Europe has been good to us?

utick wrote: »

this is something the yes to lisbon campaign keeps telling us, my question to them is how good was europe to us in the 80s?

Very good. Ireland, until recent accession states from Eastern Europe became fully fledged member states, was a net benefactor country. Ireland as a nation has done extraordinarily well out of Europe. FACT.

utick wrote: »

ireland was part of the eu/ec and was in a major deppression alot of immigration

So Lisbon threads were immigrating into a depressing Ireland in the 80s? I don't remember seeing that. And I'd remember depressed Lisbon threads, it's the kind of thing I remember.

What's those stats?

We received €50billion cash from the EU and gave them €100billion in fish for that.

Net Contributor more like.

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Sherifu wrote: »

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this

Ponster wrote: »

These threads are getting boring.

+ infinity

see its not really a politics thread, its a culture thread.

1980's ireland. i qualified from college, did an anco course, wrote up a cv and went to a recruitment agency called headhunt. little fu'cker in there with some irish version of his name, horrible little man, told me i was useless, unemployable and that i should go abroad to get work and experience. so i went, without the intention of coming back if that was the type of wa'nker that could say whether or not my cv would be passed on to an employer. went to london got a job, after 2-3 years saw a job advertised by headhunt, same little fu'cker, in the irish newspaper with a large american software corporation that was setting up in ireland and looking for my skills. sent in my cv and got it returned saying that the employer was not interested. saw the same job advertised a couple of weeks later in the english press and the chance to apply directly, which i did and got the job. little fu'cker. anyway, thats what '80s ireland reminds me of. a very few people controlling the very many for their own interests.

then came the corporations for the tax breaks. that gave people who were not part of the very few at the top the opportunity to enter the ruling class, the executive class, the monied class. no longer were we to be ruled by a bunch of in-bred rich fu'ckers who could hold sway over your life for their own benefit. we were the first generation to actually be able to stand tall because of the status that the large american corporations bestowed upon us, and everyone since has benefitted from our pioneering work. no longer was there the expectation of a priest, a nun, a civil servant, a bank clerk, a teacher and a homeboy to look after the folks considered to be the profile of the successful irish family. success could be down to the individual and the chance they took having been presented it by the large foreign corporations coming here to set up their operations.

why did they come here? because of us. because of the irish people and our intelligence. the fact that we were european, spoke english but weren't fu'cking english. the fact that we could work long hours and not complain because our forefathers had a little work. but the biggest factor, the most important element of their decision was the fact the they could change the name of their company very 3-5 years to a new name registered in the caymen islands and benefit from renewed tax breaks that were afforded them. 12.5% was across the board but depending on the company and their type of business and the level of their revenue, their would be deals done.

we should have stayed that way but we got caught on the hop and gave in to some of the eu demands. farming is fu'cked. thats not just here. collective corporate farming is killing rural communities all over europe. fishing is fu'cked. we are an island nation surrounded by rich waters and stocks that have been fleeced by spanish trawlers. we eat frozen fish from the north of england, from scotland, crab meat from fu'cking thailand. we have no real seafood culture, not any abundance or value for money.

we have allowed companies like tesco to come in and not even require them to delcare their profits, they came in as an unlimited company. other companies have also done the same thing. recently the uk based companies, the large multiples have ceased to display their prices in sterling, the strength of the euro is something they are denying us. fair enough that europe does not have much oil but the strength of the euro should afford us better rpices than $10 a gallon. and anyway, the money we spend for fuel should be svaed on other products like food and clothing due to the stregth of the euro. is it? no. we allow multiples to import beer from spain, via the uk, ship it across the boarder from the north and sell it below cost whilst fleecing us on a our groceries bill. the people dealing with this have no approach because they have no experience, they are like the planning clerks of old telling us white walls/black slate roof to preserve the integrity of the countryside, wtf? they have not got a clue.

then we open up our borders. what was that all about? an island nation with no natural resources, no indigenous industry, allows 100,000s of people to come here to seek work. i am not racist, i ma not even nationalist, truth be told i'd like to live in an anarchy(daydreams) but it is not long ago since we were in the state of the countries that these people come from, we show a little unsustainable growth and we take down our borders, meanwhile everywhere else on the planet is putting them up.

infrastructure, huh. contracts handed out on foot of brown envelopes, with work phased in such a way that the contractors finish the m50 for example and start enlarging it. what a joke. but who pays? you may say the eu but you are so wrong. thats what they want you think. we have paid with our fishing grounds, we have paid with our letting down the boarders and now each and everyone of us pays whilst we are sitting in traffic for 2-3 hours per day or by paying fu'cking ridiculous prices for housing that is 2-3 miles from work - still takes half an hour to get there though.

at the end of the day, irish people made ireland successful. the inherent good nature and hard working irish people, not the chancers but the ones who came up in hard times, nothing more, nothing less, we just didn't have the confidence to go it alone and make sure that what we had was developed for our benefit.

i pity todays generation of 20 somethings, there are some tough times ahead. we all need to rally around a little and try and make sure we help as much as we all can. be a little bit more realistic in our expectations. take control of our future.

i am not for or against europe but put it on the backboiler for now, until we make our politicians do their job, understand more about where we find ourselves. let them ask the question that i find fundamental - can we have a referendum to suspend our involvement in the eu until they take the time to educate us all about what it is for us to be european citizens. ask them to stop all this tribunal bullsh!t, all this distraction about trivial events in the past and spend as much time and money educating us on who we are and where we are going.

regardless of the rant. ireland prospered because of irish people.