We have a budget next week.

Be still my beating heart!

It's really not so much a budget as a weasely list of excuses as to why they are robbing us blind.  If they reduce our deductions by a fiver a year they call it a giveaway budget, and expect us to sing their praises from the roof tops.  If they reduce tax they claim they have to make up the shortfall by taxing something else.  It never seems to occur to them to cut down on spending.  Cut your cloth to suit your purse, and all that shit?

It's taken as a given that smokes are going up.  No one even remarks on that these days.  A pack of baccy will go up by just enough to make them extra cash without causing anyone to stop buying.  Fuck that.  White Van Man will be partying again next week, and putting a down payment on yet another villa in Spain.

After the crash, they brought in an "emergency tax" called the Universal Social Charge, which was just a temporary measure to help bail us out of the financial mess.  Now they keep telling us that the good times are here and Ireland is growing faster than the Orient Express, but the USC remains.  it would "cost the exchequer too much" to eliminate it apparently.  Once they get their grubby little hand into your pocket it's going to stay there.  What they love about the USC is that it applies to everyone with no relief even for the lowest paid.  That's equality, they say.  Tell that to the bloke who gets a mere ten grand a year, but still has to pay tax on it.

There's talk of the "sugar tax".  Again, nothing to do with health, but an exellent way of raising yet more cash.  Once they find a new potential for screwing us, they're in there faster than a bishop into a whorehouse.  All they need is the flimsiest of excuses and they're off.

They have promised to increase the Old Age Pension which is something.  We're to gat a massive fiver a week extra!  When you think about it, that's nearly half a packet of fags [or a third, after the budget].  Wow!

But Herself has just come steaming into the room from where she'd been listening to the radio.  "You know that pension increase?" she asked rhetorically, "That little fucking wank-stain of a fucking shit-cunt of a minister say's we aren't going to get it for another six months!".  I'd tell you exactly what she called him, but it was quite rude.

There is some interesting speculation about Inheritance Tax.  They are talking about raising the threshold on this one so that the kids don't have to pay so much [at 33% on the value of the property above the threshold] but apparently there is some doubt about this one.  Childless couples are screaming discrimination.

Discrimination against the children of childless couples?

That's a new one?