The R Word

shnaek said:
Hear, hear.

And back to the civil servants again:


4% increase in their expenses. Or was that a 4% increment? Either way, this isn't going to help us fight our way out of recession.
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Good to see the Herald keeping up Independent Group's usual high standards for printing fiction masquerading as fact. The writer doesn't get it. Here's the truth about expenses. The mileage rate is pretty good, the subsistence rates are pretty crap. However, corporate policies insist on use of public transport where available. Anywhere on regular train routes means train journey.

What the writer omits to mention about the overnight rate is that it covers accomodation and food. Try getting a decent overnight room plus breakfast/lunch/dinner on €140 odd and you'll see how generous the expenses are. The only way to avoid being out of pocket on the overnight rate is stay at a B&B (€50-€60 a night) and not a hotel.

On a recent trip to Cork, I stayed in Jury's Inn to be with some contractor colleagues who were working with me. The overnight rate was €85 and breakfast was an additional €12. We ate in Isaac's for dinner (no dessert, 1/2 bottle house wine €50). So I went over my allowance before I got lunch.

The Herald's make-up numbers of somebody spending 30 nights away from home with zero outgoings (no breakfast/lunch/dinner/accomodation) is simply ludicrous. I'd take his claim that most staff claim 4,000 with a large pinch of salt unless there is come credible source for this.


The silly, unplanned decentralisation programme has resulted in a huge increase in T&S payments - just one of the many reasons why this programme should be promptly shelved until a rational, planned programme can be put in place.

To get back to the equality issue, have any of the other posters on this thread wondered why bad parenting seems to be more common in areas of low income, and why heroin addiction seems to be more common in areas of low income?
 
Complainer said:
The silly, unplanned decentralisation programme has resulted in a huge increase in T&S payments - just one of the many reasons why this programme should be promptly shelved until a rational, planned programme can be put in place.
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I agree

Complainer said:
To get back to the equality issue, have any of the other posters on this thread wondered why bad parenting seems to be more common in areas of low income
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Have you ever considered that you may have the root cause and effect backward?
 
Purple said:
I agree


Have you ever considered that you may have the root cause and effect backward?
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Ah, the chicken and egg question. Now we're getting places at last. So you're suggesting that the bad parenting skills are the cause of their low income. So perhaps you might like to explain the statistical improbability of a large number of people with bad parenting skills randomly choosing to live in the same community?
 
Complainer said:
Ah, the chicken and egg question. Now we're getting places at last.
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It may be unintentional but your didactic tone is condescending and quite bizarre as you have not alluded to this question before. No one here is talking in absolutes so a degree of interconnectedness is a given in all discussions like this.


I am suggesting that the root cause of poverty is social rather than economic. Adults have free will in this country and as such can choose to change their environment or move to a different one. I am not saying it is easy, it is not but the function of government should be to make the decision easier for the person to make, not make it easier for them to just stay where they are.

As a tradesman from a lower socioeconomic background (but by no means deprived or poor as my parents became quite well off throughout my childhood) I detest the term “Working class”. We are citizens in a republic; we should reject any and all attempts to be classified into immobile social or economic strata.
 
This is a republic, we have no class system. Go and live in the UK for a few years if you want to see a country that has one and see how vile it is.
"Working class pride" means "I have bugger all, I want my children to have bugger all, and I'm proud of it". These are exactly the sorts of reactive people who suffer most in a recession.
 
Purple said:
"Working class pride" means "I have bugger all, I want my children to have bugger all, and I'm proud of it". These are exactly the sorts of reactive people who suffer most in a recession.
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This is what working class pride means to you. my own father was working class . He never felt that he "wanted his children to have bugger all" but he tried to instill in us a sence to understanding that being poor is not a badge of dishonour. Values like working hard for a fair days pay, providing for your family and supporting your extended family, helping those less fortunate than yourself, the importance of community, respecting authority, and most importantly getting an education. These are working class values, and they are the values I will try to give my children and I always consider myself working class.
 
No. no, I don't mean to offend. Some of my best friends are WC. I just thought u were kinda intelligent, maybe even D4. I'm just in a bit of a shock.
 
Harchibald said:
No. no, I don't mean to offend. Some of my best friends are WC. I just thought u were kinda intelligent, maybe even D4. I'm just in a bit of a shock.
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No actually my father was a judge, but he had a working class mentality. and another thing if you are not being ironic about the "i just thought you were kinda intelligent" remark then intelligence is not awarded by post code.
 
Anyway what's wrong with a bit of R? Japan has had R more or less for the last 20 years and I don't hear them asking for food parcels.
 
television said:
Can you explain exactly what you mean by this?
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I can give an example(I will generalise slightly in order to make my point).

When I got married first I bought a house in a newish suburb of Dublin. Most of my neighbours were from what other posters here would describe as a working class area. Most of their siblings still lived in those areas. When I lived there it would be safe to say that my neighbours had a lower disposable income than their siblings in the nearby council estate. Now, more than 10 years later, my former neighbours have their own home, their kids are going to college and they have a good standard of living. Their siblings are still in the same rut they were in 10 years ago.

What's the difference between the two groups other than attitude?
 

Not a great explaination of the your hypothesis that the cause of poverty is social rather than economic i am afraid.

You seem to be suggesting that the cause of poverty is attitude, would you like to elaborate?
 
These are the qualities of a good citizen, "working class" or otherwise. I would hope that all parents try to teach their children these values regardless of what socioeconomic group they are born into. Can I take it that he also tried to instil in you a sense that there was nothing wrong with doing well through your own hard work? People like that are called class traitors in England.
 
television said:
Not a great explaination of the your hypothesis that the cause of poverty is social rather than economic i am afraid.

You seem to be suggesting that the cause of poverty is attitude, would you like to elaborate?
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You are making no attempt to be constructive here. I am engaging in a discussion but your tone suggests that I should in some way seek your approval. This is not the case. While I enjoy the discussion I feel no compulsion to seek your approval as I regard your biases and preconceptions as intellectually lazy. You have taken an ideological position and accept only views and discourse that supports your ideology.

I have given you an example and tried to explain my views over a number of pages of posts.
Would you care to let us know what you thing the root cause of poverty is?
 

No I am afraid a class traitor is someone who turns thier back on thier working class roots and becomes, to basterdise a phrase "more thatcherite that thatcher herself", so to speak. ( I see a lot of that from people on here). Hard work is a core working class value. But hard work to feed your family and to give a little extra back for the good of the community, knowing that there is always someone worse off than your self.
 

Nice way of deflecting yourself from answering a question that you know you is pretty much unanswerable. Because I know you have probably reasoned out the flaws in your own argument and dont want to be trapped.
 
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