Bertie = €160,000 + Merc + driver. Blair = €60,000 + shank’s mare

THAT there is something rotten in the state hardly needs saying. However, the eradication of rot requires corrective action from the inside out rather than the outside in via bailouts, etc.

We could do an awful lot to solve our own problems if only we could take a detached look at ourselves and the culture of excess which we still support more than two years after the economic implosion of September 2008.

Cutbacks are necessary, drastic cutbacks at that. In any sane household or small business the budgetary trimming would first start as far away from the bone as possible.