[mandmandam]

Developers fucked us over in a lot of ways. Government and media and banking were fully in on it, and still are.

Remember how I talked about housing estates being built where there was no desire or infrastructure there? They did this by taking advantage of human psychology. When people turned out against a development, they'd simply resubmit the proposal in 6 months or a year and this time people would be fatigued and not fight it. I have personally heard them talk about doing this with my own ears. They made backhanders to politicians, they paid off newspapers and TV stations, they made deals with substandard suppliers.

And why did they do this? There was huge money in it. Government funds, aforesaid substandard materials, treating workers like shit. Ever way the system could be gamed it was gamed; and they didn't even try all that hard to hide it.

Look up CRH, Ireland's concrete cartel. Look up mica blocks in Donegal. Look up NAMA corruption. There's more than enough information out there to put all the pieces together but media and Gardai refuse to do so. Half the population is aware of how fucked all this is and it remains an open secret; so seeing revisionist wank coming out of Oxford academia is actually offensive.

... So, developers got paid. Media got paid. Establishment politicians got paid. Banks got paid repeatedly, as did their bondholders. Everyone got paid except for the people, who were and are being cynically and systematically fleeced before, during and after each boom bust cycle.