The one with the Budget!

Well its all said and done now. Bryan Dobsons stunt double delivered a tough one yesterday. They're strangling each other in the Dail over it, but no doubt it'll be all forgotten about in a few weeks, as these things are. The people who are roaring about not voting next time round for any party or indeed Fianna Fail, normally forget such things as well.

Vat goes up to 21.5% from December. No big deal???? Course not. As long as your buying shoes and clothing. No VAT on them. And sure there are plenty of foods that are VAT exempt, but theres also a selection of food products that do have the oul VAT. Like chocolate biscuits? Like frozen desserts? Like fruit juices? Well they along with a selection of other food products will all get the new 21.5% VAT rate. It'll all add up over the course of a year. I suppose you can always replace the biscuits and the desserts with a pair of Nike runners.  Ya cant beat that new runner smell.

From the indebt budget coverage on the show last night, alot of people are really going to be caught on the hop with the 8c per litre petrol increase. Ive never seen a queue for a garage in my life, especially not one that was 40 cars deep. This was the case all over the city and county last night where people started panic buying, in order to save a few bob. I worked out the average, and unless you were sitting in small plane in a forecourt, the average saving on a full tank fill up would have been around €3-€5 last night. Not really worth hauling yer ass up off the couch for.

Personally the petrol increase is gonna cost me around an extra €250-€300 a year. Now, if I were living in Dublin where they have a wide, vast and regular public transport system I wouldn't give a monkeys left ball about it. But I'm not living in Dublin, I'm living the Cork, where the public transport system is well below average. I have, like many others, NO option but to drive to work. So maybe it would be an idea to start giving people OUTSIDE of Dublin more options when it comes to public transport as opposed to hiking on 8c per litre. Don't fecking penalise me for the lack of public transport options!

The fuel increase will have a knock on effect to many industries, which in turn will drive the cost of things up even further. Given that the the oil market is so volatile, if the price of oil skyrockets again, there are very serious implications for anybody using a petrol pump. And then the rat bastard garages and their parent oil company mammy's and daddies are milking the situation into the ground. I used appreciate the fact the many garages were on low margins when it came to the price of fuel. Well can someone explain why they all dropped their prices last night, by nearly 7 and 8 cent. Great marketing move there lads. Good way to fuck the average Joe in the ass.....again. 

The Tax rates stay the same, but they don't really. We get an income levy of 1% if your earning up to 100k and the levy is 2% if your over the 100k a year. That's another couple of hundred quid a year gone from your average salary. That couple of hundred quid could pay for a holiday, your child's medical expenses or a weeks worth of petrol.

And then, Brian Lenihan adds in the fabric softener to make the whole thing seem not so bad. All Ministers and ministers of state will take a 10% pay cut. Good one! So when they start getting a couple of rises next year and increments and the like, that 10% will be back in no time! Better one! Maybe put a freeze of ministerial pay rises for a year or more. Why not do that? Then I read this morning that the President is also taking a 10% pay cut on her huge salary. I really don't know why we have a president. Shut down the bloody office and save a small fortune every year on everything from her salary and expenses to the feckin ESB bill! I know that she signs a few autographs every now and then, but come on! Its not the white house. At least we know what that "individual" does!!!!!

The fags are gone up 50c. They didnt jump up the €2 that was called for. Of course not. Not only would that see the blackmarket sales go through the roof but revenue from the sale of cigs would fall dramatically. On an all too regular basis, I have politicians and people ranting on raving about underage drinking on the show. Was the price of alcohol put up? So that it would hit people in the pocket, in particular the underage drinkers? Was it shit put up! Same reason the diesel wasnt put up. The publicans and the hauliers would tear this country apart! Maybe the average folk on the street should adopt that attitude.

I appreciate the fact that the country is in a bit of a state (in various sectors, but I still cant see that real dark clouds forming over the bread lines) at the moment and its now, well more so from January next that the people on the ground, the taxpayers will start feeling the pain. If there has been vast overspending during the last couple of years, then which individual left all that slip through the net. Was it not long ago that the SSIA scheme was introduced so we could all save for a rainy day and our futures? Pity the government didn't take their own fucking advice on that one!