ULA, United Left Alliance - Long Term

imme

What do people see as to the long term prospects for the United Left Alliance.

The ULA is composed of The Socialist Party, People Before Profit, various Independents.

They will have 6 TD's in the 31st Dail, Joe Higgins, Joan Collins, R Boyd Barrett, Catherine Murphy, Claire Daly, Seamus Healy.

How will they fare in the new Dail. Will they be competing with Sinn Fein for attention and/or outrage.

Also, will they be cohesive, in that they are an amalgamation of various parties/figures.

Min

They will be attention seekers, loud, will talk about the 'working people' and have nothing worthwhile to offer.
One of them went to jail for opposing bin charges, they will want everything and want to pay nothing for it.

Pyridine

Min wrote: »

they will want everything and want to pay nothing for it.

Sorry I had to read that twice....thought you were talking about Seanai Fitz and the gang!

dsmythy

Splitters!

Min

Pyridine wrote: »

Sorry I had to read that twice....thought you were talking about Seanai Fitz and the gang!

They probably voted ULA so...

goose2005

Min wrote: »

They will be attention seekers, loud, will talk about the 'working people' and have nothing worthwhile to offer.
One of them went to jail for opposing bin charges, they will want everything and want to pay nothing for it.

The right wing are attention seekers, loud, will talk about the 'businesspeople' and have nothing worthwhile to offer.
None of them went to jail for bankrupting the state, they will want everything and want to pay nothing for it.

LeixlipRed

imme wrote: »

What do people see as to the long term prospects for the United Left Alliance.

The ULA is composed of The Socialist Party, People Before Profit, various Independents.

They will have 6 TD's in the 31st Dail, Joe Higgins, Joan Collins, R Boyd Barrett, Catherine Murphy, Claire Daly, Seamus Healy.

How will they fare in the new Dail. Will they be competing with Sinn Fein for attention and/or outrage.

Also, will they be cohesive, in that they are an amalgamation of various parties/figures.

Catherine Murphy isn't in the ULA and wouldn't be welcome either.

goose2005

Pretty good prospects, even if Irish people hate those who express any opinion whatsoever.

Count Dooku

goose2005 wrote: »

The right wing are attention seekers, loud, will talk about the 'businesspeople' and have nothing worthwhile to offer.
None of them went to jail for bankrupting the state, they will want everything and want to pay nothing for it.

I afraid that last sentence is more applicable to left wingers with correction that they want somebody else to pay instead of them

NWPat

They will do alright while the economy is weak. When(or if) the recovery comes they will fade away.

Min

goose2005 wrote: »

The right wing are attention seekers, loud, will talk about the 'businesspeople' and have nothing worthwhile to offer.
None of them went to jail for bankrupting the state, they will want everything and want to pay nothing for it.

Business people create jobs, they are people who create jobs, who create the employment and who do not want the ULA anywhere near power.
Workers would be really screwed with the ULA.

There are cases that the Gardai are investigating, cases with the DPP, we would all be bankrupt it we had taken the ULA approach - no bailout so the banks would have collapsed and what we have now would seem like an economic boom compared to what the ULA proposed should have been done.
No bailout - no access to our money in our bank accounts, no money for businesses to pay their employees, no money for anything, no money for the government to pay anyone, no social welfare or services. It is great for the ULA to be all talk but the workers which they think they represent would have nothing at all.
It is a good thing there are enough people wise enough to not vote for them.

OhNoYouDidn't

Min wrote: »

Business people create jobs, they are people who create jobs, who create the employment and who do not want the ULA anywhere near power.
Workers would be really screwed with the ULA.

There are cases that the Gardai are investigating, cases with the DPP, we would all be bankrupt it we had taken the ULA approach - no bailout so the banks would have collapsed and what we have now would seem like an economic boom compared to what the ULA proposed should have been done.
No bailout - no access to our money in our bank accounts, no money for businesses to pay their employees, no money for anything, no money for the government to pay anyone, no social welfare or services. It is great for the ULA to be all talk but the workers which they think they represent would have nothing at all.
It is a good thing there are enough people wise enough to not vote for them.

Please tell me you are at it here? That cannot be a serious analysis of the last 3 years?

shadowninty

OhNoYouDidn't wrote: »

Please tell me you are at it here? That cannot be a serious analysis of the last 3 years?

you may disagree about the way the bailout was structured, but could you even imagine the Irish banking system being wiped out?

Mister men

Delighted they got in if for nothing more than pissing off the right wing elite in the country.

karma_

shadowninty wrote: »

you may disagree about the way the bailout was structured, but could you even imagine the Irish banking system being wiped out?

Of course, we can look at Iceland.

Min

OhNoYouDidn't wrote: »

Please tell me you are at it here? That cannot be a serious analysis of the last 3 years?

No one is happy with what happened with the banks, however this country would be destroyed if the banks were not saved, the whole banking system back in 2008 was on the verge of collapse, it was a desperate time, we were within days of a total collapse of our banks.

The bank guarantee by the state at the time was seen as a very clever way of preventing the collapse of the financial system in this country, the thing is at no time during the last 3 years has anyone been told they could not access their money because the state had allowed the bank to collapse, the bailouts prevented this.
If the banks had not been saved it would have been total devastation for Ireland, what we have now might be seen as bad, but it is nothing compared to what it could have been.

One can question why Anglo Irish bank was bailed out, but then it was the third biggest bank in the country at the time and as we know most of the debt was hidden.
However AIB and Bank of Ireland, the two main banks needed a bailout too so the banking debt was endemic. There is an argument that if Anglo had been allowed to fail it would have brought down the other banks too. Whatever one thinks, the government had to do something, I don't believe letting them fail was an option, it would have been a total disaster - everyone would have lost their money, many businesses would be out of business as they would have no access to their money or funds, no money for public services, for social welfare and unemployment would be many times worse than now, there would have been civil unrest.

The bailout was not done for the fun of it. It was done in the interest of the people, anyone who thinks there should have been no bailout whatsoever of the banks really do not understand how bad things were back in 2008, 2009, 2010.
The new government will have to put more money into the banks - not because they want to, it is because they have to. It is not popular with the public but it has to be done.

Why do you think the ECB lent Irish banks over this period about €150 billion at 1% interest rate?
I will tell you why, it was so you or I or anyone else here could go the bank and access our money.

Min

karma_ wrote: »

Of course, we can look at Iceland.

The Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123032660060735767.html

Yeah Iceland....

Iceland is an extreme casualty of an era in which it became extraordinarily easy to borrow money. But it was more than that: An examination of the nation's banking system, which collapsed over about 10 days this autumn, reveals the degree to which Iceland was one of the international financial bubble's most enthusiastic players. Home to fewer people than Wichita, Kan., Iceland became so leveraged and so deeply intertwined with the global financial infrastructure that its collapse has rattled the world from Tokyo to California to the Middle East.
In Japan and Hong Kong, bond buyers got stuck holding all-but-worthless debt. In Beverly Hills, a real-estate developer was forced to default after teaming up with an Icelandic bank to build condos near Wilshire Boulevard. A German regional lender, Bayerische Landesbank, suffered big losses on its Icelandic investments contributing to its need for a €30 billion ($42 billion) bailout package.
And in recent weeks, Naomi House, a hospice in southern England, had to cancel a service in which aides made house calls to give the parents of dying children a helping hand. Some £5.7 million ($8.7 million) -- two-thirds of its available cash -- is frozen and may never be fully returned. It was deposited in an Icelandic bank.
Khalid Aziz, chairman of the hospice trust, says he didn't think twice back in 2005 when Icelanders bought the local bank. "With the globalization of markets," he says, "everybody owns everything these days, don't they?"

Yeah we should have let our banks collapse and let us all know what real poverty is...

hatrickpatrick

shadowninty wrote: »

you may disagree about the way the bailout was structured, but could you even imagine the Irish banking system being wiped out?

Yes. I'd go further, I'd love it if every single financial institution in the entire world disappeared overnight. Out with money circulation as we know it. The system doesn't work.

Let every benighted financial institution in the entire world collapse and let's build something which actually works the way it's supposed to. The system we have is fundamentally cracked at its very core. Why are so many people defending it?

The fact that every euro in your pocket came from a bank which BORROWED it from a central bank somewhere with interest, doesn't that horrify you at all?

It's a simple fact that at any one time there will always be more money owed than actually exists. The central bank lends out 10 million on day one at 10% interest. Where the hell is the 10% extra going to come from, since it doesn't exist?

This is why the entire economic system breaks down like clockwork every few years. We have a bipolar monetary system. You can give a bipolar patient antidepressants during the bad phase and suppressants during the high phase, but it's not a long term solution. It solves nothing and delays the inevitable.

shadowninty

Mister men wrote: »

Delighted they got in if for nothing more than pissing off the right wing elite in the country.

Labour can at least provide constructive criticism against the elite - all the ULA and SF can do is whine and make loud noises

dsmythy

shadowninty wrote: »

Labour can at least provide constructive criticism against the elite - all the ULA and SF can do is whine and make loud noises

Labour are part of the elite.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

LeixlipRed

You know nothing about the far-left if you think there's a single former comrade of Gilmore's involved in the ULA. Gilmore was a Stalinist.

As for the poster who said Labour can provide constructive criticism of the elite, of course you can, criticism is all you can ever hope to achieve. Sure that's why people vote labour, the party of, "ah here now lads, ya can't be doing that".

dsmythy

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

I wonder which Labour TD's will be the first to jump ship when the pressure gets too much. Some possible pickings for the ULA among them I'd imagine.

irishh_bob

Mister men wrote: »

Delighted they got in if for nothing more than pissing off the right wing elite in the country.

the elite in this countrys only idealogy is me feinism