Oh don’t worry. When the moratorium on recruitment is lifted from the public service, the only contracts they’ll be dishing out will be short term ones. So instead of blaming the PS, try to realise that the stability of all our working futures are under this kind of threat. The recession has been a brilliant excuse to erode the rights of ALL workers and their conditions.

So someone who works in the public sector isn’t an ordinary worker, is that the point your making here? I work for a semi state body, you may have heard of it, its called An Post. We are regularly lumped into this private-v-public sector debate even though throughout the boom years our wage remained the same while others in the communications sector saw theirs rise as much as 50%, most of those being in private employment.
An Post is set to make 1,200 people redundant in the coming months, the vast majority of those jobs will be those same safe jobs everyone in the media talks about, the ones we are all so very lucky to have. This whole media debate pitting private sector against public sector worker is a calculated divisive strategy from our government to keep us fighting amongst ourselves while the coalition and their friends in the E.U. continue to milk this state for all its worth.

I am guessing that you did not read the entire article or the point he was trying to make just went right over your head.

The point he’s making is that there is a big difference between how corporations and (most) people are treated by the banks. Clery’s was financially dead, then resurrected with half it’s debt written off. People who’ve lost their jobs and have equivalent debts from mortgages don’t get this treatment, they stay financially dead. What’s impossible for (most) people can miraculously be whipped together in 24 hours for corporations.

Blathin..May I ask, what are you proposing or suggesting?

That people should be left in impossible financial situations because a ‘former banker’ pointed out the inconsistency and ineffectiveness of our current legal framework and economic policy disposition? That amending that hypocrisy would be to augment my ‘self-worth’ and should not, therefore, be done? That I’m wrong because of a previous occupation?

My point is that we have added to and modernized our ‘companies’ legislation many times since the Victorian era but have not done as much for personal rights (and what little has been done has mainly been at the behest of the EU). So we have an unbalanced set of rights and obligations between people and corporations. Following from that I suggest that there can be no recovery while the mortgagees of this economy are not afforded the same means of financial redress because personal debts are more than half of our assets. The last point I sought to make was that it is a strange and poor republic that treats legal fictions better than human beings.

I’m sorry for whatever caused you to be so keen on ‘shooting messengers’ but since I was never an executive in any bank in this jurisdiction/market I know I had no part in any of the misfortunes that have been inflicted on this island or on you.

I am blessed with the wit and intellect to be able to formulate an argument without the playground imperative of calling people or a society, hypocrites. I can cogently argue for and against most propositions without calling anyone a hypocrite or deploying other pejorative adjectives. I am also blessed with a secure self image that I have no need to engage in snobbery in real life, particularly the variety that seeks to denigrate individuals or groups of individuals in order to inversely boost one’s own relativist sense of status. Oh I do engage in snobbery through acerbic comments but only to return denigration to its source. Someone has to take a stand against the dull minds that label us all as hypocrites erroneously thinking that their derogatory labelling of a society to which they also belong (or once belonged), does not apply to them.

A solid argument can be made for debt forgiveness on many levels and from many perspectives including economic, financial and social theory without using the old Irish ‘Bedgrudgery filter’. Yet ‘isolationism’ is the much favoured ‘analytical’ tool of those bereft of the wit to properly examine a global financial crisis and the role and options available to a small open economy. It might be a bit too much work in order to examine the history of financial boom & busts and see what causes such phenomena and what actions were taken to solve these crises. Thus it becomes obvious that the ease and comfort of faulty thinking is preferable to the hard work of controlling for cognitive biases, the imperative of quality thinking.

“Blathin..May I ask, what are you proposing or suggesting?”

I suspect you’re still none the wiser Arthur…..

Ah Tomy, my old flower, flying back around to demonstrate for us the intellectual prowess of ‘qualified’ teachers. En Guard!

No, I just don’t think you answered the question.

Tomy, it has again escaped your notice that my original comment did not contain a proposal or a suggestion. Thus the ‘question’ is a diversionary tactic which only an unskilled observer would fall for. My comments are in relation the hypocrisy of calling others hypocrites. I reserve the right to debate the debt relief issue with those possessed of even a tiny modicum of skill in the art of discourse. i.e one who has outgrown the tendency for playschool name calling.

I used to work in the private sector – I was also in SIPTU and when I was made redundant I got a very reasonable redundancy package.

I think your watching far too much Six-One News Rodrigo.