to think that will all the massive cuts that are being made it is odd

[2shoes]

that the government can lend another country billions....
now I know there will be a good reason for them doing it, but if we are so in debt, how the hell can we find money to lend to others??

Nooo, chickens, you'll never do that to me! I'll knock you off your heels!

I'm not blaming anyone, its not personal, but in the main British people know absolutely nothing about Irish history or politics. You can't make comments about the place and expect them to go unchallenged.

And Riven, it was the fault of SOME people, there is no outside entity controlling things! The government, they're people, the aristicrocy, also people...every group and body are people. So no, never generally the proletariat, but still some of the people, many more than you think.

An informed opinion is the only one worth listening to.

Whatever way you look at it historically we owe them No question

@BonniePrinceBilly.

No you are wrong 'the British' did not cause the deaths of millions of Irish and the emigration of millions more.

Most British people were not responsible so there should be no collective guilt. It was a tiny elite that made the decisions and benefitted from the situation.

I am half West Indian. I could bang on all day about the injustices done to that half of my people. From being enslaved and having to work to enrich other countries for free for hundreds of years. The West Indian countries had to then buy their independence and some countries are still paying over 60% of their GDP back to rich countries which enslaved them which means their economies will never get the chance to get off the ground. The people suffer racial injustice too whenever they try to move to the richer countries etc.

However, I know the original crimes happened a long time ago and were carried out by those long since dead and that it's not the fault of the 'British' or the 'Americans' but that of an elite who continue to this day to enrich themselves at the expense of the little people no matter what nationality those people are or how much suffering they have to go through...This shouldn't be a competition over who has suffered most in the past as there are people currently suffering in both nations...and people in other nations suffering much more.

"because there is normally fault on both sides.
But as I wasn't alive in that era I can't say for sure."

Riight, so if I say I wasn't alive in WW2...that Holocaust malarkey, must of been fault on both sides, and buy the way, you Jews not over it yet? Wasn't the peoples fault anyway.

thats a fine thing to say is it? Or would that be utterly insulting and belittling?

I admit I knew very little about Irish history or politics. I have asked DH, but being as though he generally slept through his history lessons he has some slightly dodgy historical 'facts'. MIL simply states that she was told by her parish priest to 'Burn everything from England except it's coal'. Which apparently sums it all up. It doesn't help that DS1 speaks like he works for the 1940's BBC, and DS2 breaks out in to his 'Simpsons'-esque Irish accent at the worst possible times. My Englishness is a bit like an evil fart, you know it's in the room but everyone is far too polite to mention it.

Riven, stop taking it so personally! Nobody is blaming anyone person for anything. And if you do want to make it about you and yours, you should be pissed off about The Hunger too, because the emigrés would have taken your slum dwelling folks jobs and made their shitty lives even worse.

But, fádo fádo, nobody really cares. I'm only commenting to correct inaccuracies, I care when people get shit wrong, thats all

We can lend Ireland the money because any money that would have to borrowed to lend to Ireland would not add to the structural deficit. The cuts that are being made are being done to reduce the structural deficit.

"The banks and rich fckers"...who was borrowing money from the banks to fund unsustainable lifestyles? Who was being presented with the terms of their loans and not batting an eyelid at borrowing 5, 6 , 7 times their income? Who thrived on talking about the newfound value of their homes, living on credit, running up debt?

It isn't all the banks you know...they needed customers to sell products to and bloody hell did they find a gullible lot ready to sign the dotted line.

Everything is a mess in this country because of the incompetence of the Government as it believed they had abolished the economic cycle and was very naive with regards to the financial sector.

Irelands problems result from poor regulation of its banking sector.

People took on mortgages that they could afford, then they cut wages and brought in pension levies and lots of people lost their jobs, and THEN they couldn't afford their mortgages. And you can't sell and get something smaller, or sell and rent, when your house is now worth half what your mortgage is due to the property crash.

Whats gullible about buying the cheapest house you can find, because its hard to rent and badly regulated? I am so sick of being told that we were greedy or stupid when all we did was what every other fucker does.

They wasted the boom, a few people got rich and the rest of us got fucked over. Now its all in the toilet and we're still getting fucked over, as well as being told its all our own fault.

There isn't widespread negative equity of 50% though is there?

Everyones fucked. We're just first.

A lot of people made money out of the property boom most notably the banks and property investors.