The wondrous adventures of Sinn Fein (part 2)

RandomName2 · 27-08-2020 5:54pm

smurgen wrote: »

Christ the Anti SF crowd are really gone into overdrive the last few days. You lads sound like trump supporters rattling on about conspiracy theories non stop about pizza gate, Benghazi and roaring Hillary every two seconds.

Says a pro-SF poster, thanked by two Sinn Fein posters.

That's objectivity for you.

A bit like Mary Lou calling for politicians to resign due to attending a mass event but not feeling like doing the same thing when they wanted to attend the funeral of an ex-IRA member

Wait, did we have any posters who post nothing but pro-FG material, and thanked by exclusively pro-FG posters cry about all the anti-fine gaelers posting about Hogan?

That's a rhetorical question there.

What is it about SF and victim complex? Do they live for nothing else but to go on about how hard done by they are, and how hypocritical everyone other than themselves are?

hatrickpatrick · 27-08-2020 5:57pm

I apologise for the weeklong absence, I went through a busy period of not having the energy for online debates and I in no way intended to abandon the thread or shirk questions arising from my previous posts. I'll quote those who replied to me, but as I can't hit the quote button on the old thread and include the Post IDs, I'm honestly unsure as to whether these quotes will appear in those users' quote inboxes. My apologies! I'll try to attach the post IDs using the syntax I think VB uses, but I have no idea if this'll work

Yeah_Right wrote: »

I think I get what you are saying about the younger generation voting for SF. It was a single issue vote. Housing was the issue. I can understand why someone might vote on a single issue but I think its narrow minded and stupid. Like the Americans that vote purely on abortion or gun rights. It leads to parties saying what they think is popular but not actually having any sensible policies. Like SF.

Maybe you're right, maybe you're not. We haven't seen the left in power in Ireland so we cannot yet say with any certainty whether their policies would work. But if I could offer you a simple analogy, if you've been shot and are bleeding to death, and your only two choices for someone to operate on you are Doctor A who says "bleeding to death is something you just have to learn to accept because we need to collect your blood to save someone else" and Doctor B who says "I haven't done this kind of surgery before, but I'm willing to try something which might work because obviously it's better to try to save your life as opposed to just letting you die without any attempt to save you", you're obviously going to go with Doctor B assuming you actually want to live. And if Doctor B's attempts at surgery end up hurting you, who cares? You're bleeding to death anyway. You have nothing to lose.

That's how young people in Ireland view tackling the cost of living. FFG don't want to fix it, because the people they cater to are the f*ckers who are benefitting from exorbitant rents. Therefore, offered a choice, people would rather take the chance with the folks who actually want to fix the problem as opposed to the people who say "Young peoples' incomes are being decimated by high rents? Great, that's our generational bubbles' retirement sorted so. Who cares if that hurts other people".

It really is that simple, but it's something which is apparently almost impossible to get across because this whole conversation has been repeating on a loop and yet there are still people who are scratching their heads and can't understand the young's utter hatred for FF and FG.

hatrickpatrick · 27-08-2020 6:05pm

Truthvader wrote: »

OK this is actually useful and I get the point. What would you like the government actually to do? It seems to me that a booming macro economy necessarily drives up property prices because everyone has more money. The solution cannot be to damage the macro economy as the result of that is Detroit, where housing is dirt cheap but everything else is ****.

Plus whatever the solution is Sinn Fein of all parties are not going to provide it. Perhaps I may be right wing but I dont see PBP and their like providing a solution. Could it be that the housing "build" program that should kick in (supply and demand) necessarily lags behind the economic success. With covid 19 we could well end up with plenty of houses yet as the economy collapses, people stop paying rent and mortgages etc

The entire paradigm of "housing provision as a profit-making exercise" and "property as an asset rather than a home" has to be changed, it's as simple as that. The state needs to return to being a large landlord which directly constructs housing on public land and charges rents not based on how much they can milk from the public but on what is fair based on someone's income, just like it did for the vast majority of the 20th century. We need to move on from the paradigm of housing being traded by people who have no intention of living in it, just for the sake of moving wealth around and storing it, or 'earning' a passive income from it. Property should not be used in this manner because it is corrosive to society as a whole.

We need a government which sees the provision of housing and controlling the cost of living as its duty, not as something to sit back and allow "the chips to fall where they may" as the free market - which has absolutely no sense of civil responsibility or care about the majority of the peoples' quality of life - exploits the provision of housing not to actually house people, but to leech as much money as possible from them without any regard to how that hurts the person whose bank account is being drained.

We need an en masse social housing program on the scale of what Herbert Simms did in the early 20th century. We need en masse CPOs of the overcrowded tenements-in-all-but-name which populate Dublin's inner city (and I'm sure many other cities) and for them to replaced with high density blocks of apartments which will be rented out at rents which are based on peoples' means and not on how much "the market" allows the landlord to get away with, consequences be damned.

"Could" and "should" are two different concepts. The problem with the current free market housing model is that how much one "could" charge in rent is seen as the only legitimate concept between the two. The idea that one "should" keep the quality of life of the tenant in mind when deciding what to charge is non-existent (indeed it's a non-existent concept in capitalism generally) and for this reason, the provision of housing needs to revert to being largely a public service as opposed to a private profit-making exercise.

Of the three major parties, two are simply too wedded to the current model because the demographics they represent are doing too well out of it. That's why young people have flocked to the third in droves.

hatrickpatrick · 27-08-2020 6:18pm

Yeah_Right wrote: »

Are zero hour contracts allowed in Ireland? Honest question because I didn't think they were.

They were. They aren't anymore, but AFAIK there are loopholes in this prohibition which are widely exploited.

I get that the cost of living is tough for low paid workers. The problem is that everyone gets paid more, everything costs more and so on and so on. I've been there. As a student and then a young professional getting paid peanuts and having to live off it. Budgeting and living pay-check to pay-check. Its not something new. Then as the career progresses the earnings increase and you move out of that cycle.

The issue here is that the part in bold has not been true during the 2010s. Young people have not benefitted from the "recovery" and young workers are primarily those who have been targeted in cost-saving measures - I can think of a few obvious examples off the top of my head, the move to stop paying student nurses and the two-tiered pay system in teaching and other professions come immediately to mind, but this phenomenon has been replicated right through society and is yet another example of the ladder being pulled up. Most people I know working in full time careers haven't experienced anything close to the kind of wage inflation that they've had to deal with in cost of living inflation during the same period. Again I know I keep quoting this, but the Financial Times is a reputable newspaper so it seems a good, non-controversial source of figures for a debate like this - 40& vs 14%. The former percentage is how much the cost of living has inflated for young people over the last ten years. The latter is how much take-home pay has inflated during the same period.

You cannot introduce people to a certain quality of life, dramatically reduce it very suddenly, and expect those people not to become extremely angry at this. Young people who had jobs could afford better living conditions in the early 2010s than they can now, because very specifically of inflation in the cost of living - of which the cost of housing represents a gigantic proportion. Peoples' living conditions were better in the earlier half of this decade than they are now. Hell, many people I know who moved out of the family home earlier this decade and began living an independent life have had to reverse that decision because there was simple no way they could keep up with the spiralling cost of rent regardless of how hard they worked or how quickly they climbed the corporate ladder.

Again, how can anyone logically expect quality of life to regress across the board, and for the people experiencing that not lash out at the smug, out-of-touch, "keep the recovery going" w*nkers they had to put up with, acting as if life wasn't getting worse for a large number of people - or indeed acting, as Eoghan Murphy did with his idiotic "boutique hotels" comment, as if young people should just accept this, take it lying down, and even somehow learn to be happy about it?

It simple isn't going to happen. You cannot withdraw peoples' hard earned lifestyle in favour of a much more Spartan one without blowback. It's that simple. The paradigm of the earlier half of the 2010s was one of being able to afford rent and actually have some disposable income to live a life on. You cannot tell people that they'll have to give that up and not provide a viable alternative, or those people will revolt.

It's very, very basic human psychology.

You will never convince me that owning a rental property is a bad or evil thing. I would have always said it was a good investment. Use the rent to clear the mortgage and then get another. Keep going like that and build a nice little nest egg. But you have to maintain the property, pay tax and deal with difficult tenants. It takes work. I would never do it in Ireland because the laws favour the tenants too much and landlords get screwed. If I was to buy an investment property here, I would only rent it out for short term stays. Obviously not an option at the moment with Covid.

At the beginning of the COVID crisis, there was a gigantic outcry against a group of people who bought PPE in bulk for no reason other than to hold it to ransom and price-gouge on it. I have no idea where you came down on that particular issue, but society was more or less united in regarding the people doing so as a bunch of unimaginably greedy c*nts. Why is it surprising that hoarding housing during a shortage for the sole purpose of "earning" money without actually producing anything of value is regarded with the same level of disdain by those who are being price gouged in this manner? There's a societal-level cognitive dissonance about this issue. If one is morally wrong, then by definition so too is the other.

27-08-2020 7:41pm

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

The entire paradigm of "housing provision as a profit-making exercise" and "property as an asset rather than a home" has to be changed, it's as simple as that. The state needs to return to being a large landlord which directly constructs housing on public land and charges rents not based on how much they can milk from the public but on what is fair based on someone's income, just like it did for the vast majority of the 20th century. We need to move on from the paradigm of housing being traded by people who have no intention of living in it, just for the sake of moving wealth around and storing it, or 'earning' a passive income from it. Property should not be used in this manner because it is corrosive to society as a whole.

We need a government which sees the provision of housing and controlling the cost of living as its duty, not as something to sit back and allow "the chips to fall where they may" as the free market - which has absolutely no sense of civil responsibility or care about the majority of the peoples' quality of life - exploits the provision of housing not to actually house people, but to leech as much money as possible from them without any regard to how that hurts the person whose bank account is being drained.

We need an en masse social housing program on the scale of what Herbert Simms did in the early 20th century. We need en masse CPOs of the overcrowded tenements-in-all-but-name which populate Dublin's inner city (and I'm sure many other cities) and for them to replaced with high density blocks of apartments which will be rented out at rents which are based on peoples' means and not on how much "the market" allows the landlord to get away with, consequences be damned.

"Could" and "should" are two different concepts. The problem with the current free market housing model is that how much one "could" charge in rent is seen as the only legitimate concept between the two. The idea that one "should" keep the quality of life of the tenant in mind when deciding what to charge is non-existent (indeed it's a non-existent concept in capitalism generally) and for this reason, the provision of housing needs to revert to being largely a public service as opposed to a private profit-making exercise.

Of the three major parties, two are simply too wedded to the current model because the demographics they represent are doing too well out of it. That's why young people have flocked to the third in droves.

FF traditional built huge housing estates and are a left of centre party. The brought in free education etc. The issues began when the State faced huge (and expensive to tackle) crime in the estates they built. A philosophy arose that said if people owned their council house they would be more inclined to maintain it and stabilise their areas etc. Instead the opposite happened, people who could afford to buy their house and then sell it on left the estates and in general the worst estates got worse. It was a mass transfer of state assets to the less well off at low prices that really ****ed the estates.

Another problem is that social housing comes with a massive maintenance cost that no one wants to address. DCC alone were owed 30 million in back rent last year. That's money that can't be put towards building new houses or maintaining old ones.

SF's housing policy calls for another mass transfer of state assets (this time to private developers) under the O'Cualann scheme. (SF want developers to get state land for free with no rates or taxes provided they curtail the profits they can make, anyone who's looked at construction site books knows how far we can trust developers on this aspect...).

Truthvader · 28-08-2020 12:30am

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

The entire paradigm of "housing provision as a profit-making exercise" and "property as an asset rather than a home" has to be changed, it's as simple as that. The state needs to return to being a large landlord which directly constructs housing on public land and charges rents not based on how much they can milk from the public but on what is fair based on someone's income, just like it did for the vast majority of the 20th century. We need to move on from the paradigm of housing being traded by people who have no intention of living in it, just for the sake of moving wealth around and storing it, or 'earning' a passive income from it. Property should not be used in this manner because it is corrosive to society as a whole.

We need a government which sees the provision of housing and controlling the cost of living as its duty, not as something to sit back and allow "the chips to fall where they may" as the free market - which has absolutely no sense of civil responsibility or care about the majority of the peoples' quality of life - exploits the provision of housing not to actually house people, but to leech as much money as possible from them without any regard to how that hurts the person whose bank account is being drained.

We need an en masse social housing program on the scale of what Herbert Simms did in the early 20th century. We need en masse CPOs of the overcrowded tenements-in-all-but-name which populate Dublin's inner city (and I'm sure many other cities) and for them to replaced with high density blocks of apartments which will be rented out at rents which are based on peoples' means and not on how much "the market" allows the landlord to get away with, consequences be damned.

"Could" and "should" are two different concepts. The problem with the current free market housing model is that how much one "could" charge in rent is seen as the only legitimate concept between the two. The idea that one "should" keep the quality of life of the tenant in mind when deciding what to charge is non-existent (indeed it's a non-existent concept in capitalism generally) and for this reason, the provision of housing needs to revert to being largely a public service as opposed to a private profit-making exercise.

Of the three major parties, two are simply too wedded to the current model because the demographics they represent are doing too well out of it. That's why young people have flocked to the third in droves.

Think they tried this in Ballymun

maccored · 28-08-2020 1:44am

RandomName2 wrote: »

What is it about SF and victim complex? Do they live for nothing else but to go on about how hard done by they are, and how hypocritical everyone other than themselves are?

I often wonder at that theory. most of the time they are doing exactly what they were voted in to do. They have different opinions that you, say - but that doesnt make their opinions and the issues they raise stupid, or pretending they are 'hard done by'. I do hear it said a lot mind you. usually by rabid ANBSFers mind you. Was it in the Indo? Is that where that idea comes from?

dundalkfc10 · 28-08-2020 1:51am

JasonStatham wrote: »

Sinn Fein ain't wondrous, they're stigmatised. The vast majority won't vote for them.

The vast majority don't vote any party

blanch152 · 28-08-2020 9:50am

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

They were. They aren't anymore, but AFAIK there are loopholes in this prohibition which are widely exploited.

The issue here is that the part in bold has not been true during the 2010s. Young people have not benefitted from the "recovery" and young workers are primarily those who have been targeted in cost-saving measures - I can think of a few obvious examples off the top of my head, the move to stop paying student nurses and the two-tiered pay system in teaching and other professions come immediately to mind, but this phenomenon has been replicated right through society and is yet another example of the ladder being pulled up. Most people I know working in full time careers haven't experienced anything close to the kind of wage inflation that they've had to deal with in cost of living inflation during the same period. Again I know I keep quoting this, but the Financial Times is a reputable newspaper so it seems a good, non-controversial source of figures for a debate like this - 40& vs 14%. The former percentage is how much the cost of living has inflated for young people over the last ten years. The latter is how much take-home pay has inflated during the same period.

You cannot introduce people to a certain quality of life, dramatically reduce it very suddenly, and expect those people not to become extremely angry at this. Young people who had jobs could afford better living conditions in the early 2010s than they can now, because very specifically of inflation in the cost of living - of which the cost of housing represents a gigantic proportion. Peoples' living conditions were better in the earlier half of this decade than they are now. Hell, many people I know who moved out of the family home earlier this decade and began living an independent life have had to reverse that decision because there was simple no way they could keep up with the spiralling cost of rent regardless of how hard they worked or how quickly they climbed the corporate ladder.

Again, how can anyone logically expect quality of life to regress across the board, and for the people experiencing that not lash out at the smug, out-of-touch, "keep the recovery going" w*nkers they had to put up with, acting as if life wasn't getting worse for a large number of people - or indeed acting, as Eoghan Murphy did with his idiotic "boutique hotels" comment, as if young people should just accept this, take it lying down, and even somehow learn to be happy about it?

It simple isn't going to happen. You cannot withdraw peoples' hard earned lifestyle in favour of a much more Spartan one without blowback. It's that simple. The paradigm of the earlier half of the 2010s was one of being able to afford rent and actually have some disposable income to live a life on. You cannot tell people that they'll have to give that up and not provide a viable alternative, or those people will revolt.

It's very, very basic human psychology.

At the beginning of the COVID crisis, there was a gigantic outcry against a group of people who bought PPE in bulk for no reason other than to hold it to ransom and price-gouge on it. I have no idea where you came down on that particular issue, but society was more or less united in regarding the people doing so as a bunch of unimaginably greedy c*nts. Why is it surprising that hoarding housing during a shortage for the sole purpose of "earning" money without actually producing anything of value is regarded with the same level of disdain by those who are being price gouged in this manner? There's a societal-level cognitive dissonance about this issue. If one is morally wrong, then by definition so too is the other.

The sense of entitlement around young people in this post is dumbfounding.

"You cannot introduce people to a certain quality of life, dramatically reduce it very suddenly, and expect those people not to become extremely angry at this."

Wow, just wow. Happens all the time to everyone, jobs lost, retirement income less than expected etc., yet you don't see those people bitching non-stop about it on social media.

There is a reality that everyone needs to consider. Ireland is far far above the world average for living standards. That is going to change as a more equal world is built. All those young people campaigning for Black Lives Matter, for action on Climate Change, for free immigration, need to realise that they are the ones who will pay the price and are paying the price for a more equal world. The rest of us will pay that price too. The average Irish standard of living is unsustainable in the longer term, just as the average standard of living of medieval kings who were waited on night and day by peasant servants was unsustainable.

Campaign for a better and more equal world or keep your privileges. Expecting both is naive and selfish.

Truthvader · 28-08-2020 11:05am

maccored wrote: »

I often wonder at that theory. most of the time they are doing exactly what they were voted in to do. They have different opinions that you, say - but that doesnt make their opinions and the issues they raise stupid, or pretending they are 'hard done by'. I do hear it said a lot mind you. usually by rabid ANBSFers mind you. Was it in the Indo? Is that where that idea comes from?

Think "ideas" about Sinn Fein come from their on going entanglement with criminals and thugs and the glorification of their cruel history plus the low calibre of candidates infesting their party.

If they were in power who could they send to Europe instead of "Big Phil"? Angus O'Snodaigh? Dessie Ellis? Eoin O'Brion? Martina Anderson?

Edgware · 28-08-2020 1:59pm

Truthvader wrote: »

Think "ideas" about Sinn Fein come from their on going entanglement with criminals and thugs and the glorification of their cruel history plus the low calibre of candidates infesting their party.

If they were in power who could they send to Europe instead of "Big Phil"? Angus O'Snodaigh? Dessie Ellis? Eoin O'Brion? Martina Anderson?

Two of those are ruled out because they cannot speak English. One other because she cannot be allowed out unaccompanied

markodaly · 28-08-2020 3:30pm

blanch152 wrote: »

Campaign for a better and more equal world or keep your privileges. Expecting both is naive and selfish.

That is a good summation of it in fairness.

They want world peace, climate justice, BLM, less inequality.... but they don't realise that in world terms THEY are the 1%... so who do you think is going to lose out if we want to spread the wealth globally? Some South Sudanese girl?

Having your cake and eating comes to mind. They want all the gravy for themselves, get someone else to pay for it AND rise everyone else in the world up too....!!

Economic Collapse · 28-08-2020 4:59pm

This is what you are dealing with in Sinn Fein. Terrorists, murderers, rapists, paedophiles, communists, MI5 agents, racists, sectarian bigots, xenophobes. And soon they will be running the show here if they can get their grubby hands on power. Sickening.

Economic Collapse · 28-08-2020 5:01pm

Edgware wrote: »

Two of those are ruled out because they cannot speak English. One other because she cannot be allowed out unaccompanied

Dessie Ellis is a serial killer linked to 50 murders. That should rule him out normally but in Sinn Fein he is lauded as some hero.

afro man · 28-08-2020 5:06pm

Economic Collapse wrote: »

This is what you are dealing with in Sinn Fein. Terrorists, murderers, rapists, paedophiles, communists, MI5 agents, racists, sectarian bigots, xenophobes. And soon they will be running the show here if they can get their grubby hands on power. Sickening.

Drop the Terrorists / Murderers and im sure a lot of the other descriptions would apply to our Other Political parties

Odhinn · 28-08-2020 5:20pm

Economic Collapse wrote: »

Dessie Ellis is a serial killer linked to 50 murders..................

You've some source for that claim?

Economic Collapse · 28-08-2020 5:24pm

Odhinn wrote: »

You've some source for that claim?

I can't post URLs but google Dessie Ellis 50 murders, there are loads of articles from Journal.ie, BBC, Belfast Telegraph, Irish Central etc

Common knowledge although he denies the claims.

Odhinn · 28-08-2020 5:31pm

Economic Collapse wrote: »

I can't post URLs but google Dessie Ellis 50 murders, there are loads of articles from Journal.ie, BBC, Belfast Telegraph, Irish Central etc

Common knowledge although he denies the claims.

It's a claim by the Brits, and no details of these killings are mentioned so I suggest your notion of him being a 'serial killer' is rather far fetched. However as an active member of the IRA he would obviously have been involved in attacks on crown forces where there was loss of life.

Economic Collapse · 28-08-2020 5:34pm

Odhinn wrote: »

It's a claim by the Brits, and no details of these killings are mentioned so I suggest your notion of him being a 'serial killer' is rather far fetched. However as an active member of the IRA he would obviously have been involved in attacks on crown forces where there was loss of life.

You can make excuses for mass murder if you want, I won't.

markodaly · 28-08-2020 5:47pm

Odhinn wrote: »

You've some source for that claim?

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/the-sinn-fein-td-who-is-linked-to-50-murders-28951973.html

blanch152 · 28-08-2020 9:10pm

Odhinn wrote: »

It's a claim by the Brits, and no details of these killings are mentioned so I suggest your notion of him being a 'serial killer' is rather far fetched. However as an active member of the IRA he would obviously have been involved in attacks on crown forces where there was loss of life.

You can always spot the admirers of sociopaths when they dehumanise people through the use of phrases like the “crown forces”.

Human beings, he was involved in the killing of human beings, who look just like you and I.

McMurphy · 28-08-2020 9:25pm

markodaly wrote: »

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/the-sinn-fein-td-who-is-linked-to-50-murders-28951973.html

Says in that link he was acquitted.

Here

He was eventually acquitted in London.

Odhinn · 28-08-2020 9:32pm

blanch152 wrote: »

You can always spot the admirers of sociopaths when they dehumanise people through the use of phrases like the “crown forces”.

Human beings, he was involved in the killing of human beings, who look just like you and I.

They were forces of the crown, hence "crown forces".

Yes, its a thing called "War".

RandomViewer · 28-08-2020 9:37pm

McMurphy wrote: »

Bookmarked this post.

I didn't know fifteen years was the limit to discuss past transgressions.

Interesting.

Last tent was 2008, this counting lark seems confusing for some

tikkahunter · 28-08-2020 9:41pm

Odhinn wrote: »

They were forces of the crown, hence "crown forces".

Yes, its a thing called "War".

Protection rackets part of “war” as well?

Truthvader · 28-08-2020 10:24pm

Odhinn wrote: »

They were forces of the crown, hence "crown forces".

Yes, its a thing called "War".

A woman going shopping is not "crown forces" (unless of course Gerry says she is). The thing is not called "war" it is called crime of the lowest most cowardly kind. Still keep celebrating the likes of Desdie Ellis. It helps clarify who Sinn Fein are for newcomers

McMurphy · 29-08-2020 12:43am

blanch152 wrote: »

You can always spot the admirers of sociopaths when they dehumanise people through the use of phrases like the “crown forces”.

Human beings, he was involved in the killing of human beings, who look just like you and I.

Leo dehumanising our Irish humans apparently.

https://twitter.com/LeoVaradkar/status/944623413011894272?s=19

JohnnyFlash · 29-08-2020 9:45am

I see SF in cahoots with the DUP voted for pay increases for MLA’s and their special advisors and staff.

The same sort of thing they were pretending to be outraged over in the Dáil.

Absolutely awful opposition so far.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-53938821

Superfoods · 29-08-2020 12:13pm

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

I see SF in cahoots with the DUP voted for pay increases for MLA’s and their special advisors and staff.

The same sort of thing they were pretending to be outraged over in the Dáil.

Absolutely awful opposition so far.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-53938821

Where is the outrage we seen after the latest increase in Ireland?

Edgware · 29-08-2020 2:14pm

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

I see SF in cahoots with the DUP voted for pay increases for MLA’s and their special advisors and staff.

The same sort of thing they were pretending to be outraged over in the Dáil.

Absolutely awful opposition so far.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-53938821

They had to vote in favour or it might damage the Peace Process.

The wondrous adventures of Sinn Fein (part 2)

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