Brian’s Budget

Hats off to Minister Brian Lenihan on yesterday’s stern but fair Budget. I’d take my hat off, but I had to sell it for food. I have one important question for Mr. Lenihan however, one which he made no attempt to address during his speech. Is that a hairpiece you are wearing and if so, did you blacken it yourself or is that its natural colour? I have to say I was disappointed with the €3,000 penis levy introduced by the minister.  All people between twenty and forty who currently own, or did within the past five years own, a penis, qualify to pay the levy.  I will of course have to pay this myself, but I am lucky that I have a bit extra lying around at the moment after an inheritance from a very close friend, who committed suicide after the property balloon burst into flames last year.

People need to face the realities of the current situation. We can’t sustain our current lifestyle. The harsh truth is that a lot of us need to pass on the steak and foie gras and instead go back to bread. I remember when growing up a slice of cheese was a delicacy. Put that slice of cheese on a cut of bread and you had a veritable feast. My father toiled for hours in the bog to put bread on our table. My siblings and I used to bound happily up the field to meet him as he was coming home. He would have a slice of bread and a sod of turf under his arm.  It was all we needed and more.

Why do we need this obscene lifestyle? All a man needs is a sheep, a goat, a few potatoes and a slice of bread. It was good enough for our forefathers, it will do us just fine. This country has lost its way over the last twenty years; we used to be known all over the world for our simple nature and lack of pretension. I think we got ahead of ourselves a small bit with all the college educations and diplomas. We thought that if we got a few degrees then we could compete with the English or French. Sadly, it’s in our genes to underachieve.

My great-grandfather was executed during the Civil War. Admittedly, he didn’t die in the fighting per se, rather he was shot by a ragtag group of farmers outside Charleville in County Cork (apparently he molested a young boy at the school where he taught). What’s important though, is that he was a good man. He understood the value of a hard days work and the honesty of eternal disappointment and misery. If he were alive today to see the excess and soulless materialism of the Celtic Tiger generation he would probably weep.