Duke of Marmalade
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Sunny I gave josh the benefit of the doubt that he was using a sort of Joycean style. Unfortunately James always went over my head.
Rise of extremist politics
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Yes, of course.
This graph shows inflation at 23% in the early 80's
Policies and electoral strategy
Other suggestions so far unadopted included minting a 99p coin and forbidding greyhound racing in order to "stop the country going to the dogs"
Membership
It currently costs £12.00 per year for membership, which includes a party rosette, a certificate of insanity, a 'Loony Badge,' your personal party I.D card, and a letter from the party's current leader; Alan ‘Howlin Laud’ Hope.[23] It is also noted that a £14.50 membership is available for those overseas.
Honestly, for 20 quid I'd be tempted myself for the craic!
Needs to think bigger... this country has already gone to the dogs!
Sophrosyne
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The statistics in the table in my previous post displays the average inflation rates and average mortgage rates for a year in accordance with the CSO.
At a point in time during 1981 inflation may have reached 23%, as Lep's mortgage may have been 19%.
However, since Lep's entire mortgage was not paid off at a point in time when inflation was at its highest, the rates for other years in the 80s matter in your original contention.
Yea, no idea what that's about either.Ahh Firfly Appears as Purples Shadow hear from time to time No matter how Swift is he will not outstrip his shadow smarter man by far,
I don't think firfly would resent seen his mother leaving his father to station to go into town to have coffee with his retired friends,
Leeching off poor purpleator I see on another posting having to pay away less into the prsi fund single contractor from your pay,
poor purplealator Sees a lot more stopped from his payroll in prsi all of his working life
Just for the record keep up what you are Doing the less FF?FG?SF will have to squander the better,
It's like overhearing parts of a conversation...How would you bet firefly knows ,Did you ever hear the saying Rob Peter to pay Paul
you are peter,
Ceist Beag
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It's like standing at a bar at 11:30pm while two beside you are having an animated conversation - well one of them is, the other is looking towards the exit or trying to catch your eye to help him out of there!
Ahh Firfly Appears as Purples Shadow hear from time to time No matter how Swift is he will not outstrip his shadow smarter man by far,
I don't think firfly would resent seen his mother leaving his father to station to go into town to have coffee with his retired friends,
Leeching off poor purpleator I see on another posting having to pay away less into the prsi fund single contractor from your pay,
poor purplealator Sees a lot more stopped from his payroll in prsi all of his working life
Just for the record keep up what you are Doing the less FF?FG?SF will have to squander the better,
ThisIsMe
Sure they are.
Oh, so it was the young working people, then in primary school, who ran the government, ran the banks, ran the departments and ran the construction companies in the years leading up to the boom? I did not know that. I was under the impression that those people are now in their 60's, 70's and 80's.
It must have been those same children who turned a blind eye to all that child abuse, the disgusting treatment of unmarried women who were pregnant, LGBT people and other minorities.
You are retired. You are part of the most incompetent, corrupt, morally bankrupt and selfish generation this country has ever produced. I'm in my 40's. My generation is better, mainly because they travelled more and so shed some of our bigotry, but the generation now in their 20's and 30's (the people paying your pension but who won't have one of their own) are far better again.
As a generation you should be ashamed of yourselves but instead when you bankrupted the country you guaranteed your own deposits, bailed out your own pension funds and didn't take a cent of a cut in your pensions. Given your track record that didn't come as a surprise. You even protested when the medical car was taken from pensioners earning over €1300 a week (though you still got health insurance which is massively subsidised by younger people). Just have the good grace to be contrite. That would be a nice start.
Sophrosyne
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Corruption, indifference, bigotry, greed, incompetence, ignorance or their opposites are characteristics that are not exclusive to one generation.
To repeatedly suggest that they are is a failure to understand the human condition.
It is not everyone in a generation that has the moral courage or enlightenment to advance their generation. It is usually a handful and the rest, including the next generation, benefit.
Each generation strives for better and that’s how it should be.
This generation has challenges. Will it handle those challenges better than previous generations handled theirs? Who knows?
My problem is with the sense of entitlement of pensioners and their utter lack of insight into how they have screwed up the lives of their grandchildren. They should be apologetic, not entitled. They certainly have no business criticising that generation for anything.
Sophrosyne
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Yes, but every pensioner is not responsible for events that took place during their working life no more than you are individually responsible for those that take place during yours.
I don’t feel responsible or the need to be apologetic for the unfortunate actions of specific individuals or specific groups of individuals nor would I take gratuitous credit for putting a man on the moon or inventing the internet.
You are promoting a singular and rather unwise view of collective responsibility while repudiating individual accountability.
I don’t feel responsible or the need to be apologetic for the unfortunate actions of specific individuals or specific groups of individuals nor would I take gratuitous credit for putting a man on the moon or inventing the internet.
You are promoting a singular and rather unwise view of collective responsibility while repudiating individual accountability.
I am responding to the trope that "Pensioners, they worked hard all their lives, they built the country". Collectively that just isn't the case. There has never been a better time to be a pensioner and there will never be a better time to be a pensioner.
We joined the EU and they gave us a shed load of money and in the last 20 years or so we stopped turning a blind eye to child rape, gross misogyny, endemic corruption and terrorism.
I'm very lucky in life. I know that the ability to acquire capital assets from earned income will be much harder for my children. I know that because their future was mortgaged to pay the pensions and protect the assets of those who are currently retired they will have to work longer with less security and pay more for their housing than I did. I have a problem with that. I think it is unjust.
To the likes of me on pension, the golden age started for people born after circa 1980. Their parents (like our parents) were caught up in recession after recession, rampant inflation, unbelieveable high interest rates. Recession was the norm. You can laugh at this, but we had no year out in Australia or anything like it. We had the cattle boat to England if we couldn't find work. That's what many of us did as there was nothing else available unless you were a silver-spooner like many around these days.
Get one thing straight - I am not the conscience of the state. I earned my pension and so did most others. Things came tougher for us. We were not the cause of our economy being screwed up. Therefore, many of us treated our children with kid gloves ensuring they got nearly everything they wanted and had not to do what we did. They got university education and almost a free ride into relatively good employment in Ireland. And now they want to make us the conscience of the state?
Most people earn what they have.
Most people work hard.
I was born well before 1980. I started working summers, easter, Christmas etc when I was 14. I started working full time at 17. I worked 7 days a week, 70-80 hours a week in a factory machining metal. It wasn't that hard and I was well paid for it. We can all put a hardship spin on most things (like the "cattle boat" to england like you were being shipped to Auschwitz) but both you and I started work with the realistic expectation that we could buy a home. I bought my first home when I was 23. It was an apartment in Dublin in a great location. I bought it because I read that with EMU interest rates would drop significantly so it was obvious that prices would go up. I got in ahead of the property boom. I was lucky to enter the market when interest rates were high and so asset costs were depressed. You were even luckier to get in when interest rates were even higher and prices depressed even more.
You didn't get a year out in Australia but you are getting a retirement in Spain and wherever else you feel like going. You may have contributed to a pension all your life but if it is a State pension then you certainly didn't come anywhere close to paying for it. The parents who funded the three months in Australia or the USA? Their kids are now paying for their retirement, and will be paying for it long after those parents are dead, so it turns out it was a good investment.
That free ride into relatively good employment in Ireland, that doesn't include the ability to buy a home and probably won't include a State pension. Maybe it's not as good as you think.
Duke of Marmalade
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Purple, when I think of the two earls I share your sentiment that they will not have it as good as my generation on the housing and pensions front.
However, I do not accept that this is because I was morally corrupt and greedy, without denying that I might indeed possess those personal qualities. Nor has it anything to do with the "crash" (the crash actually helped housing affordability for a while and still is dong so with ridiculously low interest rates).
The housing "crisis" is a problem of success. Our population is much higher than it was in the '80s and we have full employment with better paid jobs. The IMF rates us 5th (World Bank 4th) in the World in terms of GDP per capita*, only behind such beauts as Brunei and Qatar. Housing supply in Dublin in particular did not keep pace with this surge on the demand side. Should I apologise for Ireland rising from being the poorest in the EU to being 5th in the World?
On pensions the main concern is increased longevity. Brought about by medical advances and public health initiatives (like anti smoking measures). Should I apologise for increased longevity?
* possibly leprechaun statistics
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Absolutely not but you, and me, should accept that circumstances have given us a big advantage in that we owned capital assets while they inflated greatly in real terms relative to the value of earned income and look to our government to act to level the playing field for those now starting out in life. That means that the richest demographic in the country, retired people, should not keep sucking up the future of those who are coming behind us.
Again, absolutely not but you should acknowledge that those without the savings or capital or state funded incomes are paying for your State pension and not whinge about being asked to retire at 67 or 68. And say thank you to those young people for subsidising your lifestyle the odd time.
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