I found your entry interesting thus I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog :)…

‘We even have a scheme where we deduct 2 hours per week off the employees pay and every 4 weeks they get an extra day off and thats on top of their holiday entitlement .’

What you describe is forced unpaid leave. This practise is used by companies to save on their wage bill but it’s nothing to boast about. And if it wasn’t in addition to their holiday entitlement it would actually be a wage cut. So, why mention it?

Bottom line: – all influencers (all instruments: – bonds, CDS, derivatives etc) should be regulated.
http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/books/michael-lewis-the-big-short-makes-big_100334948.html
On Bloomberg this morning.
http://www.amazon.com/Big-Short-Inside-Doomsday-Machine/dp/0393072231

The story of Mary Harney’s crusade to reform the Health service may go down in history as a disaster ranking alongside NAMA.
Mary Harney was a simple farmers daughter (we are told) who rose to high office in the neo-liberal party so called “Progressive Democrats”.Her party was founded to oppose corruption during the Charles J. Haughey Era. Corruption was an art form under his reign.As with all small “reformist” parties in Ireland, (The Green Party?) her wee outfit eventually held the balance of power,and were subsumed into the Fianna Fail party, to ensure that Fianna Fail continued their dark night of corruption, under Charles Haughey-and later-his heir designate, Bartholmew Ahern!
She set out her policy stall endless years ago. Privatise Health Provide huge incentives for builders and developers and wealthy businessmen to build new private hospitals.She even gave them the land for free, conveniently located beside the existing structures, so that the Consultants could continue “double jobbing”, hopping into the public service to do the odd procedure, while beavering away in the lucrative private operating theatres next door.!
She was-she said- going to make fundamental reforms in a totally dis-functional government department,and like a latter day Joan of Arc sallied forth with a budget of 16 billion Euros to create a new,equally wasteful,bureaucracy; with the grandiose title “HSE” (Health Service Executive).
She appointed numerous cronies to the job. They went on worldwide junkets and stayed in five star hotels swilling the best wines ,while “studying” the health services in other nations.Two of their top executives indulged in a street brawl outside a well known city pub (Ryan’s Parkgate Street).One suffered broken bones and sued his drinking colleague for hundreds of thousands of Euros.The Health executive gave the assailant a huge golden handshake.He used it to pay off the injured party and this ensured the matter (although written about in the media) would never see the light of day in the Four goldmines.
She left the public service unions in charge of the public hospitals and all their accompanying bureaucracy. Nothing changed.She simply created a new layer of “apparatcheks” to oversee the existing lot.She made nobody redundant.This just doubled the cost of running the same dreary old service.it doubled-nay quadrupled- the waiting lists for surgery.the citizens-frightened by horror stories of dirty ,virus ridden, public hospital wards- rushed to join the VHI, Ireland’s (until recently) private health insurance monopolist (part owned by the government and the consultants themselves). She then tried to stem the rising cost of private health insurance by legislating for “competition”. Competition arrived from John Bull’s country (BUPA), but left shortly afterwards when they discovered the would have to pay half of their profits to the former monopolist whose elderly clientele were understandably nervous that saving a few hundred Euros a year by joining the new outfit, would not result in BUPA having an inordinately strong commitment to look after them in their ( medically expensive) old age..
So the old stayed put, and some of the healthy moved, but BUPA had had enough of the unique Irish mish-mash of socialism-capitalism in the Health arena, and they sailed back across the channel.
Enter one of our very own cute hoor businessmen who saw an opportunity.
Sean Quinn, a buccaneering tycoon (and would-be-owner of Anglo Irish Bank) was the man who made a billion when he broke the CRH cement monopoly in CJH’s Ireland some years past.
He had his eyes on all those premiums from the young workers who would pay him lots of dosh now-for decades in fact- before entering their golden years when he would have to give some of it back.A great business, the insurance industry,shure he might be dead by the time the came looking for heart surgery.Their pension funds had just been decimated,(2009)and they were slow to take out costly private health insurance. Sure the new company could go out of business before they were old and grey. Mary was in a dilemma. Foundations laid by the developers to screw the families who were now in negative equity and worse-unemployed-what to do now.?
Well Sean went to the Four Goldmines and challenged Mary’s misconceived cross subsidy plan, which was a total disaster. He is now able to spend millions in the media touting his cheaper health insurance.The former state monopolist is left carrying the can for the cost of keeping alive a growing number of older fogies. The demographics are not good. As the VHI struggles with it’s mounting burden, and annual renewal premiums continue to rise in double digits, their survival is far from guaranteed. What then Mary.? At least you will be a happy pensioner (on your obscene Dail pension)

Expressing surprise at it is, I think, legitimate.

In fact, it was so surprising, it appears it may now become a matter for Harney’s lawyers.

That does not mean that I should pretend that I like Harney as a politician. What she presides over in her department (but accepts no responsibility for) is a disgraceful litany of failures.

What have children got to do with it, Paddy? Everything, if they need treatment in Crumlin Childrens’ Hospital, Paddy.

He said, these people might come across as nice, you may even consider going for a beer with them, however, you must not forget that they are part of a monstrous system.

This can be said of Lenihan and the rest, sometimes he does come across well, but he is indeed part of a monstrous system that allows Shannon to be use by US forces, sees Ireland involved in the arms industry, sees the State selling off our natural resources for a song, a system that failed to regulate and curb the greedy excesses of the financial instutitions, a State that failed to regenerate the inner cities and provide decent accommodation for those who need it (breaking the cycle pf poverty and crime), a government who tried to implement the medical card cuts, succeeded in cutting benefits for the blind, disabled, unemployed, impoverished, bailout out the banks to the tune of billions (with little to no string attached), are proposing further bailouts to the tune of €54 billion (NAMA), is a slave to the markets, FDI and multinationals – this is indeed a MONSTROUS system.

I don’t see what kids have to do with this debate, but for the record, I have children, so stop making incorrect assumptions, and deal with the issue in hand please.

Why can’t you condemn this slur on Mary Harney? To make things worse, McCafferty then mentions the death of Mary Harney’s mother. I think this is a disgrace ; that is none of her business. I would condemn this kind of gutter radio, regardless of who the person being slurred is.

Paddy