Yes Taoiseach, this whole situation has come about by greed. The problem is, why this wasn’t seen long ago and that the relevant legislation wasn’t put in place to help those greedy bastards to control themselves, because they couldn’t contol their greed, and that should have been seen in advance.

On the other side of the coin, we, as a small nation, have no control over the world-wide situation, which is today at least the USA and the UK, and we are just riding along with what has gone on. Fair play to you for taking the plunge with this guarantee, but every leader in the future must understand that human greed must be controlled. I am totaly agaist excessive legislation, but why are ye after f*cking up the Irish culture with your legislation and forgot to control what really was important to control?

Aomeone, somewhere lost sight of the big picture and they were counting pennies with smoking rules etc. but forgot to control the f*cking *greed* properly – which has lead to, and will lead to more, deaths from stress and financial pressure than any smoking will ever do. It’s like checking the upholstery in the car and forgetting about the engine. Stick with reality Mr Cowen, drop the bullshit and know the difference, which is the most important part. It seems to me that you understand that anyway, thank God, even if a little late. When all is settled down a little and you have had a chance to have a week with your family, fly down here to Lanzarote and come to Charlie´s, and there will be a pint of the plain standing on the counter with your name on it. Cheers.

I genuinely pray to God for your health, Brian, and wellbeing in these difficult times. Head down, like a bull, and a*se to the wind. Blink for no one, trust your own instincts and drive on like f*ck, and it will all work out for the simple reason that I know you genuinely want what’s best for the Irish nation, above all else. Good luck.

Murphy

At the tender age of 43, this is my second time living through a recession, and recessions by and large are not a bad thing if you are ready for them. For most of you this is going to be a long-winded post that you may have no interest in, and I will just give my opinion on this recession that we are facing. If you’re not into this kind of thing, stop reading now, find yourself a partner of which ever sex you are into and go and do what you have to do – or just stroll down to Charlies for a pint.

Funnily enough, recessions boost the bar trade in general, and the holiday trade. The reason for this is simple and well documented – when we are going through periods like the Celtic Tiger, people feel the need to move fast with the economy and they can see others buying property and making money, and any fool could make money in those times, but not every fool could hold on to it. The stupid banks fuel the problem giving out mortgages left right and centre, and nobody can relax and enjoy life because of greed. Then you get a down turn in property and the economy and it’s cool to do nothing. People start to relax and spend their time drinking a few pints and enjoying themselves again because they don’t feel that they will miss something, and they don’t worry that others around them will move on faster than themselves.

There are those who unfortunately are under pressure to pay banks for their first home because, again, the bastards lend too much money fighting for a share of the market. It’s my opinion that those who are in that position should realise that this is much more the banks´ problem than yours. People who are struggling should get together and collectively tell the banks to go and f*ck themselves. They should pay what they can comfortably afford, and the banks can wait for the rest. If everyone did that, who are the banks going to sell the houses too? It’s time for the people to control the banks and not the other way around.

Over the last three years or so my own lads in their early 20s have been saying to me “why did you stop building houses, apartments and warehouses?” etc. I told them that everything was too expensive. Just by looking at average salaries against average house prices, and even working couples can’t afford to live at this rate. They said to me that everyone was still building and there would never be a recession again…. Mmmmmm!!!!

Unfortunately I was right and they were wrong. At that age they have only seen everything going up, people buying, buying, and no stop in sight. I am happy that they now see what can happen at an early age, just like I did in the late eighties, so that they won’t forget it for the rest of their lives. They obviously don’t remember when they were two years old and I was in and out of court with the banks trying to hold on to our house, which thankfully I did, by the skin of my teeth. But I wasn’t too worried about it, living in Ireland, the government would give you a corporation house anyway, and I knew if that’s the worst that can happen, things ain’t bad at all. This was a much bigger problem for the bank than it was for me. I would get going again and buy another house. What I do remember about those times was that there were a lot of people under serious pressure and life was grey to dark – or moral was I suppose.

Take a couple with 52,000 Euros per year net income. This is the way they will work out their finances, in this order, weekly:

mortgage 600
shopping 150
insurance 20
etc. etc.

The way it should be worked out I believe is the following way:

spending money 300
shopping 150
insurance etc. etc.

And whatever is left is what they can pay for a mortgage which would reduce the price of property and give people a quality of life.

How long will this reccesion last? I think things will go down about another 20% in the next two years and will steady, and slowly, start picking up. For sure, it will start to get a little better a year after that a/h Bush is gone.

The bottom line is that banks are greedy institutions that are only answerable to shareholders to make as much profit as possible at anyone´s expense, regardless of the consequences. Their greed blinds them from making long term steady decisions for the benefit of all including themselves. Now, because of their lack of vision and greed, they have thrown money at anyone that will take it, driving up the price of everything to a false level, which is now correcting itself (otherwise known as a “reccession”), and they are unable to keep life in balance for the public, or for themselves. As I have said before, if they lend more than a certain proven income to a couple or individual, they should be left swing and have no opportunity by law to get the money back.

If our governments can’t control them, or won’t, then we (the public) should. If everyone stopped paying their mortgage or any loan for one month, then you would see very quickly what would happen. The banks would be very accomodating very fast, and they would be begging the public instead of the public begging them, and even more of the public would be at Charlie´s having a few pints and a laugh singing along with Skin & Hide,while the greedy would be in their suits 24 hours a day, scratching their heads in offices, worried and thinking “what will we do now?” Then, after a while, the public would feel sorry for these poor assholes and agree to give them X amount per month, and we would never have a recession again as long as we don’t have another Bush, spending billions killing people.

That brings me to think again about people power. The American and English soldiers should not be waiting for Bush to withdraw them out of Iraq. They should simply say “Adios” and walk off to the airport and join the rest of us at Charlie´s for a few pints and refuse to put themselves in the way of fire, or to be firing at others.

Power and greed has the likes of Bush and the banks fcked up,which in turn has the world f*cked up. It’s a disease they have, just like cancer, and they need our help to cure these diseases. I hope none of us would walk away from someone lying on the street sick, so let’s not walk away from the opportunity to help the likes of Bush and the big w*nkers (sorry, bankers) of the world. It’s our opportunity to relieve them of their pain.

That’s enough shit for one day. Or is it shit?

Murphy

There is something on my mind for a long time that I would like to share with anyone who cares to read or listen…

I have travelled a lot over the years and have seen many different cultures. What’s right in one place is completely wrong in another. There are a few basic human traits that I have noticed everywhere, and I can only put them down to human nature, which seems to me to be the common language, and which is stronger than any culture. It’s a higher level of understanding which surpasses all cultures and religions, as I understand it. When you get to this level of understanding, life becomes a little bit easier, or has done so, in my experience. Be very careful of what you read here because this is just my opinion and it could be complete shit, but it’s based on what experience (or lack of it!) I have of life.

The main point which I want to make is that across all cultures and religions greed, selfishness, dishonesty and jealousy are the roots of everything that goes wrong in this world, regardless of one´s intelligence (or lack of it).

If we could only control these conditions in the human being, what a great party we could all have! To control these human conditions takes effort, but it leads to a much better result than not to.

Sometimes greed is expressed through ego, sometimes through material things, but it’s still all greed, whichever way you look at it, same as is jealousy.

Like everyone else, I have been as guilty as hell but I spend a lot of time trying not to be. I can’t stand anything that separates people, and I love anything that brings people together, regardless of nationality, culture or religion. I’m always trying to find the common ground and not the uncommon, but I don’t always succeed.

If you look at capitalism and communism, you quickly understand that communism is fantastic on paper, but capitalism suits human nature much better. I have lived in the former USSR for a period and all of the older folk would much prefer to have communism back. They felt safe. They didn’t have a lot by Western standards (materially), but they had a lot more than the Third World. They didn’t know this as they were kept in the dark, but they will tell you that they went to work, they had their apartment, a Lada car and a holiday every year. They had enough. The truth of it is that this system may well have lasted, only for the fact that the USSR engaged in the Cold War, which cost billions of any currency you wish to choose, and ultimately ended with the fall of the USSR.

One of the saddest things I have ever witnessed in my lifetime was the collapse of the Russian Rubel – not because a currency collapsed, but because there were hard working people who had saved for their pensions all their lives and they lost everything in a week.  When you meet highly educated or intelligent (not always the same) hard working people begging in cold train stations in their 60s +, it makes you sick to the bone.  You listen to their stories and it would kill you.  I have lived with these people in the same house and got to know them.  The lucky ones had sons or daughters who got out to the West and sent money back home so their parents had a comfortable living.  The unlucky ones… you don’t want to know.  Again, the whole lot of this human suffering was caused because of greed or pride/ego.  Will we ever learn?

To be half fair, in the Russian situation they seemed to me to be more on the defensive after the Second World War, after what Germany did to them, and wanted to make sure that it never happened again.  I know there were desperate atrocities carried out by the Russian establishments long before the Second World War against the Russian people as well (which is a different story), but again leads back to the same thing:  control caused by greed, ego etc etc.

I feel that no human being has the right to determine where another lives or not.  Forget communism and capitalism for the moment.  If everybody in this world was able to travel and trade free, we would come to a situation where every human being had at least an equal opportunity to share in the World´s wealth.  Who the f*ck do we think we are to tell another human that he cannot go here or there because of his colour/nationality or culture?  Open your minds and your doors, don’t be afraid and the results will surprise you.

I have today read two things in the papers that caught my attention and are very relevant to this topic.  The first I read was about a tribe of 240 people called the Zoe (I think, I put the magazine in the bin and when I went back to check the name someone had put more waste on top of it and I wasn’t willing to dig through it to get the name right!).  This tribe are and have been living in stone age times and are protected by the Brazilian government.  They have no contact with the World as we know it.  They have been watched and studied, just like wild animals would be for a documentary.  They don’t wear clothes, they kill only what they need to eat, and no more.  They have straw built tents and they sleep in anyone they want to, with whoever they want to.  They have no crazy man invented rules, and they share everything automatically.  Disputes are solved by tickling – whoever laughs the first loses.  They know f*ck all about religion, never mind penalty points or traffic lights, and yet they live in perfect harmony in their ignorance – or maybe it’s our ignorance.  Back to basics, and this is as close as you would get to human nature at its best before we were corrupted by all kinds of rules and sh*t.

The second thing that I read today was that the English government want the English flag displayed much more and have lifted old rules which say that the flag can only be flown at half mast with the consent of the Queen.  So now it is OK to fly the flag at half mast if a local (good person) dies in the community, without the permission of the Queen.  They want to fly the English flag from every government building in the country and they are encouraging people to fly it from their homes as well to get back their identity, regardless of whether it’s England or anywhere else!  Did you ever hear such f*cking bullsh*t in your life?!  Anyone who has to identify themselves with a flag is as insecure a human being as you will meet on any road.

I am Irish (culturally) and I am proud of it, but not nationally.  I see the Irish flag as a sign of “welcome”, whereas the English (and only the English that would support this shit, which is not all English, by any means) see this as a defensive measure.  They feel they are losing their identity and need to get it back in this stupid way.  I also know that there are many Irish that think we should not let any foreigners into Ireland, but they too are the greedy, trying to protect what they have and not share with other fellow human beings because of their own insecurities.

As far as I am concerned, anyone who is willing to pull their weight should be welcome in any society.
If I ever go missing, I will be with the Zoes in North Brazil, but I don’t expect that they would accept me after being so corrupted by all kinds of organisations making rules of how I should and shouldn’t live.  Where will I go then?  I will be simply f*cked if the Zoes don’t accept me!!!!

Murphy