Messages

[I thought Hayes demolished Lyn on that in the Prime Time debate.]

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.

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.

Used to pay that myself in 96/97 but I've never been charged in any bar in Europe to watch a game - probably easier to use dodgy boxes, or IR sky cards in European boxes.

Welcome back Bud - good to see a bit of proper Laois cut back on the board - you'd be more of a Hairy Hughie Emerson man than a Wooly wannabe.  As regards us being favourites, perhaps its because that, apart from 2003, we were well able for you back in the mid noughties when we weren't winning All Irelands. That said, we only really blew you out in one of them, and it took Mossie's free taking to get us through the last Leinster final we contested.

Last time we played you in the League as well we destroyed you - O'Gara was unplayable that night in Portlaoise as i remember.

Dublin also played derry away in a qualifier in 2003. Just to add to the roll call of away matches in the last 15 years. I also remember Dublin playing away on leinster during the all.Ireland year in 95- remember Jayo's goal without his boot?

Ah "relax"- classic trollism. Well played.

But there you go again Croi - to assume that Cliona Foley is not on telly because she doesn't fit Sky's standards if attractiveness is completely off the mark. Cliona Foley isn't on telly much because she is a print journalist. To bring her in as an example of sky's sexist policy ie she wouldn't make it there completely ignores the fact that she presumably doesn't want to present on sky, has never made any effort to.present on sky, and has never presented on any other programmes on other channels. She has been used as an analyst on Rte and setanta programmes but she probably suffers from the same problem all print journalists do when asked to come into studio to cover breaking news - they are either at the event in question or writing about it. If your proof of sky's sexism is Cliona Foley's absence than you have no proof. However we do gave proof of Joe Brolly's blatant sexism, it is on his twitter feed. That is what we should be concentrating on.

Croi the inference I was taking from your comments re Cliona Foley was that the reason she is never on TV is because she might not be considered as attractive as Rachel Wyse. If I was wrong to take it as that, I apologise, but I wasn't the only one to read your post that way. On the mobile so I can't do the whole quote thing. Not important anyway, brolly's comments are the thing. btw his apology was absolutely pathetic - I think he has really damaged his credibility - wouldn't be surprised if he had to sit out a few Sundays.

in the history of gaa tv coverage, the most knowledgeable presenter was Pat Spillane - and look how that turned out. Perhaps we should all be grateful, that as an experienced tv presenter and journalist, that Rachel Wyse will at least be able to ask a question and read an autocue.

And as for Cliona Foley, like a lot of journalists, her focus is on her day job, not Tv. To suggest her not appearing on TV more is some sexist conspiracy is actually fairly reductive of her very successful career as a sports writer, and in itself, sexist. Not every woman is dying to be on TV.
You can have a sense of humour and still call out Joe for a horribly misjudged and sexist comment. He should know better. We all should.

Just with regard to the game itself, I can't help thinking what way the media would have played this if we hadn't drawn with Mayo in the league. Perhaps it would have all been about a Dublin team repeating the same mistakes from 2012, mediocre league form, struggling with an All Ireland hangover and facing a team that lost out by three points after a brutally unlucky goal in our last Championship meeting. It would be a different story then.

But now, because O'Gara saved our bacon, we're on the verge of establishing a thousand year Reich and all should cower before us??!! I'll say this for Woolly, after the game on Sunday he was saying that if any Laois player are frightened of going to Croker they shouldn't be on the panel. He said that playing Dublin always inspired him and the lads of his era and they had no fear of them in Croker.

We should win it, yes, and I don;t think Laois are as defensively disciplined as they were in 2012 - but the best time to beat us is now. I hope it is a close game, as we had brilliant clashes in 2003/05/06. If Laois have any sense they'll make it as slow and as sticky as they can, invite us on and then try and hit their forwards as quickly as they can.

Dubs by six.

Quick word on Alan Brogan - he has three All Star Awards, two of them won in 2006 and 2007, the middle of the decade that Kerry and tyrone dominated. The last was won in 2011, as well as the Footballer of the Year award.

Stephen O'Neill has three All Star Awards and one Player of the Year award. Tyrone would have happily welcomed a player of Alan's quality at any time over the past decade.

Thank you.

I can't believe the rest of the country is tolerating this - no one else has a paid-for coach! And yet the Rossies are swanning around with their coach, like the cheats that they are. You do realise with a coach like this they are practically playing at home wherever they go!

(Emoticons courtesy of Don't Matter)

Main Street - any argument I put forward there were solely based on Neilthemac's very helpfully posted figures and CSO census figures. You might cut and paste the 260k figure from that report - no time to go through it, but given that Leinster counties are actively canvassing to keep Dublin in Croker to keep up revenue streams, I'd be surprised if that is the case now- the Blue Wave document is from 2011  and Neilthemac's figures from 2013.

Can't say for sure Dinny, but a basic knowledge of human nature would make you suspect that local administrators might well resent any intrusion on what they might regard as their own sphere of influence? Nothing displays power like controlling funding and in their own counties, the chairman and board members are very powerful people. All politics are local, after all, and there is nothing as political as sports administration - as lads like Pat Hickey, John Delaney, Bernard O'Byrne, Philip Browne etc would tell you.

[administered]

I'm a bit of a pedant AZ, what I'm actually saying is, that while Dublin are being administered as a province, they are competing as a county. Take my example of Cork - they have access to 100k games development funds directly and also a slice of  the 1.1 million that the munster council have. If we divide that 1.1 million by 6 counties we get 183k or so - now if we follow the principle of
allocating that money on a per capita or playing population basis you'd expect Cork to get at least a double share - so now we're looking at Cork having about 466k to play with for development funds (could be a little less, could be a little more - I'd think it is probably more). Doing rough maths again on the perspective populations of the two counties - Dublin from the 2011 census was just under 1.27 million and Cork was 518,000 - so suddenly things aren't looking so inequal on a funding or competition basis.

Administering Dublin separately makes sense because of the size of it, but I don't think that confers any inherent advantage on the pitch.