As SirAlex said:

"Throw up an opinion you have that totally goes against the grain. This is not a thread to provoke laughing smilies and petulant replies...though great debate on opinions should be encouraged."

On the contrary, it is a beautiful county with beautiful towns such as Castlebar and middleing towns such as Westport

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a terrible movie

Scarface is a seriously overrated movie (Pacino's performance aside)

Bruce Springsteen is a seriously overrated musician

Money is slowly destroying the game.

lol outside of antrim (where we are clearly garbage at both codes) football is god in ulster. They think its the greatest thing ever and swear its better than hurling. 

mental folks 

Its British actually. Scotland is just a British region

You wouldn't believe how often I hear this 

A few things.

Ireland have an embarrassingly higher number of illegal immigrants in America than any other civilized, fully-developed, westernized country. So I find some of the attitudes Irish people have towards foreigners - most of whom through legal channels - coming here absolutely astounding.

However, let's be frank here, not to toot our own horn but Irish people are genetically hard working people and never really become a burden on the host country.

There is a shocking number of people coming here - and I am not singling anyone out - who are not inclined to work, and they are choking a welfare and benefits system that is already suffocating the country.

You know the kind. They spend all day in Paddy Power and then all night in nightclubs nursing one drink.

We cannot support these people. It is a f'ing small country.

I lose interest in supporting a team in person if they win most of their games easily e.g Dublin GAA, Leinster Rugby of 2/3 years ago. Thankfully do not have that problem supporting our soccer team

I hated Arthurs Day. Thankfully it got canned

Managers like players reach a stage when they lost their hunger and ability - Martin O'Neill is a case in point

I care not for Socialism

Size D bangers and above - real or fake. too much

I dont even find a post like that funny and im easy going all the time.

The fact that what chunk of rock your mother gave birth to you on is still a bigger factor in weighty decisions like this than whether or not you are just stealing from the state, in the 21st century is quite frankly ridiculous.

Timbuktu in Mali would be my choice, the same place I want those in the UK who do the same.

'Sean Cavanagh is not a man' since that moment I have hated the prick. Sean Cavanagh is the standout player in Ireland over the last 10 years, and on top of that a top top bloke.

http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeUi2KR5VaY" rel="nofollow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeUi2KR5VaY

Lets look at the fahcts a la benitez. About ten years ago Ireland had its lower ever rate of unemployment, roughly 3.6% of the potential workforce. This is the best place to look to try and get a fairly accurate idea of the numbers of people who choose to receive welfare instead of working as it was when the job market was at its healthiest. The rate of long term unemployment (12 months or more) during this perioid was 1.2%. This is obviously what we have to look at if we want to asses the impact of 'scroungers' on the state. So of this 1.2% we obviously still had people who were genuinely unable to find full time employment; there were parts of rural ireland or large working class areas where prospects remained poor even during the height of the boom. 

A large percentage of the live register consists of people in part time or casual employment who receive a small income which is in essence 'topped up' by the state. I myself was in this position for about 18months or so; working in a job on a zero hour contract, constantly being promised full time hours but rarely receiving them. It's unfair to label all of these people scroungers, I personally consider myself hard working and would take offence at being labeled a sponge due to work circumstances beyond my control.

There are also fairly large numbers of people who find themselves unable to hold down a job due to an underlaying or undiagnosed medical condition, often related to mental illness. I've known at least two people myself who were constantly out of work during the boom and were later diagnosed with serious and debilitating mental illnesses. I also know a girl who was similarly unable to work due to chronic back pain but it took a couple of years for her to be certified as medically unable to work in full time employment. People in these situations are still labeled as part of that 1.2% of long term unemployed, and I imagine their situations are fairly common. Again; not scroungers. 

There is also the case of people who don't work for practical reasons e.g. caring for a loved one who for any number of reasons are technically inelligable for carers assistance and thus remain on the live register as full time unemployed. Hard to asses numbers here but they definitely exist, even in tiny numbers.

Finally we have the situation of young people in their late teens or early twenties who drift about for a bit and maybe only work part time while they figure out what they want to do with their life/f**k about in a band/as an artist before copping on and joining the world of full time wage work. Also lumped in with this young people who lack the confidence to go out working straight away and take a year or so to mature. Maybe not model citizens they are hardly destroying civilisation. 

So after all of those exceptions, and others that I havn't thought of, we are left with the tiny percentage of people who choose not to work despite being fully capable in a thriving jobs market (which we have not had in this country for nearly a decade). The total numbers of these people is so small that the economic strain they put on the economy is more or less statistically negligible (someone about said 'bleeding the state dry'!!), particularly when its gauged alongside the impact of the tens of billions of euros of private banking debts that the state regretfully took on. 

I don't blame people entirely for holding such ignorant views though when the media is constantly peddling rubbish about the scourge of 'scroungers' despite the real lack of evidence that they are anything more than a rare anomaly, and we even have 'leftist' politicians like Joan Burton blaming this mythical figure for the state of the countries finances.  

Hah yeah prolly ranting a bit there, just trying to point out that theres little evidence of welfare scroungers having a major impact on the countries finances, something i've seen alleged a fair bit on these forums!

I totally disagree 

+1

The only good thing about it is the song over the end credits.