Happy endings for all in Finance’s fantastic fairyland

UNDER-BREATH Budget Day gripes were plentiful, but public protest was left to the country’s third-level students who converged on the Dáil in a noisy, animated but — apart from a few expletive-peppered slogans — impeccably-behaved show of disgruntlement.

Usual suspects Cutback McCreevy, Arrogance Ahern and Hardship Harney all received a verbal bashing on a day when bricks-and-mortar spending on colleges fell by almost 50%, but the students’ ire was carefully targeted and they remembered their manners, to the point of publicly thanking gardaí for their help.

They better hope the guards were too overcome with flattery to think of rounding up a few new suspects. A hastily-hammered-together coffin used to symbolise cutbacks killing colleges looked suspiciously like a wardrobe. Beware landlords bearing inventories.