Are you going to protest tomorrow

Ardent

gamblor1975 wrote: »

This whole escapade seems to be all about getting as many people out on the streets as possible regardless of what their cause is. The unions seem to be casting as wide a net as possible to get numbers out and I'm pretty sure that after the protest (which I hope is peacefull) the union leaders will point to the crowd and say that all of these people are here to protest about the pension levy.
I believe that there are people protesting today who should be listned to (Dublin bus and the lower paid public service unions etc.) but there will also be many people protesting who should not in my opinion be lumped in with these lower paid workers. Gardai and nurses in particular earn 40-50K+ and for this reason I dont think they will get the same sympathy from the public. This seems to be the plan of the protest organisers to blend the crowd in together and make it seem like they are all hurting the same. With so many different groups all protesting over different issues, this protest does seem to lack a sense of direction.

Exactly, which is why I'm not going. I'd love to be part of any demonstration against the incompetents in Leinster House but I don't want to be hoodwinked into a protest against the pension levy (which is essentially what this is) because some form of public sector cuts is necessary IMO.

MG

MG wrote: »

No I do think FF, the banks and the builders are to blame.

But I also blame FF voters, the banks customers and the builders customers.

True, however when the leaders of the county are advising you to buy-buy-buy before it's too late and only the super rich will own houses, alot of people will listen. Sure even last September, Bertie was telling everyone that "If he had money, he'd buy Bank of Ireland (Think it was) shares"

Probably trying to bail out some of his mates with millions invested in the shares themselves.

Sure there'll be some hypocrite's there, but then again the majority of the country didn't vote for Fianna Fail.

MG

Rojomcdojo wrote: »

True, however when the leaders of the county are advising you to buy-buy-buy before it's too late and only the super rich will own houses, alot of people will listen. Sure even last September, Bertie was telling everyone that "If he had money, he'd buy Bank of Ireland (Think it was) shares"

Probably trying to bail out some of his mates with millions invested in the shares themselves.

Sure there'll be some hypocrite's there, but then again the majority of the country didn't vote for Fianna Fail.

Not voting for them but then listening to them anyway isn't exactly smart either

fraz1971

I see people trying to blame the public for this mess in their threads. The financial institutions invested heavily in the US sub prime fiasco. The bankers and politicians are to blame for the overheated housing market. They kept expanding their lending criteria in order to keep the housing market buoyant. Let's face it if nobody bought a home for fear of redundancy where would half the population live?

Economies go up and down in a cycle. The real culprets are the government who left us exposed.

A novel idea for seeing out the downturn would have been actually getting paid for our oil and gas reserves. If we didn't have a bunch of corrupt cowboys running the country we could have had a pile of money stashed in the kitty after a Summer of high oil prices. Even pisspot African dictators can get 60% of the profit from oil revenues. Opec gets about 80%. Why do we get nothing? All the parties are to blame. The two big parties were involved and the rest sat on their hands. An ex independant TD once told me that on his first day in the Dail he was told to sit down and shut up if he wanted to see his pension. That is exactly what he did. This country needs a new party whose hands are clean. Maybe then we can get paid for our natural resources and investigate the deals which have ripped off the irish public. The lates oil and gas reserve estimates reckon we have over 600 billion Euro worth to exploit. I think the revenue from that would see us through the recession.

The present government are guilty of treason.

yankinlk

gamblor1975 wrote: »

This whole escapade seems to be all about getting as many people out on the streets as possible regardless of what their cause is. The unions seem to be casting as wide a net as possible to get numbers out and I'm pretty sure that after the protest (which I hope is peacefull) the union leaders will point to the crowd and say that all of these people are here to protest about the pension levy.

So if they don't get the 50K protesters they were hoping for will it be reported as the damp squid that it is?

Scofflaw

fraz1971 wrote: »

I see people trying to blame the public for this mess in their threads. The financial institutions invested heavily in the US sub prime fiasco. The bankers and politicians are to blame for the overheated housing market. They kept expanding their lending criteria in order to keep the housing market buoyant. Let's face it if nobody bought a home for fear of redundancy where would half the population live?

Economies go up and down in a cycle. The real culprets are the government who left us exposed.

A novel idea for seeing out the downturn would have been actually getting paid for our oil and gas reserves. If we didn't have a bunch of corrupt cowboys running the country we could have had a pile of money stashed in the kitty after a Summer of high oil prices. Even pisspot African dictators can get 60% of the profit from oil revenues. Opec gets about 80%. Why do we get nothing? All the parties are to blame. The two big parties were involved and the rest sat on their hands. An ex independant TD once told me that on his first day in the Dail he was told to sit down and shut up if he wanted to see his pension. That is exactly what he did. This country needs a new party whose hands are clean. Maybe then we can get paid for our natural resources and investigate the deals which have ripped off the irish public. The lates oil and gas reserve estimates reckon we have over 600 billion Euro worth to exploit. I think the revenue from that would see us through the recession.

The present government are guilty of treason.

There have been no profits from the "billions of oil and gas reserves". Not a bit of it has been brought on shore.

cordially,
Scofflaw

lods

yankinlk wrote: »

So if they don't get the 50K protesters they were hoping for will it be reported as the damp squid that it is?

An estimated 10,000 people have turned out for the protest, which started at Parnell Square at 2pm.
http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0221/protest.html

it didn't even reach a damp squib

andrewdeerpark

lods wrote: »

it didn't even reach a damp squib

Agree as said before, social partnership / benchmarking is only an ATM you can take money out but do not ask for it back.

Watch the unions trying to "unite" all workers when really this is about one issue the public service pension levy.

They are fooling no one with the Crystal workers and SR technics leading the protest.

Unionised employment = public service.

The governments divide and conquer strategy is spot on.

FrankGrimes

lods wrote: »

it didn't even reach a damp squib

In fairness, it seems the RTE site has changed 3 times in the past 15 minutes. Here is the latest:

http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0221/protest.html

Union leaders are estimating 100,000 people turned out for the march, while gardaí say they believe the figure to be between 70,000 to 80,000. It has just been reported on BBC news also though bizarrely they connected their reporting with it to an interview with Gerry Adams!

So it looks fair to assume there was genuinely at least 50,000 showed up - I'll take both the unions and the Gardai figures with a pinch of salt due to their vested interest.

That said, I'm very surprised that so many people showed up to this march....I just don't understand what these people are proposing be done to address our ~€20billion budget deficit. I fully accept all the points they make about the bankers needing to be held to account and the shameful failure of the government. But we need to separate the emotive responses from the reality that irrespective of who caused it, the country is in grave difficulty and it's not a case of punishing the public sector: if there was a way to punish the bankers and fat cats that would solve all our woes without hitting the public sector pay, I would be 100% behind it.

nesf

As I said on the other thread, RTE appear to be reporting that the turnout was between 70,000 and 100,000 not 10,000.

Davo D

RTE news just said 60,000. There are people desperate to play down the numbers and people desperate to play up the numbers. I'll wait until I see pictures of the march before I believe either side.

yankinlk

nesf wrote: »

As I said on the other thread, RTE appear to be reporting that the turnout was between 70,000 and 100,000 not 10,000.

The did report 10,000 for a time orignally. But whats a decimal point among freinds? oh wait, isnt that what got us here to begin with?

eoinbn

FrankGrimes wrote: »

That said, I'm very surprised that so many people showed up to this march....I just don't understand what these people are proposing be done to address our ~€20billion budget deficit.

They plan to increase it to €30B+

nesf

yankinlk wrote: »

The did report 10,000 for a time orignally. But whats a decimal point among freinds? oh wait, isnt that what got us here to begin with?

Yup, these numbers are of never sure at the start. All the different groups will be preaching their version of the truth.

Économiste Monétaire

fraz1971 wrote: »

The financial institutions invested heavily in the US sub prime fiasco.

Umm, no they did not. Exactly how much of banks' current assets are accounted for by U.S. originated MBS and CDOs?

MG

Économiste Monétaire wrote: »

Umm, no they did not. Exactly how much of banks' current assets are accounted for by U.S. originated MBS and CDOs?

Correct. The majority of the bank's bad debt problems are domestic.

peasant

FrankGrimes wrote: »

That said, I'm very surprised that so many people showed up to this march....I just don't understand what these people are proposing be done to address our ~€20billion budget deficit.

I would think that, individually, none of those that took part in the protest have a solution to our current problems that goes far beyond their own personal circumstances and interests.

Collectively however, I would assume (hope!) that they are all aware that the brown stuff has indeed hit the fan and that something needs to be done.

This "something" needs to be big and all inclusive and not half-hearted and divisive.

The only group that had "reason" to attend todays protest are low paid civil servants ...the fact that there seem to be quite few people from other walks of life involved gives me hope personally. Despite all the divide and conquer tactics of the vested interests, there seems to be a sense of solidarity among the population and several tens of thousands have made it their business to show that solidarity.

Now ...if you had a strong governement, capable of putting "the good of the nation" before their vested interests, you could harness that solidarity and push through measures that might actually achieve something to get us out of this in a reasonable time frame. These measures would hurt, there is no doubt about it, but as long as they hurt everyone equally, there will be support for them.

The people on the street today are looking for leadership. Fair and equal leadership.

Somebody will have to provide that fast before the whole country marches ...to a standstill.

jaffa20

What a **** protest. So organised and lame. Wow, a row of people walking along, blocking traffic and buses and an odd whislte blow here and there. Nobody shouting. If you want to protest, do it like the french in an all out riot. Otherwise, it's pointless!

nesf

Économiste Monétaire wrote: »

Umm, no they did not. Exactly how much of banks' current assets are accounted for by U.S. originated MBS and CDOs?

Indeed, and it's something we can be very thankful for.

eoinbn

peasant wrote: »

The only group that had "reason" to attend todays protest are low paid civil servants ...the fact that there seem to be quite few people from other walks of life involved gives me hope personally. Despite all the divide and conquer tactics of the vested interests, there seems to be a sense of solidarity among the population and several tens of thousands have made it their business to show that solidarity.

Now ...if you had a strong governement, capable of putting "the good of the nation" before their vested interests, you could harness that solidarity and push through measures that might actually achieve something to get us out of this in a reasonable time frame. These measures would hurt, there is no doubt about it, but as long as they hurt everyone equally, there will be support for them.

So the only people feeling the pain atm is lower paid civil servants? Nobody else has a reason to protest? Are you for real?
This talk of people willing to take the pain, once it's fair, is all BS. Nobody is interested in taking any pay cuts, public or private. It's just that for the most part the private sector doesn't really have a choice.

peasant

eoinbn wrote: »

So the only people feeling the pain atm is lower paid civil servants?

no, but it's them that it was ostensibly organised for

guinnessdrinker

jaffa20 wrote: »

What a **** protest. So organised and lame. Wow, a row of people walking along, blocking traffic and buses and an odd whislte blow here and there. Nobody shouting. If you want to protest, do it like the french in an all out riot. Otherwise, it's pointless!

"So organised"! That was the idea.

Why would you have been so happy to see a riot? You want people injured and property damaged? Or if there had been a riot would you have been the same person to have condemned it?

jaffa20

guinnessdrinker wrote: »

"So organised"! That was the idea.

Why would you have been so happy to see a riot? You want people injured and property damaged? Or if there had been a riot would you have been the same person to have condemned it?

No, but it would be good to see some of them have some balls outside leinster house, shouting etc. It was just a boring parade. It's too early for paddy's day!

Mr.Micro

So Robocop did not show up then?:D

+1 on the boring parade, but maybe this was the "This is us playing nice" part.

According to the guards there was roughly 100k people which I would believe. The procession of people was miles and miles long. I have some video footage(none of it particularly good) which I might upload later if I'm particularly bothered.

Diogenes

FrankGrimes wrote: »

That said, I'm very surprised that so many people showed up to this march....

Firstly, solidarity. Secondly as a mark of widespread anger and frustration at our current administration whose arrogance and hubris got us into this mess, and unwillingness to admit that the mistakes they made were major contributing factors. Finally as a sign that business as usual must stop in this country, that cosy deals at the Fianna Fail tent at the Galway races is not an acceptable way for this country to be run. We want tougher legislation dealing with financial oversight, and I would sincerely like to see more accountability for those in Dail.

Run_to_da_hills

jaffa20 wrote: »

What a **** protest. So organized and lame. Wow, a row of people walking along, blocking traffic and buses and an odd whistle blow here and there. Nobody shouting. If you want to protest, do it like the French in an all out riot. Otherwise, it's pointless!

Early days yet, not bad for a start, Wait and see in six months or a year down the line when more and more high profile scandals are exposed, more are laid off work, and more families are kicked out on to the streets after loosing their homes.

I came back about half an hour after the protest ended and saw union members rounding up posters from the ground, jokingly I said, you will be needing all these again in a few weeks.

Diogenes

Rojomcdojo wrote: »

+1 on the boring parade, but maybe this was the "This is us playing nice" part.

Could we perhaps explore the possibilities of peaceful protest before we start building barricades and making molotovs? Things aren't exactly as bad as the Lockouts just yet

irish_bob

andrewdeerpark wrote: »

Agree as said before, social partnership / benchmarking is only an ATM you can take money out but do not ask for it back.

Watch the unions trying to "unite" all workers when really this is about one issue the public service pension levy.

They are fooling no one with the Crystal workers and SR technics leading the protest.

Unionised employment = public service.

The governments divide and conquer strategy is spot on.

i agree with all your post bar the last line , ive hear it before and i find it patronising , it suggest those of us in the private sector are being used as glove puppets against the public sector , i and most private sector workers have enough personal experience with the public sector to know that its innefficent , completly over staffed and of course over paid , we dont need the sindo to tell us that

thier is no public v private conspirocy by the goverment , its just another strawman and banner created by the public sector unions along with

WE DIDNT CAUSE THIS MESS
THE PRIVATE SECTOR RAKED IT IN DURING THE BOOM

like clones , each and everyone of them utter the same inane cliches day in day out on the airwaves , not an original thought among them

seangal

yankinlk wrote: »

So if they don't get the 50K protesters they were hoping for will it be reported as the damp squid that it is?

well u did not get your damp squid
100k there
bet u did not see that coming