New Labour leader

Mad Finn

Oh Great. Another former Stickie gets to lead Labour. Embarassing for him that RTE showed a clip of him from the 80s saying that "the private sector has failed in this country"

I suspect he's moved on from there.

As for the deputy leader election. I hope Joan Burton wins that.

I think she's sexy.

Dirk Gently

Mad Finn wrote:

Joan Burton ....

I think she's sexy.

:eek:

Jackie laughlin

That comment would have been accurate enough. The private sector is performing rather better now thanks to a great deal of state support.

I think I'll reserve judgement on the deputy leadership until after I see them in formal dresses. No, I'll wait until after the swimsuit section.

dereko1969

think the total lack of media interest in the 'election' of gilmore as leader of the labour party shows what trouble that party is in. the third largest party in the state and it got a few paragraphs here and there fairly pathetic really. seems like a pat rabbitte 'mini-me' but hopefully he'll breathe a bit of new life into the party

mike65

Labour is dead - it just has'nt felt the bullet going in yet.

At best it'll remain a potential coalition mud guard and one who's vote is going to be gradually eaten away from all sides. The 'comrade' tendency will drift to SF over time, the working man will end up throwing this lot in with FF/FG as "trad labour" concerns are no longer in thier everyday lives.

If it had a dynamic leader it could become more popular if by sheer force of will but Gilmore looks and sounds like a clipboard merchant/union accountant.

Mike.

Jackie laughlin

Parties come and go in Ireland but the party system is basically set as what has been described as the two and a half party system. SF & PDs will fade further and be absorbed by FF, the Republican Party. The Greens will split on left and right and will join parties which suit them. Nothing will happen suddenly or overnight. New little parties will emerge and fade. Throughout there will be FF, FG and Lab. They are in rude good health, very experienced and represent the different viewpoints within Ireland rather well. All the little parties who emerge have the ambition to become that half party but they never fit the bill.

Dirk Gently

Jackie laughlin wrote:

FF, FG and Lab..... represent the different viewpoints within Ireland rather well.l.

I wouldn't have thought so myself. I find the three to be very mono message tbh. The only point of conflict this election was public land / private hospital and even this I feel was only exploited because there was nothing else to differentiate from. FG in particular I don't think would have had a problem with it had they any other political leverage against FF. While I support labours position rathar than FF/PD on the issue it still smacked of clutching at straws overall.

Jackie laughlin

It was an issue that stood socialism/social democracy up against neo-liberalism. However, the fact is that the vast majority of the Irish people support the neo-liberal argument. They prefer boston to Berlin!

E92

Jackie laughlin wrote:

They prefer boston to Berlin!

They prefer whichever one gives them he most money at the given time!

clown bag wrote:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mad Finn
Joan Burton ....

I think she's sexy.

:eek: We obviously see 2 different Joan Butrons! The Dáils sexiest deputy is Lucinda Creighton of Fine Gael(or failing that Olwyn Enright). The sexiest politician is Thresa Ferris, she might be the daughter of a convited IRA and politicion for Kerry North who is a Shinner, but beauty doesn't see such impurities:D :eek: .

moe_sizlak

E92 wrote:

They prefer whichever one gives them he most money at the given time!


:eek: We obviously see 2 different Joan Butrons! The Dáils sexiest deputy is Lucinda Creighton of Fine Gael(or failing that Olwyn Enright). The sexiest politician is Thresa Ferris, she might be the daughter of a convited IRA and politicion for Kerry North who is a Shinner, but beauty doesn't see such impurities:D :eek: .

lucinda creighton is good looking but shes a bit too straight laced to be sexy
olwyn enright is pretty and nice , shes a lovely girl but not sexy
liz o donell was the only bit of td totty ever to grace leinster house , that woman will be sexy when shes in a 6 x 3 wooden box going down 6 feet under

as for joan burton , about as sexy as a bag of unwashed spuds and thats before she opens her mouth

Jackie laughlin

E92,
Do you think that it is neo-liberalism which gives people most money? Care to expand on "most money"?

ReefBreak

Big mistake by labour to elect Gilmore, in my opinion. He's just like Rabbitte, except less witty, and more grumpy-sounding. Labour need someone fresher to really make an impact.

Hotblack Desiato

Rabbitte may have annoyed as many people as he appealed to (I could never stand him) but at least you knew who he was.

Tricity Bendix

Jackie laughlin wrote:

That comment would have been accurate enough. The private sector is performing rather better now thanks to a great deal of state support.

So you're saying that once the government created the right environment, the private sector was able to perform? If you are, I totally agree with you, but the both of us would be at odds with Deputy Gilmore.

Mad Finn wrote:

I think she's sexy.

She has a fantastic bosom. I'll say nothing about her face or voice.

Jackie laughlin

No, I worry about the term "right environment". It usually is a cover for the exercise of state power to enrich a group or class or class fraction. I'm merely making the point that markets do not work - indeed, cannot exist - without the power of the state.

Ireland now has close to full employment but also has frighteningly deep and entrenched poverty, obscene levels of inequality, ludicrous "reward packages" for senior manager (irrespective of success or failure), unsustainable levels of personal debt, significant numbers of citizens on good incomes who cannot afford a home reasonably close to their work or at all, schools producing Leaving Certs. who are neither literate or numerate and who will therefore never enjoy the finer things of life - regardless of their eventual income, a health service of which the citizens are scared, an addiction to fossil fuels etc etc.

In short, the squandering of so much wealth urgently needs a socialist/social democratic (I'm not fussed about those two terms.) response.

moe_sizlak

if i thought a social democratic goverment involving labour presumably would reduce the amount of poverty , i would be the 1st to salute them
unfotunatley what would most likely happen is that over staffed and underworked public serivce would be assured an even sweeter deal than they have now under (the i want to be everyone,s friend so i loose not a single vote ) BERTIE

Jackie laughlin

Moe,
Why in the face of all of the evidence for huge disparities in wealth, do you choose to attack public service workers? Even if your allegations were true, they would be largely irrelevant to the overall argument.

There are silly salaries paid in the public sector, the top level of the HSE would be a glaring example. However, some of the worst paid workers in Ireland are public servants. It is a very long time indeed since the public service was overstaffed and underworked. Some services are disintegrating for lack of staff and the workers are tired and demoralised. The old public service pension provisions, which should have been a model for what every worker ought to have, is a thing of the past for most young public servants.

moe_sizlak

Jackie laughlin wrote:

Moe,
Why in the face of all of the evidence for huge disparities in wealth, do you choose to attack public service workers? Even if your allegations were true, they would be largely irrelevant to the overall argument.

There are silly salaries paid in the public sector, the top level of the HSE would be a glaring example. However, some of the worst paid workers in Ireland are public servants. It is a very long time indeed since the public service was overstaffed and underworked. Some services are disintegrating for lack of staff and the workers are tired and demoralised. The old public service pension provisions, which should have been a model for what every worker ought to have, is a thing of the past for most young public servants.

your having a laugh , right

Rock Climber

ReefBreak wrote:

Big mistake by labour to elect Gilmore, in my opinion. He's just like Rabbitte, except less witty, and more grumpy-sounding. Labour need someone fresher to really make an impact.

Theres very few of them though.
From what I can see,the vast majority of their T.d's are going to be in or arounf 60 or more by the next election.

Jackie laughlin

Moe,
Stop messing and argue.

Rock,
If your comment referred to gender, religion or colour, rather than age, it would be regarded as offensive or silly.

Dirk Gently

Jackie laughlin wrote:

Rock,
If your comment referred to gender, religion or colour, rather than age, it would be regarded as offensive or silly.

Although true nonetheless.
Whether you like it or not that does present an image problem to a lot of young people and a poor image backed up by clone politics of the big two doesn't do labour any favours.

Jackie, I think maybe you and your fellow “socialists” should perform a coup d'état and re-inject some life into old labour.

Jackie laughlin

CB,
I don't think it presents an "image problem" for young people particularly. Indeed the one encouraging point to emerge from the last election was the disproportionate share of the first-time vote which Labour attracted.

There is a huge intellectual challenge facing the left and not just in Ireland. Many, many comrades are working on it. I assure you I'm trying to make a modest input.

moe_sizlak

Jackie laughlin wrote:

Moe,
Stop messing and argue.

Rock,
If your comment referred to gender, religion or colour, rather than age, it would be regarded as offensive or silly.

jackie , those who work in the public service are not only on average much higher paid than those who work in the private sector , those who work in the public service have more or less bullet proof job security
if a building contractor in 2007 sees that the construction industry is slowing down then he may have to let go some of his brickies or sparkies
this does not happen in the public service , im specifically talking about those who work in administration , jobs are more or less created for theese people no matter how pointless they are , anything to avoid a cull
i see it all the time in the business im in , you meet public servants who do the most pointless non productive jobs , seemingly to justify there salarys
this is why our health service is such a mess , we have been throwing more and more money at it each yr yet it gets worse and worse , what is needed is a mass cull of pen pushers and other administrators who unlike junior doctors never work more than an 8 hr day and never have to come in at the weekend or the middle of the night
that is just in the health service , we could do with a cull in many other public service areas also but this wont happen as it would be career suicide for too many politicians
the citizens who theese people are meant to serve must suffer on

Jackie laughlin

Moe,
The idea that one cannot get fired from the public sector is a myth. It is quite difficult for a civil servant or a teacher to get fired but that doesn't apply right across the public sector.

The building industry is by its nature insecure and not comparable with, say, banking either.

The problem of rampant managerialism applies throughout business and not simply in the public sector. So-called "strategic managers" have become a plague together with "consultants". Almost every worker will tell you that paperwork has exploded in order to satisfy the needs of over-management. Yes, it occurs in the public sector and a fine example is the relatively new HSE with a chief executive on 450K + and a raft of other senior managers.

Comparing average wage levels between sectors and industries is pointless because you are seldom if ever comparing like with like, e.g. the average wage level in a firm of solicitors will be higher than the average wage level in a shop.

I really don't think that my postman is overpaid and underworked. I can see that the bin crew is now down to 3 including the driver. My daughter is a lecturer employed on 9 month contracts. I could go on and on.

The point is that I feel that you should be attacking the gross inequality and bloated salaries in Irish society and not wading into a huge group of people many of whom are downright poor and work very hard.

Hotblack Desiato

moe_sizlak wrote:

jackie , those who work in the public service are not only on average much higher paid than those who work in the private sector

Bzzt. Wrong. Don't believe everything you read in the Indo. The oft-quoted comparisons between the 'average industrial wage' and the public sector are totally meaningless. The average industrial operative doesn't have a degree or specialist skills, many public servants do. The average industrial operative doesn't manage staff or projects or budgets. The average figures quoted for the public sector include a small number of very high earners who skew the figures, it would be the equivalent of factoring the CEO's wage into the factory floor 'average'.

moe_sizlak

Jackie laughlin wrote:

Moe,
The idea that one cannot get fired from the public sector is a myth. It is quite difficult for a civil servant or a teacher to get fired but that doesn't apply right across the public sector.

The building industry is by its nature insecure and not comparable with, say, banking either.

The problem of rampant managerialism applies throughout business and not simply in the public sector. So-called "strategic managers" have become a plague together with "consultants". Almost every worker will tell you that paperwork has exploded in order to satisfy the needs of over-management. Yes, it occurs in the public sector and a fine example is the relatively new HSE with a chief executive on 450K + and a raft of other senior managers.

Comparing average wage levels between sectors and industries is pointless because you are seldom if ever comparing like with like, e.g. the average wage level in a firm of solicitors will be higher than the average wage level in a shop.

I really don't think that my postman is overpaid and underworked. I can see that the bin crew is now down to 3 including the driver. My daughter is a lecturer employed on 9 month contracts. I could go on and on.


ive no compliants about my postman specifically although the postal service in this country is extremley slow , very often its 3 days from cork
the area i deal with is dept of agriculture , im not a farmer but work with them
im not a vet either by the way , you know how farmers recieve payments , the so called check in the post , many non farmers resent this and see it as money for nothing , it is on the face of it but let me assure you if farmers were paid enough at the meat factories for there meat in order to cover there feed costs , farmers would perfer not there was no cheque in the post
it would mean they did not have to comply with the extremley complex set of rules and regulations accompnying this payment
however there is a group of people who would be up in arms were theese payments to cease in the morning , the civil servants at the dept of ag
there is an entire public service industry built around the so called cheque in the post to farmers , on a regular basis farmers recieve visits by dept of ag officers , visits which involve the most pointless of exercises on the face of it

anway im not going to elaborate on this particular issue any longer , just wanted to get that out there that the cheque in the post to farmers has many more beneficaries than the farmers themselves

bye now

Jackie laughlin

Moe,
I'm glad that you are no longer attacking public servants.

Insofar as I know anything about it, I've no problem with the cheque in the post to farmers. Socialism will have to look very carefully about the extent to which rural Ireland is being denuded of services and people. Decent villages should not have to be profitable in order to survive.

Any system which needs to be administered will generate a bureaucracy interested in its continuance. They're just normal people who want to keep their jobs! I'm not saying that in all cases, all jobs have to be maintained. I simply mean that I understand their feelings.

E92

Jackie laughlin wrote:

E92,
Do you think that it is neo-liberalism which gives people most money? Care to expand on "most money"?

What I meant is that whichever economic model has the best chance of putting more money in the Paddy's arse pocket is the one people will vote for.

People clearly don't care about public services, Fine Gael said the last election was a referenddum on the health service, so if it was, why are Feel and Fail back in power, and why did they actually manage to increase their vote on 2002?

If the Paddy cared about such "unimportant" things like why Fianna Fail cant get things done on time and to me seem incapable of orgainising a piss up in a Brewery(the national Motorway network was supposed to be done by the end of last year) then Feel and Fail would have lost the election in style. They would have put Fine Gael/Labour in place(in fairness if Fine Gael/Labour managed to get 3 extra seats from FF/PD they would be in power, so FF very nearly were in oppisition)

I'm not a socialist(heaven forbid), but I do think that there is more to life than having money in my arse pocket. People should be able to go out, have a few drinks or do whatever they want to do, and not be afraid of being mugged or assaulted or encountering the weirdos that seem to be ever increasing in number these days. I favour Privitisation of most state services, the only problem is that Fianna Fáil seem to have an awful habit of ballsing up each one they do.

Jackie laughlin

You think there's more to life than individual spending but "heaven forbid" that anyone would see that as socialism! Many people would see it as just that. However, your "out" clause is that you would privatise. Does this apply to everything incl. essential services and profitable state companies? Why so doctrinaire? Markets work only insofar as the state controls them. You might prefer if I stated this as, "provides the conditions for them to operate effectively". Should the state ever bail out a private company or individual who gets into a mess? Perhaps you just don't like the word, socialist? It's unfashionable these days.