Some of the country’s more devout Christians appear to be up in arms over the fact that Munster take on Leinster in a Magners league match (note, Magners League and not Heineken Cup) in Thomond Park this evening. Generally, for local derby style matches of this ilk, the fixtures are billed as Munster V Leinster or Leinster V Munster, they are written about widely in our press and discussed at length by Munster and Leinster supporters. Today’s fixture however has taken on a life of its own. A life that has little to do with rugby and more to do with the fact that the pubs will not just be OPEN!! but they will BE SERVING DRINK! The uproar this has caused in certain Christian circles is very amusing to an Atheist by-stander who thinks of Good Friday as a great day becasue I don’t have to work (although I used to work for Irish and American companies that required me to work on Good Friday) although it can be a slight inconvenience that many shops are closed on this particular day. Good Friday when I was a child was a completely different matter. I hated it with an absolute passion. I hated Holy Thursday, I hated Good Friday, I hated Easter Saturday and Easter Sunday. Only Easter Monday offered some welcome relief from the absolute torture of attending church services involving stations of the cross, washing of feet, solemn remembrance of the crucificition, ressurection of the dead and various other mumbo-jumbo that I never believed in, not from a very early age, but for which I was required to attend church services because my not very devout parents liked to torture us at Easter. No Easter Egg was ever sufficient reward for what was endured on the previous four days of religious solemnity.
The reality of life in Ireland today is that you can’t ram your beliefs down people’s throats any more. Ireland is supposedly a pluralist society now, a tolerant one, one that welcomes all races, colours and creeds. The reality for our immigrants is often different. In such a society, anyone wanting to sell alcohol on Good Friday should be allowed to, and its not as though sales of alcohol haven’t taken place in private clubs throughout the country on Good Friday for years anyway. It’s not as though no one drinks on Good Friday. Anyone who thinks that the pubs being open and being allowed to serve alcohol in Limerick is going to result in public drunkeness and a general decline in our moral standards is obviously an ostrich with their heads in the sand, because how could anyone in Ireland turn a blind eye to what goes on in every supermarket and off licence every Holy Thursday? The alcohol sales shoot through the roof on that day. In our multi-cultural pluralist society, no religion should dictate what gets closed and what stays open on particular day, and the legislation governing pubs on Good Friday should be changed to allow them to open, not that this will ever actually happen, at least not in an era where we have a minister who enacted blasphemy legislation recently.
On the rugby, I have this to say. C’mon Munster.
snowy conditions in Dublin today. Killiney Hill was a winter wonderland and so much fun was being had by adults and children alike! I’m loving the snow, I just wish we had it every winter so that we’d be better able to cope with it and would have a stock of salt, snow ploughs and pavement clearers like you see in mainland europe.
I’ve been listening to the Dail speeches in reply to Brian Lenihan’s speech. As someone who will have a small baby to feed, clothe and put nappys on next May, I feel that I am entitled to weigh in on the debate over child benefit.
The problem with child benefit isn’t that it has been reduced, the problem with child benefit is that it is a universal payment.
In my circumstances, unless both SK and I lose our jobs (and I think that is reasonably unlikely for both of us to lose our jobs at the moment) we are not going to be affected in an adverse way over 16 euro a month less in MONEY FOR FREE or should I call it by it’s proper name, child benefit.
The way I look at child benefit is this. We are choosing to bring a baby into this country. We choose to do that in full knowledge that our home purchased near to the top of the boom is in negative equity should we need to sell it tomorrow. We don’t need to sell it, so it’s not actually an issue. We choose parenthood knowing what childcare costs every month. We choose parenthood knowing how much GP visits cost, how much babysitting costs, how much milk for the babby costs (nothing if you breast feed for six months, but that’s another story). We choose parenthood knowing what all the studies on the cost of raising children say it costs. We choose parenthood knowing what private schools cost, what school books cost, what school uniforms cost, what university costs, what gap years in South America costs, what extra-cirricular demands like ponies and dinghies cost. We still choose it. So it is our responsibility. It is nice that the government chooses to help us out and gives us (let me write it again) MONEY FOR FREE. If the government wants to increase that money or decrease that money, that is their decision. Bottom line, when you are getting money for free, you should be thankful for what you get and stop whining about the decrease.
To say that the decrease in child benefit and the abolishment of the early childcare supplement will declare us (as a family, lumped in with all families by those declaring this small decrease a disaster) destitute with no milk for the babby and no way to clothe the babby is complete nonsense.
So what is a solution. Well, you could tax child benefit. But to tax child benefit would actually mean that everyone in receipt of it would need to be in the tax system. You could means test child benefit, but to do that would require honesty about bank (overseas or domestic) accounts and credit union accounts and actual income on the part of applicants. Or, you can apply a reduction across the board. A reduction across the board seems quite fair to me given the deflation in the economy and the decrease in the basic costs of living. People say their costs of living have not decreased. That is complete nonsense. How can they not have when the ESRI and CSO are saying that they have and they have the statistics to back up these claims. I also have statistics to back up these claims. The statistics are our gas bill, our electricity bill, our mortgage and our grocery bill.
When I hear Joan Burton in the Dail saying that the decrease in child benefit is going to affect the people with the sliced pans and sausages in the shopping trollies rather than fresh meat and veg, I scratch my head. I go online to superquinn and discover the price of sausages and some kinds of fresh meat per kilo. Sausages, per kilo, of various brands, Denny, Superquinn own brand and others are MORE EXPENSIVE than certain types of fresh meat. Sliced pans per kilo are MORE EXPENSIVE that kilos of potatoes. If child benefit is going to be summarised by Joan Burton as making life harder for the sausages and sliced bread brigade, then I say this. Let them have cooking lessons. Let them learn how to feed their children with fish, meat and potatoes, which are cheaper than sausages and sliced pans, and more nutritious to boot. What is a white sliced pan if it isn’t empty calories with no nutritional content.
Please note, I absolutely sympathise with public sector workers who have had a pay cut, they will find a large gap in their pockets and I do actually sympathise with those cuts, despite thinking that they were necessary. But if you are complaining solely about child benefit cuts whilst still employed, don’t be so dramatic and don’t think it is going to ruin your life. There are so many ways to earn sixteen euro a month. Show some initiative instead of expecting the government to bail you out at every turn.
