Today is Budget Day.

For a while now we have been hearing all about how this is to be an “end of austerity” budget.  There are all sorts of promises that the tax burden will be eased and how they are going to start “giving something back”.

We, the Poor People of Ireland are of course meant to be grateful.  Those nice people who run our lives are actually thinking of us and are helping us through the crisis. 

Michael ‘The Weasel’ Noonan is going to happily announce all sorts of measures which will sound nice but will have fuck all effect on me.  For this apparently I am supposed to applaud his largesse and proclaim him a saviour, and lay palm fronds on the street for him to walk on.

In the last year, two new taxes were introduced.  We had the tax on our homes and of course the water tax.  Between those two, they are demanding an extra €700 or so a year off me, and that doesn’t include all the other various charges, taxes and duties that have all increased in the last couple of years.

So, a simple piece of mathematics….

Unless the budget eases my tax burden by at the very least €700 a year, I am worse off.  There is no “relief”.  There is no “easing of the burden”.  They are still robbing me blind to pay off their pals in Brussels and those gamblers on the financial markets.

And what’s more, they cannot “give something back”.  Giving something back that you stole in the first place is not a gift – it’s merely restitution. 

This is how they do it, you see?

They mug you for a thousand at gunpoint, and then give you a fiver back.

And you’re supposed to be grateful.