FG probably lost a lot of votes for robbing peoples pensions

yqtwqxqm

At work today when everyone was discussing who they were going to vote for, reasons etc. A lot of people said they would never ever forgive FG for the raid on their pension funds.
The gist was that that was such a breach of trust that it was unforgivable.

I hadnt really thought about it til it was mentioned today, but it did sway my vote today. I voted FG last time out and was probably going to vote for them again today, but having been reminded on the pension grab, i dropped FG from my mind and gave someone else my vote today.

Anyone else had a similar swing moment for the pension raid or any other event that stands out?

Stinicker

Fianna Fáil were responsible for that if you knew anything.

yqtwqxqm

Stinicker wrote: »

Fianna Fáil were responsible for that if you knew anything.

Michael Noonan is FG. I know that.

endacl

Don't care. Don't have a pension.

Stinicker

yqtwqxqm wrote: »

Michael Noonan is FG. I know that.

It was Fianna Fáil who signed everything good this country had away to bailout their corrupt developer cronies. The man responsible was Brian Lenihan and karma sent him to a painful early death and it was a fitting end to the traitor after what he did.

yqtwqxqm

Stinicker wrote: »

It was Fianna Fáil who signed everything good this country had away to bailout their corrupt developer cronies. The man responsible was Brian Lenihan and karma sent him to a painful early death and it was a fitting end to the traitor after what he did.

Oh dear god. Can we stop with this now.
Even though I loath FF, FG have really beaten that one to death at this stage.
And thats another reason im gone off FG. They take no responsibility for their own decisions.

NIMAN

Stinicker wrote: »

It was Fianna Fáil who signed everything good this country had away to bailout their corrupt developer cronies. The man responsible was Brian Lenihan and karma sent him to a painful early death and it was a fitting end to the traitor after what he did.

No fan of what FF did to this country, but that's a low comment.:mad:

colossus-x

The funny thing about elections is we debate and debate over a multitude of issues.

But you can't vote on a single issue. The only choice you have is this party or that one. In the UK it's either the Conservatives or Labour.

So , the choice was today whether or not to keep FG in, or to swap for FF. Isn't that bizzar in a way.

I can't possibly see how the country would swap back to FF right now.

I don't like this system, but there it is.

Stinicker

NIMAN wrote: »

No fan of what FF did to this country, but that's a low comment.:mad:

What they did to this country, it effected a lot of people including me and my family personally. I have lost friends who died to suicide because of Fianna Fails corruption, lost family members due to the disgraceful healthcare here. Fianna Fáil went along way to destroying me personally. They are to Ireland what the Nazis were to Germany, yet gombeen went and voted them 40+ seats. Lenihan should remember along with Michael Martin, Ahern and Cowen as one of our worst traitors ever.

Harry Angstrom

Stinicker wrote: »

What they did to this country, it effected a lot of people including me and my family personally. I have lost friends who died to suicide because of Fianna Fails corruption, lost family members due to the disgraceful healthcare here. Fianna Fáil went along way to destroying me personally. They are to Ireland what the Nazis were to Germany, yet gombeen went and voted them 40+ seats. Lenihan should remember along with Michael Martin, Ahern and Cowen as one of our worst traitors ever.

I was wondering how long it would take for Godwin's Law to be invoked :rolleyes:

BoJack Horseman

yqtwqxqm wrote: »

A lot of people said they would never ever forgive FG for the raid on their pension funds.

Wasn't it 6 tenths of a percentage of the fund value for 3 years plus 1 tenth of a percentage for a 4th?
(Open to correction there)....
Which may/may not have been that noticeable especially considering any competently run fund would be increasing in value by a much greater margin considering the explosion in the equities market in the last 5 years.

Quite the baby/bathwater moment for you & your buddies there

The alternate government has TRS on pension contributions in their crosshairs which will cost multiples of the previous administrations 'garnishing'.

yqtwqxqm

BoJack Horseman wrote: »

Wasn't it 6 tenths of a percentage of the fund value for 3 years plus 1 tenth of a percentage for a 4th?
(Open to correction there)....
Which may/may not have been that noticeable especially considering any competently run fund would be increasing in value by a much greater margin considering the explosion in the equities market in the last 5 years.

Quite the baby/bathwater moment for you & your buddies there

The alternate government has TRS on pension contributions in their crosshairs which will cost multiples of the previous administrations 'garnishing'.

They turned pension funds from being savings that you could use to plan your future to a money trap that could be raided at any time and not used for planning your future any more.
Quiet a seismic shift.

BoJack Horseman

yqtwqxqm wrote: »

They turned pension funds from being savings that you could use to plan your future to a money trap that could be raided at any time and not used for planning your future any more.
Quiet a seismic shift.

I'm not saying I agreed with it....

But it was temporary, is no longer in place & the alternative promises something that is costlier.

Voting for something that will cost you more, simply out of spite, seems stupid to me.

ted1

yqtwqxqm wrote: »

Oh dear god. Can we stop with this now.
Even though I loath FF, FG have really beaten that one to death at this stage.
And thats another reason im gone off FG. They take no responsibility for their own decisions.

Stick your head in the ground, that's fine by me.

yqtwqxqm

BoJack Horseman wrote: »

I'm not saying I agreed with it....

But it was temporary, is no longer in place & the alternative promises something that is costlier.

Voting for something that will cost you more, simply out of spite, seems stupid to me.

It now could happen again any time now. Your pension fund should be untouchable.

ancapailldorcha

Stinicker wrote: »

It was Fianna Fáil who signed everything good this country had away to bailout their corrupt developer cronies. The man responsible was Brian Lenihan and karma sent him to a painful early death and it was a fitting end to the traitor after what he did.

This is well below the standard of posting we expect here. Please read the charter before posting again.

Richard Bingham

yqtwqxqm wrote: »

It now could happen again any time now. Your pension fund should be untouchable.

Agreed, whilst acknowledging all the wrongs perpetrated by the last government during this crisis, the raid on pension funds was probably the most blatantly undemocratic thing which was done.
Money in your pension has already gone through the tax net. When you make a contribution to your pension you do so on the understanding that it won't be taxed going in and the growth won't be taxed (within the pension). You know that it will be taxed on exit (if it's greater than your tax free allowance) and that's fair enough. It should be unconstitutional for the government to simply take money from you, just because it's needed.

I think that people should campaign for a referendum to insert an amendment into the constitution which would prevent something like this ever happening again, otherwise what's the point in trying to provide for yourself (which saves the government from having to do so) or provide for your retirement.

I don't think however that this one issue caused FG's poor election results.

FG have never been re-elected because they are no good at electioneering. They knew that an election was on the horizon for a long time now, and look at all the votes they lost by pissing the electorate off for little gain in the last while. The amount of people on hospital trolleys, the money spent on Irish Water, the only affect of which was to annoy a good portion of the electorate. Look at the sheer number of Gardaí, Teachers and Nurses who are thoroughly pissed off with their lot. Someone made the comment a couple of weeks ago, that instead of representing Ireland in Europe, Enda represented Europe in Ireland. Let's remember that FG got into government very largely based on a promise that they would show Europe a thing or two. They have recently been claiming the credit for putting an end to the recession and this is totally disingenuous. When things were bad they always trotted out the line that in a small open economy we suffered when things were bad globally. You could equally give the credit for any positive developments of late to global or European factors.

- Low interest rates - FGLabour have no input to as determined by ECB.
- Favourable exchange rates which help Irish exports - FGLabour have no input to as determined by foreign exchange markets.
- Low price of oil - FGLabour have no input to as determined by world market forces.

Studies have shown that for every dollar (or Euro) that households save in energy costs, they spend 73c on discretionary items like eating out and entertainment. What state would the economy be in without the above positive developments?

As for the Whinger comment - a week before an election. What was he thinking?

Lastly, and I don't want to make this about abortion but FG (through Labour) allowed themselves to be dragged into the abortion issue. You don't win votes by getting involved in this. While the Irish Times can produce a poll that says that 70% or whatever of the citizens want abortion, by asking people are they in favour of abortion if it will save the life of the mother, the reality is that the majority of people in Ireland do not want abortion on demand, which if we were honest is what was being pushed (in fact of late, many Pro Choice groups have changed tack from what they were saying in 2013, and admitted that they want abortion based on the British model). When there is a Pro Life march in Dublin it attracts 50,000 or 60,000 people; when there is a Pro Choice march it attracts between 250 and 2,000 people and the reality is that Pro Life people are the only ones who are sufficiently exercised by the issue to either ask a canvasser/candidate about it on the doorstep or decide their vote based on it. Labour admitted yesterday evening that while Pro Choice people said it was a redline issue for them, they didn't vote on this basis.

Fianna Fail must have been smiling to themselves over the last few months. They would never have screwed up like this. If they were in power, every decision, every press release, every speech for the past 12 months would have been made with one eye on the issue at hand, and one on the upcoming election. That is how you have to do politics. Fine Gael, while well intentioned just aren't cute enough.