ERSI economist leaves and advises "Get out now"

Having seen a brief clip of the individual concerned on one of the news programs, I'm not sure if we will even miss him. He looked as if he would be very comfortable working very closely with the rest of the "bearded wonders" from the Social compact Trade Union representatives. We've seen what they were capable of over the last while, and I've yet to be impressed by the pontification that comes out of the ESRI.

Pete_Cavan wrote: »

This is problem with this country, we would rather get our economics from media whores like Hobbs and McWilliams and then dismiss a guy with facial hair as someone who "would be very comfortable working very closely with Trade Union representative". Hobbs and McWilliams are soundbite merchants only interested in promoting their latest book/tv programme/seminar. And because very few economists predicted the banking crisis we will now dismiss all of them, even if they are experts in Environmental & Natural Resources and Energy, not banking.

If we had a few more experts in Environment and the like, we'd not be in the situation where a Carbon tax is not really a carbon tax, it's a consumption tax because there are no viable alternatives at the moment, and some of the supposed alternatives are only suitable for young people with a lot of spare storage space in their property, I don't fancy the idea of lugging 25 Kg sacks of woodchip around given the quantity required, amd storing it will be a nightmare compared to the equivalent in oil.

Maybe the clip RTE showed was intended to be slightly disrespectful, he certainly didn't come across at all well on that clip. I tried looking at the economics site pointed to by another poster, and didn't find any articles by him that got my attention.

I have a lot of respect for Tol and he is exactly what we need in the ESRI - someone who owes nothing to no one and who is not afraid to speak his mind. Now he has had enough of being in the governments pocket and we will be left with spineless economists who will only be rolled out to back up the government because they know where their next pay cheque is coming from.

And maybe that's the problem. The brief clip left the impression of a man that is not a public speaker, he may well be good at producing the reports and working with the information, but not good at then standing up and presenting it, and both skills are needed for people in the public eye.

I guess we want the same from out economists as we do from our politicians - people who will tell us what we want to hear but not what we need to hear.

Surprise surprise, NO, we need politicians that will be honest, because a lot more of us than they realise have seen through the sham, and pretense, and all the other bullsh1t that we've been fed with over the years, and we're hoping that maybe they will have the courage to actually do some of the things that were proposed in the manifesto documents. We need, desperately. a new direction that's going to take Ireland into the future, it's not communism, that's been proved to be a busted flush, and so has the form of capitalism that's been tried in recent years, all that turned out to be was a different form of communism without dictators that still ended up with a select few getting the majority of the benefits that were there. Somewhere between the 2 there is a way to run things that doesn't end up paying obscene bonuses to people that have done little more than move electrons around a computer system or two, and things like the present medical system where too many people spend time working out which insurance company is paying for which paper napkin is also absurd. EU rules on the shape, size colour curvature etc of bananas (or cucumbers, or cabbages or whatever) are exactly that, rules for a banana republic, which we can neither justify or afford. A company I do work for has a small cleaning device that uses about 20 Litres of Kerosene. It's serviced every couple of months to replace the solvent, and the local authority charge for the paperwork relating to the "disposal" of the kerosene is €30. That's more than the value of the kerosene, and an absurd charge for what's involved, and we're full of all manner of similar regulations that are only providing work for people that might otherwise be unemployable.

Why does an NCT serve as an acceptable proof of roadworthiness for a car, but a DOE certificate not provide the same for a commercial equivalent, and cost an extra €13 to change a certificate of test for an almost identical certificate of roadworthiness. That's just a jobs for the boys job at the relevant local authority to justify their existence.

Need a new tax? How about putting a serious level of tax on imported bottled water. Bottled water is needed at the moment because the quality of tap water is sometimes questionable, but imported from all over the place, with the energy costs of shipping it to Ireland? That's definitely a luxury, so why not tax that significantly.

Plenty of other areas that could be discussed as well, but danger of tl;dr if we're not careful, even in the politics forum, the attention span is sometimes limited.