Time to bring a bit of balance to budget coverage
Date Published: {J}
It goes without saying that your heart would go out to anyone who is living on or below the poverty line, anyone who has to care for a sick child or adult and anyone who finds themselves among the 450,000 on the dole queue – but does RTÉ realise that the budget affects everyone and not just the few?
Because one night after another we had a parade of bad-luck stories and poor unfortunates whose lives, quite frankly, wouldn’t have been made any better if Michael Noonan had found another €3.6 billion down the back of the couch and gave it all to them in small denominations.
It is an undeniable fact that the true test of a country is how it looks after its very old, its very young and its very ill – but surely there’s a responsibility on the national broadcaster to analyse how it affects those of us lucky to have a job and a healthy family as well.
But no – it was a single mother with more dependants than Mother Hubbard and a house that was both smaller and damper than a shoe; it was a pensioner who hadn’t the price of twenty fags, or a poor woman catering for a severely disabled child.
And while each of their cases is heartbreaking and every injustice done to them is unforgiveable, there isn’t a country in the world whose budget won’t hurt the vulnerable more than it will affect the majority.Why not feature someone in a job, who admits they’re only marginally worse off and if the price of home heating oil goes up, sure they can always put on that garish sweater their missus bought them last Christmas?
How about someone who says that the 25c on the packet of 20 fags is the final straw and that the Government has finally forced them to give up that awful habit?
How about an economist who – if they disagree with the efforts of the Coalition – actually comes up with a viable alternative?
Equally how about an opposition spokesperson who, when they say we should burn the bond holders, then has the intelligence and honesty to admit what really would happen next ... that the ATMs would run out of money and there’d be no wages for our civil servants, teachers, nurses and Gardaí?
For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.