The fact that something is legal does not make it right or even good, just permissable, and attacking people as being begrudgers when they make a perfectly valid set of comments is just dumb.

There is nothing wrong with someone pointing out and using a set of facts to make some points which happen to be critical of an individual. An individual who has often courted publicity and being a public figure, so he can take the critical comments along with the positive ones.

And BTW who says “Begrudgers never got anywhere” I think you wil find that statment to be untrue more often than not. Anyway I dont think \the Hare was being a begrudger at all. Merely a strong critic. Now is it not a pity we have not had more of these over the past 5-10 or 15 years? if we had and they had been more widely listened to then the greedy excesses we have seen might not have left us in quite the mess we are in now!

Capitalism and profit – Yes! But the “off the rails/scale” kind of greed which has virtually destroyed [or at any rate tramsformed] Irish society has not been a good thing for Ireland as a whole and we will be reaping the rewards of the failed ideas and dogmas for years to come.

Harsh and jealous words from harry the Hare. Begrudgers never got anywhere.

IF DOB had never existed this means that all those businesses would never have happened? Hilarious and proof that you still don’t get it.

Goodness forbid that DOB should drop dead today- but if he did all those employees [underlings perhaps in your world?] would continue on as if he never was! DOB depends on other people to make him rich and always has. He evidently is a good manipulator and manager? But that’s all really. If it was not him doing what he does it would have been someone else, and I happen to take the view that nobody should be able to get the sort of obscene amounts of money he and others LIKE HIM get.

However as we live in a very unequal and unjust world I accept we have not evolved enough yet to have the right balance in all our human affairs. What I object to though is that given the virtually limitless amounts of money people can be rewarded with, that is totally out of whack with any scale of proportion of what they actually do, compared to those around them I think the least such people can do is not be so greedy and venal as to play silly games with TAX laws based on their personal residence.

If I were earning the amounts of money that DOB got I would be happy/proud to be a resident of Ireland and pay whatever tax I must- coz you know I would still be mega rich anyway! Plus it sets a very bad example to play these silly games about being a resident!

As regards the other stuff [many flaws and errors contained therein] you have wrote about in your comments I would agree with a lot of what you say but disagree with a lot too- and I can even refute outright some of it!

That’s something I will do after I have copied what I write in WORD into this browser. But for now I have to go back to WORD first. I know how important it is to you to make no typos and spelling omissions/mistakes etc etc.

Is that ok with you?

I am not a Rock boy. I am a reluctant Belvo boy though. Wrong side of the city and I never played rugby. I have lived and will live again after a temporary hiatus in D4. Plenty of Rock boys for you to hug there I guess. My car is 92 and much loved so please let me drive it on your velvet roads.

All my grandparents are dead. Three of them checked out early. My paternal grandfather died at 46, his wife at 56 and the others died at 70 and 83. Not many there would have benefitted from medical cards. And none of them had much luck in the pubilc health system hence their early demises.

Medical cards and the widespread need for them are the end result and not the cause. We don’t educate people as to what is a healthy diet and poor education leads to poor health. So maybe we need less Denny and Avonmore and more green vegetables and exercise. As the government is in the pocket of big business this will never happen.

We are aiming at the wrong targets. We are aiming at the results and not the causes. Medical cards are needed for people over 70 and I don’t think they should have to go cap in hand for a handout but to reduce the need for the card in the first place we need to teach people to look after themselves. This starts with education and because education here is based on a failed ideology we arent going to get very far.

‘It is a bad idea for the Irish state to be paying for the migration and immigration choices of foreign nationals who choose to come here of their own accord and in their own interests.’

However, it is also a bad idea for the Irish state to be paying for the lifestyle choices of our own native Irish people who make a conscious decision never to engage in gainful employment. Among the thousands of long term unemployed in this country are quite a number who have always been, and are determined that they never will be anything but, a burden on the state (although they, possibly, would not see it quite that way. They believe fervently in entitlements.) The only real difference between welfare fraudulent immigrants and welfare fraudulent natives is the obvious one that the natives, by a random accident of birthplace, happen to have been born in a relatively wealthy nation. Apart from the accident of their birthplace I see no argument for retaining these people in the country, so why not deport them along with the (pesky) foreigners. (For the benefit of Larry the Lamb let me point to my tongue which is planted in my cheek as I utter the word ‘pesky’).

Now, that’s the dole spongers sorted out. What about those thieving ladies who are claiming lone parents’ allowance while living with their partners? Surely there can be no place in a civilised democracy for people who would steal from their own kind, their fellow citizens. I mean, it’s not as if they are stealing from (pesky) foreigners. They are actually stealing from Irish citizens! And as we know, the only difference between them and a (pesky) foreigner who is defrauding the lone parents’ allowance is an accident of birthplace. Let’s deport all of them as well.

The kind of thinking espoused by Barney the Bear makes perfect sense to people like him because they see everything in terms of a nationalistic world view. This is ‘Our Country’. That is ‘Your Country’. Our country is rich and safe. Your country is a shit hole. Tough. This kind of them and us mentality feeds and breeds xenophobic and racist ideals.

Henry the Horse then says…

‘Allow me to point out that people are not employed by O’Brien in this country rather they are emplyed (sic) by companies in which he doubtless has a stake in or is a CEO of…
…for it is the efforts of a great many other people that DOB would rely on which insure (sic) his success or failure. He is richly rewarded to an obscene level for the efforts he pouts (sic) into his business interests and all I say is that it reveals alot (sic) about the man when he plays the silly game about being a resident of ……. Just to keep taxes which otherwise would normally come his way.’

Presumably, then, if Denis O’Brien had not started his mobile phone company all of those people now employed by it in its current form would simply have decided to set up their own phone company. Also, O’Brien is the owner of several radio stations in Ireland and lots of people work for those radio stations, ergo, he employs them. It is not a difficult concept to understand. It is even easier to master than a spellchecker or a qwerty keypad.

When I lumped Wally the Weasel in with the Céad Míle Fáilte people over at Immigration Control Platform I did so based on his apparent belief that there is nothing positive to say about immigration. I’m sure that if our Weasel friend did have some positive thoughts on immigration he/she would have shared them with us. Over at the ICP website one can find no positive comment about immigration. The same old line is peddled again and again. Immigration is bad. Immigration will ruin our society. Nothing good ever came of immigration.

So please, Roger the Rat, don’t give me the sort of line I read last night from Hibernia Girl to explain why immigration is bad…

‘I love my country. I love my people. I love Western Civilisation. I want to protect them and ensure that they continue on well into the future.’

Why do people feel so threatened? Why do people feel that their very culture is under attack? George Hook twice this week on his radio show bemoaned the fact that he can walk three hundred yards from his office to his car and not hear a word of English spoken on the street. So what! They’re not talking to him. They are talking to friends and family whose first language happens to be something other than English. When I go to Spain I always try to speak in Spanish when I am talking to a native. But I don’t speak Spanish to my family over dinner of an evening. That would be daft.

By the way, Polly the Parrot, when you cut and pasted the entire first half of your (un)original comment above did you lift it from Hibernia Girl, the ICP or the Irish Independent?

If I get this correct we should have first and second class citizens based on your criteria.

A&E is the result not the cause. It is a manifestation of crappy education and crappy social services. Our whole society is corrupt and people get around the system as and how they see fit. We breed ignorance and helplessness from an early age. These people know no better and have no incentive to know any better. Pushing granny and grandad to the front of the queue is ignoring the main problem. I am not saying they deserve what happens but as long as we are mired in idealogical bullshit and a political class that dumbs down and plays to the gallery we will continue to have these problems.

And people in A&E are triaged. This meaning the sickest get the first call on beds. Even if they are skangers and they did it to themselves. These people are your fellow ctizens. But I think that we now have a divided society that places a very low value on people that are not like themselves or are poor.

The thing is that the basics are not sexy. Preparing for a rainy day in a boom time is sneered at. You don’t see the fire brigade looking for ladders and hoses when the fire is at its height. They prepare when the going is good and get ready for the bad times in the good times. We went out on the piss and the Government went mad with vanity project after vanity project.

And Jane use a capital letter for your name and possibly learn a bit of punctuation. Comma, one space. Full stop. Two spaces. And keep the punction to the left. Good girl. Now go back to your 42 inch plasma and keep quiet.