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Off Topic Thread 3.0

Zzippy

All things non-rugby related here.

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Buer

Brolly might be a complete spanner but he's a very entertaining speaker especially outside the RTE studio.

Erik Shin

mfceiling wrote: »

Joe Brolly on newstalk now and he is f*cking hilarious!!

Unintentionally?

mfceiling

Joe Brolly on newstalk now and he is f*cking hilarious!!

Erik Shin

swiwi_ wrote: »

Just like Kerry and Cork, huh?

Very much so actually, Dublin taxi drivers invariably get it wrong.

swiwi_

Erik Shin wrote: »

To the normal ear, it is quite hard to distinguish between an Aussie accent and their noisy neighbours

Just like Kerry and Cork, huh?

pickarooney

Unglush, mother****er, do you speak ut?

Erik Shin

To the normal ear, it is quite hard to distinguish between an Aussie accent and their noisy neighbours

swiwi_

*On the phone to pharmaceutical rep. Can we speak English? Yes we can. Where are you from, is that an Australian accent...*

:mad:

FFS, some things never change.

irishbucsfan

awec wrote: »

Impressive that Klitchko wasn't properly put to sleep by that uppercut. Basically turned him into a giraffe.

Joshua was knocked down by a similarly ludicrously tough looking punch as well. They're both very scary men.

awec

Impressive that Klitchko wasn't properly put to sleep by that uppercut. Basically turned him into a giraffe.

CMOTDibbler

errlloyd wrote: »

I once traveled to an Island called Gili Trawangan. It's about a kilometre wide, beaches on all sides. Hardly any roads, no cars, cops or dogs. To get there I had to get a 4 hour van across Bali - which itself is a fairly isolated Island on the Indonesian archipelago - but that isn't important. The van dropped us at this last port.From there we boarded a fast ferry, 8 200 horsepower outboard motors and it still took us about 90 minutes to power across to Gili T.

Now coming it was beautiful. You could see beaches and huts, and you just knew it was paradise like. There was no dock on that side. The boat got close and you just waded in. So you walk up the kinda ramp, hours from the nearest proper infrastructure, in the middle of nowhere. A thousand miles from the next Irish speaker. And Bang. Right in front of you. "Tir Na nÓg".

And there it is

Erik Shin

Surely something got lost in translation here....or do Colombian drug prices play a part in transfer dealings

Bazzo

Unbelievable fight.

CatFromHue

I didn't know Second Captains put this clip up online, it's one of their very best if you ask me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCyC6SW9rkI

errlloyd

Erik Shin wrote: »

Come all the way to Lisbon and this is what i see when i walk in the hotel door

I once traveled to an Island called Gili Trawangan. It's about a kilometre wide, beaches on all sides. Hardly any roads, no cars, cops or dogs. To get there I had to get a 4 hour van across Bali - which itself is a fairly isolated Island on the Indonesian archipelago - but that isn't important. The van dropped us at this last port.From there we boarded a fast ferry, 8 200 horsepower outboard motors and it still took us about 90 minutes to power across to Gili T.

Now coming it was beautiful. You could see beaches and huts, and you just knew it was paradise like. There was no dock on that side. The boat got close and you just waded in. So you walk up the kinda ramp, hours from the nearest proper infrastructure, in the middle of nowhere. A thousand miles from the next Irish speaker. And Bang. Right in front of you. "Tir Na nÓg".

Synode

irishbucsfan wrote: »

This Fyre Festival stuff is brilliant

There goes my afternoon

irishbucsfan

This Fyre Festival stuff is brilliant

mfceiling

Never heard the story but a saw a tweet along the lines of "Changing my tinder age to 60 in the hope of meeting John Terry's mum"...

Erik Shin

awec wrote: »

Wouldn't want to be John Terry today :pac:

Apparently not his mum, but it's still funny !

awec

Wouldn't want to be John Terry today :pac:

Tom Mann Centuria

New venture from O2 and Rugby Union to get people into the game and make it more exciting

Play Rugby League!

https://twitter.com/O2touch/status/856885527953285122

thomond2006

http://waterfordwhispersnews.com/2017/04/21/maternity-hospital-will-respect-rights-of-the-mother-if-shes-married-confirms-spokesnun/

Awesome.

CatFromHue

That was my original point, that they hadn't convinced everyone that public spending was a problem as Mick Barry was saying on Thursday that all the problems were caused by the greedy bankers. That's not an exact quote but it's pretty much exactly what he said.

I'm not saying the banks didn't cause us big problems, as they did, I'm saying we had other big problems too.

I can't copy and paste but Fig 2 on page 10 is pretty interesting, the report itself is good too
http://www.tcd.ie/Economics/staff/phonohan/What%20went%20wrong.pdf

irishbucsfan

CatFromHue wrote: »

Do you mean it was a banking crisis mismanaged into public debt?

As others have said our govt income had been increased by property/construction bubble that was never going to last and when it burst we were left with massive budget deficits.

I'd love to see more on how exactly the bail out money was spent as as far as I know a lot of it went on our day to day expenditure.

Also not only are you not getting into Heaven but now CMOTDibbler has gotten two passes in :pac:

Yes, I do mean that, sorry.

Our government income was marginally increased by a bubble, the size of that bubble looks far larger in hindsight now due to how horrifically things went from 2009-2012, but it accounted for somewhere between 10%-20% of GDP. Public spending increases were completely sensible in context, and were not the cause of that bubble.

There was no public spending orgy. It's a myth, not only in Ireland but across Europe and in the US as well. Our public expenditure did not become a problem until after we committed hari kari and went through austerity, slashing our own GDP. They've done a fantastic job of convincing everyone that the problem was public spending.

The bail out money was split roughly 50/50 between covering the banking sector and expenditure. It was always going to be there to cover the banking sector though, the bank with the biggest exposure to Ireland was not any Irish bank, but Deutsche Bank.

CatFromHue

irishbucsfan wrote: »

EDIT: Just to keep this in context, the original claim was that public spending was "the cause" of our financial problems. I'm saying that it wasn't at all, it wasn't a banking crisis that was mismanaged into a public debt crisis

Do you mean it was a banking crisis mismanaged into public debt?

As others have said our govt income had been increased by property/construction bubble that was never going to last and when it burst we were left with massive budget deficits.

I'd love to see more on how exactly the bail out money was spent as as far as I know a lot of it went on our day to day expenditure.

Also not only are you not getting into Heaven but now CMOTDibbler has gotten two passes in :pac:

Erik Shin

Come all the way to Lisbon and this is what i see when i walk in the hotel door

Rigor Mortis

I always liked this quote, there are many variations

“He who is not a r?publicain at twenty compels one to doubt the generosity of his heart; but he who, after thirty, persists, compels one to doubt the soundness of his mind.

the other famous version is attributed (incorrectly I think) to Churchill

Anyone who is not a liberal at 20 has no heart, any who is not a conservative at 40 has no brain

b.gud

thomond2006 wrote: »

Here's my economic philosophy: The TV licence is a ****ing scam.

I would like to vote for you in any upcoming election

CMOTDibbler

irishbucsfan wrote: »

The quicksand was the massive over-capitalisation of the european banking sector. The symptom of that was the property sector you're referring to.

Well yes, easy credit fuelled the propery boom. But there were also government incentives, lack of regulation and cosy relationships between government and developers and some very questionable practices amongst outlier banks.

irishbucsfan wrote: »

I'm not actually sure there's an alternative reality where this could have been avoided as if we had tried to curtail our banking sector I guarantee you that the EU would have come down on us like a ton of bricks, as our banks were their customers. Our banks were not the root of the problem, just an extension of it, the continental banks were in a much worse position, the only difference is their governments never had to take responsibility for it in the same way ours did.

Over exposure to one particular economic sector or one particular customer was anathema to prudent banking practice in the years before the early to mid noughties. The reasons for these practices were forgotten in the usual cyclical corporate amnesia that happens in large organisations.

irishbucsfan

CMOTDibbler wrote: »

Were you talking about the same quicksand though?

The quicksand was the massive over-capitalisation of the european banking sector. The symptom of that was the property sector you're referring to.

CMOTDibbler wrote: »

We slashed our GDP by means of cutbacks in government spending to match the shortfall in income caused by the property crash. That's what I meant by 'chicken and egg'.

We engaged in austerity despite it being a repeatedly failed approach to economic downturns. And the huge surprise was... it didn't work. "Expansionary fiscal contraction" was what they expected, somehow. Unfortunately our own government had no alternative choice as we have no fiscal or monetary control of our own. Despite Dominique Strauss-Kahn (remember him?!) on behalf of the IMF and some of our own government arguing against austerity, knowing well what was going to be the outcome. Thankfully then the ECB copped on after a few years of waiting around.

CMOTDibbler wrote: »

I agree with this. Except for the point that prudent government would have looked closely at the underlying GDP figures and hedged on the possibility of the property boom being a bubble.

The same way that the central bank (and the individual banks) should have been aware of the over-exposure of the banking sector to property investment. Bank of Ireland were probably the only one that started to see the writing on the wall and had actually started a process of divestment before the crash happened.

They weren't the only government to fail to see the crash coming. In fact we were just like everyone else in our failure to see it coming. They also couldn't really have expected Trichet to abdicate responsibility.

I'm not actually sure there's an alternative reality where this could have been avoided as if we had tried to curtail our banking sector I guarantee you that the EU would have come down on us like a ton of bricks, as our banks were their customers. Our banks were not the root of the problem, just an extension of it, the continental banks were in a much worse position, the only difference is their governments never had to take responsibility for it in the same way ours did.