Were we not miserable enough? Must they kick you while you’re down? Do they really need to take that one last and most damaging punch as a precaution just in case you might rise up from the ashes?
Seemingly so. We’ve all got the disease. The budget blues have seriously kicked in. Two days after Brian’s bumper edition budget was published, many of us are still reeling from its contents. Am I wrong to think that the main group to be targeted by this year’s budget are the low to middle class earners?
Already we were suffering from high fuel costs and The Minister increases the price of petrol. We are already paying more for alcohol than in any European country and they increase the price of wine. We already pay huge taxes and VAT and they have increased that. They know that class sizes are too big in primary schools and they have increased the size of those. We also pay one of the highest rates of car tax of any other European country (and in many countries they don’t pay any ) and they have increased that. How can Brian Lenihan and Brian Cowen expect the country to take them seriously and vote them in again in the future when it’s obvious that when things go wrong for them, they take it out on the country and not on the people who instigated the wrong-doing.
I’m sick of hearing people claim that we had it so good for so long - did we? I certainly didn’t notice and neither did my counterparts. OK it was easier to get a mortgage - is that a good thing? Otherwise the only people to benefit from the Celtic Tiger were big developers and people who had their own businesses such as tradesmen. The ordinary Joe Soap did not feel the benefits of the gold rush over the last ten years. We are still earning modest salaries and working very hard for them. Nothing had ever changed for us. Now things have changed and here we are once again, coughing up for the Government’s errors.
Things are difficult enough for people at the moment and the two Brians have now gone and made things a whole lot worse. OK, the economy needs to be addressed, but cut spending on projects rather than putting your hand into people’s pockets. Non-essential projects can be put on hold - Lord knows they have been on hold for decades, another couple of years won’t make much difference.
Taking the medical card from the elderly is nothing short of a disgrace. There will also be huge numbers of job losses as a direct result of this budget with the axing of several state agencies - we ain’t seen nothing yet in this area, I believe.
The economy has hit a slump but scaremongering the public into accepting this year’s budget cuts is nothing short of bullying. Our economy is a hell of a lot better than many other economies in the world and more importantly, in the EU. Making the poor poorer and the modest poor is doing nothing to aid the current crisis.
We didn’t see Brian target the wealthy artists and stud farmers this time around either - is there a good reason for this, if we are in a crisis and elderly people are losing their medical cards and low earners are paying 1 percent of a Government tax? Correct me if I’m wrong, but are you not protecting the wrong class of person Brian? Should you not be looking after those who actually do pay their taxes in this country and are not trying to avoid them at all costs.
