Bertie hates people

lostexpectation

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/laziness-killing-off-voluntary-work-says-ahern-1496215.html

F services given by volunteers had to be paid for, "the country would be long broke -- we wouldn't have to wait for the banks", former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern observed yesterday.

His comments were made at the launch of a study on 'The Community Life of Older People', at the Dublin Institute of Technology's Mountjoy Square campus.

Mr Ahern said he did not "buy into the idea" that people are too stressed out, and working too long hours, to volunteer for community events, since they have plenty of time to watch the European Championships on TV and then go to the pub on Fridays.

Instead, he puts lack of volunteerism down to "laziness and indifference".

The book's author, Dr Carmel Gallagher, urged the Government not to slash funding for vital community services for the elderly, such as day centres and social clubs, in the Budget. She added that the work of voluntary groups should not be taken for granted.

so this women does a study on community care for the old and suggest it needs more government support bertie is invited to speak and tells everyone no more support is needed you are just lazy.

prick

DonkeyStyle \o/

Ah sure Bertie would be happier if we all committed suicide.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Man's no longer Taoiseacht, doesn't have to worry about votes. Can speak his mind now...

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

and where do you volunteer OP?

lostexpectation

i don't at the mo but i have volunteered at a youth club, that's not the point, its about his excuses for the lack government responsibility for social services, there is always going to be a need for free voluntary work and neighbourliness but we pay our taxes to be looked after in various ways, they are the people that are suppose to arrange it on are behalf.

he totally contradicts the study he's presenting, attacking others to avoid his responsibilities of the stressful life he has helped to create as politicians and undermining the voluntary sector out of spite.

ninty9er

If you bothered to read the whole article rather than just the snippet you quoted, you'll see he was stressing that we need more volunteers or funding to the support networks won't make a difference.

This has been a pet peeve of Bertie's for 4-5 years and he's never made a secret of it, the press just never bothered to cover it.

Liam Byrne

And if people didn't have to work six days a week to keep their head above water, or leave their houses @ 7am for work and get home @ 8pm due to bad planning, infrastructure and public transport, then they might actually have time to volunteer.

ninty9er

Liam Byrne wrote: »

And if people didn't have to work six days a week to keep their head above water, or leave their houses @ 7am for work and get home @ 8pm due to bad planning, infrastructure and public transport, then they might actually have time to volunteer.

A lot of people in those circumstances still manage. Lifestyle choices is a phrase that comes to mind.

Liam Byrne

ninty9er wrote: »

A lot of people in those circumstances still manage.

Yes, and fair play to them; I'm SOOOO bad, in that I only manage to occasionally help out with Community Games and Special Olympics and another charity; seriously, though - I'm not blowing my trumpet on those because lots of people do more.

But I would DEFINITELY do more if I had the time, money and energy. That's a fact, so it's a little unfair to dismissively regard it as purely a lifestyle "choice".

Lifestyle choices is a phrase that comes to mind.

Speaking of which, I can think of another word starting with "L" that "came to mind" in another thread about the same man, but was told that what springs to mind isn't always right.

lostexpectation

the point is this women just did a study and she says then eed more back up, he's just waffling and being rude.

his pet peeve he says people don't volunteer enough wow, we forgivve him of all his deeds for that.

why is so much spite in his call for more volunteers.

nesf

That's a wonderfully misleading title you've picked there.

Liam Byrne

P.S. If someone wants to give me a year's wages in a brown envelope then I'll gladly volunteer for lots of good causes.....

ninty9er

Liam Byrne wrote: »

P.S. If someone wants to give me a year's wages in a brown envelope then I'll gladly volunteer for lots of good causes.....

Where would you find the time:rolleyes: or would you give up work for life to do good deeds for one year's wages?

Macha

Liam Byrne wrote: »

And if people didn't have to work six days a week to keep their head above water, or leave their houses @ 7am for work and get home @ 8pm due to bad planning, infrastructure and public transport, then they might actually have time to volunteer.

ninty9er wrote: »

A lot of people in those circumstances still manage. Lifestyle choices is a phrase that comes to mind.

For many people it is not a lifestyle choice to have to live out in the suburbs. There a very, very few family-sized apartments in urban centres and therefore most are forced to buy a house (and most are happy with that). However, due to the low density of our residential developments and lack of mixed-use developments, much of the housing stock lies at a considerable distance to the residents' work places. This means that there are accessibility-rich and accessibility-poor areas and the price of property reflects that.
I certainly don't blame any person with a family who has ended up living in feckin Tyrrelstown or some other satellite town in the GDA. And I certainly wouldn't call it a "lifestyle choice".

The pledge in the constitution that the mother (or either parent, if we take it to be gender-neutral, as the government so lamely argues) should not be forced to work outside the home for economic reasons has fallen by the way-side. And yet it's the general public's fault that volunteering is at it's current level?? Maybe it is, but the way family life in Ireland has evolved certainly doesn't help matters.

For example. research by Maynooth shows that newly-arrived couples in a suburban town only really get to know their neighbours when their children start going to school. If both parent's are at work and the child-minder is collecting them from school, this connection is lost. Social capital, me arse.

lostexpectation

his pet peeve, i have heard him go on volunteerism before, and at that too the group he was speaking with asked for more support and he threw it back in their faces too,

ahern your policy of boom and bust is failed one, ah but do you volunteer?

its like haughey with arts a method to indulge his ego as a fair man, his token socialist stick to beat people with

nesf

taconnol wrote: »

The pledge in the constitution that the mother (or either parent, if we take it to be gender-neutral, as the government so lamely argues) should not be forced to work outside the home for economic reasons has fallen by the way-side.

Is this something that the people have chosen themselves or something that's been forced upon them? It's all a vicious (or virtuous depending on your viewpoint) circle where more women chose to work because they want to increasing the income of the family meaning that house prices and cost of living in general increases because your average family has a larger income and this puts pressure on women who would if given the choice, be housewives. The day of the woman automatically giving up work to become a housewife seem to be over for better or worse.

Macha

nesf wrote: »

Is this something that the people have chosen themselves or something that's been forced upon them? It's all a vicious (or virtuous depending on your viewpoint) circle where more women chose to work because they want to increasing the income of the family meaning that house prices and cost of living in general increases because your average family has a larger income and this puts pressure on women who would if given the choice, be housewives. The day of the woman automatically giving up work to become a housewife seem to be over for better or worse.

Ok firstly, I think many women choose to work because, well, because they want to. But I also think there are many families that would like to have one parent at home full time (be it the man or the woman) and for many, this has been removed as an option since the 1990s.

Sure, many couples have chosen to live lavish lifestyles (eg house, holidays etc) and both parents had to work to fuel that lifestyle, but many families are not living it up but both parents still need to work. I feel that it was not a choice because in my opinion, the housing bubble and resulting shoddy developments and infrastructure are a result of government policies. Sure, there was a lot of panic-buying but that occurs in any rapidly rising housing market. The end result has been an overblown housing market, with ridiculous prices and rents (no indexing of these..) and many people forced into the expensive purchase and maintenance of one or more cars as their only reliable mode of transport.

Now I'm not saying I agree with the consitution's pledge that the mother (or father) should never need to work for economic reasons. I'm just saying that it's there and it hasn't been fulfilled and so Bertie's comments are quite hypocritical. Bertie should have a look back at the damage his own policies have done to family life in Ireland and then ask himself why more people don't have the free time to volunteer. Or better yet, he should ask himself why the proper welfare services are not in place and why so many people desperately depend on the good-will of volunteers in the NGO sector (mental health: case in point)

nesf

taconnol wrote: »

I feel that it was not a choice because in my opinion, the housing bubble and resulting shoddy developments and infrastructure are a result of government policies.

The blame for the standard of the developments should be lain almost completely at the feet of local councillors who were in a direct position to do something about it rather than the Government. I'm not trying to absolve FF here, many of the said councillors were FF people, it's just that attacking the Government takes the focus away from where the real problem in the system is. There is hardly any public attention on local level politicians, mores the pity.


I appreciate where you are coming from on the dual income issue, the thing is I don't think there's anything a Government can do about it other than putting loads of tax disincentives against a second income and really this would just be keeping women in the kitchen through other means (or more importantly it would be viewed this way).

Macha

nesf wrote: »

The blame for the standard of the developments should be lain almost completely at the feet of local councillors who were in a direct position to do something about it rather than the Government. I'm not trying to absolve FF here, many of the said councillors were FF people, it's just that attacking the Government takes the focus away from where the real problem in the system is. There is hardly any public attention on local level politicians, mores the pity.

I knew you'd pull out that sentence . Yeah, I forgot to make a distinction between central and local government. And you're right, local government is very weak in Ireland and is very dependent on central government for funding. And the whole planning system is very dependent on the decisions of local populist elected individuals. Hopefully Gormley's proposed legislation on local government reform will make some changes.

nesf wrote: »

I appreciate where you are coming from on the dual income issue, the thing is I don't think there's anything a Government can do about it other than putting loads of tax disincentives against a second income and really this would just be keeping women in the kitchen through other means (or more importantly it would be viewed this way).

Well, when you consider their other policies eg no paternity leave, then yes, it would really be the woman forced to stay at home in most cases. There's not much they can do now because the housing bubble has already happened.
However, again, we have become a very materialistic society: in fact, we're the biggest consumers per capita in the EU. So there's definitely an element of people having to have the salary to spend, spend, spend and spend conspicuously at that.

Just on the subject of charity/volunteering, I heard that per capita and as individuals, British people give twice as much to charity as Irish people and Americans give four times as much. Heard it on the radio, don't have a source or anything..

nesf

taconnol wrote: »

I knew you'd pull out that sentence .

Yeah it's a pet hate of mine, how lightly the local level guys seem to be getting away with things with the national Government being the centre of complaint in the matter.

taconnol wrote: »

Yeah, I forgot to make a distinction between central and local government. And you're right, local government is very weak in Ireland and is very dependent on central government for funding. And the whole planning system is very dependent on the decisions of local populist elected individuals. Hopefully Gormley's proposed legislation on local government reform will make some changes.

I don't hold much hope until I see what the legislation they'll vote on will look. I don't think TDs would like to see their thunder stolen etc.

taconnol wrote: »

Well, when you consider their other policies eg no paternity leave, then yes, it would really be the woman forced to stay at home in most cases. There's not much they can do now because the housing bubble has already happened.
However, again, we have become a very materialistic society: in fact, we're the biggest consumers per capita in the EU.

I wouldn't equate biggest consumers per capita with materialistic personally (depends on how it's measured if it's in nominal terms without adjusting for price differences in different countries it's a meaningless statistic).

Macha

nesf wrote: »

I wouldn't equate biggest consumers per capita with materialistic personally (depends on how it's measured if it's in nominal terms without adjusting for price differences in different countries it's a meaningless statistic).

Hm, I didn't even think about this to be honest. I have heard the statistic that consumer prices are 20% above the EU-15 average in Ireland.
However, if you add in the fact that we also produce very high levels of waste..?
tbh, i'm finding it hard to get statistics on consumption.