The ‘pretend budget’ from Govt clowns means the joke is on us

Date Published: {J}

Cowen says the EU and IMF want to ‘build on Fianna Fáil policy’. He doesn’t say exactly what they want to build, but I’m thinking it’s an enormous concrete shield like they put over the smoking ruins of Chernobyl.

That’s what this ‘bailout package’ is, when you think about it; here less to help us than to protect neighbouring countries. And like that other coffer, it seems to be crumbling already. Stuffing €85 billion into the system is a bit like trying to scare away an attacker by mooning them. A risky strategy.

If there was money to be made bringing down our banks before, now the prize is even higher. The markets smell blood. And if Ireland goes, then surely it will just be the first. For the money vultures, breaking up the euro would be like smashing the world’s biggest Piñata. Indeed that would be a pretty good way to visualise the markets in action – as blindfolded children with sticks.

Our banks are already doomed, there’s no saving them now, so all this money is really to defend the euro. We’re borrowing money therefore to prop up the economies of larger countries. How did that happen?

And to make it even more bizarre, we apparently expect the poorest to pay. This ‘pretend Budget’ will immediately reduce both the lowest wages and welfare rates. Yes we have – or had – one of the highest minimum wages in Europe. We also have some of the highest prices for the necessities of life. Which, thanks to a VAT rise, are going to go up again. Meanwhile we barely scratch the paint on the luxurious first-class carriage of our economy.

I call it a ‘pretend Budget’ because of course they can’t guarantee to pass any of this. They certainly won’t be in power for the bulk of it. With any luck, they won’t even be here for the first instalment. The country wants shot of this crowd of lying incompetents. We would be free already, had they not illegally delayed three by-elections.

Meanwhile they have failed more spectacularly than we knew a party could fail. They stood guard while the country was robbed by its own banks. They refused to take action over the runaway property boom until it was years too late.

They refused to seek help from the IMF until the EU forced them. And yet they have the audacity, the effrontery, to claim they have the right to negotiate a long term commitment on our behalf.

And not just any commitment, but one that, quite incredibly, continues to give sweetheart treatment to their wealthy friends and backers. Cuts to school funding, cuts to children’s allowance, new fees for public education, cuts to welfare, €1.4 billion off health, charges for water, and tax increases for people on the lowest pay.

But for the richest, for the sort of people who, to just take a random example, ran our banks, merely a reduction in a ridiculous benefit we were giving them (which will also affect people on quite moderate incomes) and a tax on building sites of – wait for it – €200.

This is a joke, isn’t it?