Naturally the news here is filled up with election crap.

Like I cared…..!

One of the items a little while back showed a shop owner collaring Simple Simon [our Teashop] about the exorbitant rate of VAT applied to small coffee shops, hairdressers and the like. I know from chats in my coffee shop just how much those VAT rates are hurting. Anyhows, Simple Simon’s reply was on the lines that if they cut that VAT rate they would have to tax someone else to make up the shortfall.

Why?

One of the biggest problems with gubmints is that they see a country’s finances as just figures on a spreadsheet. It’s as if they don’t realise that they are supposed to treat those finances with respect as they are only the guardians of our money. They have this cavalier attitude to finance with little or no accountability. We saw recently the way they spent over three hundred thousand on a bicycle shed and over a million on a security hut. The two billion hospital is another case in point.

A good while back when I was running my little business I was contacted by a chap on the local council. He told me they were looking for a simple website for some project or other. I said no problem and that I would submit a tender. He told me to send that tender to him first before it went to a committee. I sent it to him and got a quick reply – the tender was grand but if I wanted the job I should add a zero on the end of the costing. He wanted me to charge ten times what the job was worth? He said that the committee would only accept a tender if it looked expensive and my first cost would be considered too cheap and not worthy. I added the nought and got the project. They got their site that was worth a tenth of what they paid.

A decent Finance Minister should do two things.

The first is to ensure that money is spent wisely, as if it were out of his own pocket. Why pay a hundred notes for an item if that same item can be bought for ten in any shop?

The second is to ask why the project is the gubmint’s responsibility in the first place. Why allocate a million for a GAA pitch in the west of Ireland? Why should the people on the east coast pay for something they will never use? The same goes for the Arts. I have no interest in opera so why should I subsidise an opera house? If the GAA pitch or the opera house are wanted, then let the locals and opera goers pay the cost. Hardly a week goes past without an announcement that some local project is being subsidised by vast amounts of public money.

My message is simple.

Stop throwing away the people’s cash and drop the price of my coffee.

Cunts.