Do you feel cheated?

tonymahoney

Folks, I am interested in starting a pollon the grounds that I feel cheated - cheated by our FF government, our banking system, our builders etc.
As an ordinary "JOE BLOGGS" trying to earn a reasonable standard of living I work bloody hard for my money and don't mind doing so but I can't help but thinking that all aforementioned have been operating in a different school to the rest of us and we are now paying a dear price for it and being asked to bail these guys out. What they gave been let away with anyone else would have been sacked and disgraced on the spot.

Time Magazine

Moved from Economics.

stepbar

Blame the flawed human and his/her level of greed. No need to look any further TBH.

miaowchi

I totally agree with you... and i think it will eventually lead to all out riots... working class people seem to be getting punished the whole time...
I read somewhere today that our own Brian Cowen gets paid more than the British prime minister, French president and basically every other leader in Europe... its a joke and FF in general are a joke but time and time again people will vote them in...
We were told by the tanaiste to shop around for our groceries... what go to several different supermarkets for different products ha ha iam sure she does that!! i think they should all take a reality check and try living on the minimum wage or even average industrial wage for a mth and see how they get on....

tonymahoney

Folks this won't let me start the poll I wanted to do - anyone know why - nothing malicious in this just straight forward questions that need answers

stepbar

miaowchi wrote: »

I totally agree with you... and i think it will eventually lead to all out riots... working class people seem to be getting punished the whole time...
I read somewhere today that our own Brian Cowen gets paid more than the British prime minister, French president and basically every other leader in Europe... its a joke and FF in general are a joke but time and time again people will vote them in...
We were told by the tanaiste to shop around for our groceries... what go to several different supermarkets for different products ha ha iam sure she does that!! i think they should all take a reality check and try living on the minimum wage or even average industrial wage for a mth and see how they get on....

Steady on there....

tonymahoney wrote: »

Folks this won't let me start the poll I wanted to do - anyone know why - nothing malicious in this just straight forward questions that need answers

There are no straight forward answers, that's the problem. If there was life would be great.

tonymahoney

stepbar wrote: »

Steady on there....



There are no straight forward answers, that's the problem. If there was life would be great.

Yes i totally agree that there are now no straight forward answers to get out of the mess but the 4 questions I wanted to ask as a poll *that won't let me set up as a poll are:
Do you feel cheated? (by the elite of society your politicians bankers etc etc.)
1. Yes I do
2 No I don't
3. Not sure
4. We all caused this problem during Celtic tiger era

stepbar

tonymahoney wrote: »

Yes i totally agree that there are now no straight forward answers to get out of the mess but the 4 questions I wanted to ask as a poll *that won't let me set up as a poll are:
Do you feel cheated? (by the elite of society your politicians bankers etc etc.)
1. Yes I do
2 No I don't
3. Not sure
4. We all caused this problem during Celtic tiger era

Do I feel cheated? No. Why? because I was never involved in it in the first place. Why would I feel cheated? The people who have money in society will always try to get more. I never had any so I don't know how I could feel cheated TBH. I have a relativly good job and live a modest life in a country which hasn't been all that bad over the past 15 years.

grahamo

I feel cheated. I cant afford to live in my home city as I was priced out of it. The country is run by a golden circle of corrupt sh***s who constantly line their pockets
and now things are going pear shaped because of these greedy B*stards, the working man is expected to pay by losing his job or taking pay cuts.
The fat cats must have legged it with their vast profits as there is no sign of them anywhere at the moment.
The working man seems to be getting punished more and more and I'm getting totally sick of it. I feel lately the govt. etc are pushing me too far.

Roll on the revolution!

JonathanAnon

Well I didnt buy an overpriced house. I was fortunate enough that I wasnt "forced" into buying a house like many young families who needed a place to stay. I am single so there was no necessity for me to buy a house to raise kids or the like. But I do sympathize with my friends who did.

Though you would have to wonder about some people. People paid 750,000 for houses (nice houses in fairness, 3 bed semis) for a house the other side of the Curragh, Co. Kildare. down to 500,000 now I think. So people have to take some responsibility for lack of common sense

On the banks issue, if I was a Dell worker (who lost their job through no fault of their own, only greedy Michael Dell) and had shares in Anglo, I would be feeling a little unfair considering what the lack of accountability there. In the states they would be banged up for fraud.

mike65

The will be no revolution, so it will not be televised.

By the way if you are feeling cheated, then e-mail the Green party and ask them to pull the plug.

ednwireland

i dont feel cheated but thats becauase i think the gov and banks are a shower of liars and frauds anyway and always did. just one proviso private companies i.e banks have only one aim to make as large a return for their shareholders as piossible. companies used to have a social conscience but alas no more.

cheated no disillusioned - yes. i.m on a 3 day week BTW dispite working away this week and doingg 40+ hours already, i'm also working on stuff whilst at home for the company ! (its a small company that i dont want to see go under and i know the directors are taking more pain than me.)

cabra64

ednwireland wrote: »

i dont feel cheated but thats becauase i think the gov and banks are a shower of liars and frauds anyway and always did. just one proviso private companies i.e banks have only one aim to make as large a return for their shareholders as piossible. companies used to have a social conscience but alas no more.

cheated no disillusioned - yes. i.m on a 3 day week BTW dispite working away this week and doingg 40+ hours already, i'm also working on stuff whilst at home for the company ! (its a small company that i dont want to see go under and i know the directors are taking more pain than me.)

Fair play sound reasoning. Plus pulling for your company. Sounds like your a valuable assist to company. Im suprised so many people feel so cheated. Im 23 still in college by grace of parents who help with funds. Its terrible that people are in negative equity but the property market was just crazy and with people buying to let while on peanuts as wages they werefoolish. alot people are giving out now, but did they even turn up for the election? Im annoyed at the budget and the lack of any kind of imagination for solutions. I don't know who im gonna vote for next time round but im worried that the options are very poor anyway.

El Stuntman

yes; here's a rant I posted earlier on the poker forum (sounds strange I know but there's a good OT discussion going on there). I'm hopping mad!

El Stuntman wrote: »

my rant of the day (long): The Irish People

what the fcuk is wrong with us as a people? We now have incontrovertible evidence that Fianna Fail has acted in concert with property developers and bankers to create the largest property bubble in history (woo-hoo, we're Number 1!). Either there was massive corruption going on whereby the planning laws of the State were systematically undermined by the sheer volume of brown envelopes flowing in secret and in public (remember the Galway races tent?) to politicans, mainly FF but also some other rotten eggs, or else FF have demonstrated a lack of competence in running a country that is almost unparalelled outside of the banana republics of Africa and South America (at least they shoot their leaders when things go wrong). To me it's both - corruption and incompetence.

The man who to me epitomises these twin evils is Bertie Ahern. He's clearly been on the take for years - his evidence to Mahon veered into the surreal at times, such was the scale of the lies, duplicity and double-dealing. He's never held a real job in his life (despite liking to claim that he's an accountant, he's passed no exams). He never went to college, has only a passing knowledge of the English language and despite enjoying a public image as a man of the people, has no close friends. The inanity of the celebrity culture that he enjoyed was encapsulated by the media fawning that surrounded the marriage of one of his daughters to a talentless popstar. His only genius was for finding out what people wanted and making them believe he was getting it for them.

The idiotic and criminal economic policies implemented by this man's government have led us to national ruin. I believe it's inevitable that the IMF or the ECB will be running this country's finances within two years. The shame is that we didn't have to get here; we could have wisely invested the money of the real Celtic Tiger years (about 1994-2001) and gotten ourselves some modern public infrastructure, reformed our health and education systems and positioned ourselves and our children for generations to come. Instead Fianna Fail, blinded by their and their paymaster's greed, blew the entire fruits of the Tiger on wildly fanning the fires of the housing boom. I don't think anyone needs to be told now how foolish a 'strategy' this was yet at the time the few dissenting voices (David McWilliams, Alan Aherne, Morgan Kelly, thepropertypin.com etc) were mocked as Jeremiahs by the hired mouthpieces of the banks (Dan McLaughlin, Austin Hughes etc.), developers (all the fantasy property porn shows on TV, Estate Agents) and FF themselves all spouted the mantras of 'never been a better time to buy', 'rent is dead money' and 'property only goes up'. Bertie himself even suggested that those brave dissenters should go and commit suicide. The people fell head over heels for this crap, lapped it up and enslaved themselves in generations of debt as a result. FF bought off the public sector vote through the manic scheme of benchmarking and the rest of us through SSIAs, unsustainable tax reductions and the happy illusion that we were getting rich by doing nothing more than renting property from the banks. Even now, you can still see the desperation in FF as they try to spin the line that the housing market is 'bottoming out' and the good times will soon roll again. Thankfully the numbers can't be argued with.

Yet.

If a General Election was called in the morning, at least 30% of the population would still blindly go out and vote Fianna Fail No. 1. Please don't spin me the line about 'shure the other crowd would be worse!'. Nobody, I mean nobody could be as directionless, as clueless, as venal and as amoral as these guys. Something is wrong with us as a people when we can vote a guy\gal (Cooper-Flynn, Bertie, Lowry etc.) who is blatantly corrupt back into office, over and over again. what the hell is that? Is it a legacy of colonialism by the Brits? Fcuked if I know but it sickens me to my stomach.

Another thing that sickens me is the passivity of the populace at large. As the country crumbles around us, where are the mass demonstrations, the riots and the outraged demands for heads to roll in Government. Nothing. The general attitude is one of 'keep the head down and ride it out'. The nonsense that the Government and its apologists trot out about this being all down to 'international factors' is blindly accepted. The media is a disgrace - there is very little honest attempt to investigate and analyse what has gone on here in the last decade. I watched Miriam O'Callaghan on Primetime on Wednesday night shout down the one good man in RTE (George Lee) when he was passionately making some very good points about where we are and how we got here. No surprise given that she is a scion of a noted FF family. Are we a nation of cowed peasants that are just blindly accepting this treasonous behaviour that has taken place on the part of the unholy triumvirate of FF, the banks and the developers? Why are we not baying for these fcukers to be stripped of their assets and thrown in jail for twenty years? Are we even a society any more or are we just a disparate collection of individuals out for what we each can get? The behaviour of the unions and the vested interests over the last decade would certainly support this view.

We as a people are sick. The German Ambassador was right. We're not worthy of independence.

how's that for a rant?

el S

miaowchi

cabra64 wrote: »

Fair play sound reasoning. Plus pulling for your company. Sounds like your a valuable assist to company. Im suprised so many people feel so cheated. Im 23 still in college by grace of parents who help with funds. Its terrible that people are in negative equity but the property market was just crazy and with people buying to let while on peanuts as wages they werefoolish. alot people are giving out now, but did they even turn up for the election? Im annoyed at the budget and the lack of any kind of imagination for solutions. I don't know who im gonna vote for next time round but im worried that the options are very poor anyway.

True there isnt many options there.... not really a democracy eh.

I think the gov have never really facilitated young couples or families from the working class to own a decent size house (3 bed... etc etc). It has come to a stage now where people cant even afford an 'affordable house' because you need a deposit of this percentage (it varies between councils) and they make the whole process of applying for it (been through it at least 5 times now) impossible. The councils never seem to be encouraging you (ie. being helpful) in filling out the application and getting all of the documentation together. Anyone who has been through this process will know what i mean ha ha Anyway it seems to me that maybe people on social welfare are better off than the working class what with rent allowance and decent size council houses... Yet again the working class suffer...
Iam paying rent for the last 6/7 years dead money.... and i cant even afford an affordable house... and iam not the only one in this situation.. all my friends are and iam guessing half the country...
Cheated... yes

Serenity Now!

tonymahoney wrote: »

Folks, I am interested in starting a pollon the grounds that I feel cheated - cheated by our FF government, our banking system, our builders etc.
As an ordinary "JOE BLOGGS" trying to earn a reasonable standard of living I work bloody hard for my money and don't mind doing so but I can't help but thinking that all aforementioned have been operating in a different school to the rest of us and we are now paying a dear price for it and being asked to bail these guys out. What they gave been let away with anyone else would have been sacked and disgraced on the spot.

If I had taken out a 100% house loan, remortgaged it, taken two more loans for extra cars and maxed up on three credit cards, I'd probably feel 'cheated' but then again, I'm not stupid with money and would never have got myself into so much debt in the first place. People blaming the govt for all the loans they've been able to take out doesn't wash, in my opinion.

This state isn't the only one experiencing a recessive economy. When it was good, it was great. When it bottomed out, it sucked. I would really worry about anyone in high debt.

To be honest, I think the foreign investors in the Rep.Ireland have been aching to up sticks for the past few years and cut down their costs by relocating in the newer EU states, Asia and the likes. Its worrying for sure but I'm not sure there's too much that can be done to stave the exodus. I hope Intel's subtle stream of negative performance releases don't lead to another Dell, for one. They transformed where I live but would certainly hit hard if they bolted.

cabra64

thanks miaowchi. Your dead right too. Im very lucky really with my circumstances. Again this cutting back of money in the budget can only lead to less money returning to the public coffers. Obama's (i know he's just one person and not the world saviour) plan for public spending up grading the infrastructure network and thus pumping in money and still improving the country-could this be considered here? Im not talking about lining pockets of fat cat builders. A proper effort could be made to ensure smaller local builders were given a fair crack at the contract. Building new bridges and roads and sending the money off to some spanish super contractor is not the way to go. Its public money it can be spent in the public interest with a public consciousness. Public housing similary could provide huge potential for smaller companies. Btw public pay simply cannot increase. A cautionary note tho for those saying hit the big earners-these people are big earners for a reason eg. they educated themselves, worked hard to get started, now they work in ireland and spend money in ireland. Im gonna graduate with an engineering degree and will be hitting the airport!

SkepticOne

People are talking about maxing out credit cards or buying overpriced semis in the sticks that have now dropped in value. Foolish and embarrassed, perhaps, is how I would feel in those circumstances, not cheated. The builder was merely selling them at prices people were willing to pay. The reason people were willing to pay those prices is because they thought they were going to continue to rise in value or, at the very least, hold their value.

Where I think the we are being cheated is that builders who have failed in business are now being helped with subsidies from the tax payer to shift their remaining homes even though there's a vast oversupply of them on the market. This is being done at the expense not only of the tax payer but also existing home-owners trying to sell.

Now a bank which has become insolvent through foolish lending to developers is being nationalised which will further undermine public finances.

mike65

Greed was one factor but fear was the other driver, all those who knew they could be courting disaster with a 100% mortage over 40 years pressed on 'cause they feared that if they didn't hold thier breath and sign up they could be shut out of the property owning classes.

miaowchi

I just feel cheated because there never seems to be any alternative... if you dont buy a house you have to rent... and lets face it no one likes having to pay someone else's mortgage on possibly their 20th property (as in the case of where iam renting). Usually just their side hobby/interest... have a nice property portfolio... not a clue about maintaining properties for renting etc etc...
What is the problem with people/couples/families wanting to buy a decent size house and set up home... Iam not looking to buy something out of my means but I do think the builders for years have way overpriced their timber framed houses in the surburbs... but what is the alternative that we have been fronted with... a tent maybe ha ha And what were people supposed to do in the mean time sit around and wait for house prices to fall... when you want somewhere to call your own i dont think you can...
Its not greed, its a case of i need somewhere to live and as opposed to paying rent id like to buy somewhere at a reasonable price.... i dont want a house to get on the property ladder, so it can grow in value, i want it to live in and no one can judge people for that surely

stepbar

El Stuntman wrote: »

yes; here's a rant I posted earlier on the poker forum (sounds strange I know but there's a good OT discussion going on there). I'm hopping mad!

I agree with everything but the last bit.

Mal-Adjusted

this may be a tincy bit Ot but anyway. we all remember the head of FAS, right? (his name eludes me, i'm afraid) well, ater he resigned in disgrace, it transpired that he will recieve over €430, 000 in redundancies as well as his sizable pension. (funny how his pension isn't in any danger) for a person to squander our money on personal and frivolous expenses, then recieve this kind of lavish treatment is simply wrong.

this takes place while the government is stabbing the country in the back then putting the knife in the hands of the public sector.

Serenity Now!

May I add that if anyone feeling 'cheated' didn't actually vote in any of the election then moaning about the govt would be quite hypocritical, wouldn't it?

grahamo

When I say I feel cheated I'm talking about the scale of social injustice in this country where fat cats and the golden circle get all the advantages. A few years ago I tried to buy a house in the area of Dublin I grew up in. I got a price off the builder, went off and organised a mortgage and by the time I got back to him he'd put the prices up. I had to move to the "commuter belt". A lot of my friends were in the same boat so the developers broke up whole communities and the govt. stood by and did nothing. These top govt. officials will retire with nice pensions and massive payoffs for doing a crap job and the developers can take their massive profits out of the economy and into the next economy they can take advantage of.
I didn't buy a house to make money I just needed somewhere for me and my family to live. If the price goes up or down it doesn't bother me as long as I can pay the mortgage. I may have worked through good times but I also worked through the last recession which meant long hours and really hard work on building sites and factories for a crap wage. Luckily I've never been on the dole and I put this down to the fact I was willing to work hard and I made a lot of money for employers over the years.
The working people who got the country on its feet during the 80's got nothing for their efforts.

Roll on the Revolution.

Serenity Now!

grahamo wrote: »

When I say I feel cheated I'm talking about the scale of social injustice in this country where fat cats and the golden circle get all the advantages. A few years ago I tried to buy a house in the area of Dublin I grew up in. I got a price off the builder, went off and organised a mortgage and by the time I got back to him he'd put the prices up. I had to move to the "commuter belt". A lot of my friends were in the same boat so the developers broke up whole communities and the govt. stood by and did nothing. These top govt. officials will retire with nice pensions and massive payoffs for doing a crap job and the developers can take their massive profits out of the economy and into the next economy they can take advantage of.
I didn't buy a house to make money I just needed somewhere for me and my family to live. If the price goes up or down it doesn't bother me as long as I can pay the mortgage. I may have worked through good times but I also worked through the last recession which meant long hours and really hard work on building sites and factories for a crap wage. Luckily I've never been on the dole and I put this down to the fact I was willing to work hard and I made a lot of money for employers over the years.
The working people who got the country on its feet during the 80's got nothing for their efforts.

Roll on the Revolution.

Demand drives house prices up. Would you have preferred if everyone else paused while you went to buy yours? When business booms, someone has to make money. The way it is. And the way it always be.

Tipsy Mac

I didn't vote for them so I don't feel at all cheated. Those who did vote for them and are finding it hard to keep their head above water should feel quite cheated

ionix5891

I could see how some people who are only waking up now to the fact that we were taken for a ride would feel cheated


tho thats life you live and you learn


no need to be bitter about it tho, don't cry over spilled milk they say ...

miaowchi

I didnt vote them in and i never would...

and thats the attitude of so many people just put up with.... we are all very good at just putting up with it... but i dont see why we should....
No it wont bother you until it will immediately effect you and at some point it will.... and if it doesnt effect you it will effect someone you know... so iam sick of just putting up with it ha ha Hence why so many people voted no to Lisbon... it wasnt even about the treaty it was more about people finally making a statement to our joke of our a gov who only looks after the wealthy in society... forgets about the vulnerable, the elderly, the disadvantaged....

Serenity Now!

miaowchi wrote: »

I didnt vote them in and i never would...

and thats the attitude of so many people just put up with.... we are all very good at just putting up with it... but i dont see why we should....
No it wont bother you until it will immediately effect you and at some point it will.... and if it doesnt effect you it will effect someone you know... so iam sick of just putting up with it ha ha Hence why so many people voted no to Lisbon... it wasnt even about the treaty it was more about people finally making a statement to our joke of our a gov who only looks after the wealthy in society... forgets about the vulnerable, the elderly, the disadvantaged....

I wasn't referring to people who voted for the current incumbents. I was referring to people who don't bother voting at all. The polling record in this country is utter pish.

And of course it affects me. I pay a mortgage. However I have not lived beyond my means. People waft about a false economy when they should have been alluding to their own false wealth ie. an alleged wealth built on debt.

Voting 'no' to Lisbon was just another case of people in this country wanting everything for nothing.

ionix5891

its ok come another No vote and we will endup with nothing

Mal-Adjusted

i was happily looking forward tro voting in the last GE. unfortunatley the government had better ideas and in their wisdom decided to hold the elections in the middle of exam week so as to make sure as few students as possible voted.

oh, and can we please not turn this into a bitch-fest about Lisbon?:rolleyes: