Marking Time

• Damien Mulley: Irish Telecoms Review 2006 Part 1
  “Were I without a conscience and were eircom on the stockmarket, I’d be buying shares in them.”
  (tags: Irish Politics technology)
• Damien Mulley: Irish Telecoms Review 2006 Part 2
  “BT, UTV and Magnet have considerable resources and they don’t seem to be using them to change the game in Ireland. Shame on them.”
  (tags: Irish Politics technology)

• The Living Earth - Fluoride…it doesn’t go away
  I would like the freedom to choose my level of fluoride intake rather than the state choosing it for me.
  (tags: Irish Politics Health)
• Arse End Of Ireland: Fairytale Of Moyross
  The lady can write.
  (tags: Irish Politics News)

Bertie Ahern plays fast and loose with the facts:

“What we were being asked by Bupa - and let’s not put a tooth in this - was that people who are all well and healthy can pay cheap insurance while the old people then get screwed. I am not going to do that while they get greater profits,” he said. “I’ll look after the people who need looking after. If insurance is all about going out and getting a 100 people who are unlikely to get sick for the next 10 years so they make greater profits, that’s great, that’s marvellous.

“And I am meant to be impressed by that argument? And then you get 100 people who are like myself and half-crocked and we have to pay far more for it. That’s fair? Market forces? Competition? Who are they codding,” said the Taoiseach.

Irish Times 16th December 2006

Am I really supposed to take this clown seriously as leader of the country when he comes out with rubbish like this? Show me the evidence that BUPA were cherry picking the younger customers. What has the VHI done with all the money it has made out of its current older customer base when they were young, healthy, and claim free? Why don’t the VHI have to comply with capital adequacy requirements? Who’s rubbing their hands with glee in expectation of the privatisation of the VHI that’s coming down the line?

Half-crocked is right. And what does he mean by the phrase “let’s not put a tooth in this”? Is he by any chance referring to the lack of regulation of the VHI?

Ann Fitzgerald of the National Consumer Agency says:

“It is now critically important that the Minister for Health addresses, as a matter of urgency, the dominant position of the VHI in the Irish market. Dominant players are not in consumers’ interests; we have seen that in various sectors of the economy. It is not good enough to allow VHI a further six years - until 2012 - to meet the solvency requirements which other health insurers must meet. To do so would strengthen and copperfasten the dominant position of the VHI,” she said.

“Current VHI advantages include the freedom not to comply with capital adequacy requirements which other insurers are required to do. Other advantages which would accrue to VHI over that six year period would include freedom to develop new products and markets without regulatory oversight and without compliance with the regulatory requirements which apply to other insurers.

“Radical proposals are needed to address this dominance question now. Otherwise, consumers will lose out and the market will continue to be unattractive to new entrants”

Finfacts 15th December 2006

NEARLY half the residents of an upmarket housing estate in Limerick have said ‘No’ to the relocation of the Murray family, who had two children badly burned in a petrol bomb attack. More than 60 residents in Clonile have petitioned the city council not to purchase a house for the family.

The signed petition, which was handed into City Hall on Monday, was also given to Defence Minister Willie O’Dea and other Limerick politicians.

…

Mr O’Dea said yesterday: “I received the petition and passed it on to the council at the request of the residents.” He declined to comment further.

Irish Examiner 13 December 2006

• BBC NEWS |UK ‘plot’ terror charge dropped
  So all these liquid related security measures are for nothing. Who would have thought it? (via Best of Both Worlds)
  (tags: News)

So all the while that we were being mesmerised by the shiny baubles of stamp duty reform and mortgage interest relief and blaming the mean old scrooges at the ECB for our woes, it turns out we’re blissfully ignorant to the fleecing we’re getting from unscrupulous auctioneers, mortgage brokers, developers, property management companies and everyone else and his mother with a finger in the pie of the Irish property market.

I can’t believe that anyone can be surprised at the revelations in last night’s Prime Time programme about dodgy carry-on in the property market. This is dogs in the street stuff. And the feigned shock of the various representative organisations is laughable.

Still, what can we expect from a government that has consistently put vested interests ahead of the good of society and the citizen, coupled with a citizenry endowed with more money (read credit lines) than sense?

A vote for Fianna Fáil is a vote for the guests in the tent at the Galway Races.

• Making Light: Why I blog
  If anything this phenomenon of press not telling us what we need to know in case we might upset the status quo is even worse in Ireland. Inner circles abound. Journalists and politicians are way too cosy.
  (tags: News Politics)