Don’t confuse sacred cows with sacrificial lambs

HAS Ivan Yates completely lost the run of himself or is he now slanting his columnist’s pen towards Fianna Fáil and this shambles of a Government (‘Let’s get rid of all those freebies and put a ceiling on child benefit’, October 14).

Don’t confuse sacred cows with sacrificial lambs

Perhaps he’s supporting that worn-out strategy of Brian Cowen to herald total doom so that we the little people won’t feel so bad when we’re lumbered with all the nasty stuff.

The argument that there would be a saving of millions by withdrawing the bus pass is ludicrous because all that would happen is that the same services would run with reduced efficiency. Introducing the scheme cost nothing, but it did maximise use of the available seating. Any paper shuffled between semi-state utilities and the Government cannot be considered either a cost or a saving (apart from the administration cost). Reintroducing charges would only mean pensioners wouldn’t travel, have phones, watch television or turn lights on. Dropping Michael Smurfit’s name into discussion may be very colourful but nothing more — he doesn’t avail of the service. Capping overall state benefit seems reasonable as no one should expect a good wage for no input to society. By the same coin, no one can honestly believe that annual incomes of hundreds of thousands of euro can be earned. They may be paid, given, acquired, taken, bluffed, won, stolen, cheated, exploited, but earned by one man... never. Those who are on the receiving end of these sums form a nice little pool for the Government to dip into. To do so retrospectively would cure all our ills even if it the Government ended up unpopular with the wrong people, but then many of those who had high salaries were the very people who over-inflated the bubble.

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