farmer bashing posts elsewhere on boards

Its not just on boards. Iv had things said to me in life about farmers. Probably cos im not a farmer and they'd think i agree. Farms in my family though. Usually by ignorant gob****es who would know what type of tree is in their front yard let alone anything else rural related.

Take a look at older political polls, which party do you vote for?

There is always a larger than in the real world skew well to the left, so it never came as a surprise to me.

My philosophy is now, usually, one of "don't feed the trolls" as that's what I consider those ill informed individuals.

Y'know...

alot of people have the atitude that all farmers are rich as they have land and are only a load of complainers who get free money from europe for doing nothing... until peoples minds are changed we will be stuck will this tag

I find it a bit worrying on here (and I don't know if the real world is the same) just how much sympathy SF and the ULA have despite being economic lunatics.

This is one of my biggest fears with the collapse of FF (I have no allegience to any party btw).

FF got votes from a very broad spectrum of society mainly because of civil war alligiences - now whether they bought votes or whatever is irellevant to what i am saying here - which means that people who would be left or even hard left voted for FF when in a normal political system they would vote for SF, Labour, ULA etc.

Now with the demise of FF these people will be voting (or starting to at least) vote according to reasons other than the civil war - from what i have seen of the left it seems to be people are swayed by the most passionate and those who shout the loudest about screwing the bankers, developers, the rich etc etc regardless of policy

These are very dangerous times I feel. There is a very large left and hard left population in Ireland which had been previously hoovered up with the FF vote. This population is going to make labour and SF (maybe ULA and others) very strong i feel in the next election.

To bring this back to being relative to the farming forum - you have to worry about this notion to tax the rich i.e. wealth tax which seems to be the main way we are going to keep our heads above water according to the hard left (excluding labour who i don't think are advocating a wealth tax but open to correction) I know that farmland is supposed to be exempt but for how long do we realistically think that would happen?? It couldn't be justified as an exemption IMO. This has got to be a worry for farmers, all business men and all asset owners

I wouldn't be overly worried. You can only tax so much. People won't be able to pay a property tax if they have no income.

The problem that exists in this country is that the people who earn the most money are paying the least amount of tax. Several of the country's top 100 wealthiest people are paying no tax at all even though they have income of several million € per year. Why should an irish artist that makes €10 million every year not pay tax on any of it?????

These people and the schemes that see them pay little or no tax should be targeted before they heap any more tax on the middle class. As middle class workers, we fund everything in this country through our tax. We fund the HSE and Social welfare which give out medical cards and unemployment benefit to people that have no work or have a disability or just don't want to work. The people who have the highest incomes in this country pay for nothing.

Secondly, I don't begrudge medical cards or unemployment benefit to people that are unemployed or that are sick or have a disability. God forbid, any one of us could be in their shoes in the future. But we have to remember that even in the good times, when we were bring 5000 people a week from Eastern Europe to fill the vacancies here, we still had an unemployment rate of over 4%. That tells me that 4 out of every 100 people (and their families) don't want to work and are satisfied with living on unemployment benefit, getting free health benefits from their medical cards and getting subsidised accommodation (all of which are paid for by us, the tax payer). Beyond the long term unemployed, we have seen an increase in people on Disability Allowance. Between 2002 and 2008, over 50,000 individuals that were long term unemployed applied for disability allowance and were granted it. These people were moved from a Job Seekers to a long term disability payment just to make our live register look good with less long term unemployed on it. They were advised that in order to move they should present to the examining doctor with a disability. Some presented with depression - claiming that because they did not work they had become depressed. Others presented with learning difficulties that were not diagnosed at primary school (most didn't attend secondary school). People with diabetes and other diseases that were caused by lack of exercise and sitting at home doing nothing all their lives were passed for Disability allowance. We are paying for these people. They are not expected to go out to find work. They will never be expected to work. If they get sick, tax payers money pays for it. Tax payers money pays their rent or builds their houses. We pay for their electricity, phone, sky+, etc.

Until our country's government finds a way to stop giving handouts to people that don't deserve it, we, the ordinary tax payer will be paying for these people. We'll be repaying the nama loans that go to pay for these people.

Sorry for the rant, I've met some people that maddened me today. So as for taxing middle class workers through wealth tax or property tax, I really think that the next government should look at their spending rather than their tax intake.

Tipp Man wrote: »

I find it a bit worrying on here (and I don't know if the real world is the same) just how much sympathy SF and the ULA have despite being economic lunatics.

This is one of my biggest fears with the collapse of FF (I have no allegience to any party btw).

FF got votes from a very broad spectrum of society mainly because of civil war alligiences - now whether they bought votes or whatever is irellevant to what i am saying here - which means that people who would be left or even hard left voted for FF when in a normal political system they would vote for SF, Labour, ULA etc.

Now with the demise of FF these people will be voting (or starting to at least) vote according to reasons other than the civil war - from what i have seen of the left it seems to be people are swayed by the most passionate and those who shout the loudest about screwing the bankers, developers, the rich etc etc regardless of policy

These are very dangerous times I feel. There is a very large left and hard left population in Ireland which had been previously hoovered up with the FF vote. This population is going to make labour and SF (maybe ULA and others) very strong i feel in the next election.

To bring this back to being relative to the farming forum - you have to worry about this notion to tax the rich i.e. wealth tax which seems to be the main way we are going to keep our heads above water according to the hard left (excluding labour who i don't think are advocating a wealth tax but open to correction) I know that farmland is supposed to be exempt but for how long do we realistically think that would happen?? It couldn't be justified as an exemption IMO. This has got to be a worry for farmers, all business men and all asset owners

By my guestimations are these people not advocating communisim?, and well since that doesn't work very well.....
Oh i suppose when they're weeding my cabbage patch/or turnips maybe they'll see the error of they're ways. :rolleyes:

ihatetractors wrote: »

By my guestimations are these people not advocating communisim?, and well since that doesn't work very well.....
Oh i suppose when they're weeding my cabbage patch/or turnips maybe they'll see the error of they're ways. :rolleyes:

Communism is certainly much closer to where they want to be

Just on the last line - you my friend would be out weeding the cabbage patch with them but the major difference is it would NOT be your cabbage patch any longer - the state will take it over in the interests of "society"

Wow but this post has turned from the op. Who thinks that FF vote is going to be below 25%? I for one dont see it. When you are a party hack (and speaking as a former one) it is very difficult to envisage voting for the 'enemy' ie ff for fg or fg for ff, especially when the majority of the ff supporters are OAPs. My father was at an old folks party( thats an OAP meal not a political party;)) and the majority were still going to vote ff because that was what they always did:o. Its not going to change. And people always are jelous of 'the other' because 'they' all have it easy so farming, unemployed, OAPs public service are all going to get pasted with unfair comment. AND fair comment too. We as farmers are disconnected from consumers and them from us and i cant really see any way of re-establishing any meaningful connection so the bashing will continue. Forever:(

was at a discussion group meeting last night , ulster bank where there promoting how great they are with farmers , now all of a sudden farmers are valuable customers after years of favouring builders/ developers .... i was amazed at their atitude, i am an ulster bank client , it just made me laugh.. maybe the ordinary joe soap should realise that only for the food industry there would be no exports

LostCovey wrote: »

Maybe I misunderstand you Tipp Man - are you really saying we should continue voting along the fault-lines of a 90 years old Civil War??



Tipp Man, I never realised tax the rich was a hard left philosophy.

What alternative system have you in mind?

I think farmer-bashing is pretty poor substitute for reasoned and rational discussion, but this farming & forestry forum has a few people who are pretty good at townie/Green Party bashing too. It's a two-way thing.

I think bashing is good for breaking stones, but not much else.

And its inevitable that lefties have more time to spend at the oul' keyboard!

With their union hours, and unemployment and all that.

LC

Lost Covey yes you are misunderstanding my other post. I am most certainly not advocating voting based on civil war politics - all i am saying is the demise of FF is going to lead to a huge change in the voting pattern in this election with a large swing to the left from a traditional "right" party. From an economic point of view it makes no sense that the alternative for most FF voters is SF - that doesn't make logical sense (to me anyway)

With regards to taxing the rich and i think you are being a bit sarcastic with your opening comment here- how do you define who is rich? Any farmer on here with a 100 acres of land or more is sitting on assets over a million euro - which by SF and ULA's assertion makes them rich. So they are going to tax them at 1% so that 10k a year tax on a 100 acre place - before a penny of income is made. Can you tell me how this is going to be paid??

Also on taxing the rich - lets not get carried away with ourselves. Firstly the top earning 8% of taxpayers pay 60% of the income tax - I know Relig you highlighted an example of a loophole, and there are loop holes but in general high earners pay a lot of tax - this is a fact.

Also on taxing the rich - do you not see that farmers are part of the "rich" you ask any joe soap on the street are farmers rich and i guarantee to you the majority will say yes.