Celtic Tiger - patting ourselves on the back - obscene? Stupid?

darkman2

There has been alot of it in fairness. Us patting ourselves over the last ten years and talking about what great people we are.


Honest question - When you thought it would not end were you the same? i.e telling people how great Ireland is?

I did it but cannot now My life is over! The Celtic Tiger is dead. We should just go to Switzerland and end it

seanybiker

I never did cos i never had money but i know where your coming from though. Yes the majority of people i know that done good , do look a bit silly now.

AlmightyCushion

In fairness we were doing very good. There was a time when we were one of the fastest growing economies in the world, that's no easy feat and we should be proud of that (not nah, nah, nah, nah, nah you suck, we rule type of crap). We managed to transfer ourselves from being one of the poorest countries in europe to being one of the richest in the world (by GDP or GNP can't remember which but we were second or third at one stage). Once again no easy feat.

Just because we are doing pretty badly now doesn't mean we should completely forget our past accomplishments and be ashamed of being proud of them. We should be proud and hope we can do it again in the future.

Why are those who were doing good look silly now? I could understand if they were rubbing it in everyones face and acting the twat.

Do you think some of the best athletes in the world will look back on their past achievements in 20 years time and be ashamed of themselves because they aren't as good as they were? Hell no. Why should we?

darkman2

darkman2 wrote: »

There has been alot of it in fairness. Us patting ourselves over the lat ten years and talking about what great people we are.


Honest question - When you thought it would not end were you the same? i.e telling people how great Ireland is?

I did it but cannot now My life is over! The Celtic Tiger is dead. We should just go to Switzerland and end it

..if I could delete this repeat post I WOULD..

Professey Chin

darkman2 wrote: »

..if I could delete this repeat post I WOULD..

I thought you can
Youre just Celtic Tiger gloating that youve 2 posts and we only have 1 ya backstard:mad:

Hunchback

I have to say, I was always completely allergic to the rants that people would go on about how brilliant we are (were?). I think that in many cases these people were ( and hopefully STILL are) optimists, who were merely trying to coax some of us out of our defeatist or overly humble attitudes, but at the same time, I have to admit that it always bothered me intensely to hear these motherfluffers go on about how brilliant we are and how we are world beaters. This I think is partially bitterness and jealousy on my part, as a compulsive underachiever, and also fear. Fear that anyone from other European countries will hear us blowing our own trumpets and foster their resentment for us.

Sir Gallagher

darkman2 wrote: »

..if I could delete this repeat post I WOULD..

It's nice to see schizoprenia is still alive and well, adhd [EMAIL="b@stards"]b@stards[/EMAIL] taking all the limelight!

Duiske

darkman2 wrote: »

We should just go to Switzerland and end it

And the Government would hit us with a €10 departure tax on the way out. Cnuts !!.

gurramok

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

In fairness we were doing very good. There was a time when we were one of the fastest growing economies in the world, that's no easy feat and we should be proud of that (not nah, nah, nah, nah, nah you suck, we rule type of crap). We managed to transfer ourselves from being one of the poorest countries in europe to being one of the richest in the world (by GDP or GNP can't remember which but we were second or third at one stage). Once again no easy feat.

That was based on mostly construction related activity which was credit based and not wealth generating but debt generating.

It accounted for a quarter of the economy in 2006 when it should of been a third of that like other countries to be sustainable.

http://examiner.ie/business/idojmhqlql/

And thats why we are paying the price.

femur61

All the wealth created was based on one industry, now it has gone belly up we are suffering. I think everyone should live abroad for a few years and realise we do have rely on outside industry and we do have recessions. Where is Berties in all this people were willing to beleive what a great nation we were and how well respected we were, were we?

Darragh29

darkman2 wrote: »

There has been alot of it in fairness. Us patting ourselves over the last ten years and talking about what great people we are.


Honest question - When you thought it would not end were you the same? i.e telling people how great Ireland is?

I did it but cannot now My life is over! The Celtic Tiger is dead. We should just go to Switzerland and end it

I never for a second believed in the Celtic Tiger. What I saw was a load of muppets driving 3 Series BMW's trying to buy one house after another.

There was a documentary done on RTE about 2-3 years ago, I think it was one of the "Would you Believe" episodes, where they showed this woman living in a council house who could barely make ends meet, and they told her story. Then they showed this complete loser who was driving a BMW, spent his whole day driving around looking at "investment properties" he could buy and develop. He was "too busy" in his own words to get into a relationship, all he wanted to do was make more money on paper and acquire more property. He had equity from one property leveraged against the other, the whole thing was an illusion waiting to fall down.

I'd love to see RTE going back to the same two people and seeing how each of them is getting on now...

ongarite

Have to agree with gurramok, the Celtic Tiger died years ago, starting around 2001 when the electronics industry in this country begin its downward spiral.
We than began the building boom to pick up the slack and built huge industries and supply chains around this and now that the building boom is over, all that secondary activity is dying off too.

We have nothing to fall back on this time around to pick up the slack.

Electronics sector is all but gone, Intel cutting back, HP on short-time week. Pharmaceutical industry is heading for a major consolidation and that means even more job losses in that industry in the next 2 years besides what already happening this year with short-time weeks in most companies.
Retail, Tourism is screwed as everyone is afraid to spend money or can't get the cheap easy loans of the past.

Definately a pessimist, its going to get real ugly by the end of this year.

thebman

A lot of the Celtic tiger was illusion built on debt (looks at the big pile of it in the corner and wonders how anyone could not see it).

Poor management (not really, a desire to stay in government a buy votes) drove wages and cost of doing business here up to an unworkable level and now every business in the country that can get out is getting out.

The knowledge economy is a buzz word and a myth. Sure we can have some high tech research jobs but realistically there aren't enough to go around and most people aren't intelligent enough to do those jobs. This is why all the wages etc... are being reduced at the moment (or planned for the future). To return our competitiveness.

Of course certain services have to come down in price in the mean time such as electricity so when peoples wages go down they won't become unemployed. This is essentially the governments real plan.

This will most certainly hurt anyone who has a mortgage (although the lowering of interest rates has helped them), if they do go back up in the future of if people wages are reduced too much, a lot of people are going to lose their houses which is why Anglo will probably become a toxic bank for all the bad debts for the loans people should never have gotten in the first place.

On the plus side, this will be good for savings since the money saved will in the future go further.

That is how I see it so I wouldn't spend any money at the moment and this is killing Irish businesses as the government change try to enact their policy and banks won't lend them money to survive because they don't have it, don't want to, have been told to lend to first time buyers to help FF's invested interests and because even with lending a lot of these businesses would just go under a month or two later since this is about who will survive the change.

The government aren't actually doing the wrong thing in my opinion but it is going to hurt and it is their fault we are in this mess in the first place which is why they should not be re-elected. Too little too late I'm afraid.

Fratton Fred

The fact Ireland went from one of the poorest to one of the richest countries is something to be proud of.

The fact it did absolutely **** all with the money other than build a few roads and a very nice but criminally underused tunnel is something to be ashamed of tbh.

Take your pick on which one outweighs the other.

gurramok

Popeye, nice analysis

What have we got...Hmm, Port tunnel as described, a couple of small tunnels in Cork/Limerick, major cities not even connected by motorway yet (though they are due to), 2 Luas lines that don't even meet up, M50 upgrade nearly done, struggling to name more here, anything else?

galwayrush

Duiske wrote: »

And the Government would hit us with a €10 departure tax on the way out. Cnuts !!.

Our Government created the very first tax on flights back in the 80's, they had to cash in on all the people leaving.:(