Vinne Browne on Gilmore & Rabbitt

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Firefly

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A rather scathing attack from another leftie. Is it all going Pete Tong for Labour?

[broken link removed]
 
Labour will be eviscerated at the next election,no problem for Tweedledum and Tweedledee as they will waddle off into the sunset with fine big pensions.
 
Labour are a disaster of a party - little more than a mouthpiece for their Union paymasters. Their refusal to tear up the Croker agreement will cost them dear.

But who will replace them? I cant see FG hooking up with SF/IRA, so it could well be a FG/FF coalition.
 
The next red c poll will be awaited nervously by the current Government partners , the last poll showed Labour marginally up at 14 %.

Labour have never fallen below 10% since 1989 & I think that " evisceration " of the Party is unlikely - it was , to my mind , apparent that a lot of Public Sector votes were garnered by FG & Labour in the last election based on the fact that both Parties undertook to honour the Croke Park Agreement.

On the basis that Labour are viewed generally as being more committed to the CPA than FG I would imagine that their support within the Public Sector electorate rump will increase.

Much is of course dependant on putative forthcoming negotiations on CPA 2 & the electorates reluctance to commit more fully to the appalling Sinn Fein.

Perhaps the most obvious answer to the current Government's prayers is that things will have improved by 2015 thereby increasing their chances of capturing the majority of votes.
 
Deiseblue said:
On the basis that Labour are viewed generally as being more committed to the CPA than FG I would imagine that their support within the Public Sector electorate rump will increase.
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I agree and the fact the PS numbers swelled in the "Good Times" is ultimately a good thing for Labour.

Sadly, I see CPA 2 focusing on more "efficiencies" with more lumpsum payoffs to early retirement coupled with ever decreasing services. With so many leaving our shores though, the question begs...are we going to run out of taxpayers?
 
Firefly said:
I agree and the fact the PS numbers swelled in the "Good Times" is ultimately a good thing for Labour.

Sadly, I see CPA 2 focusing on more "efficiencies" with more lumpsum payoffs to early retirement coupled with ever decreasing services. With so many leaving our shores though, the question begs...are we going to run out of taxpayers?
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Ah yes the usual, I think you've forgotten again that public sector workers are also taxpayers.
 
Complainer said:
Would that be the same agreement that all three main parties supported in their election manifestos last time round?
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CLAUSE 1.28 of the Croke Park agreement on public service pay and conditions states: “The implementation of this agreement is subject to no currently unforeseen budgetary deterioration.”

Time for the government to grow a spine and invoke that clause.

If they don't, future Irish generations will be burdened with huge debts for the current largesse. Why make our grandchildren pay?

As another poster has pointed out, if unemployment and emigration remain at current levels - it is really only a matter of time before we reach a break point.

The time to act on public sector pay and pensions is now - if we leave it much longer, it will require much much more severe remedial action in the future.
 
dereko1969 said:
Ah yes the usual, I think you've forgotten again that public sector workers are also taxpayers.
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Hi dereko,

Say the government pays out 20bn in salaries & pensions to the public sector. Perhaps 12bn of this will come back in taxes (income, VAT etc). The shortfall of 8bn comes from the private sector. It's these taxpayers that I fear are running out. Sadly the PS cannot fund itself - and this is perfectly understandable - no democratic country in the world has such a public sector. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a well-paid public sector, but strongly feel that it should only be funded from current taxation.

Firefly.
 
Firefly said:
Hi dereko,

Say the government pays out 20bn in salaries & pensions to the public sector. Perhaps 12bn of this will come back in taxes (income, VAT etc). The shortfall of 8bn comes from the private sector. It's these taxpayers that I fear are running out. Sadly the PS cannot fund itself - and this is perfectly understandable - no democratic country in the world has such a public sector. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a well-paid public sector, but strongly feel that it should only be funded from current taxation.

Firefly.
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+1

Taxing the already hard pressed private sector worker is the easy option for the Labour party, rather than addressing massive overspending on social welfare and public sector pay and pensions

In the words of Winston Churchill:

"a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."
 
celebtastic said:
CLAUSE 1.28 of the Croke Park agreement on public service pay and conditions states: “The implementation of this agreement is subject to no currently unforeseen budgetary deterioration.”.
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Could be any clearer.

Brian Lenihan had the courage to bring in the pensions levy.

This reform of the public sector by this government has been pretty poor.
 
Bill Struth said:
OK so, time to act! What do you propose and how much will your proposals save?
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My proposal is another round of benchmarking.

Payrates for similar jobs in the public sector are anything up to 20% higher than equivalent roles in the private sector:
[broken link removed]

Also we need to substantially address our over-generous welfare system. How can a country that is almost broke, afford to pay our young people up to €188 per week to sit at home watching Jeremy Kyle?

For too long we have been bribing ourselves with our own money. By addressing payment rates in the welfare and public sector, we can make the cuts we need without damaging frontline services.
 
celebtastic said:
My proposal is another round of benchmarking.

Payrates for similar jobs in the public sector are anything up to 20% higher than equivalent roles in the private sector:
[broken link removed]

Also we need to substantially address our over-generous welfare system. How can a country that is almost broke, afford to pay our young people up to €188 per week to sit at home watching Jeremy Kyle?

For too long we have been bribing ourselves with our own money. By addressing payment rates in the welfare and public sector, we can make the cuts we need without damaging frontline services.
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From your link:

But statisticians warned the analysis does not compare similar jobs between the public and private sectors.
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celebtastic said:
My proposal is another round of benchmarking.
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Although I've called for this before, I don't think this is the answer. Making salaries in the public sector match those in the private sector ignores the numbers of workers in either sector. In our situation with a recently expanded public sector and lots of people unemployed, equating the two salaries could still leave us unable to pay.

Funding government expenditure from current taxation is a better way.

What would it save - hard to estimate without being privy to the figures available to the Dept of Finance.
 
And yet, the public sector unions were perfectly happy to agree such comparators when it suited them during the infamous "benchmarking" excercises,

Remember Joe O'Toole's free ATM?

So much for the "we're all in it together" mullarkey
 
Complainer said:
Ah here, don't let facts get in the way of his argument.
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The fact is that it doesn't really matter that the jobs are different...the employer can't pay for them without borrowing money, which will have to be repaid by your kids and mine. Of course, it might be convenient for some people to tell them it was all down to bailing out the banks..
 
Vincent Browne is in favour of a maximum salary in all sectors (what very successful business owners, authors, artists, musicians, patent holders and people who gamble or trade shares etc are meant to do with their excess income is unclear). He’s spoken glowingly about the 90% income tax rate that the USA had in the 1950’s, though he conveniently ignored all the exemptions that applied and the fact that when index linked it would apply only to incomes over $1.6 million. I won’t comment on his own record in business other to say that it’s not what would be termed as “glowing”.
He is the quintessential smoked salmon socialist; well meaning but destructive to the interests of the people whose interests he earnestly champions. He is destructive not because he’s not clever; he’s a very smart man. He is destructive because he’s blinded by a bankrupt ideology called socialism and he feels betrayed when others who have espoused that dogma come to see that it just doesn’t do what it’s meant to do and so move to a more pragmatic and productive position which may actually help those most in need.
 
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