Ciaran Allan Budget

[Conan]

Watching Vinny Browne last night (not sure why I bother), the UCD lecturer said his Budget would include (amongst other proposals):

• a new top rate of tax above 70%
• a "wealth tax" of 3% p.a. on all assets
• an increase in Corporation Tax

If he (or perhaps worse - Joan Burton) were ever to be Minister for Finance, they would also need to increase the travel tax from €10 to €10m to prevent a mass exodus.

I am not sure which annoyed me more:

• the fact that this left wing socialist (somewhere left of Kim Il Sung) gets the oxygen of TV coverage , or
• that he is lecturing the next generation in UCD

It is really frustrating that RTE and TV3, night after night, have the same miserable faces, wannabe economic celebrities, drolling out a diatribe of misery. I keep hearing that you cannot talk down an economy, but the more I hear these proponents of misery, the more I am inclined to believe that you can actually talk down an economy.

I suggest that we should send some of these miners of misery down a shaft in Tara Mines, but leave them there. I doubt if anybody would bother rescuing them.