Moving back to Ireland (2 Viewers)

[7 - No tomorrow]

Try London. Pig ignorant, passive aggressive, conceited, selfish and completely boring people who I'm convinced are fooling themselves into thinking they like their lives because it's "London" and that's supposed to mean something. Dublin is a breath of fresh air every time I come home.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life...

 

[washingcattle]

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life...

I'm not tired of it, I'm tired by it.

A friend describes Dublin as an abusive partner that you're not sure why you love them and you hope they can change for you. But they never do and you always go back to them and they always hurt you but you can't help but love them.

I like that analogy it sums up Dublin pretty well, it's gritty and eludes to the violence and the unpredictable and yet inevitable nature of the place.

If that's true though London is a beautiful but aloof lover who lets you glimpse their vibrance and vitality from time to time but won't open up to you and thusly you can't commit to them.

 

[billygannon]

When a man is tired of Dublin, he his tired of Life...

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

I know most of you know already, but I was quoting Samuel Johnson.

 

[Scientician 0.8]

source?

Anyone I know who has ever moved to France for work.

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

Yes, if it's true (it's not, according to my French friends in Bordeaux, Paris, Aix and Angers - who all feel they get value for the tax they pay) it would be a pleasant change from being an urban worker paying crippling taxes (with none of France's rent controls to keep cost of living manageable) to subsidise entire urban communities where unemployment is the family business going back generations and who have very little hope of ever changing career.

Thats hardly a problem unique to Ireland, I imagine it's the same in every western European country.

 

[Squiggle]

Thats hardly a problem unique to Ireland, I imagine it's the same in every western European country.

I didn't say it was unique to Ireland, but that it would be a pleasant change to be the subsidised rather than the subsidiser - which I have been for nearly 20 years having never been on the subsidised side of the equation. Working my ass off for most of my life and seeing my take home pay drop year after year, along with what few benefits (benefits I've paid for 100 times over) I might once have been entitled to vanish, is making me pretty fucking bitter towards this country to be honest.

Sweden, since I already mentioned it, doesn't support the unemployed indefinitely, and there are a number of other European countries with similar policies.

In France, instead of doing disjointed and ineffectual FAS courses, or nothing, people returning to the workforce do a longer, directed, upskilling course which includes placed work experience (where FAS courses require work experience you're on your own to find it and FAS won't even provide a reference to help).

Even if you want to work in Ireland it can be very difficult to get a job, that is not the case everywhere.

France has other problems that we don't have. But it has nicer weather, more sympathetic planning regulations, lovely food and wine and I like the people, language and culture and that's why I'd prefer to live there.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

When there were jobs, people worked.

 

[nlgbbbblth]

Fake ad in buy and sell "100 millennium 50ps for sale. £30."

Mate's phone never stopped ringing for days.

 

[nlgbbbblth]

When a man is tired of Dublin, he his tired of Life...

Sunday Independent supplement ?

 

[Squiggle]

When there were jobs, people worked.

It's really not that simple. There are jobs, but there isn't always the incentive to take them. A good friend of mine has been turning jobs down for a year now because she and her husband would only be marginally better off if she took them than they are on the dole and other benefits. In one way that really pisses me off, because she, and people like her, are making the current problem worse, but, on the other hand I can see her point. If there is no incentive or benefit to working hard then why bother - unless you're an idiot like me with some foolish notion that you need to pay your own way in life.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

Jobs should pay more than the dole.

Everyone I know that complains about the unemployed still collects their children's allowance. It's not just the unemployed feeding at the teat. Plenty of people enjoy mortgage interest tax relief, being subsidised by the tax payers to buy their own home. Everyone's got their hand out and no one gives anything back.

The country has been betrayed by its leaders, a succession of corrupt (mostly Fianna Fail) governments that destroyed the economy.
Having to pay off the banks is what is killing the economy, not the unemployed.

 

[Squiggle]

Jobs should pay more than the dole.

Everyone I know that complains about the unemployed still collects their children's allowance. It's not just the unemployed feeding at the teat. Plenty of people enjoy mortgage interest tax relief, being subsidised by the tax payers to buy their own home. Everyone's got their hand out and no one gives anything back.

The country has been betrayed by its leaders, a succession of corrupt (mostly Fianna Fail) governments that destroyed the economy.
Having to pay off the banks is what is killing the economy, not the unemployed.

Yes, jobs should pay more than the dole.

However, if the people actually paying for "universal" services and benefits are denied access to them, or, as you've done, condemned for availing of benefits they've already paid for many times over, then the situation will become less equitable, not moreso.

I get €130 a month children's allowance. When I had my first job 20 years ago I paid more than that a month in PRSI, and if I only had the money I've paid into PRSI and now PRSI and USC over the years I'd be living on my 40 acre smallholding in France by now and wouldn't need to get back what amounts to a small percentage of what I currently pay per month into PRSI and USC.

What exactly do you mean by no one gives anything back? Back to whom exactly? I take home around 40% of my gross salary each month, the rest of it, with the exception of the portion going to our pension fund (which may be valueless by the time I retire) is going elsewhere, it's certainly not ending up back in my pocket, or my family's pockets.

It would be more accurate to say that some people do all the giving and others do all the taking.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

The unemployed wouldn't be such a big problem if our money hadn't been blown by bad governance over the last few years. The problem lies there really, not with unemployed who end up spending almost all the money they get locally because they don't really get enough to save anything (this is my experience of living on social welfare anyway).

 

[Squiggle]

Shaney, I wasn't blaming the unemployed, if you re-read my posts I think it is pretty clear that my issue is with a system that makes unemployment an attractive prospect even for people with qualifications and experience enough to work in fairly well paid jobs AND does not provide any useful assistance to people who want to work but don't have qualifications/experience to do it. It should also be a short term stopgap with effective job sourcing in place to get people out of the unemployment trap, not a lifetime support mechanism which keeps people in a kind of half life limbo, enough to live on but not enough to live.

Yes, we've been cheated, robbed and lied to by successive Governments, banks and tax evaders/avoiders.

But no matter who we vote for it only seems to get worse... which is why I can't see myself staying here for the rest of my life.

 

[billygannon]

It sounds like I need to come back and sort the place out.

 

[Scientician 0.8]

Please do, and while you're at it, giz a job mister.

 

[rettucs]

IRELAND IS A SMALL, SHIT COUNTRY

(who was it said that?)

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

Obama.

 

[Jill Hives]

IRELAND IS A SMALL, SHIT COUNTRY

(who was it said that?)

La La signature.