Almost as soon as the impending five per cent increase in electricity costs were announced this week, the clicking sound of light switches going off all around the country could distinctly be heard. Once more with the system out to get the people, the people will play to beat the system. As we know only too well, there is nothing the Irish like more than a challenge. Lay down the law of the land and they’ll find a way around it. Pay taxes in full? Not likely when there are cartloads of creative ways around stumping up full whack. Cough up more for the pleasure of luxurious heat and lighting in the home? Get a grip. We’re descended from survivors of the Great Famine. We know how to do 40 coats. We can do hardship if we have to.
As for the new motor tax penalties (pay online or incur a €20 fine ), increased petrol/diesel prices, the imminent toll taxing of national roads — has anyone noticed the splurge of bicycles on the roads lately? No longer just a health-kick trend, the biking world has turned purely functional, moving from a race for the quickest finisher to more about who’s got the biggest basket, the best panniers, the coolest child-carrier, the most protective rain gear. The great pity is the roads are still so dangerous — and with the winter weather on the way and dark day-time hours, hopefully the payback here won’t be too many casualties.
Back to the savvy homeowners and domestic fuel consumers already stocking up on cut-price coffee (price hike coming soon due to bad harvests ) and packing their larders full of cereal boxes and flour bags with 2012 sell-by dates, (bread costs also set to soar due to severe wheat crop drought in Russia ) while eyeballing tree-lined roads with a new appreciation for fireside heat potential, surely the powers-that-be will soon appreciate the contradictory state of affairs they are orchestrating. After all, on the one hand it is they who are imploring the public to get out and get spending again to save the economy, yet on the other, they are tearing so many strips off people’s disposable incomes that nobody wants to buy anything any more.
As for businesses now said to be clinging on by their fingernails, how much louder can their warnings get and still remain unheeded? This latest electricity hike puts costs here at 30 per cent higher than across in the UK and sadly, as walk-in advertisers to our newspaper this week desperate to sell all their worldly goods double-quick are showing — alongside the tens of thousands of young people also departing our shores — the notion of upping sticks and ‘leaving the country’ is now becoming quite run of the mill. A complete disaster.
It is more imperative now than ever that the old anthem regarding “Why nobody shouted stop” is not allowed to resurface. The public mindset is currently at an all-time low because those in charge of the country have dumped it there. The powers that be need to brush themselves down from their holidays and get vocal. The theme is plain and simple — jobs. Getting jobs, making jobs, providing jobs, opening doors to creating jobs and more specifically, job starting dates. Telling us about millions of euros worth of investment in R&D and innovation and technology with a view to thousands of jobs down the line is beyond crass. The future is now. What we really need to know is who exactly is getting what, where, and when can we turn up for work.
Joan Geraghty
Acting Editor [email protected]
