The real budget speech-unexpurgated version

by Des Derwin Sun Dec 05, 2004 22:25

John,

Your considered and detailed contributions continue to be marred by digs at public sector workers. Productive workers like ESB workers and teachers (without them no power, no education, no civilization) cannot be compared to the other targets of your posting.

Those who go out in the snow to restore powerlines and face 30 four-year-olds each morning cannot be blamed for inequality and cronyism.

Inequality and its causes? Cf. last week's IMI figures for CEOs remuneration. Cf. 11 millionaires paying no tax. Cf. Tax relief on private planes. Shannon Airport agrees charges of €1.50 per passenger with Ryanair and seeks redundancies form Shannon Airport workers. NTR director sells shares this year totalling €45 million. A third of workers so lowly paid they pay no tax.

by jeff Mon Dec 06, 2004 15:07

None of these price increases affect the woirking classes. For example, if you are poor, you get the county council to pay your registration fees. Fags and booze?; TV Licence? Start writing for the Daily Mail.

If there is one bad thing about this government, it is carrickmines and US aircraft at Shannon. All in all, this budget will restore voter confidence( ie; sheeple) in FF. Flash McCreevy has been turfed off to Europe, Bertie realising that monetarist policies, while saving the public purse, only hold long term appeal for writers at the Sindo like the ubiquitous BOC, Ireland's journalistic equivalent of the arrogant City stockbroker turned weekend soccer hooligan. G'wan my son! Zigga, Oi! Zagga, Oi!

by RJS Mon Dec 06, 2004 22:43

Socialist ideals go out the window when it comes to pay-bargaining. 'What's in it for me, and to hell with the rest' philosophy takes over.

In World War I Britain, the Industrial Unions threatened strike action if women were let into the labour force, because they felt that this would surely bring their own pay and conditions down.

A more up-to-date example of insular selfism was the centre door on Dublin buses, for so long kept closed, lest they might come in useful in a productivity deal.

The new buses then, have no centre doors at all, so even this didn't work.

Of three friends of mine who work in the Civil Service, all are of the opinion that most of their fellow-workers are on glorified welfare. No wonder then, when an executive officer and union official told me in October, that the Civil Service is nick-named the 'fur-lined mousetrap'. This mightn't be so bad, but my experience of CWOs left me with the impression that the rent allowence was coming directly from their wages. Fellow-workers be damned.

John thinks that 'None of these price increases affect the woirking classes'. Nothing could be further from the truth. My girlfriend works part-time and has barely any money left after rent, pipe, bin tax, and sundry other fixed costs. She is not entitled to medical card, so, being pregnant, must pay for her own visits to hospital while she aims to produce yet more fodder for the system of exploitation and drainage of humanity. The corpo will not pay any of her charges, and yet, unlike the big eight, she pays income tax as well as regressive VAT.

As for 'fags and booze', and even TV and Daily Mail, ith such bleak lives, is it any wonder that people will seek solace or refuge in escapism or unreality? To find themselves fleeced, even at this turn, is a bit much. (although i wish a speedy death to cigarette companies, and nationalisation of the beer industry and media).

Shannon and Carrickmines? Worthy as such causes are, trust a middle class mind-set to highlight them at the expense of the workers' toil and real misery that is hardly a hundred yards away, if not in the same room.

by john mcdermott - removefiannafail Mon Dec 06, 2004 23:54 jmcd444 at yahoo dot com Corruption Leinster House

I travelled with Ryanair for the first time(6 flights)last year and was highly impressed with the efficiency and reliability-not to mention cheap tickets.!
It was heartening to see ordinary Joes and students-so many young people-who would never have had the money to go skyborne in the Aer Lingus monopoly days.
Who was it dragged Aerlingus screaming and protesting into the world of reality.?
Ryanair.
Long may he prosper.
The unions have this country by the scruff of the neck.There are no unions in the private productive sector which is 90 %american transplant factories.
Bertie and his cronies feed off these,the real workers..

by jeff Wed Dec 08, 2004 22:49

Good response.

Few points I must make. For one, it is Jeff, not John, and I apologise for misspelling working classes, there is no I indeed. I blush.

Next;

College fees; if your working class, i.e; if your folks earn under a certain amount, your county council willl pay them as part of the grant. That is of course if you are a young student. If older and living alone, you'll have to pay them unless you are entitled to the grant.


TV licence: something the working classes can get away with more easily. My theory; middle class people tend to have mortages as oppossed to rented accomadation. Middle classes are part of the system even more so than working classes, so while they maintain a more comfortable standard of living, they are altogeter more enclosed in the 'leviathan' so to speak. I think therefore they are the ones more likely to be targeted for not having a tv licence.

When I had shit jobs, and rented accomadation, no dickhead inspector came after me. Nobody I knew ever paid thees and they were all in the same socio economic bracket as I was. So thanks to the middle classes for that one; your payment has made RTE more enjoyable to watch for us layabouts and losers. We don't have the nice car or 2.4 kids but we get free telly.

There are areas of Ballyfermot, Summerhill, and Ballymun that are no go areas for Gardai, let alone TV Licence inspectors, so thats that one ruled out of the equation.

Bin Charges; Do they have bin charges in Summerhill? I'm not sure, I live in Galway. Used to live near Summerhill before these bin charges.

Fags and booze; Bad for you. I smoke myself, and am glad both are expensive because otherwise I'd shit out my liver and smoke my lungs black. A good source of revenue and a good way of taming Irish ill discipline. Pubs should be open 24/7 though, like in Australia, and we should have coffee shops like the Dutch.

The Health Service; I do hope your girlfriend gives birth to a strong and healthy baby. In the meantime, get her to reapply and lie.

Believe it or not there are some CWOs that will give you the same advice! Those guys get bonuses for saving money, so there will be some CWOs who will ignore a dying pensioners need for free inhalers, some of them get that misanthropic. Rights are rights, but, like a Garda with a baton, these rights will be gleefully ignored by CWOs. They're middle class and they get pissed off at being the first ones to be caught without tv licences! Lie to them.


Shannon and Carrrickmines; No, I'm not middle class, I just have a conscience, and a sense of heritage. In the meantime, if you find yourself at the bottom, lie, cheat and steal.Then when you become middle class, enjoy you comfortable suburban home, but pay your taxes! Then if you manage to become upper class, move to Monaco!

Good luck again with the birth of your baby, RJS. Take care.

by RJS Sun Dec 12, 2004 11:27

Thanks for the best wishes.

While recognizing the merits of Shannon and Carrickmines causes, I don’t think that they are the ‘one bad thing’ about this government. They are up there competing with a plethera of undemocratic and insensitive measures, many of which, target the less well-off.

There is a category rarely spoken of, and they are not the unemployed, nor are they the middle classes. They are the low-paid workers, and they fall between both stools. My girlfiriend would be better off financially if she went on welfare, but she loves her job, and it is highly-skilled.

‘…Trust a middle-class mind-set…’ This is not to say that you are middle class, but any one of us can be prone to lapsing into the mind-set, senes its ubiquity makes it difficult to fend off 100% of the time. Our basic assumptions are influenced and affected in ways we don’t even nkow, no doubt.

I took the theme of the piece to be stealth taxes. If we pay less on the swings (income tax), we pay more on the roundabouts (stealth taxes), except, there is one big difference. Income tax can act as a redistributive mechanism, whereas, stealth taxes, like poll taxes, ask the poorest (excluding exemptions) to pay proportionately more.

A crude example of this is her bin tax, which is €5 per week, regardless of the weight. Therefore, the US embassy disposing of the waste of a weekend’s partying, pays the same as my girlfriend who has little to spare.

The TV licence is regressive, because even the unemployed are not exempt (in theory), nor is the payment graded according to income. The non-payers are brow-beaten by ads which label them as criminal, unworthy, wrong… Even if payment of licences was based on % of income, the opinions of the lower socio-economic bracket, and associated issues are scarce on RTE TV, and the promulgation of middle class values or mock-working class Brits, would not be value for money in any case. Why do they always have a new RP, ro mid-Atlantic accent impoersonate a Jackeen or Culchie accent, instead of hiring the genuine article? Why are such depictions always derogatory or disparaging? The poor are better at keeping their accents.

As much as I love the idea of ‘no-go’ areas for gardaí, I don’t think that such areas in Dublin can be romanticised. Usually, the guards couldn’t be bothered about the complaints of such residents. Where confrontations with the cops do take place, it is usually on the part of the same malcontented youth with genuine bitterness and frustration, which led to the complaint being made in the first place.

The pipe – what a rip-off are NTL, and she’s just got a letter to say they’ll cut her off immediately for non-payment, despite her having paid… Broadband will finish that crowd, like it’ll finish eircom, and good riddens. Of course, we’ll have to wait for great broadband advances in Ireland because Telecom Éireann were privatised, and comreg are toothless.

Free education? You’ll only get a fraction of the grant if you live within 30 miles of the college, at least, this applied to me as late as 2000. This applied to the great majority of Dublin poor who had miraculously made it past the Leaving Cert. This meant that such a student in Third Level couldn’t afford books for instance.
Anyway, why should anyone be grateful for the right or principle of free education? Most college-goers only attend to get their credentials so that they can pursue the mind-numbing middle class aspirations of job, car, promotion, mortgage, family etc. They shouldn’t be encouraged to go on this road of tedium, but nor should they pay for indoctrination in the industrial ethos. Although, perhaps, a hefty levy on attendents of ‘business schools/studies’ might limit the reach of that academic excrescence. Either way, many primary schools are feeling the effects of underfunding, especially in rural Ireland.

On the health service: I should have said that certain basic check-ups are free, but unscheduled visits, such as perceived emergencies (which are more likely to happn in first pregnancy) are not covered. In Britain, a pregnant woman gets everything free on the NHS, and maternity leave is now to be extended to 12 moths, as opposed to 18 weeks in Ireland.