(Tightening The Commuter Belt - I can't resist a pun - I admit it......)

How's about a thread on POSITIVE aspects of a property crash? I suppose I also mean a doomsday situation in the general economy too. Well - what good would or could come of it?

For a start we would all love to see many of the perpetrators (perpeTraitors perhaps?) taken out and shot but I suppose we've gone too tame for that.

One aspect of the present situation that appals me is the stupidity of long commutes - I did an Athy to Dundrum commute for 10 years and it wore me out - and that was in the Eighties when it took 60 minutes +/- 15 each way. Today people are spending twice as long - this is crazy! Any chance that when reality bites we will look with amazement and disgust at any TV programme pundit who suggests buying anywhere that involves a commute of more than 30 minutes (or a walk). I really do not see the harm in legislation or other form of coercion (perhaps economic) to reduce and prevent this waste of peoples' lives (you don't have to die to lose your life). It may well happen automatically if fuel costs double again.
Housing the homeless, reducing pollution, getting back to some good old values (and yes getting away from some bad old ones too), forming communities, etc. - I'm too cynical to think that some Utopia will some of this slow-motion train crash, but are there some positive results that will inevitably happen? Are there some positive results we can promote or help happen?

db.

Well hopefully all this jaysus 'development' will grind to a halt and the City Council won't be able to sell off part of our local park to build yet more apartments because there won't be any developers out there with a shilling to spend.

The entire country has been wrecked by over development and I can only hope that a halt will now be called on building any more crappy apartments and estates.

I am personally very grateful to all those people doing long commutes as they have kept my rent down for most of the past 5 years.

I'm not sure I'd like to see any legal legislation to prevent people commuting! For one thing, for some people it may be necessary for work or family reasons - for example, those with temporary contracts in other parts of the country may rightly choose to commute rather than move.

Also, there are plenty of people who bought in commuter towns to get on the ladder and are going end up there for far longer than they had imagined, possibly indefinitely. Those people may find themselves unable to move back towards urban centers and will have no choice but to commute - they'll unfortunately have to deal with the consequences of their original purchase.

However, I'd defintely agree that increasing fuel costs are going to act as an effective deterrent for those who may consider commuting as an option in future.

Oh I agree that we should have a choice about commuting - if somebody wants to live amongst trees and horses but must work in the ISFC then sure, he/she will take the hit of commuting. What bugs me is the number of people (not me Thank God) who have been forced into these ridiculous commutes and who now have been conditioned to think of it as normal. Even an hour's commute would be OK if it were on a train - read a book, people watch, daydream, listen to music/podcasts..... but the tension of driving? I like driving, but it's no fun going the same route every day and getting steamed up about slowdowns ahead and so on. Well - maybe pure Market Forces wold take care of it with fuel at say €5 a litre?
db

I'd hazard a guess that a figure far lower than that will make long distance daily commuting financially impractical for many people.

It's all good, eventually, once we get through the pain.

Old established communities have been scattered to the four winds, families bereft of the traditional friends-and-family support networks, children growing up never seeing their parents because both are working, awful build quality, remote estates with no amenties whatsoever, an ugly vicious selfish tone to the entire society, not to mention vast amounts of undeserved arrogant hubris and the tyranny of "keeping up with the neighbours". We'll not miss any of that.

Nor will we miss being blatantly gouged for every single thing we buy. There's been a completely insane attitude out there that it is somehow a mark of bling sophistication to be rich enough to be ripped off and arrogantly pay it anyway. WTF!?! There'll be a lot of fat margin-trimming being enforced over the next 3 years.

Long-shot time here, but maybe our politicians will be forced to tackle the web of cartels, anti-competitive arrangements, restrictive practices, Licence Capitalism croney deals and all the other bullshit that helps force costs here so high and strangles the small-business sector.

Cheaper houses, but also cheaper everything. What's not to like?

And we will hopefully get over the braindead notion that a small country with little in the way of natural resources can get rich by...building houses to sell to one another. FFS, dumb, dumb, dumb. We have to trade with the rest of the world, we have to sell actual products and services that other countries value enough to pay hard cash for. It is the only way we as a nation can become wealthy.

And once that sinks through our collective skulls then maybe, and I know this is a long shot but bear with me, maybe then we'll cop on that if such is the case it might perchance be better if we built up Irish companies to create and sell those products and services for export. Not much point just allowing some foreign corporations squat here for a few years before they head off to pastures cheaper, leaving us with nothing. Sure, use FDI to kickstart R&D and clusters of companies in sunrise industries, and as a stop-gap in a deprived region, but that's pretty much all FDI is good for. The basis of a sustainable productive wealth-generating economy for the long run it is not.

And once we get to that point, maybe people will have copped on to themselves enough to never vote for greasy gombeen spivs, spoofers, chancers and thieves ever again.

So yes, there's a lot of very, very positive things that could come out of this crash. If only we have the wit as a nation to wise up and take the opportunity to reform.

The Shakedown will not be televised, its on the Internet!

Its a good thing, its a great thing, but not if you are:

Vested Interests (EA, MB, BANK, Marketing...)
Controlling Cartel
Politician
Middle Class
Luxury Business

In the Shakedown these must and will go, the current power block of lucky property lotto winners are to the wall. Natural attrition is not long off, mortality is real. No economy can hide from that fact also.

Diversity will return. Life will have more meaning as time will be less constrained. A great social review will take place, a small golden time will appear, a gap that will be the place the seed of the next innovation and great outbreak of creativity will sow.

Perhaps a society built on the concept of RESPONSIBILITY will begin to flourish, it is our best and only hope if we are to reap the benefit of the golden moment of unbridled love in an ocean of uncharted hope & passion.

Jaysus OW have you ben at the bevvies??

The middle class must go?? What are you, some kind of Maoist?

I think you've mis-read.

The "middle-class" ie those who common consensus would deem to have benefitted most from the illusion of the bubble years will now be the ones to feel the most pain. I think thats accepted as fact at this stage. OW is merely pointing it out.

OW - As for the rest of your post, lets hope you're on the money cos that sounds like a place worth visiting.

SW - I like your emotive posting! I think these things myself and then one of the Other Voices (top right towards the back of my head I think) says "you're just being an Old Fart - Times Have Changed....") But seriously I do fear we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Just to pick one small piece from your posting, in recent years I have become even more cynical about what people will waste their money on (grammer, grammer.......) - and even though there is some belt-tightening going on there is STILL oodles of dosh being splashed out on brand-name junk, moronic magazines about moronic "celebrities", gold-plated audio cables, €1,500 handbags,etc. Attitudes have not changed yet - it has not sunk in that paying Centra or petrol-station prices for stuff you could get at Tesco or Dunnes, not to mention Lidl/Aldi, is crazy. How difficult is it to make yer own sandwiches or healthy snack, for instance (and yes I do buy a SubWay or a Breakfast Roll now and then - delicious but expensive). As somebody else on the Pin pointed out recently it's amazing how it the foreigners/immigrants are doing all the stuff we used to do like finding fun for free in public parks and walks, beaches and so on - while Irish people queue up in their cars at the bloody shopping mall.
db.

Well - I disagree - common consensus surely is that the middle classes were under the illusion that they were benefiting from the bubble, not that they were benefiting from the illusion? It's Old Money, Deep Pockets money, who were able to buy land and property way back, hold and watch, and sell into a rising market - they are the ones who benefitted and as they sit on their Cash piles (ooh Mother!) and wait for their opportunities to pick up bargains from the dust in 4 or 5 years they will benefit all over again.
Even those middle class who sold at the height of the boom most likely squandered their gains immediately by handing it out to their children who locked it in to 2 or more indebted prperties.

OW has got rather, ummm, opinionated of late........
db.

I think the "common consensus" referred to is part of the overall illusion

How can you waste money on good quality audio cables, they are seriously good investments if you want the best out of separates! Well worth it and not exactly extravagance personified...