Thursday, February 26, 2009
“We’re fighting for our economic lives.”
Mick flagged this up in advance. It is somewhat of an ambush, and Irish Junior Finance Minister Martin Mansergh does have a valid point about being questioned about a specific case without knowing all the relevant facts. But his reaction.. Anyway, listen out for his comments about funding of projects in Northern Ireland. There’s also a priceless moment when he reaches for an example of North/South co-operation and plucks his borrowing of an expert from the NI Department of Finance [We have experts there? - Ed] Apparently so.. Oh, and there may be times when cross-border competition is desirable. From tonight’s Hearts and Minds, here is the interview of Irish Times journalist Margaret Ward and Minister Mansergh on the state of the Irish economy. Adds Margaret Ward’s account of the interview.
Pete Baker @ 07:26 PM
This is hilarious stuff!
Manzer is rather comical as he winces in the chair and raises his voice, while Ward rolls her eyes with disdain.
A case of the nerd meets the the college girl who thinks she’s great at everything!Posted by on Feb 26, 2009 @ 10:09 PMSo….. that what Margarer Ward looks like : she’s real purdy! Manzer is just manzer and the economy is just an economy (barely !)
Posted by on Feb 26, 2009 @ 11:22 PMYes, the ‘borrowing of the expert’ was amazingly comical.I hope they don’t keep our expert too long or have we loads of them?
Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 08:23 AMShe was incredibly rude. She alwways advocated making ordinary people take all the hits at once. Utterly reactionary.
Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 08:40 AMI enjoyed Noel apparently trying not to laugh, or at least reveal his enjoyment of it all.
Not much meat added here really, just the simple;
“we’re doomed”
“we’re not doomed”Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 08:46 AMJust a thought,
Last year the nations pleasures were found as follows;
1. Bought a flat in Bulgaria to outprice the locals.
2. Drank copious amounts of wine, French and Chilean only of course, no cheap stuff ye’understand.
3. Spent a mint at Cheltenham, then was out of it at Galway but backed the winner.
4. Had two phd nerds in to put down the new floor, Canadian oak ye’know like the good stuff.
5. Sending the missus to NY NY to shop.
6. Bought a boat.
7. Looking at cars and saying fook it! I got an ‘08 SUV. My old mans people had land.
8. Telling foreigners about how the celtic tiger was all about our great education system and how the two lads with them phd things doing the floor should be so lucky as to have an edukation like them lawds in Dublin.
9. Going on the piss in prague/barcelona/paris etc etc.
10. Believing the hype.
11. Golfing.
12. Talking shite about cheese and other foods that to be honest i’m not that into.
13. Talking shite about coffee.
This year the national pleasure;1. Complaining and saying I knew it couldn’t last, sure common sense would tell you that.
2. Imagining telling the bank to go f itself. can you imagine, sure it’d be great, the crooks.
3. Laughing at our politicians.
Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 08:58 AMGreat Stuff
Follow up Margaret Ward’s take on events at: http://www.margaretward.ie/
Pity I can’t watch all of the show due to the BBC’s new BROADCASTING BAN that stops southern internet user access to the TV part of iplayer.
Is this ban legit?
Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 09:40 AMThat’s bound to be used on media training courses as an example of how not to do it.
Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 09:42 AMMartin Masergh came out of that encounter much better than Margaret Ward did.
He sounded like a sensible person with rational thoughts and he was bang on the money when he accussed her of engaging in populist soap-box rhetoric.
Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 09:49 AMPity I can’t watch all of the show due to the BBC’s new BROADCASTING BAN that stops southern internet user access to the TV part of iplayer.
UK license payers aren’t obligated to spend money to ensure that media broadcasts can be seen outside of the state. Wise up.
Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 09:52 AM“That’s bound to be used on media training courses as an example of how not to do it.”
It’s a cert. The difficult thing will be convincing the trainees that it wasn’t a couple of actors hamming it up.
Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 09:59 AMDear Comrade Stalin
How does the BBC’S new BROADCASTING BAN play out under the terms of the GFA?
Does the Agreement allow equal access of the Republics media to the North? And if it does should the BBC not have equal access to the South?
I could cry discrimination (as a unionist living down South) but in reality all i want to be able to do is to watch iplayer when I’m in County Meath. I don’t think that I’m the only one??
iplayer is great, is it not?
Apparently I have to wait for the ‘international version’ How does that sit with everybody???
Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 10:02 AMIt seems the Beeb may have hacked out the best bits, Pete:
Wondering why the sections of the BBC2 programme 2nite that made Mansergh seem a pompous, entitled, elitist were cut out? No time maybe? Margaret E Ward shortly after the programme was broadcast.
Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 10:04 AMThe current exhibition of BBC news reporting in NI confirms its anchoring role in the great Stormont pretence of NI existing as an island off England, with hardly a reference to the poor badlands to the South and West permitted.
Today’s BBC NI news output has come on a tiny bit in acknowledgement of geographical and political realities since that, difficult enough when Shepherd’s Bush doesn’t understand it, and the Unionists in Belfast don’t want it. Therefore when Noel, Mark & Co venture South they have to make do with what they can get at the fringes. As happens regularly on the fringes though, they struck gold, in this case, pure gold.
Margaret Ward, a popular enough name in caravan sites all over Ireland, sat there all gorgeous and pouting, with Martin Mansergh, Billy Bunter’s form master, the unlikeliest FF TD ever invented. To debate an tubaiste mór with the likeable, decent, informed, damned-good-at-his-job Mr Thompson as referee. Like all good refs, you hardly knew he was there.
Now Mansergh hasn’t been on any media training courses, and for that fact alone, you’d have to like him. Quintessentially English, he was the guy who led FF out of the green wilderness and delivered up the intellectual cover for the GFA. He persuaded the soul of the party that partition was an inevitable consequence of one horse heading for Gaelic revivalism whilst another was going to fight in Flanders. Tipperary has taught him of course that politics is the art of the possible, and when every small builder, minor union official and shopkeeper in Ireland has there local TD on speed dial, your room for radical manoeuvre is limited. Decent, honest, truthful, in my book, though in Margaret Ward’s blog I note she describes him as a’pompous, entitled elitist’.
Ward, as she no doubt prefers to be entitled, comes with all the humour, subtlety, class, and understanding we have come to expect from the Irish Times school of American female journalists. Like Lillington and Holmquist (of late - she had her moments) her modus operandi seems to be:
1.make a list of how things are done back home
2. compare with little old Irelan’
3. whinge, groan and look outraged.
Ward, all intertwitface and efficiency, demanded action, right now buddy, or we’re all going down the toobs.
I hear many of our newly arrived non-nationals are going home. Don’t be frustrated with paddy procrastination Margaret. Those airplanes leave all the time.
Nice one, Noel.
Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 10:24 AMniall
“Last year the nations pleasures were found as follows”
Excellent stuff, particuarly talking shite about coffee. Last year I read an article in the Sunday independant describing how coffee consumption had overtaken tea consumption for the first time, as if it were another significant milestone on the road from dysfunctional banana republic to modern self-confident country at ease with itself.
Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 10:30 AMGreat discussion here everyone but maybe you should stick to the facts or at least do some basic research? As a journalist, I have a duty to report facts and make comments based on fact, not fantasy or hysteria. Bloggers should have the same responsibility.
Let’s get the personal stuff outta the way. I am 40. Sadly not a college girl anymore. I have been a business journalist for 20 years at both The Irish Times and The Sunday Times. In New York I worked on Wall Street in both the equity and debt markets. Both my parents were born and reared in Ireland but forced to emigrate in the 1950s so that makes me what nationality??? (Does every nationality have a right to make informed comment or just Irish people?) I think racist comments are disgusting.
Other facts: Ireland is burning through more than €1 billion a week so it may be bankrupt in 12 months unless it can get fresh lending. No one wants to lend to us because we are seen as corrupt fraudsters. As a result, we pay more to borrow money than other countries.
We are one of the PIIGS group of nations who are in trouble - Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain.
Company insolvency figures show that if the 2007 and 2008 figures continue Ireland will see more than 1,500 bankrupt companies. You can imagine the job losses.
Other statistics to look at: employment figures, gross domestic product, consumer sentiment. I could go on.
The main message here is that if you are not frightened about what is happening then you should be. Please, please get informed. Take action and take it now. We are in big trouble and unless the government takes radical steps NOW our children will be paying the price.
Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 10:46 AM“borrowing of an expert from the NI Department of Finance”
They gave us a ferry operator who was as good as anyone on the west coast of Ireland so it’s only fair that we should give them a procurement person from CPD :)
Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 10:50 AMSorry, the Manics beat you to it: “If you tolerate this, then your children will be next”.
I much prefer their version.BTW, it makes you American.
Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 11:10 AMHi Margaret
Thanks for joining in the discussion.
I can only apologise for the kaboodle.
We do try to keep them civil..
Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 11:18 AMYeah Pete, rudeness is terrible. Like talking across people during a TV interview for example.
I’d like Margaret to explain her prescription for making sure that the professional classes, the property speculators, the financiers, banks and their shareholders pay their share. Because all I can see at her website is the social partners, which is code for the trade unions.
Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 11:25 AMPerhaps Mags could take over from Noel and give our politicos a good handbagging ...
Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 11:29 AMI find it intriguing that the ROI was represented here two gurus who were separately Oxbridge and American-accented. Interesting that Noel Thompson was the only bod present with an authentic Irish accent
Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 12:28 PMGaribaldy -
Shares in Irish banks are pretty much worthless. Share holders have lost their equity.
Property speculators are likely also in serious trouble, having leveraged up to invest. Many will go bankrupt, and good riddance.
Professional classes - Most of the professional classes - Doctors, Lawyers and the like work in state protected areas or for the state directly. We should absolutely cut spending and increase competition, to drive down costs in these areas.
On the unions - http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/union-chiefs-on-big-wages-unite-against-pay-cuts-1613952.html
The average salary in the public sector is €50k. Many senior public servants earn hundreds of thousands.
Ordinary private sector workers are bearing the brunt of this downturn - 36,000 unemployed in January alone. What is your plan to create or save jobs, so that ordinary workers can feed their families? What would you do to enable businesses to hire more workers and stay afloat?
At the same time, what do you think our government should do in order to convince the debt markets that we are credit worthy?Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 01:28 PMMack,
I’m not pretending to have all the answers. Having said that, I’m not sure how taking money off public sector workers helps enable businesses to stay afloat. Surely paying them their wages so they can spend them is more likely to achieve this. As you point out, there are many overpaid southern civil servants, not least the politicians. But that is what a progressive tax regime is for, and personally I would have no problem hitting not only extremely wealthy public servants, but also extremely wealthy people of all types hard. I am already on record as advocating a forced loan on the wealthy.
There are people who have made fortunes during the last two decades, often by corrupt means, and who have been paying ridiculously low amounts of tax on it. Time to make them pay up. A decent tax base seems to me to be a prerequisite for a decent credit rating.
It seems to me that practically every other government has adopted a Keynsian policy, using the vast resources at the disposal of the state to stimulate the economy through spending. The south is taking the opposite approach for reasons that have never quite been clear to me. I’m fairly sure that if the government spent a lot less on job creation and new state-owned companies than it has done on the banks, we would see extremely beneficial results.
Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 01:55 PMWhy is an American debating with a Protestant on non Irish tv about hte Irish economy? MI5 meets CIA? can Ireland not also deport undesirable aliens?
Posted by on Feb 27, 2009 @ 02:02 PM
