Electoral scitzophrenia

Einhard

For the past two years, developers have been the most hated group in Irish society, blamed for practically all our woes, and generally reviled as greedy, incompetent, and corrupt. I happened to think this was somewhat unfair, but at least it had the merit of consistency. Then however, Mick Wallace, a developer in hock to the tune of €40 million, who made all the same mistakes as his peers, gets elected in Wexford. On the first count. With a massive first preference vote. In the current climate, how is this possible? I know he put on that daft blonde wig, and wore a pink t-shirt for the whole campaign, but given the venom reserved for his colleagues, this surely couldn't have been penance enough.

Is it because the Irish electorate suffer from a form of electoral scitzophrenia? The more I look at things, the more I think that's the case. Irish people hate developers. Yet Mick Wallace acted a bit batty, has a funky dress sense, and told people he wasn't like other developers- and people believed in him, and elected him. FF candidates are abused and condemned for their past actions- and yet Martin Ferris, a convicted gun runner, and fraterniser of cop killers, gets elected. And perhaps most blatantly, 10% of voters tell RTE after the poll that they voted FF- after the count, 17% had done so.

There's plenty more examples of this strange sort of self-delusion. I know it's common to all electorates, and everyone probably indulges in it from time to time, but the Mick Wallace case just brought it home to me.

Any thoughts?

gcgirl

Never under estimate how dumb Irish people can be

meglome

I've seen Wallace interviewed a few times over the years and he seemed pretty decent. I often saw him working on the streets of Dublin with his crew, not supervising actually working. Given what I saw of him I don't know if I'd rule him out for a vote. Though I can't think of any more of them I'd even consider.

Einhard

meglome wrote: »

I've seen Wallace interviewed a few times over the years and he seemed pretty decent. I often saw him working on the streets of Dublin with his crew, not supervising actually working. Given what I saw of him I don't know if I'd rule him out for a vote. Though I can't think of any more of them I'd even consider.

Yeah, I know what you're saying. I've heard he was a nice guy, but loathing of developers isn't something that takes into account their respective personalities, but rather their business dealings. And Wallace was obviously every bit as much a developer as all those who are reviled and condemned. And yet he gets voted in on the first count. It's a bit difficult to get my head around.

meglome

Einhard wrote: »

Yeah, I know what you're saying. I've heard he was a nice guy, but loathing of developers isn't something that takes into account their respective personalities, but rather their business dealings. And Wallace was obviously every bit as much a developer as all those who are reviled and condemned. And yet he gets voted in on the first count. It's a bit difficult to get my head around.

Yeah I agree and it goes against my feelings about developers generally. I'd vote for him on the basis that he really does seem honest, even if he made mistakes in business. When the shít started to hit the fan he was the only developer that I saw to come out and say what was going on.

Balmed Out

Hes very well known in the football world and is the man behind the wexford league of ireland team. Rumour had it when pat dolan was in charge of cork city that he tried to buy them.
Not the first person to get elected from sporting popularity.

Einhard

meglome wrote: »

Yeah I agree and it goes against my feelings about developers generally. I'd vote for him on the basis that he really does seem honest, even if he made mistakes in business. When the shít started to hit the fan he was the only developer that I saw to come out and say what was going on.

But the reason that other developers are hated is precisely because they made mistakes with their businesses. I mean, if all of them were sound lads, and many of them probably are, they'd still be hated as a class. It was their mistakes that got us into this mess in the first place; it's a tad unfair to hate 99.999% of them for those mistakes, but excuse them in one because he's a nice fella.

myrak

Einhard wrote: »

For the past two years, developers have been the most hated group in Irish society, blamed for practically all our woes, and generally reviled as greedy, incompetent, and corrupt. I happened to think this was somewhat unfair, but at least it had the merit of consistency. Then however, Mick Wallace, a developer in hock to the tune of €40 million, who made all the same mistakes as his peers, gets elected in Wexford. On the first count. With a massive first preference vote. In the current climate, how is this possible? I know he put on that daft blonde wig, and wore a pink t-shirt for the whole campaign, but given the venom reserved for his colleagues, this surely couldn't have been penance enough.

Is it because the Irish electorate suffer from a form of electoral scitzophrenia? The more I look at things, the more I think that's the case. Irish people hate developers. Yet Mick Wallace acted a bit batty, has a funky dress sense, and told people he wasn't like other developers- and people believed in him, and elected him. FF candidates are abused and condemned for their past actions- and yet Martin Ferris, a convicted gun runner, and fraterniser of cop killers, gets elected. And perhaps most blatantly, 10% of voters tell RTE after the poll that they voted FF- after the count, 17% had done so.

There's plenty more examples of this strange sort of self-delusion. I know it's common to all electorates, and everyone probably indulges in it from time to time, but the Mick Wallace case just brought it home to me.

Any thoughts?

There are developers (builders) and then there are developers(dog box creators, gamblers).

meglome

Einhard wrote: »

But the reason that other developers are hated is precisely because they made mistakes with their businesses. I mean, if all of them were sound lads, and many of them probably are, they'd still be hated as a class. It was their mistakes that got us into this mess in the first place; it's a tad unfair to hate 99.999% of them for those mistakes, but excuse them in one because he's a nice fella.

Developers in this country are a symptom of the disease. The disease is the way people voted and the system they voted in. The regulation and the banks are other symptoms. So I dislike the developers for what they did but I think we have to closely look at ourselves for why they were able to do it. I used to wonder if they were just screwing us but by the end I came to realise they believed it themselves and no one had told them otherwise.

Before people jump all over me, I know many of us didn't even vote FF (i didn't) but up to now we have never held politicians accountable and that came back to bite us horribly.

Sundew

I think anybody who was questioning "developement" over the past 10/12 years, would know that Mick Wallace "developed" (god how I hate that word :mad:) in a sensitive way. I recall him being on the tv himself discussing "thoughtless & irresponsible planning" way back in the early stages of the gravy train!

I watched many apartment blocks being thrown up without any thought in Dublin but with hand on heart, can say this man did not do this. I live beside one of his blocks of apartments which has a nice Italian cafe and have to say it added something to Inchicore Village unlike many other apartments!
Just take a look at the vacant high rise block at the Black Horse!!!!!!

Unfortunately he has not been sucessful in renting out one of the retail units beside the cafe but it has been used by community groups from time to time.
Thanks to him there is now a really nice Italian Quarter beside the new Millennium Bridge which has certainly added to Dublin City unlike many other "developements"!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cianginty/3687504704/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/43762537@N00/2558087375

Einhard

Sundew wrote: »

I think anybody who was questioning "developement" over the past 10/12 years, would know that Mick Wallace "developed" (god how I hate that word :mad:) in a sensitive way. I recall him being on the tv himself discussing "thoughtless & irresponsible planning" way back in the early stages of the gravy train!

I watched many apartment blocks being thrown up without any thought in Dublin but with hand on heart, can say this man did not do this. I live beside one of his blocks of apartments which has a nice Italian cafe and have to say it added something to Inchicore Village unlike many other apartments!
Just take a look at the vacant high rise block at the Black Horse!!!!!!

Unfortunately he has not been sucessful in renting out one of the retail units beside the cafe but it has been used by community groups from time to time.
Thanks to him there is now a really nice Italian Quarter beside the new Millennium Bridge which has certainly added to Dublin City unlike many other "developements"!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cianginty/3687504704/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/43762537@N00/2558087375

But no other developers are assessed in such an individual way. And they're certainly not damned for their tasteless developments, but rather for their massive over-reaching which brought down banks and threatened the country. Mick Wallace is "guilty" of the exact same form of over-reaching. He may be a great guy personally, and his developments may be lovely, but he made the same poor decisions as the other, loathed developers. I really fail to see why, then they are condemned for their business practises, he should be so spectacularly absolved of his.

CDfm

I think people have a very weird idea on what developers are and how building is actually financed and Mick Wallace is a perfect example here.

Say a property owner owned a site with planning permission for 100 houses.

Say AIB bank may have financed the development of the site so the owner would sell say 10 sites to a builder financed by AIB Bank and build houses on borrowed money from AIB Bank and sold on to people who recieved mortgages from AIB Bank.

That is the way it happened and what we are calling a developer used to be called a builder.

The numbers got so crazy because the banks kept borrowing money abroad and pumping it into the system.

If a guy like Wallace borrowed it meant that the banks valued the assets he had as being worth more on resale - but here is the catch - resale with money they would lend to someone else.A money go round which lack of bank regulation allowed.

Lots of working people earned huge money and I remember someone commenting to me when blocklayers started getting paid over a pound a block back in 2002.A friend of mine a kitchen fitter was on 1,000 a day. People who earned big wages are not giving the big wages back.

So ordinary guys got in on the act too- borrowed money on their houses etc and got into debt.

Then you had the public service wages and waste.

If a blocklayer gets paid that -then I want it too.

Civil servants, teachers, nurses and doctors who get paid high wages based on taxes no longer collected were in it too. I see teachers driving mercs and 4 X 4's at my daughters school.

Ordinary people take 2 or 3 foreign holidays a year as if it is normal. 100,000 euro weddings and 5,000 wedding dresses were ordinary.

These things are not normal.

You dont really see that in other countries.

The system was based on unlimited money being pumped in.

The banking regulation -lack of -when entering the euro was a big thing - I cannot thing that Europe has a bit of blame for that.

A builder like Mick Wallace is not an economist. Bankers and civil servants are or are supposed to be.

Seth Brundle

Have a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2Rsrw1IwV8

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Seth Brundle

What qualifications should one have to be a TD?

Kess73

I could be very wrong, but Wallace did not receive any kind of NAMA handout/bailout, and that his debts are not Irish debt as his owed money is to foreign banks/investors and that he has been making repayments on it.


Also I think that a lot of the property that he owes the money on is in prime positions in Dublin, and is regarded as low risk by those he owes the money to.


So the man may have debt, but it would appear that he is in a position to carry that debt without it being pushed onto the tax payer. As I said at the start I could be wrong on this, but that is how it seems.

Hasschu

Most of the small builders who leveraged into a few acres with planning permission for 30-50 houses and started by building 6-12 were innocent victims of the Gov't , regulators and banks. The equivalent of third class passengers on the gravy train, monkey see betters rolling in dough and monkey says yes me too. FF of the big tent tried to put a floor under the property collapse to save the big players and the banks including bank bond holders. NAMA was a product of fertile political and financial minds or the chancers last hope depending on your perspective. And so we now elect FG which is really FF with a slimmer leader who does not imbibe to excess, we should be grateful. In the next installment coming in 2013 will Labour prop up FG and the oligarchy or will Labour manage the process by strategic absences from the Dail and not touch the poison chalice. Will FG flame out or will both FG and Lab flame out. Could FF return to save the country? In Ireland we are still mired in the bog and if the last 80+ years is anything to go by we will make many more mistakes.

conorhal

Sundew wrote: »

I think anybody who was questioning "developement" over the past 10/12 years, would know that Mick Wallace "developed" (god how I hate that word :mad:) in a sensitive way. I recall him being on the tv himself discussing "thoughtless & irresponsible planning" way back in the early stages of the gravy train!

I watched many apartment blocks being thrown up without any thought in Dublin but with hand on heart, can say this man did not do this. I live beside one of his blocks of apartments which has a nice Italian cafe and have to say it added something to Inchicore Village unlike many other apartments!
Just take a look at the vacant high rise block at the Black Horse!!!!!!

Unfortunately he has not been sucessful in renting out one of the retail units beside the cafe but it has been used by community groups from time to time.
Thanks to him there is now a really nice Italian Quarter beside the new Millennium Bridge which has certainly added to Dublin City unlike many other "developements"!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cianginty/3687504704/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/43762537@N00/2558087375

Mick Wallace and 'sensitive development' do not go hand in hand. The man almost singlehandedly created the trend for tiny shoe box appartments with a bolt on balcony, he built a ton of them all up the quays and the south inner city. He used to take the internal doors off the show appartments to make them look bigger, and a mate of mine found out why the hard way when he barged into the bathroom of one that the shared with some mates and accidentally knee-capped the poor chap that was sitting in the crapper at the time.
It was only in the latter stages of the boom the he like many other developers started building vanity projects.
The guy's a shark just like the rest of them and no amount of anti war posters on a building site changes that.

paul71

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

I understand your concern and I have reservations about him myself. However, one thing I would put forward in his favour is that he is a guy who ran as business in this country for 15/20 years and as such would be aware of a lot of the issues facing small businesses. Surely that is as good a qualifacation if not a great deal better than being a teacher.

I know he was a developer and lets be honest a failed developer but he is of a different hue to the developers who sat in Ballsbridge Ivory Towers. He was mixing cement on his own sites and as such knows the subcontractors who worked for him and is fully aware of and genuinely concerned for those he cannot afford to pay.

CiaranC

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

As opposed to our next Taoiseach who has an arts degree?

CDfm

CiaranC wrote: »

As opposed to our next Taoiseach who has an arts degree?

I am not a fan but I hope he does well.

Anyway, an arts degree is a training in a discipline and demonstrates that he can think independently.

Lets hope he has enough of a grasp of economics to say to the EU that with the Euro came a european monetary policy that operated without real controls.

Treaty of Versailles and reperations anyone.

paul71 wrote: »

I understand your concern and I have reservations about him myself. However, one thing I would put forward in his favour is that he is a guy who ran as business in this country for 15/20 years and as such would be aware of a lot of the issues facing small businesses. Surely that is as good a qualifacation if not a great deal better than being a teacher.

I know he was a developer and lets be honest a failed developer but he is of a different hue to the developers who sat in Ballsbridge Ivory Towers. He was mixing cement on his own sites and as such knows the subcontractors who worked for him and is fully aware of and genuinely concerned for those he cannot afford to pay.

He is a buillder and his obligation was to make money from building. He employed people and paid wages and had accountants etc. I am sure he wasn't totally unaware.`

Hasschu wrote: »

Most of the small builders who leveraged into a few acres with planning permission for 30-50 houses and started by building 6-12 were innocent victims of the Gov't , regulators and banks.

They lost money but they had speculated on earning a lot more.

If I bet on a dog in a greyhoumd race I cant blame the bookie if it falls.

However, if the bookie takes too many bets and cant cover them then he will go broke. The government does not bail the bookie out.

Bookies are licenced and regulated and if they go bust -they go bust.

This was an old fashioned 19th century banking collapse.

The equivalent of third class passengers on the gravy train, monkey see betters rolling in dough and monkey says yes me too. FF of the big tent tried to put a floor under the property collapse to save the big players and the banks including bank bond holders. NAMA was a product of fertile political and financial minds or the chancers last hope depending on your perspective. And so we now elect FG which is really FF with a slimmer leader who does not imbibe to excess, we should be grateful. In the next installment coming in 2013 will Labour prop up FG and the oligarchy or will Labour manage the process by strategic absences from the Dail and not touch the poison chalice. Will FG flame out or will both FG and Lab flame out. Could FF return to save the country? In Ireland we are still mired in the bog and if the last 80+ years is anything to go by we will make many more mistakes.

I cannot see your point.

Sovereign debt and bank debt should be different. If we had had our own currency we could have managed the money supply etc. We could have devalued etc to rectify the market.

The bondholders would have had to take a haircut. Here we are being held for bailing out the Euro.

Government expemditure based on property related tax revenue , advocated by all parties in an election a few years back was stupid.

There was no prudence - least of all from the public service - but the european regulators should not punish Ireland for the operation of the market or the euro.

Our regulators and dept of finance officials are a right shower but the Euro is a dog of a currency which contributed to the problems and that part of the problem is not ours.

alejandro1977

Kess73 wrote: »

I could be very wrong, but Wallace did not receive any kind of NAMA handout/bailout, and that his debts are not Irish debt as his owed money is to foreign banks/investors and that he has been making repayments on it.


Also I think that a lot of the property that he owes the money on is in prime positions in Dublin, and is regarded as low risk by those he owes the money to.


So the man may have debt, but it would appear that he is in a position to carry that debt without it being pushed onto the tax payer. As I said at the start I could be wrong on this, but that is how it seems.

NAMA was a bailout for the banks not the builders who owed money to the banks so saying that Wallace's debts aren't going to NAMA is neither here nor there.

Simon Kelly's developments in Smithfield etc added to Dublin too, didn't they? they weren't in a field in Leitrim but I don't see the same sympathy for him

Wallace is a debt monkey. Casino capitalism and the people who voted for him are the people who fell for the FF spin all along. idiots.

CDfm

alejandro1977 wrote: »

NAMA was a bailout for the banks not the builders who owed money to the banks so saying that Wallace's debts aren't going to NAMA is neither here nor there.

It was and for the regulators and for the Euro.

And that is what splitting the bank debt from the sovereign debt means. We saved the yoyo :mad:

And for those who think we invited the IMF in -they are not here yet.

The British banks that came in here took a roasting - but - the German(or whoevers) banks that lent to our banks havent.

So who has benefited.