There is much talk from our leaders – and some sections of the great Irish public – about how such a development might compromise our precious sovereignty. You know? How the IMF/EU might come in with a fresh broom and start sweeping away at some dusty old cobwebs our political class has no disire to disturb?
According to economist Dan O’Brien (Irish Times, 17th November, “Bailout conditions likely to follow Greek recipe”) this could include CIE, lawyers, pharmacists and accountants. They could also throw in consultants, GPs, dentists and any number of privileged groups. I've always thought that sovereignty was over-rated anyway. But please, let them leave the minimum wage alone.
It could also mean the Government’s 12.5% corporate tax rate, which allows US conglomerates to "minimise” their tax obligations in the EU, could end. Or, to put it another way, they could no longer use Ireland as one rocky tax dodge on the periphery of Europe. This, in turn, would mean that Ireland could no longer undercut other EU states in"attracting" foreign investment - it would have to do so fairly.
There is a letter in the same edition of the Irish Times mentioned above, in which a Dr Anthony Palmer refers to our corporate tax rate as “enviable”. Presumably he means our more advanced EU colleagues are envious of it? Why so? If they wished to, Britain, France, Germany, Austria and the rest could also prostitute themselves to the multinationals. They could introduce a 10% corporate tax rate if they so desired. They choose not to, as they don't want to sell themselves on the cheap. And that is more to do with principle than envy.
I hope the 12.5% rate goes, as it is immoral in my view. We should not allow ourselves be used as a Trojan Horse tax-dodging scam in Europe. Maybe then we can move towards full EU tax harmonisation, which would mean our domestic tax-dodgers (you know them - the ones that give loudly to charity) could not shelter their incomes from Revenue in other EU states, as they do now. It would mean a common VAT rate. It would mean the end of VRT.
Bring it on.
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23 comments:
HI MR GM I TELL you iam frantic flat out flabbergasted astonished and astounded that those nasty imf dudes are penetrating our little island of saints and scholars all because our FIANNA FAIL GOVT WILL NOT TAKE MONEY what is the world coming to WE MUST FIND OUR BERTY he will find a way of taking the cash and hide it in the caymans, ihave just sent the butler to akbars liquor store for abottle of tullamore to calm me down those IMFIANNA FAIL fuckups will be the death of me BH
Yes BH... maybe if the IMF and the EU put the money in a very large brown envelope FF will snatch it instinctively?
IMO obviously this bail out (oh no my apologies, this LOAN) will be with a set of preconditions. LOL.....Oh happyyyy daysssss, oh happy daaayss!!! Does that mean, they will scrap semi-state bodies, (or whatever they are, now?)(look out Dublin Bus,your number has been called. Oh I'd really love one of the them IMF guys to use a bus! Oh happyyyy Daaayyys!!) Will the wrecking ball of doom be brought down on all the useless over ponificated malevolent QUANGOS? Will cronyism and the nod and a wink culture be halted? (no seriously, it could happen here) Who knows, yet?! But I'll tell you this they have a damn good idea, of what goes on in the ROI already. You can bet your bottom dollar on that.
Tell me when will you be mine?/Tell me Quango , Quango Quango/We can share a love divine /please dont make me wait again ,
Brilliant I feel like a french resistance guy watching the allies crashing normandy or a beseiged ulster catholic welcoming the british army , please let the gombeen men have no more !
Once they (EU/IMF) are in the political classes will do their utmost to demonise them. We are already seeing this as the Irish politiburo (aka those families steeped in cronyism and nepotism who have run the state into the ground since 1922) talk of sovereignty and the blood sacrifices made by past generations; a quick and populist smokecreen for their total failings. Amazingly the debate today (18 nov) in the dail concerned the Irish language! Were we not such an easily manipulated people revolution would rightfully ensue.
Again today we see that NAMA was swindled by banks regarding the value of loans handed over?! When will ONE person go to jail over these type of shennanigans as people lose jobs, can't pay their mortgages and are made homeless or even jailed for not paying a TV licence!
Anon 1. Yes, I think the gombeen men have had more than enough.
Anon 2. That Nama thing? It just gets corruptier and and corruptier, as an honest version of Bertie might have said. None of them will see the inside of a cell, we can be sure.
Carlos, even I couldn't make it up! Couldn't believe that bit about the 20 year plan for the Irish Language! Glad they have their priorities right, as usual. 20 years is a long time, eh? Hope the IMF get rid of a few of the quangos and grants.
@Dakota. That's right. It's NOT a bailout. NOT a bailout. NOT a bailout.
It's a loan. Just like Greece's...
Who are they kidding, eh?
The Funny Joke, Where Nobody is Laughing
It may not be true but is has been stated that when Bertie was Taoiseach he travelled to every Manchester United game by government helicopter as he has a major shareholder in the company.
Imagine, him leaving a cabinet meeting, then going to watch Manchester United and then coming back in the evening to chair a committee meeting.
It was alleged that several cabinet ministers behaved likewise and travelled from to Dublin to Cheltenham to watch a few races and then come back again, just as though they had nipped out to the shop for a sandwich.
Allegedly, every government department has it’s own helicopter. If this is true, then it is criminal and criminal proceedings should be brought against them by The Mahon Tribunal
After all, Kwame Nkrumah, Idi Amin and Hastings Banda and other African leaders squandered the aid given to them with outrageous profligacy like Rolls Royce cars for the few. But Ireland should have known better than to behave like this.
There is no further point in whinging about the government and about their extravgance and wastefulness, but what they have done (allowed to happen) is sinful.
I spoke to a lady earlier today, who once owned (she thought) a detached house in Donnybrook. Today she lives in a frightful abode. And her children have had a quarter of a slice of Pizza for their main meal. This is a very sad story.
gdye gm iam looking forward to seeing our brians and bertie posing with the boyos from the imf bh
In Awe Of Charlie Haughey
Last May a lady on a Harrogate bus was heard to say: “You see, The Conservatives have a better class of corruption and their lies are more convincing”. This concept is very appropriate to Ireland today.
Charlie Haughey was loved, liked and feared, just like from the pages of ‘The Prince’ by Machiavelli. He did some awful things, but not everything he did was bad, he did a lot of good for a lot of people. He was a skilled politician who understood people and the vagaries of human nature.
The present politicians seem not have any wit, humour or charisma, as politicians should. They did not make any contingency plans for when things went “tits up”. Which they have.
Had these people gone to Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard or Yale, or Trinity College Dublin (some may have) where there is a ‘silent machinery’ they would have known well in advance what to do about this catastrophe.
'The Year Of Disappearances’
'The Year Of Disappearances’ depicts, The Anatomy, Physiology, Psychology and Pathology of Fianna Fail. A Political party founded on small-minded sectarianism, voracious greed and mass murder. The ghosts of the innocent people murdered for their money and their land will reek an awesome vengeance that will destroy Fianna Fail.
GERARD Murphy's 'The Year Of Disappearances -- Political Killings In Cork 1921-22' is very properly causing a major stir. Even more than Peter Hart's account of the IRA in the county, this book is revealing the terrible horror that befell the Protestants of Cork. Fianna Fail were and still are the political wing of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.
By Kevin Myers Friday November 12 2010 The Irish Independent kmyers@independent.ie
This book sums up Ireland and why it has never changed for the better, and never will !!
David Brendan McGinnity
Lets get real here Biffo 4 highest paid politician in the world he's not going to walk away from that while he can bluff it out. Just saw an interview on BBC24 some Dublin shoe-shop owner saying this bail out from the IMF 'is good for Ireland' what a moron.
Well I guess the upshot to all this doom and gloom is that we can get back to what we do best: composing poetry inspired by misery and books motivated by deprivation :-D
It is a bit strange, however, that the support packages of the EU aimed at improving the situation of the countries whose economies collapse are used to solve the problems of the European Central Bank.
@ Lorne. I think countries like Ireland are the ECB's biggest problem. Scrap that - the Euro's biggest problem.
@ David. You won't get many fans of Fianna Fail here, I can assure you.
@ Carlos. Back to basics, eh???
@ Anon. Yeah... gas. Moronic even by FF standards.
@BH. B-B-Bertie will be cute enough to keep clear, I reckon!
Brave Lads, Rich Lads, Murderous Psychopathic Lads
Is it now time to ask how the founding fathers of Fianna Fail came by their massive wealth.
This is the same wealth that many Irish Fianna Fail TD's and their families, Senior police and Army officers, Catholic clergy and Judges enjoy today even though most of the money cannot be reached because it is in off-shore bank accounts, and tax havens as the Irish people die of worry and fear and begin to starve to death as Brian Cowan grows fatter. If this sort of activity was in Africa, like Zimbabwe we would be apalled, but in Ireland. we shut our eyes.
It was and still is general knowledge that, Frank Aiken, Sean Lemass, Robert Briscoe and most of the founders of Fianna Fail were calculating cold blooded mass murderers.
Please read: GERARD Murphy's 'The Year Of Disappearances -- Political Killings In Cork 1921-22' is very properly causing a major stir. Even more than Peter Hart's account of the IRA in the county, this book is revealing the terrible horror that befell the Protestants of Cork. This murder and torture applies to all of Ireland. This was attempted genocide. How many Protestant TD's have served in Fianna Fail since the party began? ROME says NO!!!
My uncle witnessed (whilst hiding in a loft), Frank Aiken pressurizing a Protestant man to sign over his land and property to a Catholic anti-treaty (Fianna Fail) sympathiser, before killing him, his wife and two young daughters, with callous impunity. The anti-treaty people committed mass murder all over Ireland. They savagely murdered anyone who opposed them.
What about the midnight burials at Ballyocean graveyard near Emyvale, Co Monaghan?? Or, Frank Aiken’s body disposal unit at Corleanamady. The DNA will show who died and why. Land deeds will show what property was stolen from whom, and who benifited
Most people know that Sean Lemass was one on the most prolific murderers in Dublin in 1921 and later on during the Irish Civil War. Robert Briscoe set up assassinations at the behest of DeValera, and it is probable that he was present at Michael Collins murder. At last the truth is coming out without the help of any political investigative journalist. Have they been scared off or BOUGHT OFF !!!
D B Corrigan
Dear Mr ‘Carlos the Jackal’
Please read “The Great Hunger” by Patrick Kavanagh. It sums up Ireland. Poetry is not a waste, as you seem to suggest. Patrick Kavanagh was despised by the establishment when he was alive. After he died the jackals and the politicians made money from his name and fame. Most Irish politicians do not display their Alma Mater on their websites because most of them do not have a degree, or a decent degree or any record of higher scholastic attainment. If they did, they would not be so pig-ignorant, insular and empty headed.
I don't think Carlos is suggesting art, literature or poetry is a waste, David. He's just saying, if I understand correctly, that much good art is thought to have its origins in suffering.
And we've lots of that coming down the line.
Dear Carlos
I apologise, I did not mean to be disrespectful.
David Brendan McGinnity
Exciting that various wasters will get the chop, but the IMF are not a benign or altruistic bunch, at least based on their record in less developed countries in South America and Africa. The gobshites and bogshites have opened the wound, and the vampires are here to feed. We're being enlisted to indefinite penury, or will they approach us differently because we're Europeans?
Whad'ya tink Biffo? Wha?
On the IMF's agenda:
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/wbimf/facts.html
Also the book:
Diary of an Economic Hitman.
Enjoying the voice of the site, thanks,
Double Evacuee
David, no apology needed and like GM says there was no intention on my part to denigrate poetry, literature or art for they are some of the few things the gombeen politburo cannot take from us (despite concerted attempts down through the years).
Indeed, Patrick Kavanagh's 'The Great Hunger' is as relevant today as it was when written but wouldn't be understood by the intellectual pygmies ruining, oops running, this country.
The IMF won't save us, we are begging from Peter to pay Paul, in other words we are paying one bank debt by receiving another greater debt from an even more powerful bank that destroys and controls countries. In the end the banks still win and we lose. So these "preconditions" you desire, will only cripple us, "the great unwashed", even more and we don't even get to vote either.
I think it's a case of who pays the most. My hope was that those who most could afford it would bear the burden, in the form of an upwards review of corporation tax and public sector reform.
I'm not hearing the right noises however, if they are talking about hitting those on the minimum wage, rather than the better paid.
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