Shopping trip to Newry - 2008 advice?

olddoll said:
I bumped into a lady in the ILAC centre on Saturday. She was from Dundalk and had got up at the crack of dawn to travel to Dublin to do her Christmas shopping. On principle she wouldn't shop in the North as she believed money should be kept in the South. I had to admire her stance.
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I think she is a reflection of why our prices are so high in the first place - we have been happy to rip ourselves off for years.

The VAT difference is only 6.5%, apart from that most of the rest is just ripoff margin. A lot of goods come from China, USA and mainland Europe etc. so the final prices should be similar except for the VAT.
 
Jister said:
I think she is a reflection of why our prices are so high in the first place - we have been happy to rip ourselves off for years.

The VAT difference is only 6.5%, apart from that most of the rest is just ripoff margin. A lot of goods come from China, USA and mainland Europe etc. so the final prices should be similar except for the VAT.
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If you look at this issue closely, I think you will find that retailers' margins are lower here than in other countries. Overhead costs such as wages, rent, insurance and professional and regulatory fees are far too high in this country. If you don't believe me, count the numbers of stores that will shut down in the first few months of 2009.
 
but dont a lot of the higher costs faced by southern companies arise from the manic greed and government ineptness during the tiger years??
going out of their way to fuel property growth meant the government left companies (and households) paying above the odds for properties as the price was inflated by Interest and Tax breaks, companys are now faced with paying rent on propertys far in excess of similar properties elsewhere in europe; as such these costs have to be absorbed into the price of their goods and services...i'm not justifying the high costs we have here i'm just pointing out the love-in between the property developers and Fianna Fail created a lot of it.
 
bamboozle said:
but dont a lot of the higher costs faced by southern companies arise from the manic greed and government ineptness during the tiger years??
going out of their way to fuel property growth meant the government left companies (and households) paying above the odds for propertys as the price was inflated by Interest and Tax breaks, companys are now faced with paying rent on propertys far in excess of similar property's elsewhere in europe and such these costs have to be absorbed into the price of their goods and services...i'm not justifying the high costs we have here i'm just pointing out the love-in between the property developers and Fianna Fail created a lot of it.
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Exactly.

The so-called "ripoff" retailers are not to blame for this mess. The government and the property vested interests hold much of the responsibility.
 
Regardless of who is to blame I think the results will be the same. People flocking to the North, decreasing tax revenues and increasing unemployment it’s about time we stopped fixing the blame and fixed the problems in this economy. Like it or not we are too expensive and inefficient this must change.
 
theoneill said:
Regardless of who is to blame I think the results will be the same. People flocking to the North, decreasing tax revenues and increasing unemployment it’s about time we stopped fixing the blame and fixed the problems in this economy. Like it or not we are too expensive and inefficient this must change.
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Well if you can suggest a way of removing a government that has handed over control of the country to Public Service Unions while it was too busy cosying up to the Property Develpers then i'm all ears...
the writing was on the wall 4 years ago yet people still voted Fianna Fail, 10% of what the current government is borrowing is going to pay the bloated salary's in the civil service while any money that has been put away during the boom years went into a war chest designed to pay the Inflation linked Pensions of our Civil Service.
 
Interesting article on the subject which I came across today:

CROSS-BORDER SHOPPING CAN BE THE NEW PATRIOTISM
There has been a lot said and written about cross-border shopping and
patriotism in the weeks running up to Christmas. As a person with a passing
interest in both subjects (the latter mainly on the terraces at Lansdowne
Road), I wonder if I might add my two ha'apence.
Irish Finance Minister Brian Lenihan started it all with his unwise 'call to
patriotic action' in urging Irish people to accept the harsh cuts of his
October budget. He then compounded the error when he told RTE listeners last
month: 'When you shop in Northern Ireland, you're paying Her Majesty's
taxes, you're not paying taxes to the state that you live in.' (1)
Inevitably the people ignored him. The main consequence of that budget for
the average Irish citizen north of a line from Dublin to Galway (and even
further south) seems to have been to drive them in even larger numbers
across the border to do their Christmas shopping. The price differences
between North and South - helped by a dramatically weakened Sterling and a
2.5% cut in VAT in the UK compared to an 0.5% rise in the Republic - are now
the stuff of legend: Irish-made Kerrygold butter twice the price in Dublin
as in Lisburn; a bottle of Irish whiskey £14 cheaper in Northern Ireland;
and a wide range of goods from breakfast cereals and Pampers to women's
shoes and cups of coffee over 30% more expensive.
Not surprisingly, it didn't take Northern politicians long to weigh in on
the other side of the argument. Peter Robinson, stressing that he was not
trying to score any 'cheap political points', nevertheless couldn't stop
himself commenting: 'In truth it is good for us all. Northern Ireland gets a
significant economic boost, and people in the Republic might save enough on
their shopping to help pay their higher taxes and their health bills.' (2)
Jeffrey Donaldson found it 'interesting that the Irish Government supports a
united Ireland, but when it comes to patriotism, that only extends to the 26
counties of the Republic.' (3) Martin McGuinness said he was 'gobsmacked
that we are being excluded from the all-island economy.' (4)
A man with no political axe to grind, Bill Tosh, the head of Dundalk Chamber
of Commerce, put the central issue of cross-border prices most succinctly
when he pointed out that Larry Goodman produces a large proportion of the
meat sold on the island from his base near the border in County Louth: 'It's
all the same meat but somehow it ends up costing twice as much down south.
That's obscene.' (5)
Paul Cullen, Irish Times consumer affairs correspondent, noting the Dublin's
Fianna Fail Lord Mayor's call for its citizens to show 'civic patriotism' by
choosing to shop in the capital rather than go North this Christmas,
commented: 'It might seem strange for a member of the Republican Party to
suggest that patriotism cannot be exercised north of the border. After all,
isn't the most patriotic thing to buy Irish-made goods wherever they are
sold (and preferably at the cheapest prices), especially when the retailer
down South may be foreign-owned?' (6)
Or as one Limerick reader wrote to the Irish Times: 'When Aer Lingus moved
its Heathrow service from Shannon to Belfast, objectors were told it was
done because costs were lower in the North. We were informed by various
politicians and commentators that this was a free market, that we were all
one island. However when ordinary people head north to shop for the same
economic reasons, they are branded as "unpatriotic".
The prominent Southern economist Jim O'Leary pointed out that the more
Southerners went North, the more pressure there would be on Southern
retailers to cut their profit margins, costs and prices, and 'this is as it
should be.' The problem of floods of people heading North to buy cheaper
priced goods was part of the wider problem of the South's lost
competitiveness. The Republic's main weapon in the fight against the current
severe economic recession would be to cut its excessive production costs
(and even more excessive retail prices) and thus start to compete
internationally again. 'One could argue that it is our patriotic duty to do
what we can to bring that about, including travelling North for our shopping
until that has happened,' was his provocative conclusion. (7)
I'm no economist or business leader, but here's my two ha'apence worth.
Maybe we need to be moving towards a new kind of all-island patriotism which
transcends the narrow domains of traditional Irish nationalism or British
unionism. This should be based on the conviction that what we are striving
for 'in the common name of Irishmen' (and Irishwomen) is what brings the
greatest benefits to the people of the whole island. We don't want to get
into a situation like that in the 1920s, when the Irish Free State broke
away from Britain only to see its 'independent' standard of living fall
significantly. In the new post Belfast and St Andrews Agreement Ireland, the
best political and business leaders are those who can ensure the maximum
benefits for all the people of the island, nationalist and unionist and
other, North and South, whatever the colour of the governments in Dublin and
Belfast. I suggest that should be the new pragmatic, patriotic maxim for the
early 21st century.
1 Belfast Telegraph, 27 November 2008
[http://borderireland.info/info/mdetail.php?mref=1376]
2 Business World, 28 November 2008
[http://borderireland.info/info/mdetail.php?mref=1413]
3 Belfast Telegraph, 27 November 2008
[http://borderireland.info/info/mdetail.php?mref=1376]
4 Today with Pat Kenny, RTE, Radio 1, 22 December 2008
5 Irish Times, 25 November 2008
[http://borderireland.info/info/mdetail.php?mref=1370] 6 Ibid.
http://borderireland.info/info/mdetail.php?mref=1370]
7 Irish Times, 12 December 2008
http://borderireland.info/info/mdetail.php?mref=1400]
Discuss this Note now on the BorderIreland Discussion Forum.
[http://borderireland.info/discuss/?p=105]
 
This government is unpopular; this gives them real power to do what is necessary. Think about it, they cut public sector pay, eliminate stupid outdated work practices, reward work, and punish laziness creating a fine tuned efficient organisation. The unions will strike, let them, public sympathy will soon turn against them and even if it doesn’t they will run out of money. This is a chance for the government to break their backs. The Brian and Mary show have absolutely nothing to loose at this point and everything to gain. If they play this right they could been seen as the people who pulled us back from the abyss.
 
theoneill said:
This government is unpopular; this gives them real power to do what is necessary. Think about it, they cut public sector pay, eliminate stupid outdated work practices, reward work, and punish laziness creating a fine tuned efficient organisation. The unions will strike, let them, public sympathy will soon turn against them and even if it doesn’t they will run out of money. This is a chance for the government to break their backs. The Brian and Mary show have absolutely nothing to loose at this point and everything to gain. If they play this right they could been seen as the people who pulled us back from the abyss.
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i just worry if anyone in Fianna Fail is willing to be that unpopular, one things for sure, public sector budget allocation has risen from 4 billion in 2000 to 19 billion in 2007, that's where the bulk of the financial problem lies, the political problem is finding politicians who are brave enough to make the necessary changes.
What really annoys me is that the writing was on the wall and despite all their highly paid consultants & civil servants nobody stood forward and suggested the good times may not last forever and urged a bit of restraint!
 
I suspect they have already written off the local elections.
They will never have a better opportunity to shake up the public sector. They should take it.
 
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theoneill said:
I suspect they have already written off the local elections.
They will never have a better opportunity to shake up the public sector. They should take it.
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i wonder, you have a FF Lord Mayor of Dublin who'll be looking to reclaim her seat in local elections yet she still went ahead with the 350k Christmas tree from France rather than a freebie from Norway for O'Connell Street...then she tells us to be patriotic when shopping!!!!

just worry FF are very detached from reality!
 
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