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Minister of Finance’s “Me Me Me Me!” at Budget Speech

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Minister of Finance’s “Me Me Me Me!” at Budget Speech

On Tuesday the Budget 2018 was announced by the Minister of Finance Paschal Donohoe. He was talking for about 1 hour about the state of the country, the future of the economy and about all the changes that 2018 will bring regarding taxes, charges, social welfare, minimum salary, subsidies etc.

It wasn’t an exciting speech and it is certainly not an exciting budget and since most aspects were already “leaked” beforehand, there were very very few surprises. As it seems, everybody will get a bit more money, but it is a tiny amount of money so no big parties!

Richard Boyd Barrett from People Before Profit is not someone I usually agree with, but in this case he was spot on. He said “This is a budget of crumbs.”

The only thing that got my blood boiling, but I will write about that another time, is the nonsensical sugar tax that will be introduced in April 2018.

Today, though, I want to point out another odd thing. Why is it that all Finance Ministers suffer from an ego-syndrome when they announce the budget. The current minister is not the first one that constantly talked about “I will….”, “I have decided…”, “I am increasing…”, “I am allocating….”, “I am providing….”. What is this nonsense?

No Minister of Finance makes these decisions on his own. He needs to agree them with the Taoiseach, other ministers, coalition partners and in the current government even with the Fianna Fail opposition and before all that, the whole work was done not by the Minister but the employees in his department. So would a “we” not be more appropriate than the constant “I, i, i,….” or “me, me, me, me” focus?

Politicians are odd animals anyway and nearly all are power hungry beasts, but the budget speech is a special ego trip every year, it seems.

I know you will not click on this link. ;-) But in case you want to read the whole speech, you will find it here.

 

Odd, Politics, Taoiseach, , , , ,

That’s not democratic! – Fine Gael Leadership Competition

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
That’s not democratic! – Fine Gael Leadership Competition

After Enda Kenny stepped down (and he was nearly FORCED to step down because he made some nonsensical promises about his longevity in the role of party leader and Taoiseach), the leadership battle between Simon Coveney and Leo Varadkar commenced and on Friday was decision day. 10,000 party members, the 223 Fine Gael councillors and 73 senators and PDs (the Parliamentary Party) had an opportunity to vote.

Before the vote already 46 of the 73 members of the Parliamentary Party had declared their support for Leo Varadkar and only 21 for Simon Coveney, but among the 10,000 party members the preferences looked different! About 65% of the party members were supporting Coveney and only 35% were on Varadkar’s side.

But now the odd thing: This is a party in a Western country where you would expect the highest level of democracy and fairness. Right? Not so!!

Oddly, the 10,000 party members only have 25% of “weight” in the final decision, the FG councillors have 10% “weight”, which means that 73 men and women control 65% of the party. You could say that these 73 were elected by the members (and by non-members) and therefore have a double legitimisation. But it is still odd that ONE member of the Parliamentary Party has close to the same weight as nearly 400 party members.

Doesn’t sound very democratic, does it!?

In the end Leo Varadkar won just 35% of the party member votes, but he won 55% of the councillor votes and 70% of the votes from TDs and senators. In total he got 60% of the votes and therefore won.

www.rte.ie/news/2017/0602/879837-fine-gael-leadership-tracker/

Elections, Politics, Taoiseach, ,

Taoiseach puts himself on ejection seat, but stop talking about it!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Taoiseach puts himself on ejection seat, but stop talking about it!

There is a time in our lives when we all have to leave. I am not talking about that final leave, that will put us 6ft under, but I am talking about leaving a job, leaving a hobby, leaving a group of friends, leaving a football/chess/car racing/knitting/etc club. It is usually best if YOU can choose when you depart and also it is best to keep it a bit as a surprise just because it should ideally be on your terms not on other people’s terms.

The current Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, wasn’t clever enough to ensure that he was in charge of his future, but stupidly he indicated to the nation that he might not lead his party into the next election. Maybe he wanted to get some positive gain from this statement, but it certainly has back fired as his party and in fact the political landscape in Ireland seems to be mesmerised by the question WHEN will he step down. It totally distract from the real issues and it must interfere with the ability of the current government to do the best job they are capable of.

I have to admit that I am not a big fan of the current Taoiseach, but at the same time I do think that day to day politics is a lot more relevant than the discussion about who will be the next leader of Fine Gael and the “peacocking” of his possible successors is really putting me off all of them. Leo Varadkar, Simon Coveney or Frances Fitzgerald? Neither of them has been elected, so I don’t really care about them.

At the moment, there is one guy in charge. He is telling us about how Ireland will deal with a Brexit….and seems to talk more nonsense than sense. He is going to bring a silly bowl of shamrock to Donald Trump, a move that certainly doesn’t find support everywhere because of the person the American president is. And he didn’t impress with his handling of the recent whistleblower affair in the police force.

So no “Well done! Great job!”, but because I don’t think the discussion about him stepping down (when, how, where?) will bring Ireland forward in a positive way, I would prefer if the speculation about the date of stepping down and about the successor would not take up newspaper headline after newspaper headline.

As long as the man is in his current job, don’t distract him all the time! If he doesn’t give his job full attention, it might turn out even worse than now.

 

Elections, Politics, Taoiseach, , , , ,
 
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