Brian Cowen and my 2cents.

smelltheglove

On the weekend I read an article whereby BrianCowen states the public should stick with FF, that other parties are happy to make criticisms but none have a solution, that he has made the tough decisions and that we are already seeing the benefits of these decisions.

I cannot for the life of me find the article but does anyone agree that yes he has made the tough decisons whereas others have walked away from the problems, i.e. Bertie, and now the decisions are made we should stick with them for them to flourish rather than voting in another crowd that will undo the hard decisions that have been made in an effort to gain popularity?

I am not the most politically minded, and some of the decisions that were made have irritated me but this article, short as it was, I think News of the World, made me think, yes perhaps he is right, that we need to stick with the plans and hope we see the other side of this recession soon! Or are the majority still of the frame of mind that we should get someone else in now? Dont get me wrong in the longterm maybe we would be best without FF but why not let them complete their plans and let someone else with lessor experience of the job take over when the country is back on course!

Nelson Muntz

What else would he say? That he is an idiot & should voted out at the first opportunity?

Niall Keane

If you don't rub a dogs nose in it, he'll keep shi***g in your kitchen!

EKRIUQ

He's only had to make tough decisions because of his own and his adviser’s mismanagement of the countries money. They have coordinated the current economic climate and I don't think they should be given the opportunity by the public to congratulate their main rescue plan of tax and more tax until people spending power is diminished to nothing.

spank_inferno

No, they should be removed from power at the earliest convenience.

They call the decisions they have made "tough" but they havent been
as tough as they should have been.
Everything FF do is based on short term electoral need.
The good of Ireland isnt a factor.

Ireland is faced with a situation where we have a €26 billion deficit for 2009.
The governments "tough decisions" have clawed back about 4-5 billion of this.

The truth is, Ireland cant afford to allow Cowen & Co to continue in power.

Imagine this hypothetical.
I take your well looked after, nice performing car or a day, I drive it badly.
Revving the engine too much, overheating it, going hard on the clutch etc.
By the end of the day through my poor driving skill I've crashed it into a tree.
I tell you "we'll (you) have to make the tough decisions and feel the pain now to get this fixed"

We all know it will cost far more, and you wonder
"Why did I let you in control in the first place!"

FF's plans for recovery may have had an impact had they not FUBAR'd this country up so much in the first place.

& the opposition have plenty of ideas for recovery, but we'll never know if they work until we give them a chance to lead.

smelltheglove

spank_inferno wrote: »

& the opposition have plenty of ideas for recovery, but we'll never know if they work until we give them a chance to lead.

Thats a good point also. As I said, I'm not very politically minded, just trying to understand it bit by bit.

P. Breathnach

spank_inferno wrote: »

... Everything FF do is based on short term electoral need...

Frankly, that does not distinguish them from any other party. Show me any Irish politician who would be prepared to make what Sir Humphrey would term "courageous decisions".

The opposition parties are generally playing electoral politics in this extremely difficult situation.

turgon

Where does he get this garbage that the opposition has no alternative? Doesnt he read the papers?

hobochris

One thing I wonder is, a couple of years ago Brian Cowen(think he was finance minister at the time) announced that they had excess tax revenue.. Why was this not used to take a chunk out of the countries national debt?

turgon wrote: »

Where does he get this garbage that the opposition has no alternative? Doesnt he read the papers?

It's hard to read a paper with your head in the sand!

Small Change

I might be more inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt had he not been the Finance minister since 2005...

jmayo

smelltheglove wrote: »

On the weekend I read an article whereby BrianCowen states the public should stick with FF, that other parties are happy to make criticisms but none have a solution, that he has made the tough decisions and that we are already seeing the benefits of these decisions.

I cannot for the life of me find the article but does anyone agree that yes he has made the tough decisons whereas others have walked away from the problems, i.e. Bertie, and now the decisions are made we should stick with them for them to flourish rather than voting in another crowd that will undo the hard decisions that have been made in an effort to gain popularity?

I am not the most politically minded, and some of the decisions that were made have irritated me but this article, short as it was, I think News of the World, made me think, yes perhaps he is right, that we need to stick with the plans and hope we see the other side of this recession soon! Or are the majority still of the frame of mind that we should get someone else in now? Dont get me wrong in the longterm maybe we would be best without FF but why not let them complete their plans and let someone else with lessor experience of the job take over when the country is back on course!

First off stop reading the news of the world, murdochs toilet paper. :mad:

Regarding clowen et al, they have stumbled from one mishap to another, always trying to lay the blame elsewhere, worldwide economic slowdown, banking credit squeeze, the media and commentators for talking down the economy, the phase of the moon, wille o'dea's jocks.
You name they have tried to blame it.

Even without the global recession, the credit squeeze, the banking disasters, the government are spending way more than they are earning.

Yes the construction industry meltdown is reason for this and they even use this as excuse, a if they had nothing to do with creating this loppy sided economy.

Clowen was in charge of finance up till 2008, so why didn't he see the writing on the wall regarding basing government spending on an industry that sooner or later was going to collapse ?
And it was already slowing down before a credit squeeze was apparent.
House prices had just reached too high a multiple of average salary to be sustainable.

Thus he and his government are repsonsible for the mess the finances are in and the fact that they have been clueless in dealing with the fallout.

BTW I bet he has taken more than two cents off you :rolleyes:

jmayo

hobochris wrote: »

It's hard to read a paper with your head in the sand!

I'm told it's hard to read with your head up yer ar** :mad:

johnnyskeleton

smelltheglove wrote: »

On the weekend I read an article whereby BrianCowen states the public should stick with FF, that other parties are happy to make criticisms but none have a solution, that he has made the tough decisions and that we are already seeing the benefits of these decisions.

This is the biggest, most outrageous lie that Cowen has ever told, far worse than the destruction of the economy was not his fault, far worse than we have sound fundamentals etc.

He has not made the tough decisions. He has made the easy decisions. What had to be done, the really tough decisions included dramatic cuts in public sector wages, social welfare, letting Anglo Irish fail so the other banks could survive, ensuring that those responsible for serious regulatory breaches were fully proseucted and duly punished, that people who couldn't afford their mortgage were told "sorry but if you can't afford your mortgage we will have to repossess your house", the list goes on, and these are just the tough decisions that should have been made in the last 2 years. In fact, one of the softest decisions made by him in the last two years was, notwithstanding that it was known that the economy was going into a recession and that the housing bubble had burst 3 years ago, the government did nothing at all to remedy our economy before last October. Even then, they INCREASED social welfare when our deficit was projected to be €18-20bn and we were experiencing deflation.

Compared to all that, increasing the levi on everybody was a very soft option. Add to that it was a mistake as it discourages private innovation and arguably increases gross wage demands thus not helping us regain productivity.

smelltheglove

I see where you are coming from Johnny yet these decisions made him extremely unpopular, now I am not a supporter of any particular person at the moment, just trying to understand, do you think he should have bropught in a higher levy? Do you also think he should have reduced dole payments?

mickoneill30

spank_inferno wrote: »

& the opposition have plenty of ideas for recovery, but we'll never know if they work until we give them a chance to lead.

The reason FF won't be getting my vote is because of the backpeddling (because they were unpopular) on some of the though decisions they did make. The reason FG / Lab aren't getting my vote is because of their opposition to absolutely everything, good decisions and bad. Maybe FG / Labour don't oppose everything but it sure seems like that. You know the government can make the odd (rare) good decision. Expressing "outrage" "amazement" "dismay" at everything the government does just makes them look like the boy who cried wolf.

I'd vote for a party that would make some though decisions and stand by them. We all know that we've to take the pain. Most people realise that. Just figure it out. The constant "I'm cutting this" to "oh now I'm not cutting it, I'm cutting this" does not inspire confidence.

jen_23

I think what annoys me the most about ff is the idea they can tax a way out of a recession.

Being perfectly honest I don't mind the taxes going up and the levys etc etc it was neccessary due to the blundering mess they have managed to make over the years by ignoring the issues that were arising.
What annoyed me is they decided to tax, tax tax and then put absolutely nothing back in. Nothing to help small companies who are struggling, nothing to keep jobs in Ireland and nothing with incentive to bring companies here.

The amount of people losing jobs is absolutely ridiculous and then they wanted to back pay the levy to January? Just in case ppl weren't struggling enough?

Alot of people I know are voting for independants as they have lost faith in all parties out there at the moment.

boardswalker

It is not the decisions that he's taking now that are relevant, but the decisions that he took (or didn't take) in recent years.

Brian is trying to focus on where we are going while we are all wondering how did we get here.

like clockwork!

Here's something that annoys me. The only course of action open to Cowen and the others is to tax people more and more. But if they do that, things ultimately get worse.

So is it fair to say that no governemnt can really do anything to help the economy recover? Any party running for election that promises to increase spending/ cut taxes must be lying surely? Or else intending to borrow even more money and ruin the country?

P. Breathnach

like clockwork! wrote: »

Here's something that annoys me. The only course of action open to Cowen and the others is to tax people more and more. But if they do that, things ultimately get worse.

So is it fair to say that no governemnt can really do anything to help the economy recover? Any party running for election that promises to increase spending/ cut taxes must be lying surely? Or else intending to borrow even more money and ruin the country?

The projected gap in the public finances is enormous.

It cannot reasonably be closed solely by cutting expenditure because the cuts would need to be so great that public provision of services would be reduced to a level that the people would consider intolerable (e.g. no free healthcare, no free education).

It cannot reasonably be closed by taxation alone, because the Irish people have become quite tax-resistant. Our taxes are relatively low by the standards of the western world, yet people still complain about them.

It cannot reasonably be closed by borrowing, because the cost of borrowing would become intolerable (and beyond some point, funds would simply become unavailable at any price). In any event, borrowing does little more than allow us to defer the problem.

So there is a need to work out a balance between cuts, tax increases, and borrowing. It's a dynamic situation, and the balance might need to be adjusted from time to time.

I would distrust any politician who ruled out any one of the three elements, or argued that we had little or no scope for movement in one of them.

Nody

Here's a novel idea; implement a 10% cut across the board in any public/semi public sector for anyone making more then 40k a year; 20% on the part between 60k and 80k and 30% on anything above 80k a year.

For our politicans, since they are "feeling our pain" we'll have a straight up 50% cut and reduction of all non salary related benefits by 75%. After all they should be there due to wanting to serve the people and represent us and not make money.

Second hire 100 master blackbelt consultants and offer them 10% of any savings they can generate in the public sector and give them free hands for ideas and implementation.

Third tell the unions to STFU and run over them if needed to implement the above and fire a lot of excess administratiors and removal of waste administration etc.


Now THAT would have been tough decisions and actually improve the service to public but no poliican will ever have the courage to do that.

jimmmy

spank_inferno wrote: »

No, they should be removed from power at the earliest convenience.

They call the decisions they have made "tough" but they havent been
as tough as they should have been.
Everything FF do is based on short term electoral need.
The good of Ireland isnt a factor.

Ireland is faced with a situation where we have a €26 billion deficit for 2009.

True enough. Certain areas of expenditure are just a joke, and have hade Ireland the laughing stock of the world. Is it any surprise we are in this mess when the people responsible eg our taoiseach and the head of our central bank - are paid more than their counterparts in much bigger, industrialised nations abroad ?

old boy

jimmmy wrote: »

True enough. Certain areas of expenditure are just a joke, and have hade Ireland the laughing stock of the world. Is it any surprise we are in this mess when the people responsible eg our taoiseach and the head of our central bank - are paid more than their counterparts in much bigger, industrialised nations abroad ?

and the the head of our armed (?) forces earning more than his opposite number in the uk. who is running a war in afganastan, a skirmish in iraq, a few other handbag free for alls, our guy, well organising the 17th march parade must be fairly high on his agenda.

johnnyskeleton

smelltheglove wrote: »

I see where you are coming from Johnny yet these decisions made him extremely unpopular, now I am not a supporter of any particular person at the moment, just trying to understand, do you think he should have bropught in a higher levy? Do you also think he should have reduced dole payments?

Mainly the cuts should come from our overbloated public sector. Three main types of cut:

1) cut all unnecessary insitutions
2) cut unnecessary jobs from necessary institutions
3) pay cuts all round, gradient from the top down.

I don't think he should have brought in any levy.

I do think he should have cut social welfare, but not so much that people can't live off them.

Again, see my post above as to the actual hard decisions. Simply lashing on an extra layer of taxation is unpopular, but its not as hard a decision as some others. More importantly, I believe the increase in tax does more harm than good.

paddyboy23

i think hes the best we have simple as that,give the man a chance,remember 4years ago ff got slaughtered in the local elections and the country was booming look at the state of it now, when bertie left he left a country ready to implode tony blair done the same on gordon brown, if edna kenny is the best we have to offer i think id prefer brian

ejmaztec

paddyboy23 wrote: »

i think hes the best we have simple as that,give the man a chance,remember 4years ago ff got slaughtered in the local elections and the country was booming look at the state of it now, when bertie left he left a country ready to implode tony blair done the same on gordon brown, if edna kenny is the best we have to offer i think id prefer brian

I wouldn't say that Cowen as Minister for Finance had nothing to do with the country being ready to implode when Bertie took off.

Mac daddy

paddyboy23 wrote: »

i think hes the best we have simple as that,give the man a chance

No he isn't, I have been bitching for years and never once voted for fainna "fail"

This goverment has no idea's, they are trying to tax there way out of a hole they dug themselves in, and making the rest of us pay for it.

Instead of spending savage amounts of money in the public sector and creating all these various roles the money should have been put into R&D/infastructure/Education/healthcare but they didn't.

This country has nothing to offer we attract corporations with a very low corporate tax, they setup shop here make there money **** hits the fan they bail out.
And what do we have to show for it? 12% tax rate and nothing else.
We export other peoples and corporations products not our own why because we haven't got anything innovative apart from a number of small Irish company who get sweet $uck all help from the goverment when they asked for it!
Instead we have call centers and manufacturing plants/factories which are the fist to close up.

People like you "paddyboy23" make me sick for still standing behind this goverment, your voting card should be taken off you!

I bet you haven't even bothered looking at what the indepents/SF/Libertas are saying have you? no because you and the rest of this redneck country support the usual muppets.

paddyboy23

Mac daddy wrote: »

No he isn't, I have been bitching for years and never once voted for fainna "fail"

This goverment has no idea's, they are trying to tax there way out of a hole they dug themselves in, and making the rest of us pay for it.

Instead of spending savage amounts of money in the public sector and creating all these various roles the money should have been put into R&D/infastructure/Education/healthcare but they didn't.

This country has nothing to offer we attract corporations with a very low corporate tax, they setup shop here make there money **** hits the fan they bail out.
And what do we have to show for it? 12% tax rate and nothing else.
We export other peoples and corporations products not our own why because we haven't got anything innovative apart from a number of small Irish company who get sweet $uck all help from the goverment when they asked for it!
Instead we have call centers and manufacturing plants/factories which are the fist to close up.

People like you "paddyboy23" make me sick for still standing behind this goverment, your voting card should be taken off you!

I bet you haven't even bothered looking at what the indepents/SF/Libertas are saying have you? no because you and the rest of this redneck country support the usual muppets.

thats whats wrong with this country to much bitching ye dont bloody well no how well off ye are

johnnyskeleton

paddyboy23 wrote: »

thats whats wrong with this country to much bitching ye dont bloody well no how well off ye are

No the real problem with this country is that our government doesn't seem to have the first clue about economics, or government for that matter.

Connor Lennihan was on Vincent Browne this evening talking about how all our problems stem from banks dealing in exotic financial instruments which they didn't understand. What he meant to say was that they were dealing in exotic financial instruments which he didn't understand, but instead of trying to understand and regulate them, his government decided to turn a blind eye so long as the money was rolling in. And they did that in a number of other areas too.

Fluffybums

paddyboy23 wrote: »

i think hes the best we have simple as that,give the man a chance,remember 4years ago ff got slaughtered in the local elections and the country was booming look at the state of it now, when bertie left he left a country ready to implode tony blair done the same on gordon brown, if edna kenny is the best we have to offer i think id prefer brian

This attitude is part of the reason that the government carry on regardless, they know that the general response of the electorate is that "the other lot are worse". How do we know? How could they be worse? If they are vote them out.
In the UK the ministers are resigning over the expenses - this would never happen here, the TDs and ministers don't feel responsible to the electorate, why should they Bertie didn't even know how to run a bank account or comply with his tax responsibilities even when minister of finance.
We get the bozo's we deserve, until the electorate start to make the government realise that they will not stand for their incompetence, fraud and lying nothing will change.

smelltheglove

paddyboy23 wrote: »

i think hes the best we have simple as that,give the man a chance,remember 4years ago ff got slaughtered in the local elections and the country was booming look at the state of it now, when bertie left he left a country ready to implode tony blair done the same on gordon brown, if edna kenny is the best we have to offer i think id prefer brian

Paddy I had thought similar to you but every time I said it someone would come back to me with a very valid response which is the reason I posted this thread.

I want to understand more who is responsible for what, and whatshould be done to correct this situation. I think people here have given very vaild reasons as to why we should not vote Fine Gael again.

The problem is people feel safer with what they know and dont do their homework, I always voted with the crowd before but this time I want to be sure of who I vote.

Mac daddy

paddyboy23 wrote: »

thats whats wrong with this country to much bitching ye dont bloody well no how well off ye are

I have never voted for them and I never will, I pay my taxes I'm entitled to bitch and moan about them, and I have been bitching at them when they call to my door looking for my vote.

People need to wake up and smell the incompetent goverment that we are faced with.

Most jobs three strikes your out why the Irish people haven't stormed in the Dail and removed that useless party is beyond me.
Everyone seems to be waiting on magical solution to be presented by the current goverment and Brian Coward and his sidekicks.
Here's the solution get rid of them and give another party a shot that might actualy listen to people, if they are no better get rid of them to.

Argentina has done and several other countries are doing it, why aren't we?