Speaking as an individual
Society seems to be divided into two units.
There are the productive units who go out and earn money and pay their taxes like good little people. They then spend that money and pay more taxes. They are Good Units.
Then there are the non-productive units. These are divided into several sub-groups. There are stay at home partners, who are Good Units as they provide support for the productive ones. There are children who have to be groomed and educated to become productive units, and also make excellent fodder for propaganda. They also are Good Units. Then there are the elderly units who frankly are a pain in the arse as they are no longer productive and essentially just leech money from the tax coffers and clutter up the hospitals. The latter are very definitely Bad Units.
The gubmint has been throwing an idea around for a while. Basically they want to shift those Bad Units out to the back end of beyond where they can fester and die, so that the Good Units move into the Bad Units' property.
"Well, Mrs O'Grady, you live in a fine big house here. We know that your husband [God rest his soul] worked his entire life to provide you with this mansion but we think it would be much better if you moved to a mobile home in the wilds of Connemara. We realise that you don't know anyone over there, but who needs friends at your age?
You must appreciate that we need your house so that a productive deserving unit family can move in and be close to his work. Just think of the money he will have to give to our friends in the banks for the next twenty or thirty years? Just think of the massive taxes he'll have to pay while he is working? He will be contributing to the tax pot society whereas you are just taking without producing anything. That's not right, is it?
And just think of the homeless. You do realise that's your fault? Here you are sitting in a big house on your own while we could use the space to house a proper family?"
Speaking as an individual, and as a Bad Unit [of which I am proud] I wonder why they are so keen to keep us alive. Here we are, sucking up resources and occupying perfectly good houses that would be much better used by good tax paying citizens and solving the housing crisis.
Next they'll be pushing for voluntary [and ultimately involuntary] euthanasia at 65.
Can't have us oldies cluttering up the place, can we?
yes indeed I found the whole thing somewhat disturbing. trying to pitch one group of people against the other..
just like they tried to pitch tracker mortgage holders against variable. divide and conquer
Not to mention state job salaries against private sector salaries?
Remember one simple thing Society and the goverment is not on your side basically unless your a women (hence why even in the picture its a old women who cares about old men?) best thing to do is go your own way ignore all the dumb shit and let the morons get on with their lives with out stressing yourself to much about the latest Orwellian nonsense to be spewed out by some idiot
This latest doesn't bother me a jot. If they come near my place I'd brain them with the fucking Constitution [might as well make some use out of it?] I am very happy where I am, thanks.
Crackpot ideas like that are good for a laugh though.
thats why i like ya grandad ^_^
Some parents in recent decades, including the 'boom years', built separate living quarters in their suburban backyards for their newly married offspring. I think these living arrangements brought Ireland back to the extended family communal living model. In China before the revolution, it was common for courtyard living arrangements to accommodate in close proximity the three generations – the grandparents, the married son and dutiful daughter-in-law, and any grandchildren who came along. Before the 1949 revolution too, the courtyards were extended further so that accommodation could be provided for concubines. In villages throughout Africa, extra huts are constructed in rural parts near the grandparents' hut to accommodate married offspring and in-laws. No uncivilised suggestions about quitting the original family hut. And state supported euthanasia is unthinkable. Overpopulation is unfortunately dealt with by earthquakes, floods, diseases, famines and civil wars. Ireland won't be going down that road, unless the world financial system collapses and the bank ATMs stop functioning.
During the boom years people in the suburbs sold any bit of spare land they had for building. Then during the bust, many had to install sheds or mobile homes for sons and daughters who couldn't afford a mortgage!
The idea of moving old folk into rural areas is insane. They want to be near family and friends, but most of all they treasure familiarity.
It may noy come in our lifetimes but I'm fairly confident that before the end of the century, someone is seriously going to suggest euthanasia. The world is steadily going to hell on a hand cart..
I wouldn't suggest mass deportation to rural parts of ageing parents so their married children can grab the family home. But do you remember the urban hippy communes in San Francisco, Copenhagen, London and Berlin during the 60s & 70s onwards? That social experiment involved unwashed teens and twentysomethings; but the hippy communes of today and tomorrow could be intergenerational – with big soft armchairs in ground floor sitting rooms being reserved for grandparents to relax on smoking pipes and aromatic cigarettes, while on other floors of highrise buildings the younger ones get on with their kinds of experimental socialising. The ESRI policy wonks would turn it down of course.
We are indeed a drain on society. We paid in for our retirement and pensions but that's all forgotten isn't it?
Want to know how it will all end up?
(a) Take a look at Hitler's final solutions
(b) Watch 'Soylent Green'
Not only did we pay for our pensions but we collectively made a huge contribution towards society. They seem to forget that they are enjoying the benefits of our labours and that they are the pensioners of tomorrow?
We've been on the receiving end of this drip, drip, drip poison about older people being a drain on resources and hogging housing for a few years this side of the Irish Sea. In 2012 Lord Bishard, a tax funded leech, living on a taxpayer funded pension, suggested in all seriousness that oldies, being a drain on society, should be forced to work for their pension… I kid you not. Then we had some ridiculous intergenerational report suggesting that older people are hogging houses that really should be handed over to younger people. And if they didn't want to move out, they should be "encouraged" to do so. Welcome to the club. 😉
Heh! See my reply to Dioclese above!
I imagine that like me, most of us who live in large homes which took us years of hard work to acquire, are still paying tax and, apart from our state pension, claim nothing from the government. I would say we are a lot more valuable than the feckless and the numerous immigrants who either don't work or are in low paid jobs where their income is topped up by the State. When I die the proceeds from my house will go to my son and grandchildren so two generations will benefit and probably more as their children will have a good start in life. I like big houses and have no wish to downsize.
Frankly it's irrelevant what size house we live in. If a single bloke wants to buy an hotel with fifty bedrooms and live in it as a private house then that's his business and no one else's. They seem to have completely forgotten the concept of private ownership and feel free to chastise those who have worked hard all their lives.