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Internet Censorship to hit Ireland

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Internet Censorship to hit Ireland

EMI, Sony, Warner Music and Universal won a court case against UPC, Imagine, Vodafone, Digiweb, Hutchison 3G Ltd and Telefonica O2 Ireland Ltd forcing them to block access to PirateBay websites within 30 days (Eircom had already given in years ago). www.rte.ie/news/business/2013/0612/456177-pirate-bay-court/ This is the first time – but won’t be the last time – when the Irish SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) legislation that thanks to Junior Minister Sean Sherlock and the current Fine Gael government will bring various forms of Internet censorship to Ireland.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not in favour of Copyright Infringement and Online Piracy. It is illegal and therefore its status is clear. However, ThePirateBay.org does not provide illegal content, it is just a listing or linking site (not much different than Google in its concept). And blocking access to it, is not much different than blocking access to websites that list organisations that the government of the day does not like.If that was something we heard about from China, we would all be in uproar about the oppressive government.

Find out more about the law that is used to force the Internet block here www.stopsopaireland.com/#3 Worryingly, the same law can be used to block complete access to Facebook, YouTube and all other similar websites if ANYBODY from ANYWHERE in the world ever posted material on these platforms that infringes any copyright. Is the Chinese situation now that far fetched?

What does the ruling mean for you? If you use any of the listed providers for Internet connectivity, you will soon not be able to reach the Pirate Bay website anymore if you are a normal Internet user. However, the decentralised structure of the Internet will mean that a total block is close to impossible for people “in the know”.

And there is another interesting side-effect: The National Broadband Plan in Ireland for which your taxpayer money is used, is TOTALLY overspec’d now. Because 99% of users will never be able to use their super-high-bandwidth Internet connection to the max, if they don’t use it to download illegal material.

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

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, , ,

Mick Wallace Stole Taxes!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Mick Wallace Stole Taxes!

According to a TV and newspapers, it seems to be clear that Mick Wallace knowingly underdeclared VAT. And in the year he did that or in the year his company went into liquidation, he increased his own salary from EUR 148,141 to EUR 290,000.
That creates an interesting situation, because people that bought apartments from Wallace paid VAT to him, which he was obliged to pass on to the Revenue Commission. Instead passing that money on, he kept it in his company. This sounds like clear theft!
Wallace now claims that he had intended to pay the tax at a later stage and only kept it to save his company and to save jobs. But it is very easy to claim that when you have been found out. There is a good possibility that he would nave never voluntarily given back the VAT. And even if he had genuinely planned to pay it back, it would be unacceptable because VAT belongs to the state, i.e. the tax payers and the state is not a bank for Wallace.

So, it all seems to indicate that he stole money from the state/the tax payers.

To makes things worse and to make his story even less credible, he increased his salary, so he used part of the VAT that he took from apartment buyers and stuffed it into his own pockets. To save the company? To save jobs? No way!

Should Wallace resign! Absolutely!

But we have to ask ourselves what a screwed up parliament we have in Ireland, if the other members don’t have any means to kick him out! …many even think he shouldn’t resign. Are they afraid they might sit in a glass house too and don’t want to be the first to throw the stone?

Politics, Taxes, , , ,

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, , , , ,

Budget Ireland 2012: There will be tears

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Budget Ireland 2012: There will be tears

The budget for 2012 will be announced on 05+06 December and the government is busy drip-feeding us with bits of information. The process is a bit of a joke or a smart-ish ploy. All is meant to be secret until budget day, but people would get outraged an be shocked and in panic if they found out all the bad news on budget day. So instead, we find out bits of news every day so that we can mentally prepare for the bad news. ‘Pre-framing’ in NLP terms!

Unfortunately the news on budget day will be seriously bad no matter how you look at it: VAT increase, household charges, social welfare cuts, increase in duty on petrol, higher motor taxes and many more increases in charges and reductions in services will cost all of us a LOT of money. The 06 Dec will bring a lot of tears!

UPDATE:
Surprisingly (or not after all the planted leaks in the weeks before) the budget wasn’t as shocking as initially expected. Yes, cuts and tax increases were part of it as expected, but we were all nicely prepared for bad news. Pre-framing works!!

Economy, Taxes, , ,
 
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