Government puts hands over eyes and ears, heard to say "la la la la la"....

r0nanf

From the Irish Times website story: "Cowen says he had no advance knowledge of €2bn shortfall"

Mr Cowen said the Government did not receive updates on a weekly basis and that accurate figures were not available to it until the end of each month.

They are not even monitoring the situation. I run my own business, and I have a daily cash flow plan at the moment. How can we have confidence in these guys?

diverdriver

Is there anyone left with confidence in these guys? Even in Fianna Fail!

Zynks

I think we are going beyond the point of complaining at this stage. I wonder what this phase is, in my case is a feel of hopelessness.... but who knows, maybe the next phase will be some action.

kmick

Cowen is the worst leader since Maggie. He talks tough but he cant put his money where his mouth is.

Darragh29

Cowen, Coughlan & Lenihan.

SEPT 23 1989

these idiots would not last five minutes running their own business eg the real world

Darragh29

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

these idiots would not last five minutes running their own business eg the real world

This is very very true. There is no business experience at that cabinet table, the people who are supposed to be guiding us out of this have never created a job in their lives between them.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

bigeasyeah

r0nanf wrote: »

From the Irish Times website story: "Cowen says he had no advance knowledge of ¬ 2bn shortfall"

They are not even monitoring the situation. I run my own business, and I have a daily cash flow plan at the moment. How can we have confidence in these guys?

Well whats the alternative? Who is gonna do something about it? Nothing and nobody.

Darragh29

kmick wrote: »

Cowen is the worst leader since Maggie. He talks tough but he cant put his money where his mouth is.

Well for reasons that are entirely associated with his actions over the last 5 years, the man now has no money to put anywhere.

All we need off this man is for him to get into his car and ask his driver to take him down to the Aras and tell Mary to dissolve the government. That's all he has to do... Until he does that, we are all f*cked and will remain f*cked.

kmick

donegalfella wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Margaret Thatcher destroyed the UK economy. Cowen is complicit in destroying the Irish economy through inaction.

hobochris

kmick wrote: »

Margaret Thatcher destroyed the UK economy. Cowen is complicit in destroying the Irish economy through inaction.

so what your saying is:
Cowen = Thatcher ...:D

In fairness to thatcher she did do one good thing... invent soft whip ice-cream.

mike65

Not to drag this too far OT but Mrs T saved the UK economy.

The_Minister

kmick wrote: »

Margaret Thatcher destroyed the UK economy.

No, she was great for the UK economy.

jmayo

hobochris wrote: »

so what your saying is:
Cowen = Thatcher ...:D

In fairness to thatcher she did do one good thing... invent soft whip ice-cream.

Thatcher had bigger balls than Biffo ever had.

She spelt the end for whole sections of British industry but then again their unions and management had been driving them into the ground for years before she arrived.
At least she broke the UK unions, that was her one contribution.

nesf

Well the question no one seems to be asking is if it's possible to get accurate figures on a weekly basis. Is the entire system set up to allow such granularity?

There's also the problem that what can or should one do in response to one week's figures? Extrapolating an annual trend off tax figures for one month is dodgy, doing it off one week would be madness.

The Raven.

kmick wrote: »

Margaret Thatcher destroyed the UK economy. Cowen is complicit in destroying the Irish economy through inaction.

I have said this before, and my opinion still stands. I lived in England and suffered under Thatcherism. Her divisive economic policies created a culture of greed and selfishness, and resulted in poverty, social disquiet, industrial strife and high unemployment.

Elvis Costello expressed it very well at the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-BZIWSI5UQ

Is this what we want here? It is already well underway!

Zynks

nesf wrote: »

Well the question no one seems to be asking is if it's possible to get accurate figures on a weekly basis. Is the entire system set up to allow such granularity?

There's also the problem that what can or should one do in response to one week's figures? Extrapolating an annual trend off tax figures for one month is dodgy, doing it off one week would be madness.

A decently planned spreadsheet would allow any dummy to notice a trend variation. It isn't rocket science.

ejmaztec

Zynks wrote: »

A decently planned spreadsheet would allow any dummy to notice a trend variation. It isn't rocket science.

I think that pretty much everything is rocket science to our glorious government. God knows what would happen if they had any said projectiles.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

nesf

Zynks wrote: »

A decently planned spreadsheet would allow any dummy to notice a trend variation. It isn't rocket science.

My question is whether there are numbers to put into our spreadsheets on a weekly basis.

i.e. VAT returns are posted (for most companies) on a bimonthly schedule. For any one company it's impossible for the Government to know what its VAT returns will be until it posts them. VAT returns are due on the 19th of the month following the VAT period. So Jan/Feb VAT returns are not due until the 19th of March. The Government cannot accurately state how much VAT was collected for this period until after that date. It can guesstimate but the hard data isn't available.

People are talking as if it's possible to know VAT numbers on a weekly basis, it isn't really.

nesf

Guys, start a different thread if you want to debate Thatcher's legacy and reign as PM, it's off topic in this one.

Mr.Micro

From the Irish Times website story:

"Cowen says he had no advance knowledge of €2bn shortfall"

Was there any indication that things had improved? No, yet it appears to be a big surprise to BC. He is the man for the job, like he had his eyes closed when he was the Finance Minister:rolleyes:

turgon

This is not about Thatchers legacy. I'm just saying that if Cowen treated the unions the way Thatcher treated the IRA (as in, basically ignored them) we could cut spending across the whole public service, which is what we should be doing.

Its ridiculous that theyre talking about raising taxes when we have such ludicrous spending.