Signs of the Recession in Ireland

A variety of comments about visible evidence of the depth of the recession here in Ireland gleaned from various online Irish comment boards

Went shopping to Lidl last night, and the place was full. Car park full of 4X4's and large cars.

Last night my Chinese takeaway was delivered by an Irish delivery man..

I was speaking to a vet yesterday, and she said people are less likely to opt for the expensive surgery that could save the dog/cat.

A friend was telling me that the bank where he works are watching "excessive" toilet breaks.

Soup kitchens and food centres providing meals for those in need are struggling to
cope with the rising demand for their services as job losses mount and the downturn deepens.They are reporting increases of up to 13.3pc in demand this year,
with construction workers joining cash-strapped families for food parcels.

Was in a Dunnes Stores today and the porridge section was nearly cleared out - all brands.

I've heard that insurance assessors have been kept busy looking at a lot of burnt out high-end cars and SUVs of late.

Passed a business today, with a sign on the door. "No Staff Wanted."
Reckon they were pestered by job seekers.

Pay as you go leisure centres and swimming pools are inundated with unemployed builders /tradesmen during the daytime.

Sandwich chain O'Brien's, along with other mid-market retailers, is facing "extremely" serious trading conditions, according to the company's founder and chairman, Brody Sweeney.

A guy I know went to look at a used Land Rover, the guy in the showroom immediately told him the price was €5K less than the sticker price, before even asking, and then when they were talking more, the price was clearly very negotiable from there also.

Heard from a friend of a friend that mortgage and loan staff in their bank branch haven't sold a mortgage or loan for months. Instead they're literally ringing people in arrears all day every day.

Oxegen are taking flexible payments for their tickets this year, you can put down deposit and pay rest later.

On Marian Finucane’s programme on Saturday re inheritance, wills etc.Some people are finding that being left a house in a will becomes a liability due the capital acquisitions tax being due within one year, possible outstanding mortgage liability and the difficulty of selling the property. Marian was even heard to ask if it was possible to decline to accept the property….Changing times.

Pouches of 'roll-your-own' tobacco and Rizlas requested much more frequently in the shop queues these days…Shop assistant says they often run out of the ‘Amber Leaf’ the most competitively priced brand .

The small change that used to litter the floor of local supermarkets has disappeared. I used to regularly pick up about 20 or 30c and put it in a box for special needs at the exit but its all disappeared for the past 3 months.

No one ducks their head in shame when they spot someone they know in Lidl anymore. Instead they have loud conversations about the great value to be had there.

Latest data does show a surge towards prepay mobiles and away from mobile phone contracts.

The Law Society Gazette cover headline is "LANDS OF OPPORTUNITY? Job Seeking in other jurisdictions".

Friend works in a hospital in Galway and works for a consultant who does breast cancer care- the amount of women calling to cancel initial appointments because they cannot afford the 160€ consultancy fee is rising rapidly.

In the Dublin Great Run . Bertie Ahern was there to start it off. In the silence in between Bertie being announced and starting the race, someone shouted out "Bertie, you're a fucking liar!"..He went bright red.

Counted 100 taxis queuing for Heuston station last Sunday.Nearly the entire length of St Johns road west.

Got a text from Xtravision asking if an outstanding fine was keeping me away and if so come back and all will be forgiven on the spot.

The Republic's highest paid university head has suggested that staff work for a week for nothing to help the college through the current financial crisis.The move by University College Cork (UCC) president Dr Michael Murphy comes as university heads themselves consider a voluntary pay cut

DO YOU HAVE ANY ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE TO ADD? PLACE YOUR COMMENT IN THE COMMENTS BOX & IT WILL BE ADDED TO THE MAIN BODY OF THE POST IN DUE COURSE.....

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BANKS CAPTURE GOVERNMENT AT TAXPAYERS' EXPENSE

Below for all readers of ' An Unrepentant Communist' are some points relevant to Ireland's current Banking crisis and Finance Minister Lenihan's proposed NAMA "bad bank" scheme which are excerpted from an article by Willem Buiter, Professor of European Political Economy, London School of Economics. The full article, dated yesterday, 8 April, titled "The green shoots are weeds growing through the rubble of the ruins of the global economy", may be found on Professor Buiter's Financial Times blogsite at ft.com/maverecon.

The green shoots are weeds growing through the rubble in the ruins of the global economy
by Willem Buiter
April 8, 2009
The Great Contraction will last a while longer This financial crisis will end. The Great Contraction of the Noughties also will come to an end. But neither the financial crisis nor the contraction of the global real economy are over yet. As regards the financial sector, we are not too far - probably less than a year - from the beginning of the end. The impact of the collapse of real economic activity and of the associated dramatic increase in defaults and insolvencies by non-financial enterprises and households on the loan book of what is left of the banking sector will begin to show up in the banks' financial reports at the end of the summer and in the autumn. By the end of the year - early 2010 at the latest - we will know which banks will survive and which ones are headed for the scrap heap. With the resolution of the current pervasive uncertainty about the true state of the banks' balance sheets and about their off-balance-sheet exposures, normal financial intermediation will be able to resume later in 2010.

Governments everywhere are doing the best they can to delay or prevent the lifting of the veil of uncertainty and disinformation that most banks have cast over their battered balance sheets. The banking establishment and the financial establishment representing the beneficial owners of the institutions exposed to the banks as unsecured creditors - pension funds, insurance companies, other banks, foreign investors including sovereign wealth funds - have captured the key governments, their central banks, their regulators, supervisors and accounting standard setters to a degree never seen before.
I used to believe this state capture took the form of cognitive capture, rather than financial capture. I still believe this to be the case for many, perhaps even most of the policy makers and officials involved, but it is becoming increasingly hard to deny the possibility that the extraordinary reluctance of our governments to force the unsecured creditors (and any remaining non-government shareholders) of the zombie banks to absorb the losses made by these banks, may be due to rather more primal forms of state capture. (emphasis in bold added)
History teaches us that systemic financial crises are protracted affairs. A most interesting paper by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, "The Aftermath of Financial Crises", using data on 10 systemic banking crises (the "big five" developed economy crises (Spain 1977, Norway 1987, Finland, 1991, Sweden, 1991, and Japan, 1992), three famous emerging market crises (the 1997-1998 Asian crisis (Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand); Colombia, 1998; and Argentina 2001)), and two earlier crises (Norway 1899 and the United States 1929) reaches the following conclusions (the next paragraph paraphrases Reinhart and Rogoff).
First, asset market collapses are deep and prolonged. Real housing price declines average 35 percent over six years; real equity price declines average 55 percent over a downturn of about 3.5 years. Second, the aftermath of banking crises is associated with large declines in output and employment. The unemployment rate rises an average of 7 percentage points over the down phase of the cycle which lasts on average over four years. Output falls (from peak to trough) an average of over 9 percent, but the duration of the downturn averages around 2 years. . . . . . Conclusion
There are signs that the rate of contraction of real global economic activity may be slowing down. Straws in the wind in China, the UK and the US hint that things may be getting worse at a slower rate. An inflection point for real activity (the second derivative turns positive) is not the same as a turning point (the first derivative turns positive), however. And even if decline were to end, there is no guarantee that whatever growth we get will be enough to keep up with the growth of potential. We could have a growing economy with rising unemployment and growing excess capacity for quite a while.
The reason to fear a U-shaped recovery with a long, flat segment is that the financial system was effectively destroyed even before the Great Contraction started. By the time the negative feedback loops from declining activity to the balance sheet strenght of what's left of the financial sector will have made themselves felt in full, financial intermediation is likely to be severely impaired.
All contractions and recoveries are primarily investment-driven. High-frequency inventory decumulation causes activity to collapse rapidly. Since inventories cannot become negative, there is a strong self-correcting mechanism in an inventory disinvestment cycle. We may be getting to the stage in the UK and the US (possibly also in Japan) that inventories stop falling an begin to build up again.
An end to inventory decumulation is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for sustained economic recovery. That requires fixed investment to pick up. This includes household fixed investment - residential construction, spending on home improvement and purchases of new automobiles and other consumer durables. It also includes public sector capital formation. Given the likely duration of the contraction and the subsequent period of excess capacity, even public sector infrastructure spending subject to long implementation lags is likely to come in handy. A healthy, sustained recovery also requires business fixed investment to pick up.
At the moment, I can see not a single country where business fixed investment is likely to rise anytime soon. When the inventory investment accelerator goes into reverse and starts contributing to demand growth, and when the fiscal stimuli kick in, businesses wanting to invest will need access to external financing, since retained profits are, after a couple of years of declining output, likely to be few and far between. But with the banking system on its uppers and many key financial markets still disfunctional and out of commission, external financing will be scarce and costly. This is why sorting out the banks, or rather sorting out the substantive economic activities of new bank lending and funding, that is, sorting out banking , must be a top priority and a top claimant on scarce public resources.
Until the authorities are ready to draw a clear line between the existing banks in western Europe and the USA, - many or even most of which are surplus to requirements and have become parasitic entities feeding off the tax payer - and the substantive economic activity of bank lending to non-financial enterprises and households, there will not be a robust, sustained recovery. (emphasis in bold added)

NO LISBON VOTE IN IRELAND....

Early indications suggest that the Lisbon Treaty has been rejected by the people of Ireland. It appears that Sinn Féin have got a huge pro-NO vote out in working class areas. It also appears that despite the about turn by the IFA the rural areas have gone towards the NO vote too. The middle class urban areas are more evenly divided, but there are very few suggestions that where there is a YES that it is enough to counteract the overwhelming tide towards NO. Undoubtedly the unique pincer movement of a strong Sinn Féin campaign, and a strong Libertas campaign picking uip support for a NO vote from the right leaning middle classes. This is a great result for Ireland and for all of Europe, it is killing dead with a huge democratic vote the anti-democratic notions of the EU bureaucrats, whose plans for a European army, a pro-privatisation agenda, and the increasing trend towards greater centralisation is being rejected by the people of Ireland. It begs the question, as to why this democratic process was denied to the rest of the people of the EU member states, where the decision to commit to the Lisbon Treaty has been taken from the people and handed instead to the elites represented by their various national parliaments. Sinn Féin started preparations for this Treaty back in January with a huge effort being put into creating a solid cadre of members who were absolutely up to speed on the reasons why this Treaty was inimical to the interests of ordinary working people, that forward planning and effort towards the education of its members has paid off in swinging this vote.

The significance of this outcome should not be underestimated, the NO side in Ireland were pitted against ALL the other parties in the Dáil, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour, and the Greens all called for a YES vote, as well as that the Irish media were overwhelmingly pro the YES campaign, and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) and the employers confederation IBEC also called for a 'Yes' vote. This outcome just shows that sometimes the people just know whats in their best interests, when they are fully informed by a committed and informed campaigning alliance of Sinn Féin, Libertas, and the other 'NO' campaigners...Its enough to give you hope.

Christmas Greetings from Ireland....

The photographs on this post are of a ruined early Christian church in Kerry in Ireland, and are reproduced here to show the beauty of such places at this time of year, and perhaps allow some exiles from Ireland to glimpse their homeland, and to be reassured that not all that makes it so special has gone . They are also chosen deliberately to take us for a short moment away from the frenetic bustle of shopping malls and high streets, it is in such places you can regain a serenity that should also be part of this time of year. And it really is upon us again this festive season called Christmas.

Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.” Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the festival’s conclusion, December 25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.In the 4th century AD , Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians. The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, the Christian hierarchy of the time named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25th, to be the birth date of Jesus’ Christ.

Now the festive period has returned somewhat to its saturnalian origins, except that now what is worshipped is consumption and excess. The purpose of this post is not however to cast a scrooge-like bucket of cold water on what for so many people, for whatever reason, is a special time of year. So I hope that all the readers of this weblog have a Happy Christmas, and a healthy and peaceful 2008. I hope that these images from rural Kerry evoke some sense of the timelessness, tranquility, and quiet remembrance of times, people and places, which was traditionally part of this special time of year.

Turfs Up.....and a Heroic Red Tractor Delivers It!

Isn't it about time that 'Unrepentant Communist' hosted its first image of a Red Tractor? No self -respecting socialist realist publication can be without its obligatory scarlet hued agricultural machinery, and we here at 'Unrepentant' will not permit anyone to suggest that we are depriving our readers of their fair share of this classic socialist imagery, so heres a special picture here for all you. This being one of the wettest summers in Ireland in the past three decades, has delayed the traditional saving, footing, and delivery of turf. This is a fuel still widely used in many parts of rural Ireland, it has been a staple of Irish life since time immemorial. Turf is actually peat, and is cut usually around Good Friday from the bogs, which are widely found all around Ireland . It was once cut by hand using a sleán, a special turf cutting spade, this has largely been replaced these days with machines which cut sods of turf slightly larger than the old hand cut turf.In the midlands and west of Ireland over 1m tonnes of sod peat or turf are cut annually, generally by local people who use the turf for domestic heating and cooking if they possess 'range' cookers. It is loved because it burns well and quite slowly, on an open fire it produces a heat which is less intense than coal, but also pervades the house with a distinct aroma which must be one of the most unique smells in Ireland. So distinctive is it that enterprising businesses sell little packages of turf to be burned in apartments in America and Australia, so that the homesick Irish exile can inhale the delicious blue heathery smoke of a turf fire and thus trigger instantaneously a huge deluge of memories of home. When the sod is cut, by machine or by hand, it is spread to dry on the adjacent spreading ground. After a week or ten days the sods are turned, then after a further period, (this summer because of the wet weather conditions, the period of time was extended ) the sods are “footed”, which means stacking four or five sods on end, leaning against each other. After a further week or so, the sods are built into “clamps” or stacks. Then the turf is brought home and stored in outdoor sheds or in ricks, which later are covered over for the winter. The whole process is extremely labour intensive, since to allow the air to circulate around the sods and to dry it is essential that they are regularly turned and moved, which obviously involves a lot of bending and picking. This summer the battle was to get the turf to dry, and the heavy rains made this very difficult, so the turf had to be footed and refooted more than normal. There are other aspects of work in the bog, there is a great sense of cameraderie amongst the people working in the bog, and it is usual for people to help each other out. Because it is so labour intensive, bog work is probably one of the last preserves of the 'meitheal' , this is an Irish word which means a 'gathering or collaborative group', so people readily help each other and in turn you help them out. In my case, four friends who also get their turf from the same bog, helped turn and load the turf. I first encountered turf cutting when I accompanied my Grandfather on his bog on the mountain bogs overlooking Tralee, it was even harder work then, since we walked to the bog and it was all cut by sleán, I remember particularly well though the enjoyment of tea brewed on a woodfire, and eating thick ham sandwiches, it is true, even if oft repeated, that food and tea eaten and drunk in the bog is wonderful. In Ireland there are people who like to talk about the joys of the bog, and there are those who really like it. What I love about it is the solitude, and being surrounded by nature. Your mind is relieved of all the stresses and strains of modern living as you undertake the repetitive and really quite mindless tasks of footing or stacking, but in that rhythmic work there is a slowing and a grounding which makes you tune into the sound of the wildlife and become aware of the small almost imperceptible alterations in the breeze, the clouds, and sometimes, even the sun.