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Something seriously wrong here! EU Leaders Salaries

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Something seriously wrong here! EU Leaders Salaries

During the week I found a list of EU Salaries that was posted on Facebook and if you look through that list you realise that something is SERIOUSLY wrong in Ireland!

Formatting of tables with lots of numbers doesn’t work so well here, but I hope you will see the blatant discrepancy between the salaries and the size of the countries. And I don’t care who is the head of our little country (or its government) and also is it irrelevant that some salary cuts have already been “endured” by the Taoiseach.

EU Leaders’ Gross Salary per year:

+ Slovakia —— Population: 5.4 mio ——–Leader’s salary: EUR 45.127
+ Portugal——-Population: 10.46 mio ——Leader’s salary: EUR 68,670
+ Hungary——-Population: 10 mio ———Leader’s salary: EUR 72,000
+ Spain———-Population: 46.77 mio——Leader’s salary: EUR 78,000
+ Greece———Population: 11.03 mio——Leader’s salary: EUR 85,479
+ Lithuania——Population: 10.46mio——-Leader’s salary: EUR 90,361
+ Italy———–Population: 58.83 mio——-Leader’s salary: EUR 115,000

+ IRELAND——Population: 4.7 mio———-Leader’s salary: EUR 185,000

Is that mad or what? The Taoiseach earns more than the leader of the government in Italy or Spain or all these other countries?

Note; I didn’t check all these numbers in detail and instead took it from a post that is signed with “unitedpeople.ie”. United People seems to be a new party in Ireland. I don’t know much about this party and in no way support or endorse it. A brief “Fact check” on a Wikipedia Page here did indicate that the numbers in general seem to be at least in the right region.

Irish, Odd, Politics, Taoiseach,

Electric Vehicles: Irish Government needs to do better

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Electric Vehicles: Irish Government needs to do better

Last week I read somewhere that there are now approx. 7,000 Electric Vehicles (EV) registered in Ireland. But the Irish government has committed to 20,000 on Irish roads by 2020 and 500,000 by 2030. :-O The 20,000 number doesn’t look reachable unless more is done to promote EVs.

In 10 years from 2020 to 2030 a lot can happen, so it is impossible at the moment to make any guesses about the reachability of that BIG goal, but the next milestone is – based on current uptake – impossible to reach.

Politics, Traffic,

Go Voting on Friday

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Go Voting on Friday

Yes, on the coming Friday (26 October) the presidential election is taking place in Ireland and you should go and cast your vote if you have one! Only if you are an Irish citizen you get to vote and I know that MANY Dublin Event Guide Readers are not citizens in Ireland, but the rest should definitely go and vote.

You might ask WHY? Because in the end it will have absolutely no impact on your life (or anybody else’s) or on Irish politics or on your wealth or wellbeing. Yes, indeed, voting for the Irish President is a bit of a waste of time as far as real life issues are concerned. BUT using your vote, whenever you have the opportunity, is – in my opinion – a sort of duty for everyone who cares about democracy. There will be no repercussions if you don’t vote, so the “duty” element is just a “moral duty”, but nevertheless it is relevant to keep democracy alive/working.

If you want to know my opinion about who people should vote for – and yes, it is a bit controversial – you will find it at www.joergsteegmueller.com/2018/10/19/presidential-election-anyone-but-miggeldy/

By the way, you will ALSO have a vote about a referendum on that Friday. The referendum will decide if the Blasphemy article will stay in the constitution or not. (Blasphemy is the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence to a deity, or sacred things.) Total nonsense in a secular society that does not depend on any church (anymore). And in the Irish version, the Blasphemy  article even only covers the Christian definition of a “God” and ignores all other religions. Even more a reason to get rid of this silly article from 1935.

Elections, Politics, President, ,

Presidential Election: Anyone but Miggeldy!!!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Presidential Election: Anyone but Miggeldy!!!

The Presidential Election in Ireland is coming closer. On 26 October all Irish citizens in Ireland will be asked to vote for a new President. There are six candidates (including the current president) and the term is a very long 7 years.

The candidates are Sean Gallagher, Gavin Duffy, Peter Casey, Joan Freeman, Liadh Ní Riada and the current president Michael D. Higgins (a.k.a Miggeldy Higins, after a primary school’s child answer to the question “Who is the President of Ireland?”).

None of the candidates is any better than another, considering that the Irish President has virtually NO political power. But none of them is unsuitable either. So who should you vote for?

In my opinion you can’t do ANYTHING wrong, no matter who you vote for, so if  – for whatever reason – you feel passionate about one of them, go ahead and vote for him or her. But if you are not sure and care about my opinion, then I would suggest to vote for anyone but Michael D. Higgins!

Why so? There are two reasons: 1) Age and 2) Arrogance

We have a minimum age for a President. For some reason it has been decided that anybody that is younger than 35 years of age is not eligible to be voted as a President. In the same way, it also would make sense to have an upper age limit. It can’t make sense that an over 80 year old is the President of a country unless we are super desperate and absolutely can’t find anyone else! Higgins will be 84 when the next term ends and there is no good reason for that. Aras an Uachterain should NOT be a retirement home!

And the point about arrogance? I know he took part in the debate on Virgin Media One on Thursday, but his refusal to take part in previous debates is an arrogance that no candidate should be allowed to get away with. And Sean Gallagher, who also refused because Higgins refused, doesn’t get any stars for this from me either.

Speaking about debates: The Virgin Media One debate was really interesting, because it showed that Michael D. Higgins is not at all an impressive candidate, actually he is surprisingly weak, considering that he was in that position already for 7 years. (So don’t expect anything impressive from him in the next 7 years!) But it also showed, that there is no outstanding other candidate.

And finally, what would I do…if you care? The one that I would probably vote for is Gavin Duffy! Seven years ago, it would have been Sean Gallagher, but this time around I am not convinced about him.

For me, the biggest surprise of the evening was that Pat Kenny did a really good job in probing the candidates!

Elections, Irish, Politics, President, , , , , , ,

Nobody is allowed to check the President’s spend?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Nobody is allowed to check the President’s spend?

The job of the “Public Accounts Committee (PAC)” is to check the expenditure of all offices, departments and government agencies to make sure that they don’t waste money and that everything is done and accounted for properly.

They are meant to do that regularly, but oddly it seems that the expenditure of the President wasn’t checked for a much longer time.

Now they have decided to do that checking in the next week. But suddenly the “Secretary General to the Government and Accounting Officer for the Office of the President” has a big problem with that check. He thinks it is even unconstitutional because nobody is allowed to check the President. Interestingly the Taoiseach and the leader of the opposition both also are worried about that check.

Odd! If all is well, nobody should be worried and if things are not well, then we should definitely find out BEFORE the presidential election. Don’t you think?

RTE writes about it here.

Elections, Irish, Politics, President, Taxes, ,
 
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