Harsh budget and icy roads bring on the winter blues

What a day – the budget wasn't even the start of it. To get a bus back to town I had to walk a mile over a road that had become a rink. It's been like that for days now. The government assures us that we do have enough grit. What is it we're short of then, shovels? I slipped and nearly fell four times on that slow shuffle to the bus. Which, of course never arrived. As Bus Éireann deny there were any cancellations and I waited for over forty minutes, it seems it actually came early and didn't wait. It often does, rather giving the lie to the idea that people in the country have any alternative to using cars all the time.

I got a taxi.

And then I had to sit through a long speech that beat the poor around the face for the things that the rich have done. It's lovely isn't it, how Brian Lenihan describes the new levels of tax and welfare as "going back to the 2006 rate", etc. As if somehow we were moving back in time to when things seemed so much more secure. But it doesn't fool us; we know we're paying 2006 tax on 2010 wages. When we have jobs at all.

"I am not convinced that any alternative government would have done better." So spoke Brian Lenihan after summarising the appalling situation in which we now find ourselves. But this is what politicians always say when forced to admit that some slight error of judgment may perhaps have been made. Caught crawling from the wreckage of a crashed economy, keys clutched in their hands, breath still reeking of money, they'll always fall back on the excuse that the other lot would have been just as bad. A child's logic.

"My sister did it."

"No, she didn't."

"Well she would have!"

We have heard this with such regularity that it's easy to overlook what it means. What he's actually saying here is that democracy is a sham. If every government is doomed to make the same decisions then we are just fooling ourselves by having elections. Of course it often feels like that, but it's pretty depressing when even the politicians are saying it. "Actually, we are all the bloody same." Jesus.

No, this crash has FF's fingerprints all over it. And even if the parties are too similar in their political and economic philosophies – they are – it still makes an enormous difference that one of them has had its hands on the levers of power for far too long. This is when arrogance becomes endemic, corruption casual. Any country that has what they call a "natural party of government" doesn't really have democracy. It has aristocracy in suits.

Back in 2007 we had an election. Already there were clear danger signs. Boom had long become bubble, the economy was obviously unbalanced and overheated, Bertie Ahern was having a great deal of trouble explaining where the money he spent came from. And yet enough people still voted Fianna Fáil for them to cobble together another government. To those people I say: You deserve this budget.