How the numbers add up: we’re facing bankruptcy

GEORGE W Bush had the word torture redefined so that he could put his hand over where most people’s heart is and deny that he sanctioned torture.

Fianna Fáil, especially Lenihan, have redefined lying so as not to include repeating what some bureaucrat once told them was probably true. I assumed that the figure of 1.8 million people working, which they keep giving out in order to make us less worried, is far from true. I took a total population of about 4.2 million. Then I deducted all children, non-working wives and husbands, students, pensioners, unemployed, and little part-time workers. Then I deducted all bureaucrats because they all have to be paid by the genuine taxpayers and are not taxpayers in the true sense of the word. Army, civil servants, politicos , gardaí, teachers, hospital staff, contract staff that they try to hide, etc, total just under 400,000 according to the statistics office in Cork and my own estimates. Having deducted all those, I can not get up to more than about 600,000 people working full-time in the free market and paying real taxes. And most of those people are not earning huge salaries. Perhaps we could see a detailed breakdown of that 1.8 million sometime. If not, and my figure is approximately correct, we will be bankrupt within two years. My only consolation is that the crooks who allowed this to happen, in Bertie’s case even encouraged it, will have destroyed the artificial currency that pays their own pensions.

Richard D Barton