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Labour Party Minister hurts his voters and sides with the rich

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Labour Party Minister hurts his voters and sides with the rich

The previous government was bad and we all thought that it can only get better, but it is amazing how incompetent and useless the majority of the Irish politicians are. Many were hoping that the Labour Party would give a social component and a balance to the policies of Fine Gael, but then Pat Rabbitte became Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources and he just seems to screw up everywhere.

I had hoped that a Labour Party Minister would be a little more careful with Ireland’s Natural Resources, but identical to his Fianna Fail predecessor Rabbitte just gave licenses for oil and gas away for nothing, squandering the few resources that Ireland has and giving them as a present to big commercial companies. But if you thought that was enough of a screw-up you were wrong. Rabbitte, who is also responsible for RTE and is in charge of the TV licence re-organisation is again showing his incompetence. I dare to say that apart from the job holders, nobody thinks the ridiculous salaries in RTE for people like Pat Kenny, Marianne Finucane, Ryan Tubridy, Joe Duffy etc are justified. Nobody apart from the people themselves AND Pat Rabbitte. Because instead of sorting out RTE, reducing their budget and forcing them to justify their existence, he wants to give them MORE money.

The TV licence fee should be a thing of the past. It might have had its justification when the TV and radio stations were not commercial entities, but RTE is as commercial as TV3, just that RTE delivery in a lot of aspects even worse quality. So, the TV licence fee should be reduced or abolished OR if it stays in place then ALL TV and Radio stations should be allowed to apply for part of the funds and get fair subsidies. It is ridiculous that each household is financing a commercial Radio and TV station with EUR 160 per year.

But it comes worse! People that can’t afford licence fee and cable TV charges etc currently have the option not to have a TV and then don’t need to pay. Rabbitte wants to change that. Probably from around middle of this year he wants to force everybody to pay a “Broadcast fee”. And all that money goes exclusively to RTE! So even if you never in your life watch RTE or listen to RTE, you will have to pay them a minimum of EUR 160 per year. The justification that Rabbitte uses is that we don’t need to have TV anymore to watch RTE. But has he not realised that young generations are not interested in RTE in its current form anymore?

Now, who are the people that currently don’t pay the licence fee and will have to pay it in future? The majority is people that have limited financial means. The rest has a TV and already pays the licence fee. So the Labour Minister has left his social principles and ideologies in the cupboard and instead sides with the rich and overpaid in RTE. Odd!!

Interestingly RTE has estimated that up to 15pc of households do not pay the TV licence fee – even though 99pc of houses allegedly have a TV. So that means the government is incapable of getting the money and for that reason they a new fee is introduced. If the RTE figures are right, then Rabbitte’s argument that the new fee is needed to capture the people that have no TV is a lie. He even claims even those without a TV, benefit from “publicly-funded, public service broadcasting”. Nonsense!
www.independent.ie/irish-news/broadcast-charge-to-hit-all-homes-even-those-with-no-tv-29096806.html
www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/kim-bielenberg-why-the-breaking-bad-generation-wont-pay-rabbittes-broadcast-charge-29098836.html

Politics, Society, Taxes, , ,

Mayor of Limerick – What an eejit!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Mayor of Limerick – What an eejit!

I am of the strong opinion that Irish Mayors are a waste of space. This is not necessarily (only) their fault, but they all are complicit in keeping the nonsensical alive.

However, it is one thing to be in a nonsensical role and it is another thing to to come up with stupid ideas and to promote them in the media. The new mayor of Limerick, Gerry McLoughlin, seems to have superseded all of them on the stupidity scale this week, when he suggested that Limerick’s street signs should also be in Polish and in “African” to make foreigners living there feel more at home.

www.limerickleader.ie/news/local/mayor-of-limerick-wants-polish-street-signs-1-4011509

Do I even have to say more to that? I am sure everyone sees that there is sooo much wrong with even just the idea.

Oh, by the way, there are an estimated 3000 (!!) African languages!

Elsewhere, Politics, Society, ,

Don’t get sick in Ireland! – Emergency Department

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Don’t get sick in Ireland! – Emergency Department

I was once in A&E waiting from around 14:00 until after 01:00 to be seen and it is not a good experience. At the time, my GP was clueless and sent me to A&E hoping that they had a better idea, but luckily I felt fine and therefore the 11 hour wait was just boring and annoying, but had no bad impact on my condition.

A few years later I had to go to A&E in Germany because of a suspected pneumonia and the experience there was that I arrived at the hospital and was seen INSTANTLY. Now I know that that is not the case in all hospitals and not always (I only needed an X-Ray, I didn’t need to see a doctor.), but since then I would rather jump in a plane in an instance to leave Ireland if I needed help, than to to to A&E here.

The Emergency Department situation has been and still is a serious challenge for any Irish government and the HSE has now released a 560-page report about the situation and how to improve it. It seems there are a few good suggestions in in it, but I couldn’t believe when I saw that this report on the future of emergency medicine makes that ground breaking suggestion that patients should be assessed and either discharged or admitted within six hours of arrival in an emergency department.

Sure, 6 hours is better than 11 hours, but I can’t believe that this is the best they can aspire to. It should not take more than 1 (ONE!) hour to assess a seriously ill or injured person and it should take at least 15 hours or better more to look after someone with a cold /and wastes therefore the A&E resources) or (even worse) someone who is drunk.

www.rte.ie/news/2012/0619/emergency-medicine.html

There is, however, a disconnect between the article on rte.ie and the headline. In the article a few suggestions by National Clinical Lead with the Emergency Medicine Programme Dr Una Geary are mentioned and they all sound good and positive. Only the headline mentions the 6 hours, nowhere in the article is it mentioned (and I didn’t read the 560-page report). So maybe the headline is not really fair?

Health System, Society,

Garlic vs Apartments – Prison for TD Wallace??

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Garlic vs Apartments – Prison for TD Wallace??

Do you remember the big news in March of this year? A food importer had imported garlic (which has a ridiculously high import tax) and declared it as apples. He did that for four years and the fraud allowed him to avoid EUR 1.4mio in VAT. Since 2007 he had paid back half of it, but his case was in front of a court now and he was put in prison for six (!!) years. www.jrnl.ie/379395 Can’t see that making it easier for him to get pay the rest back. In my opinion this verdict is crazy. Sure he should be penalised for his fraud, but six years of prison sentence is just madness.

Fast forward to 08 June 2012. Just 3 months later. Same country. Similar fraud. The elected parliament member TD Mick Wallace was found to have avoided a significant amount of VAT. We don’t know how much, but we know that he agreed to a settlement with the Revenue Commission for a 2.1mio underpayment of VAT over a 2 year period. Wallace is unlike the garlic importer Begley not prepared to pay anything back because his company is insolvent. In an interview he even claimed that he did not break the law, but his company did. Dohhh! This man is a member of the Irish parliament and neither the left wing group he belongs to, nor the Taoiseach is demanding his resignation. They all say it was wrong, but blabber on about it being the decision of the people who elected him, if he should resign or not. www.jrnl.ie/478230 Should Wallace not be thrown into prison too? Maybe for longer than 6 years? If 700k are equivalent to 3 years, then he should get 9 years? No, I don’t think that would be just, but many (including me) would find it just if he was kicked out of the Dail IMMEDIATELY!

Justice, Politics, Society, Taxes, , , , ,

St. Patrick’s Parade – Lies and Statistics

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
St. Patrick’s Parade – Lies and Statistics

Every year the media feeds us a whole pack of incorrect information (you could call it “lies”) about the St. Patrick’s Festival and especially about the St. Patrick’s Parade. Let me start by telling you that I think the parade is in recent years HUGELY successful and the whole St. Patrick’s Festival is a lot of fun, a great attraction for Dublin and the whole team working on it do a really good job. But I have to admit as well that I dislike dishonesty and especially if it is on a ridiculous level. I might be a little (!?) more analytical than most, but have a look at this story:
The St. Patrick’s Festival organisation claims that more than 500,000 people will watch the parade on the streets of Dublin and their website says “550,000 people from all nationalities line the streets & cheer on the performers” on www.stpatricksfestival.ie/index.php/bands And I would expect that after the parade this year, the new claim will be even higher. Watch out for it!
Can that number be correct? Absolutely not! There will be a good few numbers in the next section, but bear with it:
The parade route is 2.7km, which is 2700 metres. If we assume (and it is not totally correct, but let’s be generous), that along the complete route people can stand on both sides of the street, then we have 5400 metres along which people can line the streets. With 550,000 people, this means that per metre, there have to be approx. 100 people! Crowd planning experts say that the absolute maximum of people to squeeze into one square metre is SEVEN. So with 100 people per metre, this means that 100/7=14.29 square metres are required to accommodate the 100 people. As a result at every single point of the parade the massive crowd has to reach from the edge of the parade route to the back of the crowd for more than 14 metres – on EACH side! (That’s about 40 people deep!.) So, 28 metres are needed to accommodate the people! Add a minimum of 4-6 metres of parade route. We now need 32-34 metre wide streets! O’Connell Street is theoretically wide enough for that- Theoretically! But that is only half the route. Dame Street’s width is a fraction.
Now, let’s look at the realistic numbers. 7 per square metres is worse than a London Tube, so 5 is more likely. That means that 20 metres on each side are needed!
Oh and there is another problem! I was in Dame Street for the last few years and have photographic evidence that the crowd was just about metres deep or even less…and Dame Street is less than 20 metres wide in TOTAL. So there was a QUARTER of people of what is needed to reach 550,000!
After all this, what is the more realistic number? If we are GENEROUS, then the max number of people is probably close to 300,000. Still a really good turnout, but FAR from 550,000. Pure lies about the alleged number of attendees!
One last thing: If you are further than 5 or 6 deep from the edge of the route, you will miss half the parade because you can only see the high floats, not the bands or walking performers.

Other, Society, , ,
 
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