25,000 people protesting outside the Dail today...

stepbar

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/1022/budgethealth.html

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/1022/fees.html

First the pensioners, then the students... what's the country coming to

Down with that sort of thing

D_murph

stepbar wrote:

Down with that sort of thing

careful now

genericgoon

stepbar wrote: »

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/1022/budgethealth.html

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/1022/fees.html

First the pensioners, then the students... what's the country coming to

Down with that sort of thing

Hmmmmm the two social groups who have the most free time to faff about with.

4zn76tysfajdxp

All this protesting mallarky is nonsense, we should retaliate fairly. They raise taxes, we raze their houses. Problem solved.

marco murphy

Was great craic

Anyoen know why there were so many cans of bavaria floating around?
(Speaking of floating around, never seen so many flying condoms)

The Master

Perestroika wrote: »

never seen so many flying condoms

Bloody pensioners!

marco murphy

The Master wrote: »

Bloody pensioners!

Lol.

''We're never too old''

dr.bollocko

Are those UCD gobsheens up to their gobshittery again?

Heyes

I say fair play to them. The only way this government will respond is if the public actually say what they think.

Too often are we all too easy to sit back and let the government do what they want. Its about time some people stand up for what they believe and dont except what is been thrown at them.

Cunny-Funt

Indeed.

Hell I woulda been there myself if I wasn't feckin sick

marcsignal

What has 10'000 legs and smells of piss?

Beamish

stepbar wrote: »

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/1022/budgethealth.html

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/1022/fees.html

First the pensioners, then the students...

I'd say that smelt bad.

Soap dogers, moth balls and wee.

irish_bob

Heyes wrote: »

I say fair play to them. The only way this government will respond is if the public actually say what they think.

Too often are we all too easy to sit back and let the government do what they want. Its about time some people stand up for what they believe and dont except what is been thrown at them.

what they believe in is getting thier hands on every penny they can and spending as little of thier own money as they can , the kids of theese pensioners ( most of them in thier 40,s ) dont want to see thier inherritance spent on pills and doctors either off course

JC 2K3

I wonder how many of these students voted in the GE...

They raised the fees to 1,500. How many people will not go into third level education because of this? If they bring in the full fees, this number will only increase exponentially. As much as some people hate students, you have to wonder if this will hit the student-driven towns/cities like Athlone, Galway, Maynooth, hell even Dublin to a certain extent.

I was at the protest in Galway. Despite torential downpours, maybe close to a thousand people turned up. It was fantastic.

Funny how people complain about the students being lazy, but it's only the students who are getting up and fighting for this.

Pighead

Now Pigheads all for the right to protest but not when people are trying to geta bit of shuteye. Was awoken with a start earlier on by a bunch of students chanting rubbish slogans at the top of their whiney voices. These fcukers certainly weren't students of literature judging by their gawd awful chanting

"No way, we won't pay" How long did it take them to come up with that? Pathetic. It's like something out of an Ann and Barry book. They should have come up with something with a bit more verve and bite like " We're not going to pay, we're not, no way"

Heyes

irish_bob wrote: »

what they believe in is getting thier hands on every penny they can and spending as little of thier own money as they can , the kids of theese pensioners ( most of them in thier 40,s ) dont want to see thier inherritance spent on pills and doctors either off course

Sorry but what a pile of crap.

SoWatchaWant

I'm in TCD, and I would have gone, but it would have been a waste of time. So I made use of the time and studied. Course the Arts students have nothing better to do, so let them at it.

phantom_lord

Iarnród Éireann says up to 1,000 pensioners travelled on early morning trains from Cork and Kerry to Dublin for the rally.

A spokesman said the 6.30am and 7.30am trains from Cork were especially busy.

An extra train was laid on from Cork at 8.20am to cope with the expected demand by pensioners to get to Dublin in time for the protest outside the Dáil.

All five reserved carriages on the 7.30am train were fully booked by yesterday evening mainly by people using their travel passes.

so they put on an extra train so a bunch of people who spend their days watching countdown could travel for free to complain about not getting free health care?

phantom_lord

Deleted User wrote: »

They raised the fees to 1,500. How many people will not go into third level education because of this? .

i doubt anyone is gonna skip college just cause reg fees went up a few hundred,

Run_to_da_hills

Iarnród Éireann says up to 1,000 pensioners travelled on early morning trains from Cork and Kerry to Dublin for the rally.

I bet they didn't make a single penny out of them thanks to C J Haughy.

is_that_so

irish_bob wrote: »

what they believe in is getting thier hands on every penny they can and spending as little of thier own money as they can , the kids of theese pensioners ( most of them in thier 40,s ) dont want to see thier inherritance spent on pills and doctors either off course

Got to hand it to you, you don't disappoint.

eirebhoy

Didn't think that many people had family members or friends over 70 earning €700 a week...

Caoimhín

Right, im seriously fooked off over this.

Am i mistaken about this but is it not a fact that 95% of the current over 70 yrs old recipients of medical cardholders will retain their cards?

Is the the new budget regulations not to stop millionaires or very wealthy people availing of free medical care? Imagine Tony O Reilly using his medical card to avail of free doctors visits or medicine?

Im Not having a go at the hard working people who are now retired and deserve free medical treatment. My issue is with the people who made a bloody fortune their working lives and now believe the rest of society owes them a favour through free medical care.

The people marching today seem to have to missed the point. If through means testing you are found to be unable to pay for medical care then their state should pay.

This is just more of the fookin grab all/i deserve it mentality that has this country fooked.
What really pisses me off is when the over 60's say "we created the Celtic Tiger". Did you fook, you dug spuds. It was the US multi-nationals and an international credit bubble combined with EU funds that led to this pissy wet rock of a country being able to build crap roads and shoity prefab over-priced houses and a cosy civil service.

Edit, i understand that people who have worked hard and earned good money and paid more than their fair share of tax should be entitled to be looked after, but considering our society is in a bit of a pickle, maybe the mé fein thinking should stop. Maybe FF should stop supporting their builder/developer buddies and look after our children and old people.


//sorry, rant over.//

They raised the fees to 1,500. How many people will not go into third level education because of this?

If you want an education, you'll take out a student loan or work through college. There have been fees in the UK for years now and people get on with it without bitching and moaning. Maybe fees will weed out the many idiots who go to college because it's free/cheap and to put off getting a job. Only a handful of students from my course in Trinity ever bothered turning up to lectures and loads of people failed the exams through lack of work. When you're paying to be there, you appreciate your education a hell of a lot more. It's normal of course - if my college had been a free ride, I'd have probably spent it getting wasted as well.

andrew

I was wondering why the bus was full of old biddies this morning. Eejits the lot of 'em.

somethingwitty

My brother and I are both going to UCD next year, that's 3000 euro before we even start college. We both have to live in Dublin for it, thats about another 14000 plus. I don't think we can get much of a grant because my parents earn 1000 euro over the limit, yet they Ive heard that they dont take into accont siblings going to college at the same time. Therefore its like 25000 euro from one of my parents to put one of us through college... Basically like a single parent putting their kid through college, except we dont get FULL MAINTAINANCE...
I will ofcourse work through college but how easy do you think it will be to find a job with the way things are at the moment. Ive been trying for 2 months..
I dont want to have to take out a student loan as I dont want to be tied to something like that for the whole way through my 20s. Its pretty depressing to think about that actually. But i want a degree so it will probably have to end up like that.
Ive finally realised life is ****.

pretty-in-pink

phantom_lord wrote: »

i doubt anyone is gonna skip college just cause reg fees went up a few hundred,

College is very expensive, as it is, so yeah I reckon a lot of people will just not go. Now the little schnaks who get everything for free....they *might* go, and we can all just sit back and watch as the country implodes.

This budget has been a joke, and the sooner they realise that, and fix it, the better. Not all of us have the time to protest,so at least some people are going out there and doing it.

The level at which the powers that be decide on who gets free education, or who doesn't is a joke. If they want to bump fees, they will need to do something to chane the rules of entitlement. 1.5k a year, before all the other expenses is a lot. What if your job relocated you, and then looked for 1.5k, just cause you need to have your name put on some paper, and put in a drawer, and have a copy of the same details ut into a file on a computer?

Biffo and his bungle headed buddys have tried to shaft the lowest tax payers, forgetting that pensioners vote in their masses, and thst students will leave college, and get jobs. Whether they choose them here, or not depends on how they get treated here.

The education system has always worked pretty well here, why try and change it to mirror the education system in countries that have a poorer system?

She Devil

somethingwitty wrote: »

My brother and I are both going to UCD next year, that's 3000 euro before we even start college. We both have to live in Dublin for it, thats about another 14000 plus. I don't think we can get much of a grant because my parents earn 1000 euro over the limit, yet they Ive heard that they dont take into accont siblings going to college at the same time. Therefore its like 25000 euro from one of my parents to put one of us through college... Basically like a single parent putting their kid through college, except we dont get FULL MAINTAINANCE...
I will ofcourse work through college but how easy do you think it will be to find a job with the way things are at the moment. Ive been trying for 2 months..
I dont want to have to take out a student loan as I dont want to be tied to something like that for the whole way through my 20s. Its pretty depressing to think about that actually. But i want a degree so it will probably have to end up like that.
Ive finally realised life is ****.

Oh, it was always the way, the thick fcuker gets to be a priest, and the smart one gets to go to college! So what is it to be Dougal, what category do you fall into?

Crash

Deleted User wrote: »

Funny how people complain about the students being lazy, but it's only the students who are getting up and fighting for this.

Students are lazy. They haven't gotten up off their asses to protest the fall in the quality of university education, the underfunding crisis, ANY of these things, no matter how many attempts were made to highlight these issues directly.

Mention anything that might hit em in the pocket? You get 10,000 of them out. Don't believe for a second that student activism is alive and well, its pure and utter greed and little else. There are a small number who genuinely give a **** about the state of the third level education system in Ireland, and the rest of em just want their degree and to get the **** out.

phantom_lord

pretty-in-pink wrote: »

College is very expensive, as it is, so yeah I reckon a lot of people will just not go.

over an extra 600 or w/e it is? i really really doubt it. they could just quit smoking, cut back drinking or pick up a weekend job for a while to cover it. a few extra hundred for a college education is absolutely nothing.

pretty-in-pink wrote: »

This budget has been a joke

how so?

pretty-in-pink

phantom_lord wrote: »

over an extra 600 or w/e it is? i really really doubt it. they could just quit smoking, cut back drinking or pick up a weekend job for a while to cover it. a few extra hundred for a college education is absolutely nothing.

Well given most students already work part time to meet the current fees and cost of living, the increase will make a significant different. Now not everyone will be affected, but anyone who finds it hard to make ends meet now, will find it nigh on impossible with a rise of €600, even to me, thats a lot of money.

phantom_lord wrote: »

how so?

The education thing (second and third level), the medical card thing, the income tax thing.....

Corruptedmorals

Well actually the main point of the protest was against the reintroduction of FULL fees, people are annoyed at the hike in the reg fee but that pales into comparison with €6k a year.

Dave!

Hah, a TV3 reporter commented that most of the OAP's at the protest are voters and FF may suffer in the next general election because of this.

One wonders how many of these people will even be alive for the next General Election :pac:

As for the students, fair play really. But I'm in final year now, so I don't give a sh*t if they bring in fees muahahaha!!!

DemocAnarchis

Dave! wrote: »

As for the students, fair play really. But I'm in final year now, so I don't give a sh*t if they bring in fees muahahaha!!!

Yup, if they want to raise the drawbridge after I'm through thats fine with me!

phantom_lord

pretty-in-pink wrote: »

Well given most students already work part time to meet the current fees and cost of living, the increase will make a significant different. Now not everyone will be affected, but anyone who finds it hard to make ends meet now, will find it nigh on impossible with a rise of €600, even to me, thats a lot of money.

it's a tenner a week

pretty-in-pink wrote: »

The education thing (second and third level), the medical card thing, the income tax thing.....

you know tax receipts are way down right?

anonymous_joe

Fair ****s to all the students protesting. I was busy and ended up in town too late. Glad to see it went well.

It's not the raise to 1500 students were protesting (though that's going to cause a fair whack of people problems) so much as the plans to institute full fees for students.

gurramok

Caoimhín wrote: »

Right, im seriously fooked off over this.

Am i mistaken about this but is it not a fact that 95% of the current over 70 yrs old recipients of medical cardholders will retain their cards?

Is the the new budget regulations not to stop millionaires or very wealthy people availing of free medical care? Imagine Tony O Reilly using his medical card to avail of free doctors visits or medicine?

Rich people would be very stupid to use a medical card.

Can you picture them queuing in A&E for several hours and then thrown on a trolley under the state system?

It's just silly.

For example, Bertie fractured his leg and ended up going to the Mater private, not the public one. He has money like any wealthy person and they will pay top dollar for the quick treatment as time matters when your sick.

Same for the drugs, they will pay to get them. Same for the docs, they will pay for a call-out or even going to the private clinics to be seen pronto.

marcsignal

gurramok wrote: »

For example, Bertie fractured his leg and ended up going to the Mater private, not the public one.

that's called a 'convenient' publicity stunt gurramok

Darragh29

If only WB Yeats was alive today, he would not be able to comprehend how his words of 1913 have a greater meaning in 2008, than they had back then...

WHAT need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone;
For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kind
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman’s rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save:
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave;
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were,
In all their loneliness and pain
You’d cry ‘Some woman’s yellow hair
Has maddened every mother’s son’:
They weighed so lightly what they gave,
But let them be, they’re dead and gone,
They’re with O’Leary in the grave.


It's scary how this poem, written back at the start of the last century, describes us perfectly, almost a hundred years later....

Oshare Bones

phantom_lord wrote: »

over an extra 600 or w/e it is? i really really doubt it. they could just quit smoking, cut back drinking or pick up a weekend job for a while to cover it. a few extra hundred for a college education is absolutely nothing.

It's the trend and what is to come in the future that troubles people most I'd say. Yeah €900->€1500 this year. What about next year - €2000 acceptable? The following year €2500? Where does it end.. Sooner or later you will push people out of third level.

marcsignal

sorry gurramok, got me public and me private mixed up there when i read your post first 'public' and 'private' were the other way round,and i got all fired up to have a go at that bastard bertie

I was in college back in 2004 and the fees were 750. 4 years later, they are 900. Next year they are going to be 1,500. Why is it that in 4 years, the fees only increased 150euro - yet in a year they are going to increase 600euro? Especially in a time of such economic downturn.

Xavi6

'Oh noes we have to pay da college fees!!!11!!1'.

Due to our poxy points system I had no real option but to go to private college in order to get my career of choice. That's 4,500 per year before you even start. I worked two jobs during my first two years to help my pay for it. My parents chipped in as well. The point is it can be done by anyone if you bother your arse.

Maybe it's time the HECS system used in Australia is brought in. You get a government loan which funds your college years, then when you get your degree and start working you pay it back bit by bit. Make it that way across the board then no one can complain. Works a charm over here.

Bloody lucky to get away with free education for this long if you ask me.

jill_valentine

I can't work any more hours, and I'm already in debt. Fees for me wouldn't mean switching to Lidl for a bit, or laying off the beers. I have nothing else to cut back on.

Fees, for me, would be the end of my education.

Xavi6

jill_valentine wrote: »

I can't work any more hours, and I'm already in debt. Fees for me wouldn't mean switching to Lidl for a bit, or laying off the beers. I have nothing else to cut back on.

Fees, for me, would be the end of my education.

Have you already got a student loan?

jill_valentine

Not yet, I'm still looking into it. I worked and saved for a good while, kind of thought I'd be able to manage, but... looking at where I stand now, there's no way. Sigh. Debtlicious.

Xavi6

jill_valentine wrote: »

Not yet, I'm still looking into it. I worked and saved for a good while, kind of thought I'd be able to manage, but... looking at where I stand now, there's no way. Sigh. Debtlicious.

See this is the problem I have, and it's in no way a dig at you. Students in other countries (namely the US and Australia) have to pay thousands and thousands every year, yet never complain. Stick a few hundred in for an Irish student and all hell breaks lose.

Crash

Afaik a mate of mine who was in my year, from Belfast, graduated with 19,000 sterling in debt from four years of living in Dublin.

Of course, the big difference is interest rates and repayment times. For instance, got a loan at the start of the summer. Two years previously, when I took one out, I was given a year before repayments started (so as to reach through to the following summer when I could earn enough to repay it) - took out a second loan after paying off the first back in June - Repayments start in January. There need to be properly set up student loans if you expect loans to be the answer. As it stands it just doesn't cut it.

Crash

Afaik a mate of mine who was in my year, from Belfast, graduated with 19,000 sterling in debt from four years of living in Dublin.

Of course, the big difference is interest rates and repayment times. For instance, got a loan at the start of the summer. Two years previously, when I took one out, I was given a year before repayments started (so as to reach through to the following summer when I could earn enough to repay it) - took out a second loan after paying off the first back in June - Repayments start in January. There need to be properly set up student loans if you expect loans to be the answer. As it stands it just doesn't cut it.

Oshare Bones

Xavi6 wrote: »

See this is the problem I have, and it's in no way a dig at you. Students in other countries (namely the US and Australia) have to pay thousands and thousands every year, yet never complain. Stick a few hundred in for an Irish student and all hell breaks lose.

Yes! That's exactly what we need.. more debt!