The Irish government announced their latest budget today. Opposition had already prepared scathing attacks on the government but in reality they don’t have much to criticise today. The government have played a defensive game and are protecting their own interests.
photo credit: The Ghost of a Flea
They know full well they’ve drawn too much attention to themselves recently and made too many mistakes. Now, in their eyes, it’s not a time for massive, sweeping changes and so they’ve bottled it by reducing expenditure and increasing taxes slowly, but surely.
It’s defensive, it’s safe…. comes across as relatively sensible and conservative. But that’s not what we need. We need to attack and take risks when others won’t. Sure, America is to blame, but we can’t sit by and wait on America to recover – we must at least ATTEMPT to recover ourselves.
Creating a new toxic bank is a good move, but why not just step up to the plate and nationalise all banks and secure them all once and for all?
For the first time ever, Brain Cowen and minister for finance Brian Lenihan finally seem rattled… they’re finally showing signs of pressure. That’s good. These guys are men under pressure, with great responsibility… they need to put the needs and security of the country above themselves and their party.
Fianna Fáil are a sinking ship and they’re trying to cling on for as long as they can. In my view it largely the people’s fault; most of them can’t bitch about these guys – they voted these guys in and back in, time and time again.
Up until now, politics was a popularity game. From now on, politicians are gonna start earning their money a little bit more as the people who they represent begin to get more politically savvy and apply more pressure. There’ll be a backlash from the people in the next general election. There won’t be support for any one party, but there’ll be a huge anti-Fianna Fáil support group emerging.