You Think We Have Had it Bad?

My Blog, I'm Mad As Hell and I'm Not Taking It Any More, elicited a number of direct responses.  The article prompted Hyacinth Bucket to reply to highlight just how bad things could be in the UK, compared to what has happened in Ireland.   Corruption, incompetence, and lethargy is everywhere and it affects us all.   It is time to put a stop to it all, and like Hyacinth (@spurs2212 on twitter), with this excellent blog, you too can vent your spleen on this blog site should you be enraged enough - just drop me a line.  Now, over to Hyacinth:

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 In reply to Sam’s excellent ‘I’m Mad as Hell and I’m Not taking it any more’ blog, I’m going to cover basically the same ground, but from an Irish Republic residents view point.

 To put it in a nutshell, this country has been in the dark depths of recession and beyond since the fateful night in September 2008 when the Fianna Fail Government signed away this countries financial independence by guaranteeing the survival of our Banks. The same banks who had spent the previous few years recklessly lending billions of euros to anyone who had the words ‘Property Developer’ on their letter heads. Whether these cowboys could repay the loans was a secondary consideration in the boom days of the Celtic Tiger. Many of the deals were introduced or set up in the now infamous Fianna Fail Hospitality Tent at the famous Galway Races. Now this ‘hospitality’ came at a price. You made your ‘donation’ to party funds and in return you could rub shoulders with the executives of AIB, Bank of Ireland, Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide and set in motion, the finance for the shopping centre, apartment complex or hotel development that your company was planning. In many cases, 100 % finance was supplied by the banks in return for a share in the eventual profits the venture would ultimately make.

So, for example, Anglo Irish lent one developer €800m to buy a site in a plush area of Dublin. He planned a huge development of high priced apartments with a huge tower to cap it all off. A 10 year old child could have foreseen the planning problems such a development would have, not to mention the objections of the residents. Not Anglo Irish it seems. Now the site (without planning permission) is worth €25m, the developer is bankrupt and on the run, and Anglo Irish was wiped out by Government Order last week. That is just one example of the excesses that went on in the property market, unchecked by the Financial Regulator, ignored by the Government Ministers who had enjoyed their free holidays in the Maldives. Only a few financial journalists warned us of what was inevitably coming next, they were mainly ignored. Everybody was having too good a time to see that the pin was getting ever closer to the bubble.

In September 2008, the bubble burst. Since then, Ireland has been under the control of The European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. The joke is that we are now a subsidiary of Germany. The irony of the Irish Fans banner at Euro 2012 ‘Angela Merkel Thinks We’re at Work’ was not lost here.. Every financial move Ireland makes has to be approved by the Troika, a panel made of EC, IMF and ECB officials). It’s a horrible situation , brought about by corrupt politicians, greedy property developers and bonus driven bankers, none of which (so far) have paid the price they deserve in the courts. There are a couple of ‘show’ trials to come but they remind me of the ones Hitler orchestrated during the war, except it’s a cert the Irish defendants will get off.

The only revenge the Irish nation has been able to extract was in the General Election, 2 years ago.The sitting Fianna Fail/Green Party coalition was virtually wiped out by a Fianna Gael/Labour coalition. Its fairly certain the present government will be similarly decimated when we next go to the polls.

Only one thing is certain, the elected reps will still pick up their obscene salaries, they will still fiddle their expenses and they will still have pensions the envy of everyone.

Larry Goodman -Google him!

The beef/horse/donkey situation is interesting. How ironic that the samples that triggered this whole thing off were taken in a factory owned by Larry Goodman*. I could write a book on this guy. Google him. He cost the Irish Government millions in the 90’s, through Export Credit Insurance scams and the Tribunal that followed. Needless to say the bad guys got away scot free. Only a few minor employees got shafted, just to make it look good. The only winners were the lawyers who took home millions in fees, all paid for by us, the downtrodden taxpayer. Just to make sure that the money circle continued, many of the lawyers became property developers and the contributed to the merrygoround I dealt with in the first part.

The horse meat scandal might have originated in Romania or wherever, but you can be sure that money has been made all along the chain. These horrified ‘we didn’t know what was happening’ cries are rubbish.  Now a French MEP has claimed that because horses and donkeys are no longer allowed to use the public roads in Romania, thousands have been slaughtered. You can imagine the rest.

To get some idea of what has been going on here, go to

http://www.rte.ie/player/ie/

and check out the ‘Inside Irish Nationwide’ programme, before somebody gets an injunction to take it down. It highlights the excesses/shortcomings of that bank and its autocratic former boss Michael Fingleton. Its an interesting view. Its maddened the whole country here.  (Ed:  note the RTE Player may not work in your country.)

So, while things are bad in the UK, it may be some consolation that there is always someone worse off, in this case the Irish……..

*For more information on Larry Goodman and the beef scandal read this Daily Mail article , which also supplied the public domain photograph of Larry Goodman.