Imagine you were doing up your living room, or maybe your kitchen. Yes, let’s say your kitchen, and you want a new granite worktop, new presses, new tiles, new appliances and sure why not make a snap decision to get yourself a handcrafted table and chairs! Right, your budget, granite worktops don’t come cheap but all in all you’d probably get what you wanted for under Eur 30K. Or maybe you don’t want to redecorate but want to snap up a small investment property now that the market is dropping, you might get something decent outside of Dublin for about Eur 200K. Now with those kind of figures in mind and what you would get for them, try to conceive exactly how the redecorating of Bertie’s office cost about Eur 220K for 3 weeks work not including security or any other fancy stuff. What’s worse is that the OPW defended the cost. WTF!! This is as bad as CJ’s island. The government of this country is having a laugh at the public and rubbing their noses in anything that they have to do to make a few bob! I am so sick of this country; I’m completely fed up of the corrupt self-obsessed attitude of our political representatives who bathe themselves in ass’s milk while the rest of us dodge acid rain. You pack of ignorant, pontificating, own nest feathering, corrupt, misguided, and stupid w*nkers – F**k the lot of ye!

Well it would appear that we are in recession after all the staving off that we tried. Difficult times are certainly ahead and this is a time for much questioning and reflection upon how our country has been managed over the last number of years of unprecedented growth and great times. Unlike the early 80′s when recession last hit in a big way, emigration is not an option for so many people who are buried up to their necks in debt; debt that has been accrued due to living in an economy that has skyrocketed out of control due to a saturated housing market, massive increases in the cost of living even in terms of things like local government managed waste management services. These people cannot just leave their debt behind. We have also seen a ridiculous pour of finances into questionable social welfare cases. I don’t care what anyone thinks of this statement but the facts and truth are that there are plenty of people milking the social welfare service, living in free accommodation, in receipt of benefits and sometimes even linked to crime who are never investigated for welfare fraud nor do the government even care about it. We have just come out of outrageous pay deals in the public service whereby a massive drain on the states finances has been delivered with so-called benchmarking; some of the senior civil servants in this country are earning multiples of what hard working CEO’s are, who dedicated all their time to building a business and not just climbing a ladder.

From the late 90′s up until now, Ireland went through a very good period of growth. Growth that was largely due to the global upturn and not any doing of the government. Instead of dealing with that growth and shaping up the economy for change and new jobs that would future-proof the employment market, the government instead squandered public finances on providing tax breaks to developers and property investors to build a surplus of cheap and nasty, disposable, apartment blocks. Of course I don’t have to point out the stupidity of pouring money into an unsustainable industry in hope that it might just keep providing even though land and demand is running out. No other sustainable investment was made in our jobs market but yet so many of the Irish people thought that this was progress. For years I have been saying the opposite.

Interest rates are rising, especially now that Germany has got back on its feet again, the European Central Bank certainly won’t be keeping Ireland’s interests at heart. Nobody knows at the moment exactly how hard this recession will hit but what is certain is that those heads at the centre of the building boom and those in the public sector will not be affected by it in the slightest due to incalculable recent profits in construction and guaranteed pay deals and job safety in the public service. Who will suffer? Well that’s simple it’s the people responsible for creating the good times and not surfing on them, the lowly private sector workers who will be facing layoffs, business shutdown and a great manner of other horrible things. They will suffer, threatened with house repossession and forced, prolonged unemployment until such time that the private sector again starts to make money and give the economy a boost. Our country’s government has failed us miserably. It failed to see the obvious future picture and instead poured money into an unsustainable jobs market hoping that nothing would ever change. Now due to the cost of living and the labour force wage expectations as a result of that we have killed off competitive manufacturing and many of the jobs that made us strong in past decades. Nouveau riche Ireland has lined its pockets with the empty promises and mismanagement of Irish government and now we stand to fall to earth with a very large bump. The elections aren’t far away folks; just remember who it was that squandered all this money and turned a time of unprecedented growth and prosperity into a recession for all to enjoy without ever considering the rainy day!

Via Damien Mulley: Two members of Young Fine Gael were spotted impersonating Gerry Adams and Mary Lou McDonald outside Leinster House. Trying to create a satire and using completely inappropriate, inaccurate and irrelevant references to convince people as to the reasoning behind Sinn Féin’s stance on the Lisbon Treaty. 

Wow! Totally wow! I hope that YFG are very proud of themselves for this. No longer are they just attacking the people with questions about why they should vote yes, they have now gone and turned a completely non-party issue into a major anti-party stunt. Such behaviour belongs in the world of professional satire not within the bounds of independent political decision making. I thought that Fianna Fáil’s ignorant and dogmatic attitude on this was bad but this stunt is simply immature and groundless, and exactly the type of activity that is losing more and more support for the yes vote but more worrying is that it is further clouding any possible comprehension of the treaty by those who still don’t know the factual meaning of it. There’s so much playing of the man in this game that I don’t think that there’s even a ball on the pitch!

Seriously, you’ll never have heard it explained this way before. It’s even more chilling than reading it.

After yesterday’s poll results were announced, with respect to the opinion of voters on the Lisbon Treaty, the “no” vote has almost doubled since the last opinion poll. Am I surprised? Well frankly no, I’m not. It’s like I have said to many people on numerous occasions in the past. Those swinging towards a “no” vote are doing so because of educating themselves by reading the treaty and/or supporting literature that has come from independent sources. God knows with the support for Sinn Féin in this country that it’s certainly not because of their efforts. However, since the last opinion poll literature has been sent to homes, information has been made available on the web and people who are actually interested in what the treaty means have gone to the trouble of creating brief summaries of main points for those who don’t have the time to read fully. The net result of this information burst is a massive swing towards a “no” vote whereas previously people were happy to tow the party line and vote whatever way they were being encouraged to do so. While I am happy to see that with the advent of clear information to people who generally have no exposure to such material has allowed them to reassess their opinions it does sadden me that should this treaty be rejected in the vote, it will no doubt be brought back for vote again just like the Nice Treaty; yet again undermining our democratic principles. Plenty of political parties had a dig at the government over that fiasco and I really hope they remember their reasons should the same thing emerge again, irrespective of their unilateral support on the issue currently. source: Irish Times

Appearing in today’s Times’ letters page:

Read this on the Reg. It’s a 3-D printer made by some clever clogs in Bath. Claimed to be the first machine of its kind because it can print a copy of itself – like how cool is that! Although it would somewhat hamper future sales of the device. Basically the device sprays moulds molten plastic to create 3-D objects that can be whatever you want from phone holders to other bespoke creations. What really intrigues me about this device is that it can seemingly be created for about Eur 380 with parts listed here. Now let’s be honest here, who’s not thinking of ordering those parts right now?