap what you think.
We have a malfunctioning opposition, incapable of agreeing when they should, and silent when there should be uproar. The media isn't doing us any favours either.

jmayo

I just love it when people blame the opposition.
It is like it is all the opposition's fault if the government do something that is f***ed up.
When they did complain and raise questions about berties finances they were hammered in the opinion polls, because sure bertie is a man of the people and hard done by. Me ar** he is :rolleyes:

A hell of a lot of Irish people are greedy and don't give a crap if they are doing alright personally.
Hence they don't care about hospital waiting lists, lack of public services, MRSA, expensive cockups in public service spending, etc because it does not affect them personally.
Actually a lot of these people are those public servants that just see big pay increases and nice cushy pensions awaiting them at retirement.
How many people are in public service, add their spouses and children and you have a nice chunk of voters already ?

That is why Bertie et al have been re-elected.

It is like the fact that lots of people complained about EOS and the performance of the Irish rugby team, but then some eejits came out and said sure who else could manage them? We have no one else.
What a crock of sh**.

Unless we punish the government where it hurts, at the polls, then they will continue to walk on us.
Maybe the opposition aren't the greatest thing ever but damm it they can't treat us any worse.

I get the feeling that at cabinet meetings, they actual have competitions to see what new law or policy they can come up with to see how far they can push the citizens of this country.

Of course last weeks winner was Noel Dempsey and his provisional driver scheme.
Maybe that was why his department secretary got one of the biggest raises :rolleyes:

grahamo

I see Bertie and his mates don't come under towards 2016. I'm still waiting on a lousy 3%
pay rise due since last December. One rule for them and another for us. Its no coincidence an election is just out of the way. Nothing anyone can do about it for another 5 years.

Sleepy

The depressing thing is that there's nothing we can do about it in 5 years either grahamo, the same fvckwits that elected this government will re-elect them next time too.

I am honestly starting to believe the only way to fix this country is through armed revolution and it scares the hell out of me that I'm not joking in the slightest.

nesf

You know, there are some very good reasons for paying your politicians, judges and senior politicians "over the odds".

To begin with the bluntest one, it makes bribing them more difficult. A TD on a lean salary is going to be a lot more open to a bribe than one who's being paid well due to basic human nature (i.e. their jobs are worth more to them and they'll be less likely to risk losing them for a bribe). Ditto with a judge, ditto with senior civil servants. Incentives are important etc etc etc. It also necessitates that bribes need to get bigger, and bigger bribes are harder to hide.


Of course, if you believe that politicians, judges etc should be fair, honest, civic martyrs I can see why you might want them paid little but tbh I wouldn't be comfortable with it.


Edit: By the way, I don't in any way think they deserve this. I just can see some logic to overpaying the people at the very top of the country's civil power structure.

Boggle

A TD on a lean salary is going to be a lot more open to a bribe than one who's being paid well due to basic human nature

Or conversely, you could argue that greed begets greed?? Especially in a country where accountability and honestly is regarded as highly as this one....
Couple that to the fact that politics in this country is a family game (whereby our wonderful electorate will vote for someone based solely on their surname) and you don't actually end up with a better class of politician - regardless of how well they might be paid. It just becomes an even cosier little circle...

Were the politicians delivering anywhere near the levels which would be required to achieve the ame levels of pay in the private sector then I'd be absolutely delighted to give them that raise and more besides - but as long as Europe continues to use Dublin as an example of how NOT to plan a city, as long as our healthcare remains in the state it is and the duped electorate have been forced to borrow increasing amounts (housing) to fund the imaginary tiger I wont be happy with it.


The other issue with having policymakers earning approx 10 times the industrial average wage is that they lose touch with reality and that they would do almost anything to hold onto the job - which can lead to weak, appeasing, spineless and corrupt government (sound familiar?!).

I am honestly starting to believe the only way to fix this country is through armed revolution and it scares the hell out of me that I'm not joking in the slightest.

Unfortunately there's an element of truth in what you say. Our system clearly does not work and does not deliver in any area and unless the will is generated somewhere to get a more involved system of government we are doomed to the same shower of idiots (different faces maybe) for all eternity. The only hope we have is that the coming recession (and if you have no involvement in the building game, or rely on analysts for your opinions, you probably can't see just how bad things really are in this country) will shock our pampered little electorate into waking up...

nesf

Boggle wrote: »

The other issue with having policymakers earning approx 10 times the industrial average wage is that they lose touch with reality and that they would do almost anything to hold onto the job - which can lead to weak, appeasing, spineless and corrupt government (sound familiar?!).

Eh, and how would paying them peanuts and making very small bribes suddenly a lot more attractive improve things? I can empathise with the sentiment of "they didn't earn it" but the logic of it dictates that we should overpay them to some extent, just give them increased incentives to stay "honest".

Putting all the TDs, judges and senior civil servants on 30K a year might seem "fair" to some but it'd be a really bad idea.

nesf

nesf wrote: »

Eh, and how would paying them peanuts and making very small bribes suddenly a lot more attractive improve things?

A small point - I think it's horribly sad that we have to accept that (some) politicans would probably take bribes should they not be paid enough, to the extent that we provide incentives so that they don't take bribes.

nesf

Myth wrote: »

A small point - I think it's horribly sad that we have to accept that (some) politicans would probably take bribes should they not be paid enough, to the extent that we provide incentives so that they don't take bribes.

I think that ignoring the possibility is too dangerous to be worth maintaining idealism about politics tbh. Its a factor that people need to keep in mind when deciding on whether they should be paid large amounts or not.

nesf

nesf wrote: »

I think that ignoring the possibility is too dangerous to be worth maintaining idealism about politics tbh. Its a factor that people need to keep in mind when deciding on whether they should be paid large amounts or not.

Yup, agree completely. But still fairly depressing all the same.

Boggle

Eh, and how would paying them peanuts and making very small bribes suddenly a lot more attractive improve things?

I never said to pay them peanuts ...

I can empathise with the sentiment of "they didn't earn it" but the logic of it dictates that we should overpay them to some extent, just give them increased incentives to stay "honest".

But surely the point whereby we would be paying them over the odds was passed over 100K ago...

Putting all the TDs, judges and senior civil servants on 30K a year might seem "fair" to some but it'd be a really bad idea.

Unfortunately, while they may get a very good idea of how their electorate live - so tending towards a very socialist government - 30K pa would be too low to attract quality into the field.

to the extent that we provide incentives so that they don't take bribes.

The extent should be criminal prosecution with sever terms of imprisonment for even the slightest transgression. Advocating throwing money at the issue and hoping it'll go away is just not an answer and has never worked...

nesf

Boggle wrote: »

I never said to pay them peanuts ...

But surely the point whereby we would be paying them over the odds was passed over 100K ago...

Unfortunately, while they may get a very good idea of how their electorate live - so tending towards a very socialist government - 30K pa would be too low to attract quality into the field.

The extent should be criminal prosecution with sever terms of imprisonment for even the slightest transgression. Advocating throwing money at the issue and hoping it'll go away is just not an answer and has never worked...

And I'm not saying that we should pay them seven figure sums but when you look at the amount of money in the top jobs in the private sector these aren't big salaries really (and yes this isn't "fair"). There is some benefit to paying over the odds in order to reduce their incentives to accept bribes, it is most certainly not the only way to do this and so on and we should look at other avenues but seriously, throwing them in prison for long terms over minor offences is effectively throwing money at the problem and could very easily (considering the costs involved) work out more expensive than giving them an extra 5K a year or whatever.

Thrill

Sleepy wrote:

I am honestly starting to believe the only way to fix this country is through armed revolution and it scares the hell out of me that I'm not joking in the slightest.

Give us a break. Death and destruction because of an admittedly large pay hike is really going way OTT. The people of Burma (Myanmar) have a reason for going this far but we are a long way from that kind of problem here.

the_syco

Sleepy wrote: »

I am honestly starting to believe the only way to fix this country is through armed revolution and it scares the hell out of me that I'm not joking in the slightest.

There's a Shinner in everyone, it would seem...

=-=

Oh, and I'd like to say a f**k you to the Opposition. The ones that only picked at what Bertie said, never had any realistic counter-plans, aside from "that sucks", and thought we should elect them purely cos they went up against Bertie.