Merry Christmas to those who can afford it!

With Christmas only 10 days away, there are many people out there watching their pennies to ensure that Christmas will be as good as it can be. There is alot of talk on all forms of media about this new property tax of €100 per household. Its a blanket charge that applies the same to Dermot Desmond on Ailesbury Road, D4 as it does to the Curley family from The Snapper, in Kilbarrack, D17.

The manner in which this tax is been introduced is symptomatic of the disease that exists in this country. This disease is widespread throughout our Civil Service. Instead of putting in the work and appraising households on various criteria;income, property size,location etc, they take the easiest option; the blanket tax.

For at least 20 years that I know of, they have been talking about means testing for Children's Allowance and yet it has never been implemented. Why not? If these top civil servants need to be paid top wages due to the fact they are so brilliant why have they never taken on the task on behalf of the people they work for. It would allow us to apply future taxes in a more equitable fashion than the hamfisted approach we take now. It seems to me that they just couldn't be bothered to put the work in. It might impinge on their flexi-time or elongated holidays.

When I speak of Civil Service I am only referring to the top echelons of all depts. If you look at all the measures that have been put in place to adhere to the IMF conditions, the boyos at the top in the Civil Service, The Central Bank, all the Banks, Insurance companies, Developers, the Dept of Finance and the Government not one of them will have their lifestyles effected by any of the measures put in place. A 10% pay cut will not hurt someone earning €150,000 a year on pension. Brian Cowan will not feel the pinch when his kids go to college due to the fact that registration fees have been increase by €500. The yearly household tax of €100 is carry around change for those lads. They will all spend as much money as they need to this Christmas. They won't be cutting back. They won't be wondering will Santa be able to bring Jimmy that new expensive toy he so badly wants. No trips do to Lidl to buy cheaper groceries so that the dinner table can seem full.

I would ask Enda Kenny to go back over the transcript of his "Address to the Nation" and seriously reconsider his "sharing the pain" platitudes.
We are been screwed no matter what angle you come at it from. There is no other way to describe it.