Hurrah for Syriza!!!

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Firefly

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Anyone else find it interesting how quiet those on the Left of Irish politics (and here ;)) have been following the remarkable victory of the far-Left group Syriza in Greece?

Surely they should have been celebrating the victory of their comrades! After all, Syriza are seeking to implement changes such as raising the minimum wage, obtaining debt relief and even reversing the privatisation of previously owned state companies. What's not to like?!

But wait, what's this I am hearing about bond rates doubling in the past week?
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102379248

And the share price banks falling?
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/markets/europe/article4335494.ece

Oh, and what about the flight of deposits?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...k-deposit-flight-said-to-accelerate-to-record

On a serious note, the Syriza victory could be a blessing for us next year when they will surely have caused such a mess that SF / People Before Profit and the others on the Looney Left won't win the election.

Firefly.
 
Firefly said:
Anyone else find it interesting how quiet those on the Left of Irish politics (and here ;)) have been following the remarkable victory of the far-Left group Syriza in Greece?

Surely they should have been celebrating the victory of their comrades! After all, Syriza are seeking to implement changes such as raising the minimum wage, obtaining debt relief and even reversing the privatisation of previously owned state companies. What's not to like?!

But wait, what's this I am hearing about bond rates doubling in the past week?
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102379248

And the share price banks falling?
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/markets/europe/article4335494.ece

Oh, and what about the flight of deposits?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...k-deposit-flight-said-to-accelerate-to-record

On a serious note, the Syriza victory could be a blessing for us next year when they will surely have caused such a mess that SF / People Before Profit and the others on the Looney Left won't win the election.

Firefly.
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Spot on, Firefly. But it's worse. One of first things Tsipras did on gaining power was to commemorate the communist victims of the Nazis (sorry Godwin's Law:oops:). This was a very crude attempt to try and draw a parallel with the current German position on financial responsibility. He was probably hoping that countries like Italy, Spain and Ireland would warm to this analogy. (Ironically these three countries were sympathetic to Nazi Germany.)

And then he takes a very provocative stance in favour of Russian aggression in Ukraine. This guy is pure Sinn Fein the Workers Party. Syriza might have had a certain well of sympathy up to now but these posturings will surely isolate them.

You are right, great news for Ireland as very quickly indeed the madness of these populists quick fixes will get and have already been getting cruelly exposed.
 
No point in upsetting the applecart Firefly - to a great extent we have a Government of the left for a decade or so ;)

The battle for debt relief continues & the minimum wage is likely to be raised when the commission on low pay publishes it's findings .

I do agree that anything that reflects badly on the extreme left is to be welcomed .
 
Deiseblue said:
I do agree that anything that reflects badly on the extreme left is to be welcomed .
Click to expand...

Well, well....is the soft Left really so fearful of the hard Left?
I know that Higgins, BoydBarret, Murphy etc are always having a pop at Labour, but surely you don't fear that the Union supporting public service workers are going to jump ship and vote for them in any great number?

How would you classify SF out of curiosity? You'd hardly have them down as hard/extreme Left?
 
Delboy said:
Well, well....is the soft Left really so fearful of the hard Left?
I know that Higgins, BoydBarret, Murphy etc are always having a pop at Labour, but surely you don't fear that the Union supporting public service workers are going to jump ship and vote for them in any great number?

How would you classify SF out of curiosity? You'd hardly have them down as hard/extreme Left?
Click to expand...

People , no matter what their political affiliations are , should be wary of the more extreme left wing parties whose views , to my mind , are economically naive & populist but are unfortunately proving popular , as with the rise in support of Independents I feel a curse on all their houses attitude is driving this.

I really have no idea how such a large vote as the Public Sector vote will deploy , I would hazard a guess that given the age profile & the fact that the sector is quite highly educated then a flight of votes to the far left is unlikely - it would appear to me that votes will generally be cast in favour of the established parties , the auctioneering politics of such parties will of course play a part with FG & Labour first to bat with the shortly to be held meeting with the Unions on the possibility of pay cut reductions & the disbandment of FEMPI legislation.

Sinn Fein - as far as I am concerned , are an abomination .
 
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If this is true, Greece are playing a dangerous game and IMO could be booted out of the EU !

"Syriza, the radical left-wing political party that won the Greek parliamentary elections over the weekend, surprised the EU by challenging economic reforms and the sanctions imposed on Russia."

...

"Since the sanctions can't be imposed without all 28 EU countries agreeing, and Greece is ultimately after a debt write-off, some noted that Greece might have taken this stand order to have a bargaining chip against the EU. In other words, Greece could offer to trade the vote needed to pass an additional round of sanctions against Russia in exchange for debt relief."

http://uk.businessinsider.com/greece-syriza-turning-into-europes-nightmare-2015-1

Firefly
 
Agree, a very dangerous move and 1 they didn't have to make.....unless they are so far left that they yearn for the days of the USSR!
 
I think the real fun will start when spain votes in an anti austerity party.....interesting times ahead!
 
Firefly said:
Anyone else find it interesting how quiet those on the Left of Irish politics (and here ) have been following the remarkable victory of the far-Left group Syriza in Greece? Surely they should have been celebrating the victory of their comrades! After all, Syriza are seeking to implement changes such as raising the minimum wage, obtaining debt relief and even reversing the privatisation of previously owned state companies. What's not to like?! .
Click to expand...

This highlights their economic incompetence and confirms their naivety. It’s a “Wait and see how it plays out” approach. If it fails then they’ll just fall back on the “it’s a different economy with different social and economic aims”. ‘If’ Syriza somehow succeed in restarting Greece, then it’ll be camaraderie all round and we’re only a surname away from our Greek brothers.

Duke of Marmalade said:
Spot on, Firefly. But it's worse. One of first things Tsipras did on gaining power was to commemorate the communist victims of the Nazis (sorry Godwin's Law) .
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You really need to stop quoting Godwin’s Law when you don’t understand it.

Duke of Marmalade said:
And then he takes a very provocative stance in favour of Russian aggression in Ukraine. This guy is pure Sinn Fein the Workers Party. Syriza might have had a certain well of sympathy up to now but these posturings will surely isolate them.
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Interesting as Greece owes its inclusion in Europe due to Britain. The British government and Russia held secret talks in how to divide up Europe as the war was coming to an end. Greece was retained as pro-west/Europe whilst Romania/Bulgaria and Hungary were made part of the post war Soviet block. They could well have had a very different past 70 years as ‘part of’ Russia.

Deiseblue said:
People , no matter what their political affiliations are , should be wary of the more extreme left wing parties whose views , to my mind , are economically naive & populist but are unfortunately proving popular , as with the rise in support of Independents I feel a curse on all their houses attitude is driving this…..
Sinn Fein - as far as I am concerned , are an abomination .
Click to expand...

Firefly said:
On a serious note, the Syriza victory could be a blessing for us next year when they will surely have caused such a mess that SF / People Before Profit and the others on the Looney Left won't win the election.
Click to expand...

Couldn’t agree more with these points but as long as the Left & Sinn Fein continue to spout populist, easy swallowed lines then they’ll always have a following.
Just look at the recent debate with Gerry Adams and Joan Burton. Adams had all the rhetoric but no weight to back up his solutions, whereas Burton had relevant stats to back up her points yet Adams was still deemed to have 'won this round'. Some newspapers and online Journalists articles made for bizarre reading afterwards.
 
Mu favorite paragraph...

As it turned out, what the Greeks wanted to do, once the lights went out and they were alone in the dark with a pile of borrowed money, was turn their government into a piñata stuffed with fantastic sums and give as many citizens as possible a whack at it. In just the past decade the wage bill of the Greek public sector has doubled, in real terms—and that number doesn’t take into account the bribes collected by public officials. The average government job pays almost three times the average private-sector job. The national railroad has annual revenues of 100 million euros against an annual wage bill of 400 million, plus 300 million euros in other expenses. The average state railroad employee earns 65,000 euros a year. Twenty years ago a successful businessman turned minister of finance named Stefanos Manos pointed out that it would be cheaper to put all Greece’s rail passengers into taxicabs: it’s still true. “We have a railroad company which is bankrupt beyond comprehension,” Manos put it to me. “And yet there isn’t a single private company in Greece with that kind of average pay.” The Greek public-school system is the site of breathtaking inefficiency: one of the lowest-ranked systems in Europe, it nonetheless employs four times as many teachers per pupil as the highest-ranked, Finland’s. Greeks who send their children to public schools simply assume that they will need to hire private tutors to make sure they actually learn something. There are three government-owned defense companies: together they have billions of euros in debts, and mounting losses. The retirement age for Greek jobs classified as “arduous” is as early as 55 for men and 50 for women. As this is also the moment when the state begins to shovel out generous pensions, more than 600 Greek professions somehow managed to get themselves classified as arduous: hairdressers, radio announcers, waiters, musicians, and on and on and on. The Greek public health-care system spends far more on supplies than the European average—and it is not uncommon, several Greeks tell me, to see nurses and doctors leaving the job with their arms filled with paper towels and diapers and whatever else they can plunder from the supply closets.


And we thought we were bad!
 
Why am I thinking?:- As a reward for our now financial diligence and silent acceptance of an undeserved austere existence, we will be laboured (or partly laboured) with the Debt of Greece.
 
Leper said:
Why am I thinking?:- As a reward for our now financial diligence and silent acceptance of an undeserved austere existence, we will be laboured (or partly laboured) with the Debt of Greece.
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because we will.. :)
 
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