Nearly over

Well we near the end of a 9 months local election campaign. Voting takes place tomorrow. One last leaflet drop today.

So what better way to sign off a election campaign, old blue eyes signing my way.

Ps please vote tomorrow.

Great political video

All I can say is Bob Dylan eat your heart out.

Ps Nessa Childers at 21% in tomorrows poll

Ireland's shame

I have being following the news reports of this report into child sex abuse with great interest. Having grown up across the road for St Josephs in Kilkenny and gone to school with boys for St Josephs all I feel is shame and anger.

Shame that my state turned blind eye to the great crime committed against the people of this state. Nothing can excuse child rape, nothing can excuse now defending child from the monsters that worked in this place. Shame that people knew and did nothing. Shame that I saw one particular teacher in st patrick national school in the village beat these boys in class for being "bold" and even do I was only a child myself did not speak out. Needles to say the teacher did not beat me, as I had loving parents that would have complained. That teacher should be ashamed of himself as we all should be. The childern that we abused in these homes are national heros. National heros that should be honoured and respected. We as a country have nothing to be proud of from our first 60 years of independance when you see what we allowed happen.

I am angry that these peverted monsters are still walking the street without facing jail. To cut to the chase the Catholic Chruch can only be given one choice hand over all the files, make known all the names of everyone involved and fully co-operate in bring these bastards to justice. This must include those who covered up the abuse and allowed it continue. If they hold back a single piece of evidence from the justice system then it is time to start arresting the leaders of the church for preventing the course of justice. If we need needs to change the consituation to do this so be it, the vote would be passed easily.

Now please do not take this as a political rant, it is not. Labour we in power during these times as well and share the shame.

You have to wonder that if Connolly and the soliders of the Irish Citizen Army knew in 1916 that Ireland would turn out like this would they have gone on Easter morning. I have to think not, for we merely painted the post boxes green and the one cruel adminsiteration was merely replaced by as shower of prevented bastards.

We have so much to be ashmed of in this country.

Nationalise the banks in the short term

Having watched reporting of the AIB and Irish Nationwide AGM, I have to ask myself where will this all end. We need strong banks working to get the country back to work. Having the banks lurch from crisis to crisis is not helpful.

We in the Labour Party say nationalise the banks in the short term, open up the books to see who bad it really is. From there we can plan for a recovery.

It would also be cheaper than under writing theire debts.

Once the economy starts to work again we could priviatise the banks again and realise some value for the state and current shareholders.

Sean

Joan and Nessa came to town

We had a busy day today in Kilkenny today with the visit of Joan Burton TD and Nessa Childers our EU candidate.

Nessa launched her policy document on tourism for the region in Kilkenny City today. She made some excellent point particularly about the need to market the South East region more as a place to visit for European tourism. She pointed out the need to upgrade Waterford Airport (yes it is in Munster) as a gateway point to the South East.

We did interviews with the local papers and then the local radio. After that the guys took part in a street canvas of Kilkenny City. The reaction to Nessa and particularly Joan was outstanding. People were actually seeking out Joan to discuss the economy. What a change we have seen in politics in the last year. Voters actually crossing the street to talk to a politician about economics.
For the afternoon, it was back knocking doors for myself and the team.

Worried Fianna Fail

You can tell the worry in some one by the way the lash out when they feel under pressure, so Fianna Fail must be very worried in Kilkenny.
One of the Fianna Fail candidates was on local radio complaining about election poster, even do his running mates have put up election posters. Playing the old solider and the poor old me line.

Any way one of the main complaints was that a Labour candidate, ie me, was spending too much money on things like bill broads posters etc. Then of course I was to be commended because I asked for political donations from the public in my adverts. How dare a Labour candidate spend money and ask the public to support their campaign, clearly Labour candidates are getting ideas above their station in life.

Now that Fianna Fail's builders pals are broke they are complaining about the spending of other parties, o how the worn turns.

Pay back time for the banks

You cannot beat canvasing for getting the real free from the ground. Over the last month I have come across lots of young home owners caught in the negitivie equity trap and worse with expensive fixed rate mortgages. Frankly it is not good enough for Irish banks to seek to be bailed out by the Irish tax payer on one hand and then seek to enforce unfair mortgage agreements on the same tax payers. The bank bailout scheme must work two ways

Irish banks in the last number of years recommended, particularly to younger mortgage holders, that they take out fixed rate loans. Householders were told this would protect them against rate increases. What we have seen is that because of reckless trading from the global and Irish banking sector, the European Central Bank was required to reduce the lending rate to a record low. Householders who took out the fixed rate mortgages now find themselves at a huge disadvantage compared to householders on variable and tracker rate mortgages. Many fixed rate loans have been set at above 5% compared to many tracker rate loans which are in the region of 2.25%

People are telling me that their banks are quoting penalty figures in the region of €6,000 if people wish to switch to cheaper variable mortgages. When you see the banks queuing up to seek tax payer’s money to stay afloat it is sickening to see the same banks enforcing outdated loan rates on the same tax payers,

Put quite simply if the banks are not willing to work with already hard pressed mortgage holders, then tax payers funds should be withheld from these banks. Allowing householders to switch to lower cost loans would see an increase in disposable income in many households of €250 to €300 per month. This would also help generate economic growth through increased consumer spending. It would also reduce the amount of people defaulting on their home loans as the repayment amounts would be much lower. The banks caused our current crisis, now they must play their part in getting us out of the crisis.

In short if the bankers do not play ball with the ordinary tax payers then they should be left to sort out their own mess.

Nessa comes to town

We hosted Nessa Childers our European Candidate in Kilkenny today. Nessa did a tour of Kilkenny today and joined my canvas team for some of the afternoon for a street canvas around a very wet Kilkenny City. Nessa had canvassed North Kilkenny with Cllr Maurice Shortall in the morning.

Nessa and I did an interview with Tom Dowling at 1.30 and she met up with my team for lunch in the City from there. After that it was out and about meeting the voters of Kilkenny City. Luckily we have some good cover under the Town Hall where you can meet people out of the rain.

From Kilkenny City Nessa continued her tour canvassing in the Thomastown area with Cllr Anne Phelan and Cllr Michael O’Brien.

All told a very good day for Nessa, her profile is certainly on the rise judging by the reaction of people on the street of Kilkenny City.

Canvassing for a European election brings back memories for me of my own campaign ten years ago. I purposely arranged for Nessa to have lunch in the City as I remember only too well the type of schedule an EU candidate keeps and how often you finish the day at ten O’clock and realise you forgot to eat all day. During my campaign I lost over a stone in weight in eight weeks. (I wish the same would happen with this campaign).

John McGuinness wronged by Cowen

I think it is fair to say that there is a sense of shock in Kilkenny today at the news of John McGuinness not being reappointed as a Junior Minister today by Brian Cowen

Now I know that John is in a rival political party and all that, but you can still have to respect the man. John is a good local TD and is hard working for the people of Kilkenny. While I would strongly disagree with the record of his Party and what they have put the country through, John has often been a lone voice on the FF back benches. Looks like John paid the price for speaking out against the two Brian’s today.

Frankly John was wronged by Brian Cowen, it would now seem like Cowen is making it clear he will not allow any internal debate within FF. That is a bad day for the country; it is also a bad day for Kilkenny.

Any way John, chin up and down let them get you down. You have to ask the question, Carlow Kilkenny returned four government TD and what did the government do in response, slap down a hard working TD for being outspoken.

Spare a thought for the staff that worked with John who are now without work today as well. Politics is a hard business. Are we all crazy to put ourselves and our families through this?

Sean

Crazy situation at Nationwide.

(Would you pay this man a bonus for losing €1/4 Billion).

Now I admit that when it comes to business you can call me old fashion. For me businesses are about making a profit. Maybe it is all those years working for the like of Dell and AOL that has me that way. It was always my understanding that if the business made a profit then you got a bonus and if it made a loss you got the chop. Fairly simple you might think.

However in Irish banking clearly those rules do not apply. The head of Irish Nationwide got paid a €1 million bonus even do the bank had a loss of €1/4 of a Billion. The bank had to write off nearly €1/2 Billion in bad debts and yet you do not see the whole of the higher management being put out on the street this morning. What madness is going on at this bank, it lent €1/2 Billion to people who cannot pay their debts. You do not need to be a high flying banker to manage this. They would have stood a better chance of making a profit by betting on the horses!!

Yet the madness is that Brian Cowen said said “under EU guidelines it was important for all governments to support financial institutions of systemic importance and Irish Nationwide is one of them”. Brian please show me the EU rule that says you have to keep lose making banks going, I cannot find one.

On one had we have Brian (lover of Irish bankers) telling us how we need to support Nationwide with money and on the other hand we have Mary (the killer of Christmas) telling us we cannot afford to give old people a Christmas bonus. The same Mary that wants to take money away from families designed to support children.

All I can see is we should judge the government by their actions.

Remember at the last general election I voted to get this shower out of office. What did you vote to do!!!!!!!

micandidate.eu

I was happy to take up an invite to take part in the launch of micandidate.eu outside Leinster House today. The website is a new idea designed to bring together profiles of candidates across the EU in one place.

It was one of the strangest photo shoots I have done to date. Eoin Ryan MEP for Dublin was using the axe in the picture to break through the door with in the background. The idea being breaking down barriers to accessing information and allow people go direct to the political source.

The good news is that I had contact from a voter offering to come out canvas with me from looking at my profile on the new site.

the City.

More bad news on the Kilkenny jobs front

More bad news on the jobs front for Kilkenny with Ormonde Brick announcing it is suspending production with the loss if 42 jobs. This comes on the back on news that the mines in North Kilkenny are to close soon as well.
The closing of production in Waterford Glass had a knock on effect in South Kilkenny as many of the workers were from this area.

In Kilkenny we have had an increase in unemployment of over 100% in the last year. This does not taken into account many people who have seen their wages cut or bonuses cancelled.

Knocking on doors across Kilkenny over the last month the true picture has become apparent for all to see. During 2007 general election it was difficult to find anyone at home during the afternoon as they were out to work. Canvassing this time you find a lot more people at home during the afternoon.
Unemployment has hit middle class estates the most; these are areas where people have big mortgages to cover and are now finding it hard to cover the debts payments.

At a time where we are renting temporary cabins to teach school kids at huge costs. No one is government has the guts to cancel these contracts and get people back to work building proper class rooms.

Is it not time now for some vision in government.

Are you listening Mary White

Classic Pat Rabbitte answering Mary Whites comments on the Green fingers on the budget.

Well worth a listen.

Car Parking Charges Kilkenny

Well the parking charges are now in force in Kilkenny. From the reaction I am getting on the canvas these charges are not going well with the public.

Even though I have being raising the issue of the charges and why they should not be introduced for months now, people were giving out to me about them.

The charges are merely a blunt means for the Council to bring in local taxation. Taxtion that has no relationship to the ability to pay.

What I have seen over the last few days is drivers parking in estates outside the pay parking zones thus effecting people living in local estates.

What many elderly people are worried about is that their family will now have to pay to come and visit them. I have to ask if we really need to tax people for visiting their elderly friends and family. Do we really need tax that bad!.

In these times can low paid workers afford to pay €1200 euro per year to park their cars while at work.

What is worse, the machines do not give change. I put €2 in today to pay a €1.50 tax only to find the parking units to not give change. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Time for some sense to prevail. Time to turn off the parking metres and stop taxing people back into the 1980's.

Gilmore for Taoiseach

In a crisis a strong leader will always come to the fore. That person in our current crisis is Eamon Gilmore.

I had the privilege of working around Eamon for five months last year and he is all that the video profile shows.

Cute whoreism got us into this means. All politicians are not the same. Ireland has some tough years and no better man that Eamon to leader the country through these times.

Billbroad Campaign goes live

My campaign launched the Billbroads section of the Elect Butler 2009 Campaign this week. The rection has been very good thus far.

They offer a high profile means of communaction with the general public and certainly have focused some peoples mind.

Needless to say they are not cheap, so if you wish to help out cover the costs feel free to donation via the paypal section on the right hand side of the blog.

Sean

Fingleton Bonus and Kilkenny Unemployment

Now call me old fashioned and maybe it is the capitalist in me, but why is someone getting paid a bonus when their company is in such a bad state that they need to be bailed out by the tax payers of Ireland.

I would have thought that you got paid a bonus when the company did well. If the company did not preform then you would not get a bonus. More fool me then it would seem.

We should tax a lead from the USA and bring in a windfall tax on such bonuses and take the money back for the tax payers, simple as that.

When I look at the fact that 6,000 people are now unemployed in Kilkenny because the country was wrecked by these bankers, it actually makes me angry. From being out on the campaign trail, I am not the only angry person out there currently. People are angry with the way things are turning out and all political parties are getting a blasting on the door steps.

This week, I had a person chase down their drive way to have a go at me when they saw my team out canvasing. Luckily for the team (and me) she backed off when she saw we were from the Labour Party. This woman was quite frank in saying she is hunting for FF and GP canvas teams.

I would say go easy on canvassers calling to your door no matter what party they are from. It takes guts to go out canvasing and no one deserves to get abused on the door steps.

No to Third Level fees

(Naimh scrapped the fees)

Well it looks like we are facing the end of free Third Level very soon. The leaks coming from the Department of Education make it clear that the reintroduction of Third Level fees is planned in the forthcoming budget. We scrapped college fees in 1995, at a time when the nation’s finances were worse than they are today.

As far back as 2002 the Fianna Fail Minister for Education was looking to reintroduce Third Level fees and this was at the height of our economic boom. Now the current economic crisis is being used as a smoke screen to bring back college fees is underhand and shows up the lack of long term planning by this government. For shame, education is a right not a privilege. To think that the government are now going to target students and their families because their builder and banker friend wrecked the country. Have you no shame Mr Cowen.

Over a four year degree, this would see students from Kilkenny ending up with huge debts. The cost of attending a third level college, particularly in the Dublin region, already has students taking out personal loans and working part time jobs to survive. No matter what formula the government use the fact is a middle income family from Kilkenny City will face even further financial hardship, while the government spin doctors will talk about millionaire’s children getting free fees. The fact is that the real people to suffer will be those on middle incomes, the group that is under most pressure as it is.

Labour for all the thanks we got for it scrapped the fees. Looks like we will have to do it all over again when next in power.

So much for the Knowledge Economy. What next, the old FF line that Ireland is to small to cope with all the young people and that is why we have emigration.

Team Butler and the Gilmore Train

We had Eamon in Kilkenny City last night as part of his current national tour. The event took place in Hotel Kilkenny with about 250 people attending. It was good to see a mix of Labour Party members and people from business, community groups and the trade union movement in attendance.

Eamon was excellent in outlying how the government against the advice of many economists as well as political leaders allowed the country get into this mess. More importantly he outlined the Labour proposal to get the country out of the mess and back into a stable economy again.

He touched on the point that what is driving the recession in many ways is the lack of consumer confidence and the need to give people back some belief that as a country we can get though this and recover.
All I can say is here comes the Gilmore Train, all aboard.

White’s text tax is Green Party madness!

My local Green Party T.D. Mary White has come up with the idea to impose a 1c tax on texting utter madness. “It might be no harm if they were aware of a 1c tax on texts, prudent economy at an early age” is how she defended her idea to impose the 1c per text tax. Have you ever heard such utter madness. As if taxing young kids sending texts to each other would be good for them.

The Green Party is fully aware that this tax would focus heavily on young people including many teenagers. The idea that we would target teenagers as a group for increased taxation is utter madness. The government party’s time would be better spent trying to create employment to get us out of this mess rather than seeking out vulnerable groups to impose taxes on.

The unemployment figures released this week for Kilkenny show the real crisis we are facing locally. In Kilkenny there are now almost 6,000 people on the Live Register, this is an increase of 85% on the same time last year. Never before in our local history have we seen such a rate of increase in the level of unemployment. Having been unemployed myself for a number of months last year, I know the struggle people are going through to find work. I am one of the lucky ones that found replacement employment. However the situation for many others has merely got much worse over the last few months.

Unemployment is adding to our economic problems. Every job lost in the state costs the state €20,000 through extra social welfare spending and tax forgone. If we take this figure for Kilkenny we have seen an extra cost of €56 million to the state. The government’s number one priority now must be getting people back to work. I have already outlined the steps which I believe the local authorities should take through tax cuts and reduction of regulation to help get Kilkenny’s people back to work. Crippling people with tax is going to do nothing for job creation locally. Mary White and her colleagues in the Green Party should have learned their lessons from the fiasco of trying to take the medical cards from the over 70’s. Now they plan to target teenagers instead as a source of tax income. If this is the level of economic planning that the government is coming up with, then the dole queues in Kilkenny will most likely get much worse.

It is time the Green Party got real and faced up to the crisis we are facing instead of going after taxation of young kids. If ideas like this are going to be in the mini budget then we are in deep you know what as a country.

Sean

A true EU commissioner for the Irish

I was talking to a voter this week and the subject of the Lisbon treaty came up. This person voted No because Ireland would no longer have the right to a permanent EU Commissioner. When pressed they could not name our current Commissioner or say what the current Irish Commissioner has done for Ireland in the last five years. All they knew is that we would lose the Commissioner and that would be bad for Ireland.

The question I ask is would it really matter and could we actually be better off with rotating Commissioners. The current Irish Commissioner is Charlie McCreavy whose economic ideas have got us into our current mess. Other Irish Commissioner are the likes of good old P Flynn and Ray McSharry.

The point that I made to the person is that the idea of Charlie McCreavy running around Brussels with a green jersey on his back fighting Ireland corner simply does not happen. The EU Commission works together to manage the Trans EU agenda for all the citizens of the EU. What is important is that the policies put forward by the Commission actually are in the best interest of all the EU citizens.

The European Labour Party (PES) of which my party is a member has six members of the EU Commission. One of the brightest of these has to be Margot Wallstrom (of the Swedish Labour Party). Margot is a driving force behind more integration with the citizen and of a more open and active debate about the type and structure of the EU going forward.

She said “the financial crisis deepens and has effects on the real economy. Many analysts say that we have only seen the beginning of it…Can’t help thinking that the root causes of the economic crisis and the climate change crisis are very much the same : need, greed and feed.

Poor peoples’ need for housing in the US, speculators greed for quick money, bonuses and wealth in Wall Street and similar places, the willingness from the rest of the world to “feed” the American economy with loans/cheap money”.

For me I am more worried about that EU Commissioner are focused on building a fair and open Europe. Focused on job creation than the colour of the Jerseys they might wear.

Give me a good Commissioner for Malta over a bad Commissioner from Ireland any day.

It is official the recession hits Kilkenny

While shopping in Superquinn in the Market Cross today, I found proof that the recession has hit home hard in Kilkenny. What is the proof you may ask, it is the fact that a bottle of Bling Water (750ml) has gone down in price from €45 to €20 per bottle. Yes a mere €20 per bottle, needless to say I stocked my trolley up straight away before the rush started. It would seem that frugal is the new fashion and splashing the cash is now out of fashion.

On a more serious note, I was talking to a couple on the canvas yesterday that summed up the fact of many in today’s Ireland. They bought a three bed semi in Kilkenny City in the summer of 2006. One of them lost their job and they find themselves in a situation of struggling to meet their repayments. They have looked at selling the house, however firstly no one is buying houses currently and secondly the house prices have dropped well below what they paid for it. Now even if they did manage to sell the house the bank would still be owed a huge sum which they cannot afford. They see very little future in Kilkenny City and needless to say are stressed out about the problem. The simple question they asked was what hope is there for the situation they face. I have to say I could not point them to a simple solution.

In many cases it could be argued that the Banks may not have been prudent in their lending. They did not stress test house loans to cover any down turn. For me I think that banks should now be required to prove they gave out loans to people which the person had a reasonable chance of covering. If the bank cannot, they should only be allowed recover the amount that the person could have reasonably repaid at the time the loan was given.

The AIB announced yesterday that it was writing off €1.8 Billion of bad loans. You can bet that most of this was loans to well of property developers and very little was for hard pressed home owners. A classic case of the rich getting a free ride on the backs of the less well off proves that something’s never change.

Team Butler

Well the hurling may not have gone to plan today against Waterford, however Team Butler got the new team kit today.

My election team will now be kitted out in branded Butler election campaign material.

The guys and myself were back out on the campaign trail today now sporting the new campaign jackets.

The reaction we are getting shows that the polls giving the Party a huge increase in support are true. People are clear that the economic crisis is really hitting home. Voters I am meeting want a plan to get Ireland back on track and get people back to work.

There is a sense of gloom among many people and what I hear more and more is people putting off as much spend as possible. Instead they are trying to save any spare cash they have (that is the Lucky ones that have spare cash). People are saving more in fear that they might lose their jobs as well and need to have a nest egg to fall back on.

Needless to say this means even less consumer spending and this has a knock on affect on retail jobs and also the government tax take.

The government need to set out a recovery plan and give people confidence in the future. Without people starting to spend again we are in for a tough number of years,

Sean

Anglo Irish Raided, is there some justice in Ireland

Could there actually be some justice in Ireland. The Gardai actually raiding the office of big business investigating possible illegal affairs, maybe this recession has an upside. For too long in Ireland white collar crime was somehow looked upon by many as not really a crime. It was merely business people going a little too far.

It was easily explained away as system failures, or lack of regulation and all something that could be easily explained away.

Well a crime is a crime, the bank official in a good suit cooking the books is not better than the guys running in the front door with a swan off. They are still robbers, only the guy with the swan off is most likely taking less money and admits to being a criminal.

It is only when people do serious time in Mountjoy for white collar crime will we see a change of standards in Ireland.

Now do not get me wrong, this is not a rant against Irish business. I am very much pro free enterprise. I looked at starting my own business early last year only to find that even then the markets conditions were very bad. I am glad we decided to drop the idea and write of the work already done trying to get the business off the ground. For me the way out of the current difficultly is actually to support free enterprise and help businesses grow and create jobs and wealth.
However here in Kilkenny

We see businesses closing left right and centre.

We see people losing their jobs and facing serious financial problems.

We see people facing having to hand their homes back to the banks.

You hear people talk about emigration again.

So I ask the question if someone is caught shop lifting in Kilkenny they face the full force of the law, why should white collar criminal be any different?

What we actually need is to get business moving again in Kilkenny and get people spending again.

Hence, my opposition to the Borough Council looking to charge people to park their cars in Kilkenny City. Leave money in consumers’ pockets and let them spend the money.

For local business it is now time to look at a rates freezes for the next three years to allow business clearly plan for the future cost of running their businesses in Kilkenny.

Let’s keep dreaming about tomorrow and a better Ireland

Nessa Childers visits Kilkenny

We had Nessa Childers down in Kilkenny yesterday. Seamus Pattison and myself (both former European candidates took time of the election campaign to have coffee with Nessa.

This look like the election at which we could finally win back that European seat for this area.