Why are my taxes paying for this?

Thomas_S_Hunterson

This came to me in the post today.

Is this not misuse of government funds? It's a blatant bit of FG propaganda.
Page 1
Page 2
Envelope

The_Minister

The irony is that Fine Gael told everyone that Liz O'Donnell and Fiona O'Malley were abusing their expenses by doing the same thing before the last election (including Regan).

There is nothing illegal about it though, Fine Gael aren't doing anything wrong here.

AFAIR, each TD is allowed to send one item of post per year to all their constituents to allow them to tell their constituents what they have done, to keep people in touch with the Dail.

The bigger parties (Fine Gael, Labour and Fianna Fail) will, if they have more than one representative, co-ordinate so that their letters are spaced out.

Nodin

Sean_K wrote: »

This came to me in the post today.

Is this not misuse of government funds? It's a blatant bit of FG propaganda.
Page 1
Page 2
Envelope

Senator....Paid retirement, kicked up stairs, or waiting to pounce.....thems the questions.

The_Minister

He has made it clear that he wants in in the Dail.

He is a shoe in for the ticket in the next general election, and his daughter (a tasty bit of crumpet) is running for councilor in '09.

P. Breathnach

The_Minister wrote: »

There is nothing illegal about it though, Fine Gael aren't doing anything wrong here.

The fact that it is not illegal does not mean that it is not wrong.

Thomas_S_Hunterson

Fair enough that it's nothing illegal but I'd still expect some professional ethics.

The letters should be informative ones, not plain propaganda.

The_Minister

Sean_K wrote: »

Fair enough that it's nothing illegal but I'd still expect some professional ethics.

The letters should be informative ones, not plain propaganda.

It did seem quite informative in fairness to them, and this is a country that uses funerals to get votes.

stepbar

Sean_K wrote: »

This came to me in the post today.

Is this not misuse of government funds? It's a blatant bit of FG propaganda.

You could always write to the person in question requesting that you receive no further literature instead of gibbing about it online :rolleyes:

I doubt much of your taxes are going towards paying for a few crappy letters.

Thomas_S_Hunterson

stepbar wrote: »

You could always write to the person in question requesting that you receive no further literature instead of gibbing about it online :rolleyes:

I doubt much of your taxes are going towards paying for a few crappy letters.

55 cent * number of people in every constituency where fine gael have a seat.

I'd say it adds up quick enough.

WexfordMusings

I would much prefer my taz money to be spent on other things. Do you remember the Cervical Cancer mess-up a few weeks ago.

Well here are the figures:

Cost - €8 million

Cost per person - less than €2 euro

Estimated no. of young girls that would not get Cervical cancer per year - 40

So lets see, if i went around a room today and said to everyone can i have €2 of all of ye to potentially save 40 lives, who would say "NO".

Put another way

The government says 5c per young life saved is too expensive:mad:

Dont send one envelope at a cost of 55 cent, thats 11 lives...

Thomas_S_Hunterson

WexfordMusings wrote: »

I would much prefer my taz money to be spent on other things. Do you remember the Cervical Cancer mess-up a few weeks ago.

Well here are the figures:

Cost - €8 million

Cost per person - less than €2 euro

Estimated no. of young girls that would not get Cervical cancer per year - 40

So lets see, if i went around a room today and said to everyone can i have €2 of all of ye to potentially save 40 lives, who would say "NO".

Put another way

The government says 5c per young life saved is too expensive:mad:

Dont send one envelope at a cost of 55 cent, thats 11 lives...

I can think of a Disraeli quote that's very appropriate here.

Robbo

WexfordMusings wrote: »

I would much prefer my taz money to be spent on other things. Do you remember the Cervical Cancer mess-up a few weeks ago.

Well here are the figures:

Cost - €8 million

Cost per person - less than €2 euro

You're proposing to vaccinate those without a cervix as well?

Darragh29

The_Minister wrote: »

=
There is nothing illegal about it though, Fine Gael aren't doing anything wrong here.

Agreed, but there is something entirely idiotic about it at the same time.

The_Minister

WM, you realise that:
(1) The figure is €10,000,000
(2) If 40 per year lived (remember that the effectiveness is >100%, so in reality less probably would), then the cost would be €250,000 per life saved, which is significantly higher than 5c.
Alot higher.
Like 5,000,000 times higher.

Darragh29

Here's another example of idiotic spending...

Last month, we get a reminder in the post that the TV licence is up for renewal. So we go down and pay the TV licence, two weeks later, we get another reminder to pay for our TV licence, despite paying for the f*cking thing two weeks previously.

Then we get a 3rd letter thanking us for paying the TV licence.

Then we get a 4th letter containing the TV licence...

So that's 4 letters, say between admin, stationary and postage costs, costing 5 Euro each. So that's 20 Euro spent out for the revenue for one TV licence. Say there are 2,000,000 TV licences issued every year...

That's 40,000,000 a year spent fa*nying and arsing around with sheets of paper and envelopes and admin, when they could probably spend a couple of thousand and get a good web based admin system set up and e-mail people this information and base it along the lines of the motor tax online system...

ninty9er

Did the envelope have a barcode on the back??

AFAIK you can disregard the 54c (regarded as franked) cost of postage as the state probably pays for a licence to use the envelopes but not a cost per envelope.

I have no issue with these sort of things, at least you can see he's doing something as opposed to coming on here bitching that there;s some senator in your constituency getting paid to to God knows what if he does anything at all.

Thomas_S_Hunterson

ninty9er wrote: »

Did the envelope have a barcode on the back??

No, no barcode.

ninty9er wrote: »

I have no issue with these sort of things, at least you can see he's doing something as opposed to coming on here bitching that there;s some senator in your constituency getting paid to to God knows what if he does anything at all.

The issue I have is that I see using taxpayers money to send out literature like this to be ethically objectionable.

To that end, I have emailed the above images to a local T.D. (in a different party). I have little interest in political parties, but I do like politicians to be kept on their toes.

It'll be interesting to see if anything comes of it.

ninty9er

The only thing technically wrong is that he must have been stashing envelopes for ages not to have a barcode on the back. I do however have a few hanging around here from some work I did ages ago for a few TDs, but they've had barcodes for about 18 months for audit purposes.

You're still missing the point that it's not really costing that much and all he's doing is keeping you informed.

In fact you're likely to get a response in a similar envelope on similar headed paper signed similarly by a printer. And unless it's some independent TD who wouldn't have the mental wherewithal to put a basic clipping like that together, you're not likely to get any sympathy either. They get an allocation of envelopes to use them, not to burn them.