“Keep pulling for us” December 21, 2010
Posted by irishelectionliterature in Uncategorized.Tags: fianna fail, nama
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Its up on the RTE Player now…
If you didn’t see RTE’s Prime Time Investigates ‘Carry on Regardless’, then strap yourself in (to restrain yourself) to be even further disgusted at the web of deceit surrounding NAMA.
Interspersed with interviews of NAMA officials and soundbites from Brian Lenihan, amongst others, we hear tales of Lands, properties galore and more signed over (perfectly legally) to spouses by Developers in the NAMA process.
Developers in NAMA still using private helicopters to fly them to the races, where they watch their racehorses win.
The State paying a fortune in rent for everything from Dole offices to the NAMA HQ to developers in NAMA.
NAMA are one of the State agencies renting The Treasury building… paying rent to Treasury Holdings (Who have over a billion in loans in NAMA). As an aside, for the 2002 and 2007 General Elections, Fianna Fail had its election headquarters in the Treasury Building.
We see the opening of the new Docklands Convention Centre. Johnny Ronan and Richard Barrett of Treasury Holdings in jovial mood with the equally jovial Brian Cowen and Mary Hanafin… a jovial Bertie arrives in and Richard Barrett greets Bertie ” keep pulling for us”.
…and that’s only touching on the various angles of the show.
The show I think is another few points off FF and The Greens at the next Election.
Worth a watch, if you can stand it.
Amused at Brian Hayes being ‘shocked’ at the rents being paid to developers to house government departments and services – the reason they are renting all this space is because previous administrations, going back to the sixties, thought this kind of leasing deal was ‘better value’ than the OPW owning and building stuff. So this is BH, from a party that wants to sell off what’s left of the state’s assets wanting us to start building up a property portfolio again under that ‘byword for waste’ (in Sindo land) the OPW?
Disgraceful, and you point to a very real problem as regards the next bunch. Fundamentally they will change little and their rhetoric will throw up paradox after paradox.
Just further on that point, Frank McDonald’s ‘The Destruction of Dublin’ (well worth reading again for the distant roots of the current situation) illustrates that property boom part the first was largely a public/ private affair with developers throwing up office buildings that turned out to house – surprise! – arms of the state.
Fianna Fail had its election headquarters in the Treasury Building.
A massive coincidence, to be sure.
Meanwhile, newstalk have conducted a poll that suggests that FF will do much better than expected.
Who the hell is voting for FF anymore!
The social welfare cuts, NAMA, the pension levy, the IMF, holding back by-elections . . .
What will it take to make people see that they are a disease that needs urgent extermination!
I wonder about this one: it’s not a poll as such – they went around local radio stations and asked their pol cors for a read on it. So the adjustment upwards for FF is based on people with local knowledge reckoning that voters will go ‘I hate FF but Johnny got me the medical card’ so the outcome will be less devastating than polls might indicate. This could be true – but equally, the lads with the local knowledge might be going on a precedent that doesn’t apply any longer. We may not be in Kansas anymore…..
I was thinking about this and IELB’s post a few weeks back on how difficult it is for FF to plan an election strategy on such abysmal figures. I think IELB is sort of right: FF will receive a stronger vote than the polls suggest, but they will author their own downfall by running too many candidates.
Equally, internal tensions may come to the fore should FF strategists decide to run fewer candidates. There are a number of political climbers who will be expecting a nomination and who will be vexed when another candidate is chosen ahead of them. This could lead to defections which in turn would seriously weaken the party. One might speculate that one of the reasons so many senior ministers are retiring is to free up candidate spots for the dangerously ambitious and the previously disappointed.
Watching the show last night (a not particularly coherent one it has to be said) it was evident again that NAMA is not much more than a political deep freeze for the assets and loans of this shameless elite. We should not be shocked at their excesses; what’s shocking is the political dispensation that facilitates its persistence.
“what’s shocking is the political dispensation that facilitates its persistence.”
But it’s hardly shocking, is it? Unless one has the expectation that it would be otherwise. Collusion between government and capital is not news.
What was interesting about last night’s programme was that it was broadcast at all. The PrimeTime Investigates team appear to be the only people in that organisation who are in any way challenging the orthodoxy, however occasionally and however subtly.
Having said that, the point already made about the FG muppet trying to score political points out of the public/private partnership deals was pure farce.
Fair enough. Not a shock.
Busy watching this now.
I would love to see the wives divorce these w**kers…
I see that the High Court overturned the transfer of Anglo Man David Drumms house into wife’s name, so maybe they can chase down the NAMA guys now. That is if there is the political will to do so.
If memory serves me correctly she agreed to transfer back or not complete the transfer so strictly speaking the High Court did not adjudicate but ratehr the matter was settled on a consent basis.
Transfer of assets to a spouse is not as straight forward, the basis of the legislation was to transfer older properties, principally family homes, but not confined to them which were generally held in the husband’s name into joint names, not so much of a general problem now as both spouses are generally on title.
One of the requirements is that one is solvent at the time of the transfer and that the transfer is not designed to evade creditors, it would seem to me that on this basis the transfers might be overturned. Off course private property rights in the constitution will be used to defend these actions.
Also legislation cannot be retrospective and a change is unlikely, turkeys and christmas and all that.
Quick plug for the WP campaign to change the constitution to prevent fraudulent transfer of assets in the future:
http://www.wedemanddemocracy.ie/
The on-line petition got a decent boost after the RTE programme the other night. Between on-line and on-street signatures the numer of signatures is approaching 5,000 apparently, the bulk being the latter, gathered over the past couple of months by weather-proof WP activists in Dublin and Cork mostly.