QuoteQuote from: mylestheslasher on May 26, 2014, 09:01:56 PMQuote from: easytiger95 on May 26, 2014, 07:11:50 PM
Just re Shinners costings etc
They don't make things easy for themselves - I have an innate distrust of them from my own family's particular persuasion, and that distrust doesn't dispel when they are so easily challenged on their plans. They make a big deal of having the Dept of Finance cost their proposals but never actually talk about those figures that they supposedly received. I thought Hayes demolished Lyn on that in the Prime Time debate.
But - and it is a big but - at times saying the unsayable and challenging the unchallengable is a vital public service, no matter how cartoonish your policies are. With regard to CT, I'm with Seanie - the more SF talk about it, the bigger the debate. And we need the debate.
One of the most deeply held truisms in Irish politics is that raising CT will scare away all the inward investment - especially among tech and pharma companies. Ok. I can see the logic to this position - but a debate with only one side is not a debate, it's a lecture. And with the utmost respect to Joe Higgins et al the opposing view was really only articulated by isolated, fringe figures.
Now SF has a rising tide and are articulating this position and de facto it has to be taken seriously. Which is very good for all concerned in our democracy.
As for the specific debate on CT itself, I'm always reminded of a conversation I had in 2010 with a friend of mine home from London. At the time he was a commodities trader with a large American bank in London and he earned more money than God. after a few pints I was banging on about the guarantee, the unfairness of it all etc before finishing up "Ah sure, what could we do? We guaranteed it, we had to pay it."
He starts to laugh then says to me "We had a default factored into our predictions - we thought at best we'd get 40 cents in the euro, and most of the other bondholders thought the same." So i said that's all well and good but you'd never lend to us again. He says "We would have stayed away for six months to a year and if it looked like it was turning around we would have steamed back in. We're all about making money, sometimes we get burned, but if an opportunity presents itself in the same country we wouldn't have a problem going back in"
Bear in mind this is at least a year before Michael Lewis' Vanity Fair piece.
If we were wrong about that (and despite the ECB pressure etc if we had realised the true position we could have gotten away with paying a lot less) we could be wrong about CT as well.
Group think on a giant scale got us into this position. Although, at the moment, I wouldn't vote SF, their increasing presence will force a lot of people to be more creative in their policies. Only a good thing.
Cant understand how you could say that. Hayes said she hadn't costed anything in and she pulled out a letter saying that they had. If anything Hayes looked like a fool and maybe his vote showed that.
Hayes said quite clearly that they had for asked for individual measures to be costed but had not put them all together as a plan for the Dept to see if the total added up - that was after she produced the letter. So, i thought,in my opinion, he demolished her and I find a lot of their proposals straddle the border between fantasy and balatant populism.
Not such a bad thing though - the Shinners have demonstrated up North that they soon forget about their Marxist principles once in power - I'm just looking for them to fulfil their promise and give us a moderate, progressive left option we can vote for. However you'd fear for them if they got in, the electorate has demonstrated with Labour that if you campaign on idealism, you damn well better deliver.