and



A person with a mortgage repayment of € 900 two years ago now has a mortgage repayment of € 1400 now. Those living on the breadline, or low income, are ever those most hit whenever stuff like this happens, and I would imagine it will be much worse throughout the year (remember this is not a short term issue, this is a chronic decline in western countries which is going to continue over a number of years - US sanctions / US De-Globalization). To translate that into something understandable : The ultra nationalist party, Sein Fein, is the largest "political" party in Ireland and they are expected to win big in the next election (hint : not good). In the last election none of the other political parties wanted to partner with them (too dangerous). Hopefully the same happen again in the next election, but I am not confident. In order to remain in power, the current government is going to have to step up its game to showcase what it is doing to help low and middle income households. The problem is they are not doing enough. I would imagine this point is being repeated to varying degrees throughout europe, its just that governments dont know how to do it. It is very easy for nationalist parties to point at the cost of living crisis and say "We will fix that" and get elected on that mandate (and subsequently fail, but it would be too late by then cry about it).

From a cultural stand point irish people have ever emigrated noting successive governments (until very recently) did not build nearly enough housing in Ireland and there was ever a lack of jobs. There are alot more houses being built now (in the last 2 years) but its less then 50% of whats needed. Studies have shown then we need to be building between 42-62K houses a year, but we build only 25K per year (which is already way more then we were building). Understand in Ireland there are laws to prevent high rise buildings, and laws which hinder an explosion of building, and as a consequence we do not have enough housing/apartments. Relating to rent - your mortgage might be € 1400, but rent is € 2000+ like for like. In most countries renting costs less then repaying a mortgage. Irish people like to own, not rent, and there is simply not enough rental accommodation.

In terms of the picture provided above, this relates to social housing, whereby the government will find you a house to live in, discounted. 2/3's of people on this waiting list have to wait 2+ years. There are 73000 Ukrainian refugees in Ireland. For a population of 5million people I would like to think my country is doing its part to help refugees. It is normal however for ultra nationalists to use that as a foil for their own agenda. Its not as bad in Ireland as it is in England (The government there is very anti immigration and has a very vocal voice in politics).

As commented previously, there are various (very complex) schemes in Ireland to enable irish people to take in Ukrainian families. Irish as a nation has alot of empathy with Ukraine and we have a history of sitting beside a very strong neighbor.

Trusting I touched on the overarching points/questions.

This post was edited by ferdia on Apr 25 2023 02:48am

Here is another good one about General Reinhard Gehlen, who had served as Adolf Hitler’s top anti-Soviet spy. The CIA hired him after WW2.

"Gehlen returned to West Germany in the summer of 1946 with a mandate to rebuild his espionage organization and resume spying on the East at the behest of American intelligence. The date is significant as it preceded the onset of the cold war, which, according to standard U.S. historical accounts, did not begin until a year later."

https://ips-dc.org/the_cias_worst-kept_secret_newly_declassified_files_confirm_united_states_collaboration_with_nazis/



This post was edited by DizzyBusiness on Apr 25 2023 03:29am

took a long time to decide who is the bad guy, right ?

and all those ***** ******** *** *** ***** ****

"I am joe biden and i forgot this massage"

This post was edited by Bananii on Apr 25 2023 08:57am

Article does an okay job at framing the current dilemma. It's probably one of the main reasons why we haven't seen the leopards in use. Saving them for this great denouement, which if falls short is going to have pretty significant further support repercussions. As I previously said, I think Biden needs this war to end on a 'positive' note before the elections or it's really going to be a really toxic issue.



https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/24/biden-ukraine-russia-counteroffensive-defense-00093384