The Frontline: Statist Ireland and the Big Chill

Euro_Kraut

donegalfella wrote: »

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I blame political and civil culture. No one in Irish public life takes personal responsibility for their actions. This attitude passes down to the man on the street, imo.

Riskymove

lugha wrote: »

I don't see any problem. I also agree with the OP that there is a reluctance for us to sort out some problems for ourselves, but that doesn't mean the government should do nothing. Any given that we live in a highly litigious country it was perfectly proper and sensible that a government minister would reassure people on this matter. The only issue is whether is advice was wrong.

The point is i think the solicitor and the Minister were talking about slightly different things

I cannot see how you can be held liable (or anymore liable than in normal conditions) if you clear your path...this is the Minister's view

However, i can see where you would be liable if "you did not do it right" i.e. you make a pig's ear of it and actually make it worse...the solicitors view

basically this resulted in people being concerned that if they attempted to clear and someone fell...the claim would be that they did not do it right and from a legal view it was better not to do anything

in the subsequent media frenzy the important bit about "not doing it right" appeared to be overlooked

Dan_B

"I went out ill prepared with silly footwear and slipped and hurt myself...who do I sue?"

load of nonsense!

I think you are belittling the situation a lot of people found themselves in.
The local authorities more or less came out and said they where overwhelemed and did not have the resources to deal with the situation.
Are we asking too much for our well paid public represantatives to get involved and provide a coherant response?

Apparently so....

Riskymove

Dan_B wrote: »

I think you are belittling the situation a lot of people found themselves in.

am I? not going by some of th things I have seen over the last couple of weeks

The local authorities more or less came out and said they where overwhelemed and did not have the resources to deal with the situation.

that tends to happen when an unexpected, not seen in 40 years, thing happens

Are we asking too much for our well paid public represantatives to get involved and provide a coherant response?

I saw a response and an attempt to best tackle the problem as best they could. if they could have treated all roads/estates for the period required they would have. they were not sitting around doing nothing.

I got to work on a shuttle bus/train each day as main roads were treated, i prepared properly etc

Apparently so....

people see what they want to see

southsiderosie

donegalfella wrote: »

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I have to strongly disagree about Katrina. Even if you take a very minimalist view of the role of government, maintaining public roads and waterways and maintaining public order are still two basic responsibilities. In this case, government failed in both: New Orleans would not have drowned if the levees had been maintained correctly, and the lack of public order afterwards can be directly traced to the incompetence of the local police and the governor's foot-dragging on calling out the National Guard.

It's not "whinging" to be mad that 1) your house washed away because the government didn't do its job, and 2) you followed directions in seeking shelter only to be completely abandoned. I don't have a lot of sympathy for those who think that the federal government is now and forever responsible for paying their bills, or that they have a "right" to return to what was public housing. But New Orleans is not just a city of welfare queens; there are families who have owned their own homes and lived there for generations who lost everything, and their local, state and national governments have utterly failed them.

djpbarry

donegalfella wrote: »

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That's just a touch harsh, don't you think? We're talking about a storm that killed about 1,800 people and wrought some $100 billion worth of damage. Had I been caught up in such a natural disaster, I might think myself entitled to whinge just a little bit, and I dare say you would too.

buynow

I think attributing a mindset or political view point to an issue of clearing foot paths is a bit much.

I currently live in the US in a suburban area, and yes everyone gets out and shovels when there is snow, but the local government pretty much does everything else, trash collection is covered as part of taxes, they even come around in the fall with a special leaf collection.

The whole snow shoveling is down to practicality. It would require far too much man power to expect any local authority to clear all foot paths. Some guy in a plow can clear the street in front of your house in something like 30 seconds, it would require far more effort to do the path also.

So this is why countries that regularly get this weather on all sides of political spectrum have come up with the same solution to snowy paths. Shovel it yourself. You can try and call it being individually responsible or socially responsible but that is over thinking it.

Overheal

You can try and call it being individually responsible or socially responsible but that is over thinking it.

Frankly Politicizing the weather at all is overthinking it.

fontinalis

donegalfella wrote: »

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That was a disgrace, especially when you contrast it with the members of the local John Galt club and Heritage Foundation members who quickly got rid of the water by bucketing it over the tiny levees.
It seems this cold snap was a bit out of the ordinary and for every moaner you will have locals who will grit the road themselves if they have acces to council stocks or donegalfellas salt mine.
I remember my neighbours gritting the roads off the main roads when the roads used to freeze but there comes a level of severity that goes beyond what the average joe is capable off. Shovelling snow is easy but you can't shovel ice especially after a thaw and subsequent refreeze. The roads I mentioned that locals used to ice were literally like an ice rink this time.

In my opinion

parasite wrote: »

the foreshore act, afaik

I see the Nitrates Directive was ignored with all the Urea that was applied over the last week!!!!!!!!!

Permabear

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Scofflaw

donegalfella wrote: »

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The "Acts of God" bit is a clue, I can't help thinking.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Valmont

taconnol wrote: »

The other day I was thinking about my new year's resultions and they were all so selfish and introverted (I want to lose weight to make me feel better. I want to learn another language to enhance my CV. I want to travel more so I can have more fun). So I said feck this and registered to volunteer.

God forbid you actually improve and/or better yourself!:eek: I hope not to offend you taconnol but I find that Kantian sense of altruism absolutely terrible. In fact I find anything that devalues the individual so much that they would forego self improvement and sacrifice themselves to volunteer for an altruistic cause one of the most serious moral quandaries of our time. But I digress, that is for another thread.

Macha

Valmont wrote: »

God forbid you actually improve and/or better yourself!:eek: I hope not to offend you taconnol but I find that Kantian sense of altruism absolutely terrible. In fact I find anything that devalues the individual so much that they would forego self improvement and sacrifice themselves to volunteer for an altruistic cause one of the most serious moral quandaries of our time. But I digress, that is for another thread.

So any time spent helping others as opposed to helping yourself is time wasted?

Good luck living on your island.

imme

Valmont wrote: »

God forbid you actually improve and/or better yourself!:eek: I hope not to offend you taconnol but I find that Kantian sense of altruism absolutely terrible. In fact I find anything that devalues the individual so much that they would forego self improvement and sacrifice themselves to volunteer for an altruistic cause one of the most serious moral quandaries of our time. But I digress, that is for another thread.

your theory is quite sad from a societal point of view imo. Society benefits from people bettering themselves, society also benefits from people volunteering their time/effort. What is wrong with people volunteering?

Valmont

taconnol wrote: »

So any time spent helping others as opposed to helping yourself is time wasted?

Good luck living on your island.

How quaint:rolleyes:

I don't to see how self immolation and sacrifice in the name of altruism is a good thing. If you are happy to neglect your own life and wellbeing in the name of charity, so be it. I chose an internship at a special needs school last year specifically because it would look good on my CV; I also helped a great deal in this school. Selfishness and acts of kindness are not mutually exclusive. You obviously see an act of kindness as necessitating the degradation of yourself (e.g giving up on your self improvement), I see it as a chance to (selfishly) improve myself and my prospects and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Overheal

Valmont wrote: »

How quaint:rolleyes:

I don't to see how self immolation and sacrifice in the name of altruism is a good thing. If you are happy to neglect your own life and wellbeing in the name of charity, so be it. I chose an internship at a special needs school last year specifically because it would look good on my CV; I also helped a great deal in this school. Selfishness and acts of kindness are not mutually exclusive. You obviously see an act of kindness as necessitating the degradation of yourself (e.g giving up on your self improvement), I see it as a chance to (selfishly) improve myself and my prospects and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Regardless of your core motivations, you're still volunteering and doing charitable deeds.

Macha

Valmont wrote: »

How quaint:rolleyes:

How condescending. Your protest that you hope not to offend are starting to appear a little disingenuous.

Valmont wrote: »

I don't to see how self immolation and sacrifice in the name of altruism is a good thing. If you are happy to neglect your own life and wellbeing in the name of charity, so be it. I chose an internship at a special needs school last year specifically because it would look good on my CV; I also helped a great deal in this school. Selfishness and acts of kindness are not mutually exclusive. You obviously see an act of kindness as necessitating the degradation of yourself (e.g giving up on your self improvement), I see it as a chance to (selfishly) improve myself and my prospects and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Neglect my wellbeing? And who said I was giving up on my self-improvement (and who's to say that volunteering is not a part of self-improvement). There are a whole lot of assumptions you are making.

irish_bob

donegalfella wrote: »

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vincent browne is gratuitously leftist and every night he is on the box , he dogmatically ( regardless of the topic in hand ) lectures about how unequal a society we have and how the majority of us are so awfull that we are not paying more tax so as to allow increasing wellfare even further , seriously , its like groundhog day , same story day in day out , he also ensures he has a representitive of the poverty industry from whatever quango ( at least once a week ) on the panel to cheer him on when he goes on one of his rants , you mentioned patricia callan ( fine thing that she is ) was heckled during an out of studio show on budget day , the same fate befell jim power of friends first not long before christmas , the guy was badgered by browne and two other leftys for suggesting that some perspective was needed when it came to the issue of wellfare cuts as deflation was running at 6%

pat kenny on the other hand is the consumate proffesional IMO , in my experience , he is nearly always impartial but i confess , i did not see last nights show bar the last five mins when they were discussing health insurance

ive been saying it for some time now , leftist minority views are given a redicolously disproportionate level of air time in the mainstream media , between richard boyd barrett who despite only having been elected to mere town counci level last summer , has been a regular feature across the airwaves this past decade or lecturer ciaran allen who whenever he is in front of a mic , makes sure to call on the state to confiscate all private property ( i **** you not ) despite having no elected mandate whatsoever , i would wager that both boyd barrett and allen represent less than 1% of the electorate with thier views , as such , i believe a token once a year appearance in the name of variety would suffice for this pair to be seen or heard , then thier is ireland most tedious man fergus finlay who seems to be never off the radio , this might explain why he believes that cutting wellfare before christmas would result in some people starving to death christmas gone by , he would do well to take an occasional trip out to whatever town you like in any part of the country and witness the level of business the bookies , chippers and bars do on dole day , its no wonder so many people seem aghast when the likes of yourself DF refer to ireland as being statist or left wing , our overwhelmingly left wing media has conditioned them into thinking otherwise

Permabear

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Valmont

taconnol wrote: »

How condescending. Your protest that you hope not to offend are starting to appear a little disingenuous.

I responded in kind to your island comment.

taconnol wrote: »

And who said I was giving up on my self-improvement...There are a whole lot of assumptions you are making.

You said you were giving up or so I thought based on the "feck this" to the constructive new years resolutions. I can only go by what you post:

taconnol wrote:

The other day I was thinking about my new year's resultions and they were all so selfish and introverted (I want to lose weight to make me feel better. I want to learn another language to enhance my CV. I want to travel more so I can have more fun). So I said feck this and registered to volunteer.

I stand by my position entirely although when things come down to ideology, constructive debate quickly vanishes. So there's no point in arguing any more on this point and taking the thread off topic.

imme

donegalfella wrote: »

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DF you seem to be quite at odds with your good self!
you set out an anti-statist position (although not clear even after I asked you to clarify what you mean it to be, the Irish state or the people). You say the people should have stepped up to the plate and helped themselves. They should not have expected the state to be there for them, they should have been able as a community to do for themselves.
In post 72 you said: "Oh, I would have complained, too. But I might have directed my ire at a government that prevented volunteer organizations and charities from coming to my aid"

Who do you expect to volunteer to help the Huricane Katrina-like events. If you're personally against volunteering it must be other people. It's good enough for other people?

Macha

Valmont wrote: »

I responded in kind to your island comment.

After you called my point of view "terrible"? Let's stop with the charade.

Valmont wrote: »

You said you were giving up or so I thought based on the "feck this" to the constructive new years resolutions. I can only go by what you post

No, what you did was assume what you wanted to from my post to make some ideological point. I never said that I would not do those other things.

Valmont wrote: »

I stand by my position entirely although when things come down to ideology, constructive debate quickly vanishes. So there's no point in arguing any more on this point and taking the thread off topic.

Constructive debate also vanishes quickly when one party refuses to acknowledge they made a number of false assumptions.

bijapos

Have to say I was very disappointed about Frontline yesterday and more so with the general media reaction to the cold snap.

Pat Kenny lost it again last night, he seemed to take it personal, the show was in many ways a mixture of whingeing and ranting. He seemed to have little or no idea himself about what he was talking about, he used the past tense a couple of times regarding the cold snap as if it was already over (it was in Dublin but not in the rest of the country).

Fact is this is an unusually long cold snap for Ireland, as it is also for quite a few parts of Europe. You can see that they on the continent are also struggling with the unusual weather, and references by Kenny and other journalists that "they are dealing fine with this so why can't we" are ridiculous.

He was almost shouting when he referred to Dublin struggling last Wednesday and that this would not happen in other European countries. I, from personal experience would beg to differ. No major European city can cope with 3cm of ICE (not snow) coming down in the space of one hour in the afternoon. Any city would grind to a halt, as indeed they do regularly enough and his comment that the solution was to tell everyone to stay put for a few hours whilst it is cleared up was absurd if not idiotic.

He seems to have a chip on his shoulder about a lot of things, admittedly Eamon O'Cuiv was pathetic last night but Pat Kenny has, I feel, other problems.

Having watched Frontline most Mondays since it started, I can only feel that it is losing the way, rarely is there a solution proposed apart from some populistic nonsense like "they should all be sacked" or whatever, it seems to be more and more a ranting forum, a televised Joe Duffy if you will.

Pat Kenny did the Late Late Show for 10 years, but he was no Gay Byrne, and with Frontline he is no John Bowman I fear.

fontinalis

I don't know how donegalfella expects people to have access to salt/grit when it seems most of the councils didn't have enough.
Someone near the front of the thread said the council in Wicklow dropped off loads of grit for people to have access to, if this was done all over people would step up, pity the invisible hand didn't see the weather coming.

Eliot Rosewater

Too true DF.

About a week before the severe Cork floods, RTE went down to West Cork somewhere and were interviewing a women. The womens house was on a lane. With the heavy rainfall the lane had turned into a stream and there was a bit of water getting into her house, I think. She said something along the lines of "This has been happening for years, and Ive been onto the council and they've done nothing about it." Did it ever strike the women - shock horror - to move house?


The dependency does spring from the statism; what happens is people get used to the government doing certain things for them so they expect most things to be done for them. In terms of "solving" it: generally leaving people alone wakes them up to the realization they have to fend for themselves and they get on with it. Here in my estate a large portion of the footpaths were salted by residents, as was the hill leading out of our estate. The council didnt "save" us back in December, so people here copped on and decided to "save" themselves in January.

spank_inferno

fontinalis wrote: »

I don't know how donegalfella expects people to have access to salt/grit when it seems most of the councils didn't have enough.
Someone near the front of the thread said the council in Wicklow dropped off loads of grit for people to have access to, if this was done all over people would step up, pity the invisible hand didn't see the weather coming.

That’s a fair point fontinalis, however what is to stop a lot of people again taking this responsibility on board themselves and to plan ahead.

After the snows of feb 2008 my father purchased 5 x 25kg bags of salt from the local farmers co-op.... I "borrowed" much of it and now it’s all gone.
But it was put to great use.

Of course that cant be done by all, but enough of us have a bit of a garden shed, especially the housing estate dwellers, so let us store a bit for when this happens again.

I do hope the recent weather will shake the Irish from their complacency & be more pro-active when winter 2010 comes around.
I'm probably wrong as most muppets here look at some snowflakes like it’s the apocalypse and would be happy if the government wiped their backsides for them.

Overheal

About a week before the severe Cork floods, RTE went down to West Cork somewhere and were interviewing a women. The womens house was on a lane. With the heavy rainfall the lane had turned into a stream and there was a bit of water getting into her house, I think. She said something along the lines of "This has been happening for years, and Ive been onto the council and they've done nothing about it." Did it ever strike the women - shock horror - to move house?

In serious though, what happened? Lets assume this house did not flood when she bought it. It was not in a flood zone. Then,for example as is the case in Ennis the Council is always under nagging from one Developer or another that wants to build something on the Flood Plain behind the Post Office. What happens, the money goes into the right pocket and suddenly this Flood Plain Zoning System has failed, and you can then actually track the problem down to the local council who was responsible for the zoning in the first place.

I dont think its that far of a stretch that the Council could be implicit in that kind of case.

And now that the house is flooding, how can she resell it? Not at nearly the same amount she paid and mortgaged it for. She's at a complete loss over it.

There are some legitimate cases of grievance toward the government and councils out there. The real problem though is theres 100 other people for every one of these that latch on to that case and use it as ammunition to bitch and moan, when these other 100 people, would Really have no claim to anything. All it does is devaluate the actual strifes of people like this woman you mention.

Macha

spank_inferno wrote: »

That’s a fair point fontinalis, however what is to stop a lot of people again taking this responsibility on board themselves and to plan ahead.

I have to say I find this attitude a lot in the area of environmental issues as well. Research has shown that Irish people tend to view the environment as something out there and nothing to do with them. This attitude is a significant contributor to our high levels of litter.

Perhaps the recent attitude towards helping out with the ice and show was another manifestation of the same underlying trend. Given that we have seen examples from varying political spectra that show different attitudes towards personal responsibility, is it that this is more cultural than political?

Valmont

taconnol wrote: »

After you called my point of view "terrible"? Let's stop with the charade.

Well at least you now admit that Kantian altruism is indeed your point of view. Regarding my supposed false assumptions, you said that the self improvement you had set out to achieve was selfish and then said "feck this"

Now tell me what in the name of goodness should I have construed from the "Feck this" regarding your resolutions? That you were going to pursue them with more vigour? That you were going to volunteer and stick with you resolutions? I responded reasonably considering the information you provided me.

taconnol wrote: »

I never said that I would not do those other things.

It was very much implied. Perhaps my assumptions were wrong and you will do everything you set out to do but what was I supposed to think based on your original post? I'm not a psychic.

taconnol wrote:

So any time spent helping others as opposed to helping yourself is time wasted?

taconnol wrote:

they were all so selfish and introverted

taconnol wrote:

So I said feck this

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