Brian’s Budget
by planetparker
Brian Lenihan Jr has delivered his first budget, and indeed there should not be a back anywhere in Ireland that isn’t smarting from the imposition of this financial haishirt.
I knew Brian Lenihan Jr at Trinity, the fact that he is minister for finance and that I am well here need not concern us now. Let’s just say he never came across as the sharpest tool in the shed; I remember how we both attended a table-quiz and sat at contiguous tables, and how the personnel on our table supplied more than one answer to the assembled legal brains gathered around Brian oge.
Of course he was once elected a Scholar in Law entitling him to free tuition, free board in Trinity and a free meal (if he could stomach it) for five years. This had nothing to do with the fact that his father was at the time a minister in the government upon whom the College of the Holy and Unidvidied Trinity was dependant for its funding. What a horrible thought! No more than was the decision to grant a Law Scholarship to a girl whose mother just happened to be Minister for Education in a later government.
Brian oge has said (though he denies it) that the decision to means-test medical cards for the over-70s is a “feye-asco” foisted on him by the Minister for Health. I honestly don’t think he knew about it. The same could not be said for his colleague, Mary Harney, who is on record as saying she would prefer to be in the cut-and-thrust free-market environment of Boston than in the pink, liberal, socialist environs of Berlin. She of course is a fan of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, that b*$ch who supped tea with the mass murderer Pinochet.
But the government hardly needs Harney’s support. She is one of only two PD TDs (one of whom is expected to show un-rat-like courage and rejoin Fianna Fail soon) and the FFers can comfortably rely for support on John Gormless and his pals for the considerable future. So why do they put up with her? Why don’t they make life easy for themselves by saying: “Look Mary, why don’t you do yourself and the country a really big favour and FUCK OFF to Boston!”
PS. I hope there are no members of Cavan County Council who think I’m belittling myself here? The fact is I like belittling myself: you could say it’s one of my hobbies.
