Saturday, October 10, 2009

Economics 10/10/2009: Green (or Northern Irish?) Votes

This is to report few bits of information from the Green Party meeting tonight:
  • 84% vote for the Programme for Government - which contains some good ideas (Site Value Tax / Land Value Tax) and some pretty bad ones...
  • 31% against Nama.
Per several Green Party members exiting the meetings:
  1. The Greens have sold the country to stay in power for another 6 months - the sentiment of several Party members who spoke to me. Reasoning: "we've been in the Government only a year and we need more time to make our policies reality". A fine argument assuming that once they lose power, their policies cannot be reversed/undone.
  2. The country got another taste of the sanctimonious and perverse Green ways (also a quote from a Party member), where members voted for Nama as their price tag for PfG. In other words, they sold the entire nation's future by hoisting Nama on this economy in order to gain few token concessions from the FF - a truly Machiavellian pact.
Now, a note worth looking into in more details. Per my sources at the meeting, there was a number of Northern Irish Green Party members who were voting on both PfG and Nama. One of the discussions at the meeting was even chaired by a Northern Irish academic from Quinn's Uni. Presumably (not being an economist or finance professional) he had a personal stake in how Nama might work out... Greens are an all-island party, so their by-laws allow for this.

One of my sources alleged that these Northern Irish Greens were 'helped' to get to RDS by the party officials / leadership in order to secure today's vote. I was told that buses were used by the party to deliver them to Dublin. (I have no confirmation of this, so this is a rumor.)

So we might have a strange situation developing here:
  • the taxpayers of this country have no say on Nama,
  • while taxpayers of the other country do...
Democracy Irish-style?
at

5 comments:

  1. AnonymousOctober 10, 2009

    truly horrific. The GP deserve political oblivion. Clearly they have the understanding of economics of a rabid mink.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Derek WallOctober 11, 2009

    shameful, the Irish Green Party damage green politics internationally.

    ReplyDelete
  3. charlbergOctober 11, 2009

    The Program for National Bankruptcy revealed by FF and the Greens on friday is 40 pages long and the word 'cut' does not feature even once. Our 2010 budget deficit will be 20% of GNP and the Greens think the solution is encouraging cycle tourism!! God help us..

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownOctober 11, 2009

    Gormleymander says:

    The finest NAMA-DDDA-Anglo-Irish site in the country is 500 metres from Mr Gormley's house: €550 million Irish Glass Bottle site.

    Seven hundred hospital beds have already been shut.

    John The Traitor now has two years accrued towards his Ministerial Pension ...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Another John MOctober 12, 2009

    At least the mink are safe, right? And who else is willing to stick their necks out for stags? Some good came out of this. I think they also got a number of firm commitments to determine if matters should be send to review committees. So it's not all bad. Chin up, guys.

    ReplyDelete