Just why are we being a loan shark for Ireland?

[Damian]

It bloody riles me to find out that not only is the UK bailing Eire out via the EU, but also the UK will borrow upto £8 Billion to help out the country because the Royal Bank of Scotland has lent £50 Billion to a dodgy high risk customer.
To top itall off, the bankers are still getting bonuses despite the rest of the country being in unemployment termoil and people still having to pay back last years credit card bills and having to use credit cards again this year as a sorce of christmas cheer!!
All the cutbacks mentioned in the UK will not affect the upper management of any establishment in the public service sector. Any "early retirements" ( redundancey isn't a watchword in the suit brigade) always come intact with full pay/final salary schemes.

The only people who suffer are those who work at the coalface and actually produce the product or service.

Rant over!!

 

[Damian]

Just one minor reason,,,,,they are Britains biggest export market, which was all explained last night on a programme about why.

 

[Dustydog]

Couldn't agree more Steve.
Even worse are the poor devils who entrusted their life savings to the Post Office to discover their money is really with the Bank of Ireland!
However on the otherside of the coin you have Irish companies like Glen Dimplex and Primark who heavily support UK employment.
I'd like to see the fat cat Bankers who made all these mistakes dismissed immediately and forgo all their bonuses and pensions. Seems failure at banks is rewarded with more bonuses than ever!

 

[LMH]

But we've never had it so good.

 

[Dustydog]

Hi Damien
I felt the programme was very misleading and merely a ploy to justify a loan that we can ill afford.
Our biggest customer is teh USA. Eire is only 5th. See also the imports table http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/feb/24/uk-trade-exports-imports#data

 

[Lord Braykewynde]

Correct DD. Notice that our historical trading partners, with the exception of the USA, are down the list.

Rank
Country of Destination
2009 (£m)
2008 (£m)
% Change1UNITED STATES3353134964-4.12GERMANY2476028454-133FRANCE1787118746-4.74NETHERLANDS1737919367-10.35IRISH REPUBLIC1529518586-17.76BELGIUM1045613044-19.87SPAIN894910037-10.88ITALY81969309-129CHINA512948705.310SWEDEN41065095-19.411SWITZERLAND38794607-15.812CANADA361535960.513UAE35563686-3.514HONG KONG351234701.215JAPAN33633685-8.716INDIA28934119-29.817SINGAPORE284627274.318AUSTRALIA28012961-5.419NORWAY26922755-2.320POLAND

 

[Lord Braykewynde]

Oops apologies, I never saw your link

 

[Damian]

Well there you go, typical media manipulating the facts to the disadvantage of the Public.
Still, 5th is still a lot of export I guess.

 

[Guest]

One could ask why a country with a population of just 4.5 million needs £16 billion of exports just from us. What other imports do they get from other countries as well? That UK number equates to £3500 for every man, woman and child and when you compare the numbers to the UK exports to France and Holland which have vastly larger populations, there seems to something askew here. I did look up the UK import figues, which are quite hard to track down at least in understandable English. However, if I am reading them right then the total import figures for Scotland for example are £5.4 billion, or a third of what the Irish seem to want. Looking at the UK as a whole the numbers equate to£2800 for every man, woman and child but as our population is increasing so rapidly, that may well have changed by the time you read this.

 

[Steve L]

Well there you go, typical media manipulating the facts to the disadvantage of the Public.
Still, 5th is still a lot of export I guess.

I studied the figures too. Eire is our 5th largest customer but it has also got the 4th largest "tail off" of export trade from us. That could well be down to our industries realising the trading risk and selling elsewhere.
Kingspan is another Irish firm with facilities in the UK. They are trading strong in the insulation board market place here and exporting the building product back to Eire. But not for much longer because of the vast amount of abandoned developements over there.

My wife's eldest sister emigrated there 3 years ago and now wants to come back to blighty, because there is no job prospects there. Her hubby has been out of work 18Mths now and has applied for neumerous jobs without success.

 

[Dustydog]

Top UK import partners 2009
Rank
Country of Dispatch
2009 (£m)
2008 (£m)
% Change1GERMANY3913144460-122UNITED STATES2845128877-1.53CHINA228402196844NETHERLANDS2120125327-16.35FRANCE2022623191-12.86NORWAY1508520646-26.97BELGIUM1477116103-8.38IRISH REPUBLIC12218120201.79ITALY1198314061-14.810SPAIN908810291-11.711HONG KONG71787659-6.312JAPAN62328106-23.113SWITZERLAND57245955-3.914SWEDEN53406702-20.315CANADA52706251-15.716POLAND460742408.717RUSSIA44546694-33.518INDIA432542661.419TURKEY43154676-7.720DENMARK36873850-4.221SOUTH AFRICA35834536-2122SINGAPORE33723843-12.323CZECH REPUBLIC33253529-5.824SOUTH KOREA26863326-19.225

And here is what we import:-
1. BMWs and Mercs Germany
2.Wheat corn cotton USA
3.Clothes and most electrical goods including mobile phones China
4.Electronics and electricals Holland
5.Eastern European illegals France
6.Oil coal Norway
7.Sexy chocolate Belgium
8. Debts???

Ireland

Ever felt somones pulling your chain