Last Friday’s 9.55am train from Limerick pulled out on time, hurtling towards the ‘Junction’. As we sped past the waterlogged land on a beautiful morning, commuters on the train were going about their business as normal, reading about the treacherous Thierry Henry in the paper and chatting to friends on the phone.
As we arrived at Limerick Junction – a bleak enough place which hasn’t changed an iota since the early 1980s – a talkative grandmother cornered me to discuss the ‘‘situation’’. I regretted having the last pint in Limerick’s wonderful White House the night before. It probably wasn’t absolutely necessary.
The Cork train arrived just in time and I settled in, gazing out the window and thinking about how normal the country seemed, even though we are nearly bankrupt. Is this how it will be? Will we meander on as if nothing is happening, until we wake up and realise that the credit taps have been turned off?
When you look for real signs of the massive fall in our income, when you look for signs of the €20 billion-odd budget deficit, it is easy to convince yourself that these things are remote. But as you travel through the countryside ,you slowly begin to see the trauma. Every town the train passes through has the same ‘ghost estates’ on the outskirts – desperate places that are worth nothing, or next to nothing. How will these mortgages ever be paid?
At Thurles, the guy opposite me got chatting about how he’d lost his job in April. He was a young accountant, and he was going to Dublin to do his fourth interview since then. He had expected to bounce back in May or maybe June, but having scoured the papers since then, he was beginning to sink. He’d expected dozens of interviews and was confident that, having finished the first year of training, he’d be fine. But six months on, nothing was emerging. He was 24.
We nattered away until Heuston Station and, as we came closer and closer to Dublin, more and more ghost estates appeared.
From Kildare to Dublin, all we saw were rows and rows of empty housing estates, which were beginning to suffer from what has been called the ‘broken windows theory’.
This is when a neighbourhood begins to falter. A window is broken here and there, and soon the place starts disintegrating. If the windows are not fixed straight away, it sends out a signal that it is fine to break windows. Then the rot sets in.
In time, rather than being ‘worth something’, the houses begin to cost the owners. But the owners might have lost their jobs, so they don’t have the cash to fix up the house and, in short order, the places become quasi-ghettos. This has happened in many parts of the US. It could well happen here.
The key to the ghettoisation of our ghost estates will be the rate of unemployment.
If unemployment continues its upward trend, these places will be abandoned – and might ultimately be pulled down in a crime prevention move in the years ahead. The one thing that will drive crime in the years ahead is youth unemployment (but more on that later).This all sounds radical now, but the lesson from this crisis is that what sounded radical last year is now mainstream, and what sounded mainstream last year just sounds silly.
If we look at the chart from the US, we can see a clear correlation between the rise in unemployment and the number of properties that are being foreclosed on.
While there are outliers like Florida, where foreclosures seem to be running way ahead of unemployment – probably due to defaults on the huge amount of holiday homes in the state – the trend is pretty much as you’d expect.
In Ireland, we will see a similar pattern emerging. I expect unemployment to rise significantly next year as the financial industry contracts. This will mean large layoffs in our banks and insurance companies.
As well as this, the public sector will contract after the budget cuts, and retail employment will fall away after Christmas under the twin pressures of higher taxes and charges, and the strong euro driving thousands over the border to shop.
If we look at our unemployment figures, we see a potentially explosive rise in youth unemployment, which has not been properly documented yet. According to the CSO’s quarterly national household survey,12.1 per cent of our 15to 19-yearolds were unemployed in July 2007.This has jumped to a terrifying 36.4 per cent. Think about it – more than a third of our youth who are not in education are unemployed.
In the next age group, the 20to 24year-olds, the figures are equally frightening. When this government came into power, 8 per cent of this group were unemployed. This figure stands at 23 per cent, or close to one in four, today. In the key 25-34 age group – the ‘Pope’s Children Generation’ -13.4 per cent are out of work now, as opposed to 4.7 per cent the month that this government won the election.
The three-fold rise in unemployment in the 25-34 age group is why defaults will increase dramatically. These are the first time buyers who were shamefully cajoled into getting on the property ladder. Now they can’t repay their loans. Many thousands will simply walk away from their houses, hand in the keys and turn their backs on yesterday’s false dream.
When these houses become vacant – with no one to rent them, because you need jobs to have a healthy rental market – these estates will become classic breeding grounds for marginalisation. Some of the 35 per cent of those between 15 and 19 who are idle won’t be long finding these estates to hang out in. This is the way it goes.
The gardaí will eventually stop patrolling the estates, and the places will fall apart. Again, we have the evidence from US cities which, in the 1970s and 1980s, were allowed to deteriorate. The people who live in these estates will try to maintain standards, but they will eventually flee in the face of constant crime.
Many of the young men like the guy I met on the train will just head off if they can’t find jobs, and try their luck in the likes of London, Sydney or Boston. We are just witnessing the tip of the iceberg now.
We are living in extraordinary times, and we need extraordinary policy changes. Thus far, we are just seeing incrementalism because we have been lulled into a false sense of security by the calm before the storm. However, to get out of this mess, we will need to entertain extraordinary remedies. Otherwise, a country with close to 30 per cent of its youth under the age of 25 on the dole could become very, very angry.
Posters :
The public sector workers are in a pole position too de – rail the ruling elites.
All out strike. No cuts.
So what on the outgoings.
The public sector can deliver the knock out punch too the crony elite hegemony we all live under.
THe public sector workers can take the cuts down the road under a different pretext.
The cuts now been forced onto the pubic sector is all about ‘pretext’.
The elites are setting the pretext for everyone else to do this and do that YET the elites are the wrong doers so no one is obligated to dance to their tune.
Yes the public sector is bloated etc, and in the future this will be addressed, but for now, the cuts can wait and the elites will be denied the high ground on all of this intrigue.
The elites are always moving forward their power on the legitimacy conceded too them unwittingly by others. Deny it too them by saying no.
Well worth watching this documentary from John Pilger Wills and anyone else who is remotely interested in the truth – how the world & corporate world really works, it speaks for itself! Ghettoisation of the world, far worse than a few ghost estates, not something you will see on RTE.
Was anyone else surprised at George Lee doing a documentary on the fall of the Berlin Wall on RTE? I could not believe my eyes, still shocked.
John Pilger – The New Rulers of the World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8firb73r67g&feature=related
Its an optimistic vision. The PS however has its own elite and would I am sure cheer-lead a revolt from within the PS in order to protect their position.
wills, you are correct; however, most public servants do not see this; they believe the main-stream Meeja.
The problem is waking-them-up to the reality.
I tried to wake-up some colleagues today, while on picket outside my place-of-work: I asked them to note the year-reg of the cars passing on the road and those that “beeped” in support and those that did not.
This little “straw-Poll” shows this:
The newest car that beeped (only one such) was a ’04 car; ALL other cars that supported were older than that, and most were in the 1990s. Not ONE ’09 car beeped, or ’08, 07′ 06′ 05 reg beeped. NOT ONE!
Q.: What kind of job does a person have, that has them driving on a road in Blackrock, Dublin, at 10am in a 2009 Porsche, Mercedes, BMW and Range-Rover, Bentley and Aston-Martin?
Are they “sharing the pain”?
The only tax we collect from these people is from the 49% excise-duties, VAT and VRT that they pay on their new cars.
I’m glad they’re buying them, so.
(Imagine, being able to buy a €250,000 car?)
They’re probably the “ladies who lunch”, you know, the people who go shopping on Grafton Street in the daytime during the week, pop into Weirs and buy some nice jewellery there (until Bus Gate came in and upset their little precious routine), yeah, nothing like shopping in Dublin when all the suckers are slaving away at work while you get to enjoy the hassle free experience without the crowds. Their husbands probably pull a 6 figure salary in some bank / law firm / medical practice or do a bit of landlording on the side.
Yes.
tim –
Fascinating too see the papers tomorrow demonising the public sector workers all going shopping ‘up North’.
Pathetic.
This whole thing is bizarre.
Photos of cars on a road who knows where with headlines on whomever going shopping.
The ‘ruling elites’ are threatened BIG TIME by the power the public sector has in the palm of its hand.
Very clever straw poll tim on picket. Very telling indeed.
Alot of the public sector workers on browne to nite interviewed were on the ball.
In your book on pg 183 you say that
‘Things were to get worse as HSBC lost close to 96% of its share value last year, and went bust. It’s now owned by the UK government’
This is not true and HBSC was the first bank to recognise that is had sub-prime debts in Aug 07 and put them on the balance sheet. It is not owned by Uk Government at all.It is now relocating is hearquarters to China
Love the book by the way
Today in the Dáil, Mr Wimpy called for wage cuts to be accepted, based on the clear evidence of deflation. Will this same ideological zeal be applied when the cost of servicing mortgages rockets as EU interest rates are ratcheted up? I think not. The pragmatism of FF, and its PD-infected leaders such as Brian Lenihan and Brian Cowen, is a one-way pragmatism.
The pragmatism of the many voices who called for a Yes vote for Lisbon II, such as Chambers Ireland and other local business bodies, seems to be a one-way pragmatism also. Apparently I am anti-EU if I question the mechanisms and the agenda behind the Lisbon Treaty. And I am unpatriotic if I do not support the same Irish businesses who so vigorously called my fellow citizens to throw away fractions of our sovereignty.
Where is my EU-sourced mortgage?
My EU-sourced insurance for my car?
My EU seems to be an EU of Reaganomics. A vast market opened up for the big boys, but not for the small guy.
If you don’t support Irish stores this Christmas, then some will close. And we will see an end to the bullshit jobs that stuffed the statistics of the majority of our counties. These are fluff-jobs and are merely there to ensure that the Haves can sell overpriced foreign imports to the Have-nots.
Tony Murphy says it correctly earlier here: – if you have cash in a BOI or an AIB, then shame on you. You are either for or against a fair country, for or against systemic health, for or against sharing of burdens. If you are against Ryanair’s bullying stance on Lisbon II (any democrat should be), then don’t fly with them. I don’t. If you are against the unfair special treatment of AIB in particular, then withdraw your support (money, mortgage etc). Enfeeble your enemies.
If you are against economic rent-takers, and against landprice-infected economic enterprises in particular, then avoid them.
For once, please take Mary Harney’s advice and use your noggins. Shop in the EU. Support those who deserve it in your locality. But starve those who have trickled price reductions to you, trickled wages to you.
Have an ideology and stick to it. If you are a farmer and are genuinely not able to make the books balance, then cut to the chase and blockade whoever is strangling your hard-earned enterprise. If you are a public service worker or a flood victim and feel you genuinely have a direct grievance, then lay siege to the Dáil or lay siege to ESB or Bord na Mona offices, semi-state private companies who have affected our landscape and in BNM’s case, has legally (and sometimes illegally) bullied people out of their family-providing turf plots only to unleash the industrial beast in the name of progress; but in reality in the name of private capitalism retaining semi-state authoritarianism. ESB can, despite being a private company, ride roughshod over your lands and insist on overground pylons or whatever they want. BNM have ‘acquired’ vast amounts of ‘high banks’ belonging to small farmers and rural dwellers. Having only been beqeathed such assets from previous landlords, they were wuickly usurped by new landlords.
We need to stop complaining.
We need to list viable solutions to situations as they unfold.
BrendanW has called, previously, for the Farmleigh opus to be discovered further. Where is the produce of the great meeting of minds? Where is the business plan?
I say we stop seeing our unemployed (students, skilled labourers, architects, solicitors, painters, marketing people, teachers etc etc) as burdens, as charity cases but see them for what they are. The greatest asset a country can have, the ver thing we promoted so strongly before the Celtic Tiger and before we got house-crazy.
What we are short on is leadership, not resources, not money, not potential tax take, not effort, not productivity.
Just leadership.
Great post Ruairi. Respect. I concur, with the proviso that the leadership you call for might comprise each and every one of us, if we were to get a little bit of a certain type of education into us.
Well people can do a Captain Boycott on it, shun them in the street, shun them in the bar, shun them in the shop, shun them when it comes to services from tradesman, we’ve done it before, it can be done again, force them out!
Seen no evidence of a single job emerging from Framleigh, only payments for those involved……..would like to proved wrong, but there you go…..
Good news! Only a minority of people go for nutty conspiracy theories about banks and politicians according to a recent poll. Most people have learned the lesson that they shouldn’t have spent beyond their means.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2009/1125/1224259396265.html
In the Ghetto
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ox1Tore9nw
G –
The tin tin link yesterday is worth posting up again as it fully explains to a t davids article.
tin tin’s article is blood curdling.
It capture’s the gombeen rot in action brilliantly.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/1124/1224259338562.html
Ps200306 -
I agree, conspiracy theories are best kept at the doorstep of the vested interests and ruling elites op’s.
Monsieur Verdoux
( from my un published book 2005 The Green Deception )
I recently watched a movie about a black comedy staring Charlie Chaplin playing the role of a bank clerk who turns murderer .He became a rogue bank manager displaying a label of connoisseurship for an inflated price , advertising his insatiable salacious sexual availability with a touchable exclusivity . He was clever at creating perceived invitations to female lust in his company adorned in gubernatorial headwear and doffing to a glancing eye.
Banks are in the business of charging for Time and the more time they can create the more money they make. All banks’ efforts are made devoted to controlling time rather than space .In the times of old “waiting” was a normal pastime but today it is too expensive a commodity to give or to take because the banks have controlled all time we experience through their methods of preservation , elongation, and compression. The reason given by Banks for being in the business of time is “Progress”. For banks progress means paying your debts on time and borrowing more money. Progress for the customer means ……well something else . The banks and the customers seem to have a perceived vested interest in each other in the name of……..it’s called progress. The relationship between them is the unspoken word of Marriage certified in a registered branch office as a ‘Letter of Guarantee’, Power of Authority and Letter of Security. It is the most difficult marriage to obtain a divorce and the Church do not enact any prohibitions to divorce .Neither does the Church excommunicate you should you obtain a divorce and marry again. Yet our lives intrinsically evolve around banks’ time and not our own time. Parliaments do not have agendas to involve themselves assisting voters with this kind of divorce and nobody suggested a referendum .
Our DNA is a coded description and wisdom of the old days in which our ancestors lived .There were no banks’ time as we know them now carved in this material .What will our DNA show in the future about Banks’ time and how will effect us then .Are we going to be meta morphosised into Green Aliens ( Dolphins & Lepracauns ) with large heads time like clocks and fetish bodies.
Inevitably , we are all going to die because we are the lucky ones and there are those of us that are not going to die because they are going to be born again.
Our lives are in a state of “hurry” and for what ? I believe there is no such thing as urgent business only people in a hurry. The Banks have controlled our time for us to be in a hurry .There are more molecules in a glass of water than there are glasses of water in the sea. Should our lives use more of Our Time our satisfaction and life’s experience would be endless and for everyone and would reduce levels of Crime as we know it today otherwise we end up serving fewer and fewer as each one devours the next until there will be only one ‘ The Bank of Mankind’ .Then there will be no religion and our time belongs to The Bank. Then we are Slaves.
If you are lucky to know how to stop and observe a coexistence with nature you will experience that banks do not form a part of it’s existence and evolution.
Our DNA is unique and identifies separately with each of us .Yet each and everyone is a colony of bacteria that moves between ourselves on this planet .Some of these bacteria are known as viruses and some viruses are hazardous pathogens .It is alleged that symbiotic viruses killed off Neanderthal man and explains why Homo Sapiens won the evolutionary battle. When rainforests are cut down two species of animals or plants meet – an evolutionary war starts as the species as the species fight for dominance .The
The virus will jump species , possible effecting and killing the rival. The animal from which the virus has jumped thus kills off the invader and wins the evolutionary battle. This explains the demise of the dinosaurs. Viruses are shuttle vectors or genetic bullets and exchange genetic information. The hardest part to believe is that a virus will work together with it’s host .I mean where is the consciousness of a virus?
Should our DNA metamorphosis become Green Aliens (Dolphins & Lepracauns ) because the banks control all our time and this programmed on our genetic card our immune system will fail and our species Homo Sapiens and the banks we invented for our society as we know it will be killed off like the Dinosaur and Neanderthal Man from these symbiotic bullets.
How can we avoid this “Pandora Box” from the treat to mankind by these newly emerging viruses on our changing ecological environment and the possible successful evolution of the Baboon as successor on earth at the expense of ourselves? Will the Baboon Sapiens become a Banker and control time or will he be everlastingly contented with his nuts?
We need to to show that we have the ability to capture the zeitgeist by changing the ruthless megalomaniac – the bank – by creating a Chasm .
The business of banks has been to control time .Our choice should now be through Feng Shui that it should instead control space and release all Free Time to Mankind .This inverse of chaos should kill “progress” as given to us by bankers and our time will be reclaimed and be our own .Man would return to a new form of subsistence living , and money value hold much less intrinsic value.
……………..Mr. Verdoux had charm and privilege and trust .His women friends adored him and gave him lots of money and other pleasures. Later, he found he could not repay al of them what they had given him so he behaved like a fox…..you see him and you don’t…..More years passed and he lost his job in that bank and with his ebbing old age his experience mellowed his personality to be a simple personable person. Until, one day he was recognised by a former girlfriend and the police caught up with him or should I say……….Time .
He was jailed and could not face execution so he committed suicide.
Folks, “carry-trade” invoked here again:
http://baselinescenario.com/2009/11/25/data-on-the-debt/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BaselineScenario+%28The+Baseline+Scenario%29
roofs falling off homes.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/apartment-block-roof-blown-off-1953261.html
i’d wonder about quality of the build.
and what about homes built on flood plains which are now flooding.. thanks to local councillors and planners
i guess it will mean lots of jingle mail and more problems for banks
Folks, this, from Joan Burton via twitter:
“AIB & BOI chiefs before Finance Cttee today. Don’t expect any flow of lending to start post NAMA”
So, Oireachtas report might be worth watching tonight, to see the boyos’ demeanour?
Also, this from an entrepreneurial associate about the €20 million, FáS, and his own efforts at govt support to create jobs (he hopes to be on George Hook’s show tomorrow to talk about it):
http://evertb.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/fast-tracking-20-million-of-money-wasting/
Folks, here, the “Robin-Hood-Banker” in Germany who was prosecuted for allowing overdrafts to people who would not normally qualify for them; but we do not do anything to our bankers that gave sub-prime mortgages to people who would not normally qualify for them?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8376532.stm
Folks, an interesting and refreshing counter-media-spin look at the strike yesterday:
http://www.joehiggins.eu/2009/11/joe-higgins-reports-from-the-public-sector-picket-lines/
From prof Liam Delaney, Labour Market initiatives in Ireland, by Geary Economics:
http://gearybehaviourcenter.blogspot.com/2009/11/labour-market-initiatives-in-ireland.html
Posters:
Two words.
REGULATORY ARBITRAGE.
Through this AIG offered our banks the casino capitalism / to use more of their balance sheets to take riskier bets.
The banks got their ‘risk measures low’ simply buying A.I.G’s credit-default-swaps. The swaps meant that the risk of loss was transferred to A.I.G and the collateral triggers made the bank portfolios look absolutely risk-free.
Which meant minimal capital requirements, which the banks all wanted so they could increase their leverage and buy yet more “risk free” assets.
This practice became especially rampant in Europe. That lack of capital is one of the reasons the european banks have been in such trouble since the crisis began. See link.
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-banks-used-aigs-swaps-to-dodge-banking-rules-2009-3
So, the reason why the gov are squeezing the taxpayers like lemons is down too this A.I.G gimmick.
And, it’s interesting to bear in mind A.I.G was indeed saved by the Fed TARP which amounted too a dollar print run and monies divvied out too european banks too meet contract obligations.
Now, this means the irish banks has received such contractual closure as its most likely irish banks bought into the A.I.G gimmick.
So, how does this fit in with us been told the irish banks are broke, if in fact they where insured against debt failure…. which A.I,G honored viz a viz TARP.
????????
Posters:
This link speaks of ‘back door’ bailouts for banks through funneling TARP money through A.I.G.
So, what if Irish banks were a trading partner of A.I.G too then it follows they received their share of the TARP bailout which amounts too what figure,…??
link http://industry.bnet.com/financial-services/10004938/aig-bailout-is-both-criticized-and-justified-by-tarp-report/
More: http://ardsonas.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/the-debbie-mcgee-moment-look-at-the-real-villians/
wills, that community-groups lady we heard at the second anti-NAMA march is on Vincent Browne again, speaking truth.
Vincent ‘s got his hands full there eh!
The Fianna Fail Propaganda machine have discovered U tube.I notice they are posting various bits of bull*hit, such as Cowan speaking in the Dail , on the site.
Funny thing is, the comments option has been de-activated on them all..
I wonder why?
tirnanog33, two words: Stephen Kieron.
tephen Kearon, sorry.
Folks, “The Celtic Tiger (made in the USA)”:
http://www.fiscalstudent.com/2009/04/celtic-tiger-made-in-usa.html
By the way, Folks, where is Eugene Sheehy?
He promised his “Dead-body”, remember?
http://www.swp.ie/index.php/component/content/article/swss/index.php?page=106&dept=News&title=%91Robbing+a+bank+is+nothing+compared+to+owning+one%92+-+Ireland%92s+bankers+exposed
Have a look (REALLY!)
As an aside, I see the UK are arresting people to get their DNA on a databank and that there are calls to have everyone on the databank. No doubt, the local yolkels will want to follow suit here as well.
Your DNA will be the new PIN and the basis of your credit rating – which will depend on a combination of the length of your telomeres and your level of pull with the local elite.
And to compound by conspiracy further…have you ever noticed what a helix looks like when tilted downwards and at you at about 30deg….it looks like 666….
Make ya think? Eh …..
Tim, Wills etc…no one marches here for their fundamental rights becasue they do not believe in them. This ideology suited many in the good times…can do, flexibility, never say no etc etc… So the next best thing to march for are their benefits. In this way, the PS have a stable narrativeand now when I think about this, it probably is the best we have. Maybe it may morph into something which can have national appeal.
In Paris right now. Les Syndicats/ Unions are a powerful lot here and they command respect. The lads have no problem articulating what is right and wrong. Ireland has a lot to learn. That TinTin article really illustrates what is wrong here. What is wrong with those nutters in Sligo? Why do we support our gangsters? Definately it’s the DNA the elite need. maybe they are being bred specially?
I watched a program on the BBC recently about genetics.
To me, it suggested that mixed race people had many health advantages – because the genes of the mother and father were so different.
It also said something about the invention of the bike had huge impact on peoples gene makeup, as people could travel further. like less inbred.
Are you rich if you earn 100,000 Euro a year?
Personally I’d say yes, how crazy did Irish people get with borrowings? It’s a long way down from there
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/charlie-weston/charlie-weston-euro100000-is-not-rich-when-the-bills-are-huge-1953730.html
Blue Moments :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdCIsMeA8eY
Monsieur Verdoux :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCUsWaXVlS8
Auditioning for Chalie Chaplin Role a la Irlandaise urgently awaiting .
Pleas Queue …
John ALLEN :
In ref too post on ‘time’ yesterday it struck me overnight something of possible interest.
The invention of the clock as a device for’ time keeping’ is lost.
The banks use the clock as a device for ‘time making’ turning it into a tool into a weapon.
For anyone using the clock as a ‘time maker’ is a lock.
And mechanization follows and banking tyranny.
Truth really is stranger than fiction.
Ditherer has insulted the Irish nation many times. But appointing the Drumcondra Don as a visiting professor to anything, even a kindergarten, is a bit much.
Clearly the academic profession in NUIM are not amused at this latest stunt .
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2009/1126/1224259488850.html?via=mr
Contributors – anybody prepared to speculate on what exactly Bertosconi will be lecturing the great and good about. All contributions welcome (sic).
I presume he will not be a Professor in English, anyway. And definitely not economics.
well be won’t be lecturing on the Celtic Tiger success anymore.
The Sunday Times reported that he was asked to remove it from his list of lectures by an American speakers organisation of which Mr. Ahern is one of the performers.
I believe one of the titles from his suite of lecturees is Prime Minister as CEO or something………..
Ahern was in Honduras earlier this year speaking to the ‘great and good’ before the crash, interesting that there is a coup there now……………..
“Former taoiseach Ahern and his mangy tiger were in Central America this week, delivering a keynote lecture to the Honduran National Business Council. It was entitled The Celtic Tiger: The Irish Model of Development.
Back in Ireland, as politicians bickered while the economy spiralled further out of control; as the banking system went into meltdown and citizens took to the streets in protest, there was no sign of the man who took the nation from boom to bust, leaving others to deal with the resultant mess.
Lucky Bertie was being feted in Tegucigalpa, capital city of Honduras. He was star turn on Thursday night in the 700-seater La Concordia ballroom of the Marriot Hotel, telling the great and good of Honduras how to replicate the great economic magic he worked back home.
Tickets were $150, dress code was “formal suits” and cocktails were served after Senor Bertie’s speech.
An advert in the Spanish-language La Tribuna newspaper alerted business movers and shakers to the Ahern visit. “From Confrontation to Dialogue; From Dialogue to Development” was the heading, with a photo of El Bert smiling out at them.
It said: “Nothing about the dramatic situation in the Republic of Ireland at the start of the 20th century – with their recently acquired independence, hurt by tragic levels of inflation, massive emigration and alarming levels of unemployment – could have foretold their sudden transformation from ‘the Cinderella of Europe’ to what we now know as ‘the Celtic Tiger’.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0221/1224241586161.html
Great info G, the chap ought too provide stick on his professor list ‘ghettoisation – an urban mechanism for populace de facing.
Here you go Deco, should point you in the right direction, had to do a bit of looking in the files :-)
From The Sunday Times August 2, 2009
“Bertie Ahern told to drop the Tiger
The former taoiseach has abandoned a speech on how the Irish economy became the envy of the world
It’s the final nail in our economic coffin and some would argue that it is long overdue — Bertie Ahern has dropped a lecture titled The Celtic Tiger: the Irish Model of Development from his portfolio of after-dinner speeches.
The former taoiseach, who is signed up with the Washington Speakers Bureau (WSB) as an after-dinner orator, has been advised to change the script. Now he’s offering nuggets of wisdom in a new speech entitled Prime Minister as CEO.
Ahern gave the Celtic tiger speech, which documents how the underperforming Irish economy became the envy of the world, at a function in Honduras earlier this year. Local businessmen paid €110 each to hear him speak at the 700-seater La Concordia ballroom of the Marriott Hotel, Tegucigalpa, on February 19 where he was introduced as the “driver of the economic model”.
On the same day as Ahern was reliving former glories, the government he used to lead was reeling from revelations that a “Golden Circle” was allowed to borrow €300m from Anglo Irish Bank to buy shares in the bank as the Irish banking crisis erupted.”
Full article –
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article6735961.ece
Deco -
What come s to mind is Anglia university and its black op’s research unit organizing central for the fake green tyranny ushering in ‘earth gov’ and a global carbon tax.
Bertie ‘s professorship from this understanding above makes sense, its his next step.
check it out wills, ghettoisation of the world, been going on since time began.
The corporates don’t turn out so well Mr. McWilliams if you can take the time to open your eyes. Maybe you’ll have a ‘Damascus moment’, I live in hope.
John Pilger – New Rulers of the World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8firb73r67g&feature=related
Checkin it out G, thanks.
I like that line about this being the modern version of the divine right of kings. Religion and faith have been the main instruments of control for centuries, only recently (but not fully) displaced by the religion of consumption.
Liam –
I would contend it is the ‘dictatorship of science’ which is most effective wielding control.
Liam -
check out John ALLENs posts on TIME and my comments.
Mechanization is the killer blow been delivered by what no less than Churchill himself forewarned us all on ‘perverted science’.
Or in Irelands case, as on from to day, beware of the PAedo – Police – cleric state.
How about Taxation studies ?
Or what about Mathematics. It took real genius to go to one race meeting and come back with 35 grand. Yes, he can give a lecture “How to beat the laws of probability and win loads of money at the horses “
Deco :
The ‘Th’ as promulgated by the Irish Monks never met his lips.
YOLA :
Deco’s Library
The Absence of ‘Th’ in the north dublin accent is as a result of the Dutch Merchants trading there and in south Wexford ( Kilmore Quay) and their patois derived from Dutch /Irish/French/ and English a version known as YOLA .
The significance of this is that ‘D’ surplanted the ‘Th’ and thus the social schism in Dublin arose between the north and the south ( D4) or more precisely the ‘d’ and the ‘th’ . Perhaps you could argue that it all happend due to the invasion of Tulips …..or Dulips ….or Thulips ….or whatever.
De ‘Th’itherer ?
It is not Ahern’s accent that it is the problem. Apart from that as Ross O’Carroll Kelly has shown, affluence can make one grammatically challenged. So this has nothing to do with Ahern being a Northsider. No, this is strictly Bertie Ahern’s method of communication.
The problem is that when he is speaking he is, at times, mildly incomprehensible. He cannot structure his sentences so as to make them comprehensible. But maybe that is the general idea.
I contend that most Irish people will not vote for someone who speaks clearly and eloquently. My guess is that well spoken people are viewed with suspicion my ordinary people.
By speaking ineloquently, Bertie endears himself to “de ordinary folk” who see him as one of their own. Its his act of inverted snobbery.
Does Gordon Brown speak like Billy Connolly? Does Tony Blair speak like Jimmy Nail? Does Kevin Rudd speak like Paul Hogan?
Wills :
I never wear a watch. I consider a weapon of mass distruction .Do animals wear them ?When I roamed the deserts on my camel in the 80′s the stars at night told me everything.Once you learn to disown a watch your celestial cranium shows the way .Its magic. The song Moon River comes to mind in these dangerous moments that we are living now under ‘the shadow’.
In the Arab world time means nothing even in business unless you are flying.An appointment might be for a thursday today or another …….who knows which one we will see .Does it matter?
If we as a society in Ireland can re-discover the code of time we will return to where we belong.That is why I repeat ‘the code of before time and after time ie da wu yu code ‘ In old Irish it was experienced as ‘Imram’ . Many gaelic speakers even have never heard of it. Thats sad.
“If we as a society in Ireland can re-discover the code of time we will return to where we belong”
Are you talking about punctuality, an attribute most Irish people have no understanding of? How many times have you agreed to meet someone somewhere at a given time and when you attend, they’ve not turned up? How many times has someone told you, “I’ll be there in 10 minutes, but 20 minutes later they still haven’t arrived? This is rude and selfish behaviour, which smacks of over self-importance. I remember going for an interview and I arrived on time, and was only told to take a seat – no explaination, no updates, no offer of a cup of tea/coffee/water, so after 30 mins I got up and left. Girl from employment agency rang me the following day, and was outraged that I got up and left, so I told her to go take a run and jump.
I see that Dubai has just run out of money .
Bad news for the Russian prostitutes there.
That monument to greed built on slavery and exploitation is falling, shame on those who benefitted off the backs of the abused.
Dark Side of Dubai
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html
Dubai: Minor upset in playground of the rich – or first domino of new crash?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/26/dubai-first-domino-new-crash
Colin- feel your pulse and learn to enjoy as the blood flows.
Ommmmmm, Ommmmmm, Ommmmmm, Ommmmmm.
Colin : Nothing is perfect in your mindset .You know I know that and so do you after all you are a virgo and thats the way it is suppose to be.Try the inverse of this and have a new experience and maybe you will learn better what I mean.
Da Time Code :
I would like you to share in the moments of now what I mean.In Dubai perceived defaults are happening in their banking.Watch how they cope with their problem and they will not create a NAMA like FF did .They play with Time . This is their secret its a desert survival technique.
They also clean their arse will pebbles after they deficate.
colin – exactly and the sun burns their memories on the stones unlike ireland where water holds them in.
If we had more sunshine we would not have had NAMA
Posters-
Every where we look now we have scientific experts shoving down out throats what we should be doing for this and that and the other.
And copenhagen is round the corner and its nothing but impotent experts faking green tyranny as an excuse to box us all into an ‘earth gov’ and go to town setting up a techno geek scientific dictatorship fluttering around with DNA and GM with their scalpels and test tubes.
God help us.
Dubai is defaulting on it’s national payments and thats what we should have done and become free again.My desert camel ( named Nadeen) would be proud if she were alive now unlike her Irish cousin owned by Padraic O’ Conaire ( names Naidin) . Dubai will show us what we should have done and take note of these passing events as they occur.
John ALLEN, we can still do the same.
Just say “No”.
Nadeen & Neidin :
The analogy of these beautiful creatures is very relevant to our ‘power of Now’.Both are beasts of burden and their owners were related from another time in the past as their names indicate a similarity in sound .
The former mainly worked under the scorching sun and travelled long distances while the latter worked in undulating terrain and usually under the rain and travelled short distances.
When Adam Smith bestowed to us the ‘factors of production’ he did it from a background of poverty and his ideas served a purpose then .Today the factors of production are the same as they were before the industrial revolution and the same before sentient man arrived on our shores and they are :
Fire
Water
Earth
Air
Nadeen is Fire factor because she removes and distroys what we want her to do and she also can create a new life again.In Dubai this is the factor that the Arabs will play to remove their burdened debts and send them out a long distance into the desert to be given to the sun and the memories scorched for eternity.Then they become free again and re create a new life once more like they always have done since earliest time.Nothing has changed only the ideas are replayed again with another camel.Under the ‘blue moon’ these arabs read their heavens like they drink their tea and they use this as a power of decision process as it is imbued in their lifestyle.The only memories Arabs hold is ‘Gold’ because they believe they hold the sun in their hands in doing so.
Neidin is a Water factor .She moves within the same area and never far away so she preserves memories and her water tight profile copper fastens that .She cannot remove away what we want to eliminate or distroy so she assists in the preservations of an old time and in a way hinders that progress to new ways we need to adapt to.Neidin is NAMA product we are stuck with and bog like and imbues the demeanour of our bog like political leaders .So how can we change as a nation when all heads are under water and our political leaders on TV ( B&B) are holding their breaths with fastened lips and uplifting chests because the know they are drowning in debt.Until their Debt do us part.
John ALLEN -
Fire = Agression
Water = Erotic power
Earth = Food
Air = Breathing
When each person brings a working balance to these 4 moving forward interesting alchemy takes place.
Sustainable Capitalism, don’t think so Mr. Gore………………….
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1b1067b2-dacd-11de-933d-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
G -
These guys are something. Gore ‘s neck is ‘ jockeys arse’,… this carbon credit market is going to be the biggest POnzi scam the rigged capitalist system ‘s going too game on the pop of the planet. And copenhagen is its inception. While all else are picking up the pieces of banking tyranny’s last POnzi scam the next one is been wheeled out.
Maybe the ‘climategate’ emails scandel will stop this madness.
Thanks Wills, G & Malcolm
That link was very interesting
Posters -
The glass bottle site is turning into a ticking time bomb.
Over at FInfacts the investigation into the facts is throwing up fascinating facts and making links leading down interesting by ways.
http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1018415.shtml
Wills :
Astro-strict interpretation reads:
Fire – Capital
Air – Labour
Water – Management
Earth – Land
UL – Limerick University is flooded already in some buildings and the shannon is rising rapidly now
John: St. Columcille/Columba (521-597)
Prediction:
Seven years before the last day, the sea shall submerge Eirin [Ireland] in one inundation.
Is this it?
Malcolm – This is The Siege of Limerick re-enacted and we have no Sarsfield to save us.
It is becoming very scarey and dangerous now .
John,
And the Walls of Ennis are now the Waterfalls of Vennis.
Forget Dubai – The Dubai regime will find some way yo remortgage their building projects – based on oil revenues and finance.
This is the next shoe to drop. And it will cause Euro area interest rates to rocket. It sould also be titled “how not to run a stimulus plan”. Some of these projects are of no social utility and constitute zero in terms of public infrastructure.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a6BySqxg8kqM&pos=13
This is a disaster waiting to happen. There is something seriously wrong with the Spanish economy. At some stage it is going to come to a screeching halt and the finances will just stop. Then the Euro will be in serious trouble. And interest rates will have to shoot up.
Auf Wiedersehn – green shoots !!!
Of course on the other hand there is the curse of Gordon Brown. Basically every time that Gordon Brown tries to talk up the situation, things start going downhill. the Gordon Brown put usually means there is a serious attempt being made to mislead the public.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/6669430/Gordon-Brown-says-world-economy-strong-enough-to-cope-with-Dubai-debt-problems.html
The Lenihan put usually means there is an amatuerish attempt being made to mislead the public….
Dubai = Another POnzi property bubble scam bites the ‘dust’ and A.I.G’s nifty Regularity Arbitrage has made a bunch of arabs richer than their wildest dreams.
Maybe its time for “the specials”…….http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ2oXzrnti4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ2oXzrnti4
Ok… I have not watched that,yet…. but, I’m betting it’s “Ghost-Town”
Am I right?
(Oh, just click on the linke, Tim, and find out…….)
Lol…. ‘knew I was right………
Good-one, Tull McAdoo!
Back in that era, I knew everything-there-was-to-know about music…….. lost it now; responsibilities drive it out of you: they did, me.
42, and music (which I once considered to be my “life-blood”, has now become rather a “luxury”.)
How sad.
You need to tell the kids that Santa is Lemmy and the Tooth Fairy is Angus Young .
A Dirty Three gig ( although rare ) keeps the blood flowing .
Posters:
ANIB (state owned) is suing DDDA (state owned) for interest non payed on the glass bottle site loan two of the developers involved own but have stopped paying cos they’ve done a runner.
http://www.independent.ie/business/commercial-property/south-wharf-site-will-give-more-realistic-view-on-property-values-1731197.html
Heres a pi of one of these property speculators suing us / taxpayer.
http://images.google.ie/imgres?imgurl=http://www.independent.ie/multimedia/archive/00183/mcnamara_183507t.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/property-plus/a-big-beast-of-irish-property-pulls-in-his-horns-1385780.html&usg=__zw8-Fo8fV6u0B4EF528Tnb_PbtE=&h=249&w=294&sz=13&hl=en&start=2&sig2=2bQq0nSS3tjLesFidoku4Q&itbs=1&tbnid=E16FqezqxBW_CM:&tbnh=97&tbnw=115&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbernard%2Bmcnamara%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG&ei=4DwQS5z1LpOQjAfmmqWTBA
http://www.us-irelandalliance.org/user-assets/Images/08_Scholars_Foley/Morrissey_Moira_Bernard_Foley.jpg
another pic here.
another pic here al having a good ol time.
http://images.google.ie/imgres?imgurl=http://www.hiberniacollege.net/Portals/0/images/JMC%2520BMN%2520SR.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.hiberniacollege.net/LinkClick.aspx%3Flink%3D233%26tabid%3D184%26mid%3D417&usg=__D566Kg901MtWlgp0QFEyzkopNyQ=&h=200&w=300&sz=90&hl=en&start=15&sig2=H2A5O93k_l8l5za015C9_w&itbs=1&tbnid=7a39RddK6lAs8M:&tbnh=77&tbnw=116&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbernard%2Bmcnamara%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG&ei=4DwQS5z1LpOQjAfmmqWTBA
heres pic of the three amigos behind glass bottle site.
http://images.google.ie/imgres?imgurl=http://www.independent.ie/multimedia/archive/00082/glassact_82476t.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.independent.ie/business/a-glass-act-692599.html&usg=__NMLQ1AQgfb9u6rdm_eVAtu_S6V4=&h=97&w=294&sz=8&hl=en&start=2&sig2=PGHCE-6eDb6htspbu-YgrQ&itbs=1&tbnid=R6JSbOvi9j4JEM:&tbnh=38&tbnw=115&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpaul%2Bcoulson%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG&ei=v0EQS_CwBeK5jAe4qOTWCQ
scratch sean quinn.
South Wharf, under the control of paul coulson, bagged 280 million euro’s purely on sale of the lease relating to glass bottle site.
Keeping in mind the carry ANIB and AIB on the hook for 300 million on providing the funding.
wills, brilliant. Thank you.
How about RED RAIN classic :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynr8R9G2e9w
Dubai Conundrum :
When I was working with Arab bankers in the 80′s under the tutelage of Abu Dhabai Ruler Sheik Zaid the building of Dubai had already begun from the desert sand .Then it was thought impossible ,however the flow of oil and it’s reserves had to be spent and Dubai was running low on it’s own oil reserves.The Emerates were weak and needed a family helping hand .
I remember visiting a newly constructed Office block and mingling among the guests .I was searching for the new owner and was told he was not among those present in the building but I could find him outside .So I went outside to congratulate him.
He was inside a big tent pegged to the sand that was surrounding the building and dressed in his traditional garb and had a goati .His tent was immaculate and he was seated beside his gold ornated electric telephone.He told me it was his pride and joy in his tent .I saw the electric cable running into the sand so I asked him where did the cable connect to the main line .He said ‘ the cable goes into the sand and thats it and Allah is good ‘.He pulled the line up to reveal it was not connected and pushed it back into the sand with his fingers .He smiled and held the phone in his hand like it was his favourite toy.He would put the phone to his ear and frequently say ‘hello’ .Perhaps he was talking to Allah I dont know .It was very clear he was not interested in his new building he just did it because his bankers told him so.He was a man of the desert and his camel was his companion.
Dubai is a land of desert and hot sun and thats it and nothing will change that .Civilisations have been known to be buried underneath the Sahara and history repeats itself.
The Sun burns everything including debts owing to the world.Soon you will see the wisdom of this old man who does not need a long telephone cable to live an Arab life in the desert to remind him of his commitments .Allah is good to the merciful.
Unlike our feckin’ Galway bedouins and their tents…
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/we-should-not-be-so-negative-insists-cowen-1957036.html
I reckon it’s reached a point now were Cowen will utter any nonsense jibberish out loud cos he is so busy uttering to himself at a knot speed so fast he can’t stop himself.