Sunday Times article on the Irish economy - a fair assessment?

It is scary reading and deliberately goes for shock value, starting with a high profile suicide.
Unfortunately on balance, I'm not sure that it's unfair. I think we're only approaching the end of the beginning, and we'll only have a good idea of how bad it's going to get by the end of this year.
 
Does anyone seriously believe the Times apart from those Little Britains that have yet to learn the glory days of the empire are well and truly over. A schoolboy could have written this. Get a load of figures, find out that your girlfriend secretly fancies that Irish fella in her office, don't look too closely at the man-in-the-mirror when shaving and fire off a salvo to your inane sub-ed.:D The Times has gone tabloid in more ways than one - although they use the euphemism 'compact'. Even so it still can't get within grasp of the Sun or Daily Mail. Just as the Brits rooked Australia, an Australian is now rooking them. ;)
 
Tripe....

"The Celtic tiger that transformed a beer-soaked backwater...."

Says it all really.

It's not like the Brits have gotten away scotts free either
 
I think it is a reasonably fair assessment. Some are still in denial but at least Mr Cowen has clearly outlined our hugh problem and the pain and time it will take to put us back on course. No use in blaming others.
 
Surely some positives have come from the past fifteen years? It's not all doom and gloom - unless you listen to the news hourly. Why do people look at the gloomy side always? Listening to radio and TV reports you'd swear that the four horsemen were waiting behind the Sugarloaf. Cheer up for Chrissake. It might never happen. Or it may. But the world will not stop revolving and the heavens will remain as they are.
 
dewdrop said:
I think it is a reasonably fair assessment. Some are still in denial but at least Mr Cowen has clearly outlined our hugh problem and the pain and time it will take to put us back on course. No use in blaming others.
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So you don't see the irony of this piece, written by a trumped-up, cheerleading English journalist. On a newspaper quickly becoming a tabloid. This cheerleader fails to mention that the Great British nation is in the biggest stew of them all. Who underwrote all the derivative insurance of CDO's (Collateralised Debt Obligations), CDS's (Securities) and which market controlled 90% of the derivative, hedge and ABX trades - hmmm City of London. What country derivived 40% of its trade from one square mile (now worth nothing) and 30% from an inflated property bubble too - Broke Britian. This article is pot calling the kettle black in the finest sense.

Now why do you think sterling is being bebased? According to this useless article, if Ireland is worth €20 then the UK's worth fanny nothing. For paddy-whackery refer to this dross

Paddies heading for Poland?
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If you think the British economy is a mess, spare a thought for the neighbours “What’s the capital of Ireland?” they ask. “Oh, about 20 euros.”

The number of foreign workers rose from 1% of the population to over 12%, sending it towards levels last seen before the potato famine............

I left a godly land of broke but merry alcoholics and came back to a place where people who used to dig potatoes were buying luxury apartments
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Mentioning the tragic death at the start is disingenuous and comparing Ireland to Iceland is a fraud. At least this country has charm and character unlike the UK devoid of soul or any sort national identity apart from chav culture.

Finally this article mentions Ireland having to nationalise Anglo - now what's the counts so far in the UK with government ownership above 70%? Which country this weekend had a large mutual go to the wall, and would not be saved by these same great advising MP's for a miserly £5m.

This article belongs in the Statesman for irony. And overall some on here found this article interesting?? Oh deary deary me - sad.
 
There's no doubt that some of the charges levelled against Ireland in the article are justified. The Standard & Poor's rating change this evening reflects that.

But the gratuitous racial stereotyping in the article is completely unwarranted. The same article could have easily been written without the repeated quips about the potato famine and alcohol. Not surprising as The Sunday Times has undeniably descended into the realm of tabloid journalism.
 
I don't think we'll lose the last 15 years of gains, maybe 3 to 5 but who knows.
I don't think the UK are in much better shape either.
 
tiger said:
It is scary reading and deliberately goes for shock value, starting with a high profile suicide.
Unfortunately on balance, I'm not sure that it's unfair. I think we're only approaching the end of the beginning, and we'll only have a good idea of how bad it's going to get by the end of this year.
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I completely agree with tiger. I didn't see anything factually incorrect in the article and I think it accurately depicts what happened in Ireland over the last 20 years. The fact that many psoters prefer to focus on the origin of the article rather than the contents would indicate that there is still considerable denial about the terrible state of our economy.
 
The Sunday Times has been found out before. Google the amount of cases won against it. Without going through the article bit by bit, can I draw your attention to the story on Ryanair in page two. Twenty reasons not to use the airline. Tabloidism at it's best in a gutter journal. They did not compare Ryanair's growth to BA's downward spiral. Likewise, in the main story they did not compare like with like - Ireland's economic woes with Britain's. The scurrilous portrayal and Punch-like caricatures bestowed on Irish people over the last hundred years by this rag should not be forgotten. There is nothing slanderous in this article but it should be read with a jaundiced eye and taken with a pinch of salt.
 
It seems to me that they found one shop that was selling single tea bags and cigarettes and that, + some comments from Gerald Keane were meant to present a fair and balanced picture of the Irish economic state. It was as if all anyone could afford over here was a single tea bag shared amongst the family
The reality is that you could walk into any area in England such as inner city Liverpool or parts of the East end of London and the situation would not be much better over there

I'm not saying we're not in trouble in Ireland, we are and I think at least we now all know it. Because of the boom, the fall is going to seem far worse then perhaps it really is. If the standard of living in Ireland falls to 2003 levels as Cowan is suggesting, so what? 2003 was not that bad was it?

Mind you, my 2 year loved the picture of the cat on the magazine cover
 
To context these things, the Sunday Times/Times Online don't seem to be able to give balance. Today's effort by Susan Thompson shows the inherent ambiguities. The last sentence is at odds with the OP's link.

“As a result, we believe that Ireland’s net general government debt burden could peak at over 70 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2013, a level we view as inconsistent with the prospective debt burdens of other small eurozone sovereigns in the AAA category.” S&P said Ireland’s rating outlook was negative, meaning it could be lowered again.
Dublin has vowed to arrest the melt-down in its fiscal standing in a supplementary budget on April 7 and yesterday reiterated that new measures would include a medium-term strategy for getting the budget deficit below an EU limit of 3 per cent of GDP.
Reacting to the credit rating cut, the Irish Finance Ministry said the country was experiencing a “very significant contraction in economic growth” but was expected to grow above trend once world growth resumed.
“The Government is committed to restoring order to the public finances by bringing the deficit below the 3 per cent limit by 2013,” the statement said.
The downgrade pushed up the cost of insuring Irish debt to 255 basis points from 221.5 basis points. However, the AA+ rating still means on the S&P scale that Ireland has an extremely strong capacity to repay its borrowings.
 
I thought the article was a hotch potch of google searches & genaralisations. Some of what was said was factual but other things were either made up or based on Chinese whisper. The incident in Limerick whilst shocking and abhorent did not occur 'because a man didn't pay his debts.' And to make out that the Celtic tiger was set up by a few buckos in the back of a pub in Dublin is an insult to the IDA & business owners around the country. This was lazy red top journalism.
 
Chocks away said:
The Sunday Times has been found out before. Google the amount of cases won against it. Without going through the article bit by bit, can I draw your attention to the story on Ryanair in page two. Twenty reasons not to use the airline. Tabloidism at it's best in a gutter journal. They did not compare Ryanair's growth to BA's downward spiral. Likewise, in the main story they did not compare like with like - Ireland's economic woes with Britain's. The scurrilous portrayal and Punch-like caricatures bestowed on Irish people over the last hundred years by this rag should not be forgotten. There is nothing slanderous in this article but it should be read with a jaundiced eye and taken with a pinch of salt.
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The comparison of Iceland and Ireland is ridiculous, Ireland still has a strong manufacturing and services sector even if it is not indigenous. It may be a bust but it's not a total wipe-out.
 
After the contraction this year, Ireland will still have the 2nd largest GDP per capita after luxembourg according to the economist. All we have to do is simply get public sector expenditure in line with the rest of Europe and we're singing. Easier said than done tho
 
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