Ireland Officially In Recession.

Hmmm....From the RP:
Average soars at Tattersalls Foals opener

By Ed Prosser 7:00PM 24 NOV 2010
TRADE at yesterday's pipe opener to Tattersalls' December Foal Sale summed up the bloodstock business' current state. Only 61 per cent of those that offered changed hands but those that did made a premium as purchasers focussed on the same youngsters.

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Those top-end buyers yesterday were almost all pinhookers recruiting their 2011 yearling drafts on a day that is graded to be the weakest of the four December foal sessions and although the reduced number sold helped the median and average prices soar, the aggregate also showed an increase on 2009. Despite the country's economic woes, Irish buyers dominated the day although it was locally-based agent Richard Frisby who signed for the top-priced 42,000gns Sakhee's Secret colt, out of a half-sister to Bishops Court and Astonished.
"He's for a pinhooking syndicate and for me he was the standout individual here," said Frisby. "It's a very tough family and the dam is also a full-sister to Cape Royal, who has won 12 races and nearly £180,000 in prize money. Clive Cox has got the yearling so hopefully there will be an update next year."
 
krizon said:
Luke, great post. I could be incredibly wrong, but I've nurtured the notion that Ireland still offers a sense of community which is missing in much of England. I wouldn't say 'the UK' because there still seem to be strong communities in Wales and Scotland, but many parts of England - particularly the urban areas - have lost a lot of their community loyalty. I'd also venture that you have a much lower crime rate than the UK overall and England in particular, and that while I noted during my brief trip to Goffs in early 2008 that the hotel I stayed at employed 'foreign' EU staff, you perhaps don't suffer quite the same amount of incursions from unemployed foreigners.
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There may have been a sense of community in the 80s and before in Ireland, but that was replaced by something altogether different in the Celtic Tiger years. Some may say the sense of community continued as before, but I saw it as more of a keeping up with the Jones's type version - everyone obsessed with comparing what they had with others, and money and wealth the central part of many people's lives. A large proportion of the population took 5/6 foreign holidays a year, bought houses with 100+% mortgages because everyone they knew was doing the same, and had to have a car with this year's registration (otherwise it would look like you couldn't afford it).

I prefer the way it is in the UK by and large.

A few years ago, I went to see a documentary on John Minihan, the Irish photographer famous for his photos of Beckett and the community of Athy. He spoke himself afterwards for a while in a Q&A type session, and lamented what money was doing to Ireland and it's sense of community, very insightful.

I would say, and I'm Irish, there were few more annoying nationalities in the time of the Celtic Tiger to be around. A generalisation, and maybe even a bad one, but a lot of truth in it from what I saw.
 
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Definitely agree with you Hamm.I have younger cousins who were leaving school as the tiger roared straight into good jobs and easy credit.One of them is 30 now and unable to provide a home for his two year old son.Plenty of weekends away but very little backbone.
 
Thanks for that, Hamm - as I said, I could be incredibly wrong, and presumably I am! But that's not too unlike the mining communities around the UK, prior to their product getting too expensive versus foreign coal. Their houses were bought, some being the first owned houses in generations (versus provided by the mines or rented), and certainly many were first-generation car owners. They had to buy all new furniture, over-decorate their mini-mansions, buy a new car every year and preferably own two, and were also the first to depart on 'foreign' holidays as against a week at the coast. Materialism became rampant and when the mines collapsed (okay, for one particular forumite, were brutally smashed by Thatcher), they couldn't accept the abrupt change in the lifestyles they'd assumed. Their clothes and accessories buying sprees had to stop - they had to go back to shopping at the Co-op instead of Sainsbury's, and so on. It led to almost epidemic outbreaks of depression and psychosomatic ailments, with doctors' surgeries seeing a huge intake for anti-depressants, sleeping pills, etc., and the number of home repos went through the roof.

But it's all very understandable - the miners' families were the most prosperous in many generations' worth of underground toilers, and their pay packets brought them unprecedented prosperity. Ireland had never had it that good in all its history, and I suppose there was a collective, slightly manic, euphoria that the country was at last showing that it could rub shoulders with the most rigorously capitalist and materialist-minded nations. Wealth for all! Well, nearly. And now, a terrible price to pay for all - not just nearly.

I'm not sure how well communities connect again. Miners' kids went out of school at their usual early age, very few going on to higher education, let alone universities. Most of them took jobs with the never-ending bars, clubs, and bistros which had sprung up in the local towns to grab their share of the high incomes - the irony being that the safe, family-owned and managed shops had closed due to their councils' rampant greed in pushing up business taxes beyond their reach. In came all of the well-worn names in pub grub and late-night boozing, in came instant gratification, out went traditional stores and much of the glue of social contact which the older stores had offered. No-one would know your name in the new, glitzy gin palaces, and no-one would want to be bothered to remember it, either.

I'm not sure what gets fractured so thoroughly can ever be repaired - if the antisociety which is at large in many English, if not British, towns today is any gauge, then no, it can't. I realise everything changes, but I'm not sure it always evolves!
 
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A "sense of community" is more about nosy neighbours and interfering tossers than anything else. Bollocks to that
 
I am 27 years old I live in Ireland and the current meltdown does not bother me in the slightest. I was always strongly against the clowns my own age buying houses. Irish people are inflicted with a need to own their own house. I'm still renting two apartments. It is costly but it wont break me.
 
No krizon but I think a little bit too much can be made of this romanticised idea of "community".

A friend in need is a pest
 
UNEMPLOYED people who refuse to turn up for FAS training courses or interviews will lose up to a quarter of their weekly welfare payments, the Irish Independent has learned.
The unprecedented overhaul of the social welfare system includes a parallel plan to make the long-term jobless -- some of whom have completed training programmes -- carry out community work to get their dole.
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Proper order and should be more than 1/4
 
I work in Dublin and am renting there but I have a place in Cork too. I spend my days off back home so usually thats four nights a week in Dublin and three in Cork.
 
They are both very reasonable. Tallaght is €350 a month apaprtment share and the flat in Mallow is €320 a month. I only pay half the rent in Mallow.
 
I am back in Dublin since the end of May. On my last stint up here I rented an apartment on my own right next to the Tallaght luas stop. It was costing me €950 a month which was tough going. The same place now probably goes for €750+.
 
Huh - if I want to rent a one-bedroom retirement flat in Brighton it's £500-600 pcm. That's easily as high as ordinary (non age-restricted) flats in the city or area, probably around £50 pcm more, in fact. So much for special rates for OAPs!
 
Renting is the way to go. Irish people refer to rent as "dead money" and can't wait to get into debt to "own" their home.
 
A lot of people also refer to rent money as 'dead money' here, too, Gears. Thing is, though, with buying, unless you have the cash to splash, you need a mortgage. Then building insurance, repairs and maintenance costs - a new boiler coming in at anything from £400 for a simple water heater to over £1,000, and God knows how much distress if you get flooded.

I'm still very fluid about what to do once I've sold. Part of me really likes the security of the retirement flats and their cheaper price than those not age-limited. Another hankers for a garden where I can feed the birdies without scoldings from neighbours and managers. What I still want to do is to buy to do up and sell on for profit. I have a friend or two who might like to put in with me on this, but I think it's easier to go it alone. Done it several times before and liked it a lot. Also good is the buy-to-let business if you've got a steady income from, say, the local council.

I looked up some properties to buy in Staffordshire where I used to live. You can get a non-traditional build (which is hard to get a mortgage for) for £40,000 (3-bed semi with good gardens, so ideal for a family), and the current rental is £450 pcm. Now that's a brilliant return on a small outlay. People are either failing to get mortgages passed here or are really worried about their job security, so renting is an attractive proposition for them until they feel more confident about the future.

I'm in two minds about buying to do up to sell on, or just sticking the money into a buy-to-let. The former can bring a pre-tax return of around 13% averagely; the latter averaging 9%. Either way, it's still a healthier investment than the feckin' 'low risk' bonds, where AXA killed off most of mine.
 
A MOTHER whose mortgage repayments fell into arrears following the tragic death of her partner will not lose her family home after a fund from neighbouring communities raised more than €20,000.
Breda Heelan from Ballinlough, Kilteely, Co Limerick has paid a heartfelt tribute to all those who raised €22,000 so that she and her two daughters could continue to live in their cottage.
Last May, Breda's partner, Ged -- an experienced hunter gun club member -- slipped and broke his leg in a field. He tried to use his gun to prop himself up, but it went off and struck an artery. He bled to death.
Breda said the family was "devastated".
Ged's mortgage protection did not cover his death and the diabetic had no life assurance. Breda, who was on disability allowance, could not afford to pay the mortgage.
The bank granted her a six-month break on repayments. Admitting she was in "dire financial straits", she approached a retired Limerick county councillor, Eddie Creighton.
Mr Creighton and Gerard Mitchell, a local auctioneer, organised a fund and donations came from across east Limerick.
"Within five or six weeks they raised over €22,000 -- it was absolutely unbelievable," Breda said.
"I would like to thank each and everyone who gave to the fund, it was fantastic.
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There - community spirit beautifully demonstrated! It's that sort of case that makes me wish I could win the Euromillions, because then their problems would be sorted. I'd have made sure an awful lot of individuals didn't suffer if I'd won that £113m.
 
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Doing up properties is a young person's game, Kri - to make a profit you have to be able to do most of the cosmetic work yourself - ie all the sanding, painting, basic builder's assistant work, in my opinion. In spite of the fact we're in a recession, I've been amazed at the prices I've been quoted for a couple of jobs and yet other jobs have been well done for significantly less than I thought but those workers aren't easy to find in areas where you haven't been living for sometime.

Having just done a pretty major kitchen remodelling here where I have done all the painting, professionally cleaned the stone floors, moved all the stuff out, then back again and also acted as builder's navvie on a couple of days as well as my own work, I am fecking exhausted - and I haven't finished yet!! It's obviously saved me about three grand at least but I would seriously ask yourself whether you're physically able for the task !
 
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