21/6/2011 Irish Independent Millward Brown Lansdowne poll: FG 42 +6 Labour 19 -- FF 16 -1 SF 11 +1 Ind/Other 13 -4

[ang]

Regional vote and 100 days verdict.

Are people really that happy with austerity ?

[Sidewinder]

I think they're really just happy that those gangsters in FF are gone. And that Enda really isn't the total eejit the FF meeja were making him out to be before the election.

It's the polls next Spring that will tell the tale.

And the Budget will be the most important bit. If it actually concentrates on tackling waste and corruption and closing tax loopholes for the wealthy, instead of sociopathically kicking the poor, which is what people got used to under St Lendahand, then people might actually approve of further austerity budgets.

[morticia]

Some red tape cutting would be good. We really don't need most of it (financial regulation excepted).

[Sidewinder]

It's all those armies of middle management in the likes of the HSE that could do with a good cull. You could probably save a couple of billion just by going through that place like a dose of salts.

Then the dodgy practices of sweetheart inflated supply deals. Probably another billion or so to be saved there. Vouched expenses. Cut advertising and PR and hospitality budgets. Endless quangos.

Plenty of low-hanging fruit that wouldn't involve affecting front-line services at all.

We'll see later in the year whose side this Govt is actually on.

[C. Flower]

It's all those armies of middle management in the likes of the HSE that could do with a good cull. You could probably save a couple of billion just by going through that place like a dose of salts.

Then the dodgy practices of sweetheart inflated supply deals. Probably another billion or so to be saved there. Vouched expenses. Cut advertising and PR and hospitality budgets. Endless quangos.

Plenty of low-hanging fruit that wouldn't involve affecting front-line services at all.

We'll see later in the year whose side this Govt is actually on.

I strongly agree with you that there's a vast amount of wastage. There are also some appalling gaps in services. But I see very little sign of change under the new government, and they are very good at making cuts in front line stuff.

[Apjp]

I strongly agree with you that there's a vast amount of wastage. There are also some appalling gaps in services. But I see very little sign of change under the new government, and they are very good at making cuts in front line stuff.

i think its interesting how much the likes of right wingers like capt.con and sidewinder would go to to avoid austerity/minimalize it yet we see centrist neo liberal puppets doing whatever the bogeymen tell them to. a democracy might be worth saving if we could have parties led by the likes of cass on the left and con and side on the right. at least it would cement social justice desires across the board like denmark has done by and large. as peadar toibin said, the right in that country is still left of labour. he told me sf were after the nordic model, which would still be light years better than where we are at atm, even if socialism remained the long term goal for many on the far left like meself.

[Sidewinder]

i think its interesting how much the likes of right wingers like capt.con and sidewinder would go to to avoid austerity/minimalize it

I'm a right-winger? I'd be more of a sort of anarcho-republican libertarian I always thought

Kicking the poor while providing billions for corrupt (and incompetent) connected insiders is just wrong, and only someone with seriously skewed mental issues could support that kind of nonsense. I don't think it's a matter of left or right, just a matter of common sense, fairness, justice and accountability.

I can't stand corruption and the connected leeching off the rest of society, while hypocritically spouting off about the "need for austerity"....for the poor.

I also know that market externalities exist despite the cartoonish wailing of the neo-liberal nutters, and that there is as such a need for a strong well-funded and effective State sector to do the things deemed socially desirable that the market would never provide. I've been railing against the corrupt privitisation of critical networks (water, power, transport, telecoms) since the 1980s so I don't know how "right wing" that is either....

....but in order for the State to have the moral authority and ability to do these things properly, it can't be getting involved in croney capitalism, rigging markets, protecting insiders, artificially skewing prices...or keeping armies of useless clipboard merchants in a cushty job for life for no real benefit to the nation.

[Apjp]

I'm a right-winger? I'd be more of a sort of anarcho-republican libertarian I always thought

Kicking the poor while providing billions for corrupt (and incompetent) connected insiders is just wrong, and only someone with seriously skewed mental issues could support that kind of nonsense. I don't think it's a matter of left or right, just a matter of common sense, fairness, justice and accountability.

I can't stand corruption and the connected leeching off the rest of society, while hypocritically spouting off about the "need for austerity"....for the poor.

I also know that market externalities exist despite the cartoonish wailing of the neo-liberal nutters, and that there is as such a need for a strong well-funded and effective State sector to do the things deemed socially desirable that the market would never provide. I've been railing against the corrupt privitisation of critical networks (water, power, transport, telecoms) since the 1980s so I don't know how "right wing" that is either....

....but in order for the State to have the moral authority and ability to do these things properly, it can't be getting involved in croney capitalism, rigging markets, protecting insiders, artificially skewing prices...or keeping armies of useless clipboard merchants in a cushty job for life for no real benefit to the nation.

I apologize. In my politics you are a right winger as im hopping around on the fringes of middle-hard left. Perhaps you are economically, a keynesian social democrat, perhaps you just have a political conscience. Like i said it all depends on what is right wing side? In denmark, as i said, right wing is SF actually carrying out promises. Not a bad compromise in the medium term even for communists.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

i think its interesting how much the likes of right wingers like capt.con and sidewinder would go to to avoid austerity/minimalize it yet we see centrist neo liberal puppets doing whatever the bogeymen tell them to. a democracy might be worth saving if we could have parties led by the likes of cass on the left and con and side on the right. at least it would cement social justice desires across the board like denmark has done by and large. as peadar toibin said, the right in that country is still left of labour. he told me sf were after the nordic model, which would still be light years better than where we are at atm, even if socialism remained the long term goal for many on the far left like meself.

I wouldn't describe myself as a rightwinger apjp- I get along with socialists because I recognise their starting point of correcting an imbalance in social justice but that doesn't mean I'm any kind of Reaganite/Thatcherite or progressive democrat.

I agree very much with sidewinder that the ghost estates will be knocked down and returned to agricultural land as I predict a boom in agriland values over the next ten to twenty years as longtailed supply lines come under fuel price pressures and farming locally becomes viable again.

I'm convinced that the fact that Ireland is essentially a large farm with low population density is making Ireland a target again for British landowners and politicians as much as it was in the 17th century.

Might sound mad now but I suspect the emerging economics of local food production is behind the sudden charm offensive from the high population density island next door with its 70million population.

We might see a rerun of some very old dynamics from our neighbour with regard to Irish agricultural land I've a feeling... not to mention our relative lack of carbon producing industry making us a high rater for carbon credits in the emerging energy economy of Europe.

I doubt our politicians are intelligent enough to protect the state in this emerging new reality nor are they straight enough to resist corruption so we may not be in a position to benefit nationally from some quite positive indicators borne out of our very underdeveloped land in the near to middle future.

[Slim Buddha]

I doubt our politicians are intelligent enough to protect the state in this emerging new reality nor are they straight enough to resist corruption so we may not be in a position to benefit nationally from some quite positive indicators borne out of our very underdeveloped land in the near to middle future.

Our politicians were not intelligent enough to capitalise on the improving real economy from 1994-2000 and the FF-PD tendency towards corruption and undermining the institutions of the state and looking after cronies at all costs has taken an enormous toll on this country. The current lot are uninspiring and the vision you have outlined for economic development seems reasonable, Capt. Our atrophied political structures have proven to be inadequate in the last 15 years and our politicians and our politics will continue to fail until these structures are radically overhauled.

[Fraxinus]

In the long and short term something needs to be done about land as well. This "land industry" that so many indulge in has brought the country to its knees and is one of the main reasons why everything in this country is so expensive, including wages. No more speculating should be done on it and profits from its sale should be taxed to the max. The notion that someone can just inherit land to sell off at a huge profit for doing absolutely nothing is a national scandal and unrepublican.

[Sidewinder]

Unpicking NAMA will probably take them years, but yeah the obsession with land and property speculation needs to be destroyed if the country is to have any future.

They need to go all the way back to the TACA-inspired planning acts of 1963 onwards, encourage property prices to reach a real floor ASAP, dismantle all the supports for high property and rental prices and ways of siphoning taxpayers money to landowners....there's another couple of billion in savings right there.

Unlikely we'll see FG do anything about it but you never know.,

[Apjp]

Unpicking NAMA will probably take them years, but yeah the obsession with land and property speculation needs to be destroyed if the country is to have any future.

They need to go all the way back to the TACA-inspired planning acts of 1963 onwards, encourage property prices to reach a real floor ASAP, dismantle all the supports for high property and rental prices and ways of siphoning taxpayers money to landowners....there's another couple of billion in savings right there.

Unlikely we'll see FG do anything about it but you never know.,

side if im honest id make NAMA a short term national assets redistribution agency. With the NARA id simply implement mass nationalization and redistribution of land ownership. the state would run all viable hotels and shopping centres, the quinn insurance co. group etc. and all the extra houses could be knocked down for land to be used again under new collectivized farming. then id abolish it. I mean how long could that really take if it werent for our common law system which protects the wealthy? the houses cant be inhabited unfortunately but land can always be farmed.

[Apjp]

Regional vote and 100 days verdict.

Are people really that happy with austerity ?

i agree with sidewinder on the whodunnit mantra. gonna be at least 1 year til govt faces backlash. the smugness can only be tempered if norris gets elected and causes problems signing bills into law.

[Sidewinder]

The mass demolitions of pointless ghost estates in the likes of Roscommon and the return of the land to agricultural usage is only a matter of time Apjp!

It's been inevitable ever since the 2006 census uncovered 200,000+ vacant units, but as usual in Ireland it takes years and years of wandering round in circles talking nonsense before the obvious and inevitable course of action is ever even allowed to be discussed...

Using some of those empty hotels and shopping centres for useful productive community purposes will also happen. If you had two beside one another you could have a very interesting experiment in encouraging microenterprise and new SMEs with low costs and free living space right next door...3 years later you could have hundreds of small companies making a living, providing jobs and paying tax and then those people can move out of the hotel and commercial spaces to stand on their own two feet, let the next wave of people in...