The Other side bashing thread

Dr Galen

Right, I'm bloody sick of every thread on here turning into public Vs Private Sector bashing.

Yep, there's things to be said, but honestly they'll all been said many many many many times before, so please let it go and stick to the OP discussions. If not and if you really have too much bile/spite/vitriol to keep bottled up inside, maybe use this thread to spill it. Think of it as a buffer zone, a place for you to get all the silliness out and you can say the following things as much as you want to:

"get the fookin fatcats"
"put dem bankers in jail"
"bloody public servants, all they do is fly first class and eat gold encrusted croissants sitting in front of fire built with taxpayers money"
"i'd rather take a 450% paycut than lose my job"

Obviosuly read the charter first though, wouldn't want any of you highly informed and balanced souls getting one of the Mods knocking on ya door :rolleyes:

SkepticOne

I would tend to agree with this. Ultimately it is the culture of entitlement that the government through lack of leadership has allowed to flourish that is to blame.

PYRO#1

Me too i agree!
The people need to stand together and stop bashing each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dr Galen

well your right there, but sure that'll never happen. Cowen talked about the Irish can do attitiude............i might be missing something here but all i see as an Irish attitude is a begrudging and bitter type of attitude more often than not.

Every public servant is a lazy good for nothing tax sucking fat face
Every rich person is a corrupt, lying, cheating, property developing, banker who'd sell their granny for a few cents (well they would but they already sold her 2 years ago to help leverage a really tasty hedge fund buy in)

nesf

People are just searching around and trying to find a group to blame for their woes and the problem is there isn't any particular group that is solely to blame. We've paid ourselves too much for the past 15 years and it's crippled our competitiveness, you can't really single out anyone in particular about this, yes the public sector's generous benchmarking didn't help things but that was as much fuelled by private sector wages especially in construction and related industries.

The banks lent a lot into the property bubble but then this was driven by the people buying and selling houses as well as the construction industry and the Government and Local Government didn't do anything to stop it. The problem was that the Government and Local Government were following the public mood rather than guiding it. In case people had forgotten the general public (not everyone) was fairly obsessed with property up until relatively recently. It doesn't excuse anyone but everyone involved was jointly to blame and I don't think people can simply pass off blame for this onto the Government or the banks.


There just isn't any easy group for the mob to turn on, so as per usual people are exaggerating how much the other side are to blame so as to give them a target for their anger. It's human nature unfortunately.


Edit:

The reality of our situation is this. We used "fair weather" tax income to reduce income taxes, increase the size of the Public Service in many areas and increase current expenditure in other ways like welfare payments in the form of pensions and the dole. The fair weather tax revenue is gone and now we have a big gap in our current account. We have to reduce our spending and increase our income through a combination of taxes, reduced social welfare and/or cuts in the public pay bill through pay cuts or job losses. None of these will be popular and none of us will like it. It is necessary however, and my only hope is that the present FF Government either grow a pair and take the necessary corrective action or step aside and leave someone else who is capable of doing it in. The problem is that the solutions that have come come from Labour in particular of stimulus packages and tax cuts are not options given the huge deficit facing the Exchequer, so we are not seeing the kind of fiscal conservatism that we need from the Opposition at the moment which worries me greatly. We will not be able to spend our way out of this mess and people need to get their heads around this. The Public Sector pension levy is only a small part of the necessary corrective action that we're all going to have to put up with to get the budget balanced again.

Mr.Micro

People can blame the banks, the Government, the central bank and the inept Financial regulator and whoever else and rightly so, but they have to blame themselves as well. How many people asked where was all this credit coming from, can I afford to take on a 100% mortgage for 35 years ( extremes I know), and ah shure put a car in there, a holiday, whatever all on the new mortgage? 3 or 4 credit cards on the go as well.

Few asked or appeared to care drunk on credit as money was on offer at very low rates. I lost count of the amount of times the bank offered me loans, bigger overdraft facility over the last number of years. Experience and maturity would ring alarm bells in older people who have lived in tough times before and know there is no such thing as a free lunch. We are all to blame to a degree, with some exceptions who are utterly blameless and are punished by the herd for their prudence and caution.

SkepticOne

It did not help, of course, that the leader of the country, Ahern, dismissed those that had doubts about the sustainability of the boom wondering why they did not commit suicide in front of a bunch of guffawing trade unionists.

mikemac

Mr.Micro wrote: »

People can blame the banks, the Government, the central bank and the inept Financial regulator and whoever else and rightly so, but they have to blame themselves as well. How many people asked where was all this credit coming from, can I afford to take on a 100% mortgage for 35 years ( extremes I know), and ah shure put a car in there, a holiday, whatever all on the new mortgage? 3 or 4 credit cards on the go as well.

Few asked or appeared to care drunk on credit as money was on offer at very low rates. I lost count of the amount of times the bank offered me loans, bigger overdraft facility over the last number of years. Experience and maturity would ring alarm bells in older people who have lived in tough times before and know there is no such thing as a free lunch. We are all to blame to a degree.

And what of people who don't have a mortgage, haven't been on a holiday abroad in years, don't own a car or anything through bank loans and pay their credit card in full every month.
Still to blame? I include my humble self in this category.

I see where you post is going but you did post "We are all to blame to a degree."

Mr.Micro

mikemac wrote: »

And what of people who don't have a mortgage, haven't been on a holiday abroad in years, don't own a car or anything through bank loans and pay their credit card in full every month.
Still to blame? I include my humble self in this category.

I see where you post is going but you did post "We are all to blame to a degree."

My apologies mikemac, I am in the same category as yourself. Of course statistically there will always be those who are blameless, who have been prudent and wise in this case. Its those who cry loudest that are heard. So I will amend my post to say with some exceptions.

mikemac

Indeed, let the prudent & wise bail out the reckless

nesf

mikemac wrote: »

Indeed, let the prudent & wise bail out the reckless

Don't forget the lazy, the unlucky and the incompetent along with the reckless. The unfortunate truth is that people who didn't go crazy during the boom will have to take the same tax hits and pay cuts as those who were at the heart driving it onwards. There's nothing we can do about this though, life is rarely truly fair.

I blame ourselves i.e. All the Irish people. It is us that have never questioned and pursued a investigation of how our country is run. We might talk about these things a lot, and we hear lots about the corruption & inefficiencies of various governments, but we're content the let things continue as before. Irish people love to complain, but its very rare that we're actually willing to do anything about it, even when it seriously affects us.