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Garlic vs Apartments – Prison for TD Wallace??

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Garlic vs Apartments – Prison for TD Wallace??

Do you remember the big news in March of this year? A food importer had imported garlic (which has a ridiculously high import tax) and declared it as apples. He did that for four years and the fraud allowed him to avoid EUR 1.4mio in VAT. Since 2007 he had paid back half of it, but his case was in front of a court now and he was put in prison for six (!!) years. www.jrnl.ie/379395 Can’t see that making it easier for him to get pay the rest back. In my opinion this verdict is crazy. Sure he should be penalised for his fraud, but six years of prison sentence is just madness.

Fast forward to 08 June 2012. Just 3 months later. Same country. Similar fraud. The elected parliament member TD Mick Wallace was found to have avoided a significant amount of VAT. We don’t know how much, but we know that he agreed to a settlement with the Revenue Commission for a 2.1mio underpayment of VAT over a 2 year period. Wallace is unlike the garlic importer Begley not prepared to pay anything back because his company is insolvent. In an interview he even claimed that he did not break the law, but his company did. Dohhh! This man is a member of the Irish parliament and neither the left wing group he belongs to, nor the Taoiseach is demanding his resignation. They all say it was wrong, but blabber on about it being the decision of the people who elected him, if he should resign or not. www.jrnl.ie/478230 Should Wallace not be thrown into prison too? Maybe for longer than 6 years? If 700k are equivalent to 3 years, then he should get 9 years? No, I don’t think that would be just, but many (including me) would find it just if he was kicked out of the Dail IMMEDIATELY!

Justice, Politics, Society, Taxes, , , , ,

Bertie Ahern – The end?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Bertie Ahern – The end?

It took a long time, but the Mahon Tribunal, which investigated irregularities regarding planning applications in Dublin has finally released their 3000+ page report and the news is BAD! They have determined that corruption affected “every level of Irish political life and was allowed to continue unabated”.

Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was questioned as well over dodgy money transfers and other dubious dealings and the Tribunal decided that he failed to “truthfully” explain the source of money. So in other words, they concluded that he lied!

Not surprisingly Ahern says that he is wronged, but with that damning conclusion, it seems as if Bertie Ahern’s reputation is (deservedly) going down the drain.

Many think that he was corrupt himself, but we will most likely never find out and either way, he was at least tolerating, maybe even condoning the corruption around him.

So, the end of Bertie Ahern is near:
www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/ahern-faces-political-demise-544610.html

Politics, , ,

St. Patrick’s Parade – Lies and Statistics – Round 2

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
St. Patrick’s Parade – Lies and Statistics – Round 2

Irish journalism largely consists of re-printing press releases or even copying from each other and just re-printing what another newspaper already had said. Last week I wrote about the incorrect numbers about parade attendees that every year are spread. 500,000 is the claim, which is actually impossible because the streets of Dublin are not wide enough. And again the same lies were repeated this year: www.rte.ie/news/2012/0317/stpatricksday_ireland.html
www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/thousands-enjoy-inclusive-st-patricks-day-parades-543938.html
www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0317/breaking3.html
This year, I checked myself and found a few interesting facts:
+ Even if you are tall, you can hardly see any pedestrian parade participants if you are further back than 7 people from the parade route boundary.
+ People at the front arrived at 08:00. That is 4 hours before the parade started!
+ While there are LOTS of people in O’Connell Street, the crowds are not more than 5 deep between Christ Church and St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
+ On average there is a depth of significantly less than 30 people (15 on each side of the street) along the parade route. And only about a third of them can see the parade.

And the result? If you can fit a generous 2.5 people per metre and with a depth of 15 people on each side. The 2.7km parade route was lined by a max of 202,500 people and less than half of them (approx. 94500) actually SAW the parade! This is a lot lower than I generously calculated last week: www.joergsteegmueller.com/2012/03/15/st-patricks-parade-lies-and-statistics/
500,000 is impressive, but the realistic 94,500 is not so much!! By the way, there were certainly another thousands of people searching for a suitable viewing position, but they never saw anything, so something should be done! Or is it maybe not a high priority to get people to SEE the parade? Maybe luring thousands into the City Centre and claiming that lots were there is more important?

Dublin, Events, Other, Tourism, , , , ,

St. Patrick’s Parade – Lies and Statistics

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
St. Patrick’s Parade – Lies and Statistics

Every year the media feeds us a whole pack of incorrect information (you could call it “lies”) about the St. Patrick’s Festival and especially about the St. Patrick’s Parade. Let me start by telling you that I think the parade is in recent years HUGELY successful and the whole St. Patrick’s Festival is a lot of fun, a great attraction for Dublin and the whole team working on it do a really good job. But I have to admit as well that I dislike dishonesty and especially if it is on a ridiculous level. I might be a little (!?) more analytical than most, but have a look at this story:
The St. Patrick’s Festival organisation claims that more than 500,000 people will watch the parade on the streets of Dublin and their website says “550,000 people from all nationalities line the streets & cheer on the performers” on www.stpatricksfestival.ie/index.php/bands And I would expect that after the parade this year, the new claim will be even higher. Watch out for it!
Can that number be correct? Absolutely not! There will be a good few numbers in the next section, but bear with it:
The parade route is 2.7km, which is 2700 metres. If we assume (and it is not totally correct, but let’s be generous), that along the complete route people can stand on both sides of the street, then we have 5400 metres along which people can line the streets. With 550,000 people, this means that per metre, there have to be approx. 100 people! Crowd planning experts say that the absolute maximum of people to squeeze into one square metre is SEVEN. So with 100 people per metre, this means that 100/7=14.29 square metres are required to accommodate the 100 people. As a result at every single point of the parade the massive crowd has to reach from the edge of the parade route to the back of the crowd for more than 14 metres – on EACH side! (That’s about 40 people deep!.) So, 28 metres are needed to accommodate the people! Add a minimum of 4-6 metres of parade route. We now need 32-34 metre wide streets! O’Connell Street is theoretically wide enough for that- Theoretically! But that is only half the route. Dame Street’s width is a fraction.
Now, let’s look at the realistic numbers. 7 per square metres is worse than a London Tube, so 5 is more likely. That means that 20 metres on each side are needed!
Oh and there is another problem! I was in Dame Street for the last few years and have photographic evidence that the crowd was just about metres deep or even less…and Dame Street is less than 20 metres wide in TOTAL. So there was a QUARTER of people of what is needed to reach 550,000!
After all this, what is the more realistic number? If we are GENEROUS, then the max number of people is probably close to 300,000. Still a really good turnout, but FAR from 550,000. Pure lies about the alleged number of attendees!
One last thing: If you are further than 5 or 6 deep from the edge of the route, you will miss half the parade because you can only see the high floats, not the bands or walking performers.

Other, Society, , ,

Budget Ireland 2012: There will be tears

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Budget Ireland 2012: There will be tears

The budget for 2012 will be announced on 05+06 December and the government is busy drip-feeding us with bits of information. The process is a bit of a joke or a smart-ish ploy. All is meant to be secret until budget day, but people would get outraged an be shocked and in panic if they found out all the bad news on budget day. So instead, we find out bits of news every day so that we can mentally prepare for the bad news. ‘Pre-framing’ in NLP terms!

Unfortunately the news on budget day will be seriously bad no matter how you look at it: VAT increase, household charges, social welfare cuts, increase in duty on petrol, higher motor taxes and many more increases in charges and reductions in services will cost all of us a LOT of money. The 06 Dec will bring a lot of tears!

UPDATE:
Surprisingly (or not after all the planted leaks in the weeks before) the budget wasn’t as shocking as initially expected. Yes, cuts and tax increases were part of it as expected, but we were all nicely prepared for bad news. Pre-framing works!!

Economy, Taxes, , ,
 
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