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TUESDAY NIGHTS I always sleep well. For the last three years, I have worked four days a week – usually Monday and Tuesday, then Thursday and Friday.
The break on Wednesdays means that no matter how busy the early part of the week is, I get a chance to breathe easy, get up when I am ready, go for a long swim in the pool, write, catch up on housework, plant those long overdue spring bulbs, meet a friend for coffee or lunch, cook a nice dinner and of course chill.
The alternative is a five day week of deadlines, phone calls, meetings and pressure which for me, at the stage of life I am at is exhausting even thinking about.
Work smarter, not harder has been the mantra of management consultants for decades. But what if you just work less? There is mounting evidence that ditching the conventional working week has benefits for employers and employees as well as the planet.
The Green Party has called for a Citizen’s Assembly on a four-day work week to explore the impact it could have on issues such as people’s pay and the effect on the public service. Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman said that flexible and remote work had achieved a better work-life balance for people, but now it was time to ‘take the next steps forward.’
In an era of remote working and Artificial Intelligence, a five-day working week is outdated. Henry Ford found a century ago, that people were more productive if they worked five days out of six. In a modern era, we have to ask: Why are we stuck on five days? Is this a human invention that deserves to be reimagined?
All the evidence would suggest that it is. The four-day week is not another shiny election bauble. It is a proven model – here’s the evidence.
Six years ago, New Zealand based entrepreneur and founder of Four Day Week Global, Andrew Barnes, ran a pilot at his company Perpetual Guardian that redefined how we think about productivity. The company, which employed almost 250 staff, managing trusts, wills and estate planning, ran a three-month pilot to compare whether employees could be as productive in four days while getting paid for five.
The experiment was a resounding success. Employee engagement soared, sick days halved and retention improved. Staff stress levels decreased by seven percentage points across the board while stimulation, commitment and a sense of empowerment at work all improved significantly, with overall satisfaction increasing by five percentage points.
‘Healthier, happier, more engaged staff are more productive, more creative and give a better customer experience,’ Barnes concluded.
Four Day Week Global followed this up with a series of trials across the world in 2022 with employers in the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland taking part.
Assistant professor in social policy at the UCD School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice, Orla Kelly led the Irish component of the international trial, with Boston College coordinating the research with international academic partners. The trial involved 3,500 employees across 150 organisations in a six-month trial that included 188 employees from 12 firms in Ireland.
Across all countries, the researchers found that the four-day week resulted in a significant increase in physical and mental health, life satisfaction, work-life balance and work-family balance.
They also saw an increase in average daily sleep hours, as well as fewer sleep problems, and less frequent anxiety and fatigue. They found improvements in job satisfaction alongside a considerable reduction in burnout.
Employees in the trial had more time to dedicate to personal care, social connections and hobbies. Environmental gains included reduced commuting and increases in pro-environmental behaviour.
‘I’m working more productively,’ said one employee. ‘I’m working much smarter. I have been more focused throughout the day.’
‘It’s given me more time to spend with my family members, and I think that the even greater benefit has been that it frees up my mental space for when I’m interacting with them,’ said another. ‘The mental load of work doesn’t spill into your personal life.’
Managers reported boosted productivity.
‘In terms of productivity, we’re beating every target from the previous year, hands down. So if anything, reducing our working week has improved priority productivity to a level that it would be a very foolish decision to go back to five days,’ one manager said.
During the trial, the research team observed a decrease in commuting among employees and an increase in pro-environmental behaviour, including active travel. In addition, many organisations decreased energy use by closing on a Friday.
One worker’s testimonial summed up the positive response, which as a four-day worker, I would wholeheartedly concur with:
‘Life has gotten so much better, just a much better balance, Oh, my God! Like, I don’t know how people who don’t have it can function. Especially when you work a full-on and intense job. Before the four-day week, I didn’t feel I had the time or capacity for all the other parts of my life that needed attention. Having that extra day is a game-changer.’
Other organisations have conducted similar experiments to reduce working hours without sacrificing output.
Spain’s third-largest city, Valencia trial a four-day week by scheduling local holidays on four consecutive Mondays throughout April and May 2023. The new temporary working week affected 360,000 workers who used the additional downtime to do sporting activities, relax and prepare meals.
Results showed people in the programme had higher self-perceived health status, reduced levels of stress, were less tired and were more personally satisfied.
In a separate study in the UK in 2022, involving 73 companies and 3,300 employees, the results were similar. Four days’ work for five days’ pay benefitted both employees and workers. Almost half the respondents said productivity improved slightly or significantly, and the majority (86%) stated it highly likely they would continue with a four-day week after the study.
For families, the results from the UK study were very positive, with the time spent by male workers looking after their children increasing by 27%. But traditional metrics, like time spent in the office are deeply ingrained in corporate culture.
Barnes acknowledges this, suggesting that ‘because we don’t measure productivity properly, we often default to time as a surrogate.’ One of the key obstacles he suggests is that senior leaders are often too risk averse to experiment with new ways of working.
Barnes notes that the four-day work week isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, suggesting that in some sectors like public service, ‘you might need a journey towards proper productivity measurement before you can implement it,’ compared to private companies with more explicit productivity and revenue metrics.
But it is doable, and a Citizen’s Assembly would explore the key elements of how to introduce a four-day week that includes the public sector to maximise wellbeing and minimise any impact on productivity.
As a public sector worker, who works a four-day week I can vouch for the benefits in terms of improved productivity while I am at work, while being transformative for my brain space, strength, heart, lungs, balance, sleep, creativity and most of all my sanity.
Dr Catherine Conlon is a public health doctor and former director of human health and nutrition, safefood.
I love how everyone who comes out saying Austerity works are making a minimum of 6 figures a year and have no idea what-so-ever what life is really like under austerity.
And it wasn’t our fault. The government tried to prop up the banks but in the end only dragged us down with them. It was serious mismanagement that the Irish People did not have a say in.
Austerity was ok for Greece, Portugal, Cyprus and Ireland. Now Italy and Spain are ready to blow Barroso gets ready to print euros to hell and back.
By the time the Irish populace wakes up to the massive EU scam on behalf of Goldman Sachs et al it will be too late.
It wasn’t our fault?
Hmmm – our democratically elected government presided over one of the great property bubbles the world has ever seen, while simultaneously tripling spending on the back of stamp duty taxes.
We, the Irish, repeatedly voted them back in.
So, yeah – it’s all the German’s fault – that makes sense.
James people don’t like hearing the truth its easier to blame the government that was voted in by the people.
Incidentally – the collapse of the banks and the catastrophic guarantee undoubtedly are implicated in our current financial woes and accompanying austerity, but the vast majority of our problems arise from the fiscal deficit.
Once the stamp duty disappeared, it became apparent that we were spending more than we were generating in taxes, irrespective of the bank guarantee
I still can’t remember voting for that man.
Why is he president again.
Do I have two presidents now?
Who voted for the blanket bank Guarantee? What other Government in the world would have guaranteed a commercial bank like Anglo? Why has there never been a proper investigation into why the FF and green government made this crazy decision?
The government put a guarantee across all our banks to give confidence to investors who might invest in the Irish market.
If investors saw that they lost everything they put into the Irish market, nobody would go there again.
Without investment our economy would more than likely stagnate or collapse.
Austerity has a bad rap in Ireland because it’s been mixed in thoroughly with bondholder bailouts and rescuing banks. But pretending that the banking collapse was the source of all our woes is a typical Irish attitude because it allows us to export the blame.
Even if we leave the banking sector aside the simple fact is the fundamentals of the Irish economy in the mid-2000s were suspect. Spending was increasing at a huge rate on the basis of unsustainable taxes. And we the Irish people were generally complicit in that. No party was calling for cutbacks in the 2007 general election for the simple reason that any party that had suggested we would need to increase tax and cut spending would have been decimated at the polls. We didn’t want to hear the we were overextended or that we should be prudent. Populism is a two way process. If we didn’t demand and support populist policies then parties wouldn’t promote them.
In short Ireland was a problem waiting to happen. Even without the global financial crisis and our need to support the banks we would have reached a point where out fiscal problem would have blown up in our faces and cutbacks or austerity would have been required. The banking issue made it a lot worse but at some point we were going to have to call a halt at some point. Put simply a country can not continue to spend way above what it’s earning.
Until we accept that fact then we are blinding ourselves to the obvious and we’ll probably do the exact same thing at some point again in the future.
Low interest rates forced upon the Irish banks caused bankers to lend much more recklessly, so as to sustain the massive profits they’d been making before the euro came along.
Well said Jim!
@ Sean Hyland : I dont know how deeply they were involved in Ireland, but Goldman Sachs is reported to have systematically helped the Greek government mask the true facts concerning its national debt between the years 1998 and 2009. thus complicit in the downfall of the Greek econimy.
Jim,
Most countries run a budget deficit most of the time and it’s economic suicide to try and eliminate a deficit in the teeth of a recession as we are being forced to do now. The deficit really only becomes a serious problem when you are unable to finance it as in Ireland’s case. Ordinarily countries finance their deficits by borrowing the money in the market. Or if they control their own currency and are prepared to accept some inflation, they can simply create new money by buying their own government’s bonds etc (Quantitative easing as the Yanks call it). Even in the depths of the 1980s recession, Ireland was always able to go to the market to fund the budget deficit until Brian Lenihan bailed out the banks in 2008. The markets then realised Ireland would not be able to cover the massive banking losses and pay them back and so the interest rate they demanded rose to an unaffordable level. This pushed us into the tender Troika embrace who now lend us the money and charge interest so that we can pay the banking debt as well as our budget deficit.
In reality it’s the government who are using the budget deficit as a smokescreen to justify the implementation of their Austerity agenda and the behest of the Troika. The erosion of our social supports and escalating taxation are the means by which the citizens are being forced to cover private, illegitimate and odious banking debt. Having had €20 billion stolen from us in 2012 to pay off the bondholders, we will hand over another €17 billion in 2013 to cover the gambling losses of financial speculators. The fixation on the deficit is driven by the neo liberal political agenda to distract attention from the looting of the country for the benefit of the financial elite.
Those figures do not take into account the indirect cost of our zombie banks on the budget deficit over the past 5 years. Credit has been denied to viable businesses resulting in multiple closures throwing thousands of people onto the dole where they draw social welfare instead of contributing income tax in a double blow to the exchequer. The bank collapse and bailout is responsible for a large part of our budget deficit in addition to being the reason that we cannot finance that deficit through the normal channels.
Most people would accept the cutbacks and extra taxation if they knew that the revenue generated and saved was being used to benefit our society. However, the government have absolutely no moral authority for any of these austerity measures when the primary beneficiary is speculative financial capitalism. The social contract between the citizen and the Irish state has been utterly broken in the past 5 years.
Sorry, economy (Blackberry again)
Jim
Austerity does not work in countries simply because in order for it to work you need structural reform and no politician wants to address this because it impacts on their gravy train
That is true Evin’ ……..but without any preconditions?
Why didn’t the Government make them keep the money in Ireland…….otherwise Tax the hell out of it?
@Coddler
The problem wasn’t with the investors. The investors invested in Irish banks because they were performing well.
Unfortunately the reason they were performing well was due to reckless practices. To stop reckless practice you need to have regulation in place. That’s what we need to work on, having regulation in place that shows clearly who’s operating recklessly and how that situation can be avoided.
With the focus on
With the focus on building regulation and not blaming people or succumbing to paranoia.
@Padser,
Preconditions would still make the investment somewhat of a loss wouldn’t it? Like I’d be much more inclined to invest in something without conditions than with them.
Jim Walsh…….I think you are over simplifying it!
Yeah but the money would remain in the Country……that’s the trump card to it!
Yeah but at the same time it discourages future investors, and then what happens when the current investment runs out?
It’s not the man or woman in the street’s fault. The global party indulged in by developers and the financial sector came to a screeching halt and the parcel was dumped in the laps of the ordinary people by that incompetent and crooked shower Fianna Fail and is being perpetuated ad infinitum by the equally incompetent and even more crooked shower of FineGael/Labour.
Tell them we don’t want the bailout! We’ll pay the Gardai with hugs and kisses. We’ll fund social welfare with good cheer. Then there’ll be to need for austerity!
Economics is simple as long as you ignore that stupid “reality” part.
But you have the “future investors” by the short & curly’s”……..and let’s face it! We were not doing too badly, with investment in Ireland before this crisis………even at a time when we were branded “untrustworthy liar’s”!
Yes Jay
the reality is that Austerity doesnt work
have you heard of the law of diminishing returns
economics 101
Coddler O Toole well said. i see you have 4 dislikes though, some people are stupid or else just being paid well enough to forget morals
The German banks flooded our banks with money they wanted lent out so they could make a profit.money is simply a product which company’s sell by way of loans .the Germans had a lot to sell.
Austerity doesn’t work, diminishing returns and all that. Great. What’s the alternative? Where’s the money going to come from? The solution is no cuts to services we have no money to pay.
So we’re back to my original point of paying for the services with hugs and kisses. So long as the Gardai and various businesses accept hugs and kisses as legitimate currency then there’ll be no need for austerity because we’ve got endless hugs and kisses.
If, alternatively, they demand cash, we’ll need to make cuts because we don’t have enough cash to pay for the services. Or, third option, we could borrow some money so the cuts are less severe, which is the option we’re currently persuing. So, in lieu of a hugs and kisses-based economy, what was your solution to austerity?
This is nothing more than the rambling of an overpaid fool who doesn’t want to admit he was wrong. He’s caused terrible damage throughout the EU and watched as his policies dug the EU deeper and deeper into the crisis.
This is an EU crisis, worsened by the EU itself. To say for example all of Ireland’s or Portugal’s problems are solely of a national nature and the EU is totally blameless is delusional at best.
well said Jason, only other thing i would say is that he is an un-elected official along with the rest commission
It was our fault.
It was bad timing that there was a global crisis at the same time but it’s our fault we’re in this mess. Every single Irish person who didn’t see this coming, who borrowed money they weren’t positive they could pay back, who lived beyond their means, who didn’t ask questions and take a keen interest in how efficiently their country was being run.
I could have stopped this as much as anyone else could have stopped this, it’s our country.
Evin who owes the money? Developers owe the big bucks what drove us to the wall. It is to simple to say “oh it was our fault” what the ordinary punter owes compared to those captains of industry or development is chicken feed. That is why the eu / government is not rushing to cover house losses they know it the great scheme of things mortgages and lendings to Irish citizens is no great issue they are busy telling us it is to keep us in out place though.
@Jason Moran
If anything it would be me beating myself up as opposed to all those other people you’re implying. What I’m saying is there were a lot of different things that were happening that were wrong and looking for just one of those things to blame is never gonna solve anything.
If everyone took more interest in what was going on in our economy, and worked towards stopping improper practice, then we’d at least be more likely to spot problens before we’d be forced into recession.
@Kerry
The developers owe a lot of money, and so do a lot of other people in the country, including tons of ordinary people who aren’t paying back loans they owe.
Are developers more to blame just because they invested more money?
Developers invested in the property industry because it was booming. It was booming because it wasn’t being regulated and watched properly.
It’s our job as ordinary citizens to make sure we’re electing people who are at the very least looking at some of the largest industries in the Irish economy to make sure they’re operating correctly.
EVIN LEE your comments i have read and i am sorry to say but they are counter productive for this page and would be better suited as an opener on your cv for a job interview to the troika im sure they are always on the look out for sell outs like yourself
Paddy, you seem sound…
I’m not a sell-out.
I care about other people and the only way we can help people who really need it is by getting this country to overhaul their thinking.
We need to stop thinking about what we’re entitled to from our government (i.e. what austerity is taking away from us) and instead think about how we as individuals can contribute to build a society that works for all it’s citizens.
Money doesn’t grow on trees Paddy, it’s made from trees. Help the tree grow Paddy, help the tree grow.
The stupidity of our leaders and European masters is staggering.
The paper which expused austerity has been found to be flawed,former IMF member stated the measures in Ireland were a mistake.Will they change and admit they were wrong?wouldn’t be inclined to hold my breath.
You’re more the fool to think that they’re stupid. A greedy shower of bastards yes but definitely not stupid.
I refer to the stupidity of their actions,not their intelligence.
In my opinion is not stupidity on their part.
Its a move to back to the class system of lords and peasants.
Lords- all the money all the power, peasants – working to live.
Norman think about it. In terms of whats good for them snd their buddies, are their actions stupid? Not in slightest.
Spot on Aidan.
Norman – its the electorate who are stupid for electing them . These guys are no fools – they know exactly waht they are doing – and did – from day one .
Do yoy seriulsly think Kenny ,Ahern Cowen , Cameron , Obama etc etc give two f##s about the people – no – they service the people who put them in power – the banks and Financial industry .
that is their job – and they do it well – just look a the rich /poor divide . It grows by the day .
PS
FROM aje
”While this information is not new, it is still startling. In the video we say that the richest 300 people on earth have more wealth than the poorest 3bn – almost half the world’s population. We chose those numbers because it makes for a clear and memorable comparison, but in truth the situation is even worse: the richest 200 people have about $2.7 trillion, which is more than the poorest 3.5bn people, who have only $2.2 trillion combined. It is very difficult to wrap one’s mind around such extreme figures.”
These are shocking figures – full article
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/04/201349124135226392.html
How right you are
Just take England as an example, extra tax on households who don’t use all the bedrooms. The one valuable finite resource people can hold is land, and now they are trying to force the layman out of ownership as best they can.
@ Jim : You are perfectly right of course, so where does this leave us ? Social unrest, wars etc. What do they do with all this money ? If it was reinvested in the economy it would change many things, but the only goal seems to be to accumulate unlimited wealth. Totaly irrational.
Clear message now from euro top dogs that austerity not working but u think the nobs in the dail will take any notice tail still wagging the dog
That’s not what’s being said at all…
Austerity makes perfect sense, you don’t spend what you don’t have. Operating without austerity is like gambling in a casino.
Ideally we need to increase our income (through increased taxes) until it matches the needs (in expenditure) of the Irish people. The main problem at the moment is that people who need protection from taxes due to low incomes aren’t being protected. Kinda hard to do that in a way that encourages people to contribute more to their economy than they take though…
@Evin Lee .
”like gambling in a casino.”
thats waht the banks did – and we are to pay for it – that is robbery – plain and simple .As for any money printing peter Schif forecast this in 2006 and UK and US are at it hard – it is no soloution . It is devalutaion . The solution was to lrt the banks go .
The banks are in trouble because people can’t pay them back. Is that they’re fault or the people who borrowed?
We’re not giving the banks money because they were greedy, we’re giving them money because banks underpin how an economy works and grows. We’re giving them money so that our economy works and grows.
*their
fe#k
@evan or you could increase people’s disposable income so they spend more thus generating tax revenue. It’s not as simple as Leaving Cert accounting. Australia wasn’t hit with recession. At the very beginning of the global recession they gave everyone money to go out and spend. No one here is spending. We don’t know what the next scheme for taking money off us the government is going to roll out. All negative, no positive.
True, people aren’t spending, and spending can have the effect of increasing jobs and helping an economy grow, but what would people spend their money on?
Would they spend it on social services like healthcare for those in need, or homeless services, or other social services like education that benefit the economy? Or would they be more likely to spend it on beer, having the craic, and a nice new car?
Whether you increase taxes or give people more spending money kinda depends on what kind if society you want to build.
If you buy a car you pay VRT .. same with other examples given (unless you fly off to Spain for the craic).
You also generate jobs bar staff, salesmen etc who also pay tax.
Yeah a certain percentage of that money you spend goes to tax, instead of the actual full amount going to tax. There’s defo gonna be more waste with people spending on whatever they want. A lot of that spending can easily go out of the country as I doubt most of what any of us buy is made in Ireland, by an Irish company, which has shareholders only in Ireland.
Direct tax seems like a much more efficient method of getting steady income for the country to me. So long as the government makes sure that it is investing that income wisely in our econony. That’s something that Fine Gael seem to be doing very well as they’ve launched loads of programmes to help innovative Irish companies (particularly in the technology sector) get off the ground.
Austerity alone cannot solve this mess, it wouldnt take an economics “expert” to know that..
If the government of the day had regulated spending there never would have neen a need for austerity.
It’s ex-finance ministers and the financial regulators that need to be dragged out into the cold public light of day and made explain without stuttering, waffling or twisted political word games why exactly they allowed the banks to carry on as they did and every time a sane person over the last 10 years questioned any of the madness of the bubble and boom were told it’s all above board and controlled and regulated and to crawl back under your rock.
This was all allowed to happen (by design or utter incompetence) yet when it all comes crashing down those responsible are no were to be heard from and we are daily told by the stooges here and else where we are all to blame. No, we are in the exact same position as we were for the last 20 years, no real viable options to vote for change or to correct what these shisters have been doing because they are in every way as bad as each other. We are screwed either way and to stand as independent or create a new party will be utterly pointless for many years to come until the current lot of mindless voters die off and those who were not raised into political houses can vote in a way which actually may give this country a chance of remission from the cancer that is the Irish political mindset and thinking but that day is sadly a long way off. #endrant
Well put..
I don’t blame any other country for this mess apart from Ireland. The FF govt could have stood up and said we will not socialise private debt, we will reduce spending our own way, and we will manage our own accounts, but they capitulated easily, took on everything the EU told them to take. And now we listen to what put of touch idiots like this unelected spanner, because we are hoping he will give us the scraps from their table in pathetic interest rate adjustments and extensions. But don’t blame him, or Europe – it is our own doing that got us into this and the govt have a mandate to NOT DO ANYTHING they are told, they just need the balls to do it.
Alien
I think you might find that the last Government did everything but listen to the EU and when it came to the Bank Guarantee don’t forget that even Sinn Fein voted for it !
Qeuntin please don’t rewrite history,i’m not a SF supportor but the Dail record shows they withdraw their support for the final blanket garauntee that FF brought in.Also even you hero’s in FG admitted the FF governments hand was forced by ECB.
Alien 8 ;
I LIKED YOUR COMMENT BY MISTAKE .. It is his fault and the rest of them greedy pigs over there, just looking at this dictator laughing his head of in the EU when he gets abused by UKIP over being unelected and ruining europe not respecting the irish vote and so on, the videos are all on youtube check them out he is a dirty pig
Howya Kevin!
Kevin shaw..quentin Collins..dilco..Paddy Richard rogers.
Quentin who pays you to spout and mis inform people constantly on this site?
how many treaties have been signed in the last decade by our government brought forward by the Eu
and you say they didn’t listen so either you are very stupid or you are being paid to mis-inform and talk crap.
So what happens when austerity does reach its limit? We’ve had 5 years of this misery and there has been very little growth if any. Europe continues to slide in and out of recession so therefore austerity offers no stability or consistency. Those who are chiefly responsible for formulating and implementing austerity policies are not answerable to anyone therefore don’t have personal consequences to their actions. It’s going to be interesting to see over the next few months if Europe has finally cottoned to the fact that this insane policy of austerity just simply does not work or at least implementing such a policy in a short period of time.
Barroso: Austerity is ‘fundamentally right’ – but is approaching its limits
Did you ever hear such sh*te in your life
Guillotine comes to mind when i see that mugs face.
Derek
Would that guillotine be a State sponsored execution or are you threatening violence?
Nah just thinking of how they would have dealt with the likes of him old school. Its a pity we’re more civilised now, hey.
If you think the EU is bad now, just wait until the EU becomes a United States of Europe. Ireland will be an even more insignificant place with no real say and influence. The really cowardly and disgusting thing about all this is our wonderful leaders will go along with it all. They’ll be some of the biggest cheerleaders for this brave new world… Over the years to come, just watch who the biggest cheerleaders for a United States of Europe will be. Big business, shady politicians, eurofanatics, Barroso type people and so on. The kinds of people who couldn’t give a flying feck about Europeans in general.
@Brendan……We are a ‘de facto’ United States of Europe already! Nothing new there!
Another idiot spouting more waffle !
The comments sections and internet forums suggest that Ireland has an abundance of economic experts who could solve the country’s problems at a moments notice. Most however seem to ignore that fact that the country currently spends in excess of its income by over €1bn per month. While acknowledging that most countries in the western world operate deficits in their budgets, one would have to say that given the size of the country and the importance of its economy on a worldwide scale Ireland needs to trim its deficit to stay efficient.
The public sector trade unions have very cleverly engineered the debate on deficit/austerity to be only about wage cuts with little or no talk about the value that we get for our taxes. The hard truth is that the country contains a bloated public sector (including our politicians) that works at a pace designed to maintain its work force numbers rather than be efficient. Its workload is imbalanced, some sections of the public sector work force appear to be under massive pressure while others coast along merrily at a pace that suits them. Any contact that I have had with government departments invariably involves masses of paperwork, lack of communication between departments and probably at least one discussion with a clearly disinterested worker who only wants to pass on my query.
The squandering of limited resources is evident everywhere. Teachers pay is one area that has received huge attention in the past couple of years but within the next six or seven weeks we will enter state examination time. Exams for students of our publicly funded schools will be set, supervised and marked by employees of department of education who will receive additional payment from the department for doing so. Its red rag to bull to say this as far as teachers are concerned but how is this value for tax payers money ? and I hasten to add that this is but one example of waste. I mention it as it seems to me one area where we could maintain wages and increase productivity.
Austerity may not be the way forward but I fail to see why it has not made the public ask more questions of those who provide our public services as to what they are doing. The people need to stand up to those who hold the country’s reins of power; the unions, the politicians, the business people, the mangers of our public sector. We need more from the leaders of our society, constructive debate rather than the silly rabble rousing that engages many of our independent and opposition politicians at local and national level. Personally I find it galling that politicians, trades union leaders and academics who all earn in excess of €100k p.a. can appear on our media to lecture us on the merits or demerits of austerity or stimulus while they justify bloated salaries that they earn from the efforts of the labour force whom they lecture.
Some of what Barossa has said may be justified or unjustified but we need to examine it and see how it applies to our country before we dismiss it out of hand. This may not yet be the moment for stimulus in Ireland but were it to occur in other parts its effects will reach our markets and have a positive effect. To my mind there is no doubt that the Irish economy needs a bit more corrective surgery to make up for the sins of the past 15 years or so, but only if we make the correct changes now we will secure a better future for coming generations.
There is no way Snr Barroso said the word disequilibria! No way! He cannot say ‘I am a former Portuguese Socialist’, without retching and stuttering!…disequilibria..hah!
is there any protests coming up , and where do i find out about marches ?, sick of this bullshit and Barroso an von rompoy nation state hitmen
An interview with the Maoist Barroso in 1976, how he has turned his political beliefs around, oh boy, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAHv3UnXvmM
This is an interesting article…
Forget the United States of Europe, French ex-minister says
EXCLUSIVE / The European Union will never receive enough public support for federalism and so should abandon the idea of a United States-inspired superstate, says the influential French Socialist former minister Hubert Védrine.
… http://www.euractiv.com/priorities/abandon-eu-federalism-us-compari-news-519251 <
I think some politicians are starting to wake up a little.
They’ll never have public support which is why there will never be a continent wide referendum on full integration, this regime would rather implement their dream of a superstate by stealth, wheel out the occasional treaty which will be dressed up as some economic salvation and rely solely on the representative governments to ratify it and in the case of having to get round the oh so troublesome constitutions in countries like Ireland these treaties will be presented with underlying threats, scares and false promises which we will of course fall for.
Does this mean another referendum?
What will the blackmail clause be this time if one is required?
Its the Daily Hate unfortunately. Unless i hear it somewhere more respectable i don’t believe it.
No shit Sherlock
have your say