1. Banks: Why make good banks and bad banks?  In the national spirit, why not have some indifferent banks?  In such a scenario the bank manager would be pretty indifferent when you came in looking for a mortgage.  You ask for a mortgage and he is not sure about it, he’ll think about it and get back to you….maybe.  I’ll tell you if this was the kind of bank we had for the past 10 years we would be in a much better place now.  So, number 1 for me is to make indifferent banks.

2. Presentation: Introduce humour into a budget speech. For instance Mr. Lenihan might have opened yesterday with the following side-splitting gag: “Well, folks, I have good news and bad news for you.  The good news is that we have enough money to get out of the financial crisis.  The bad news is that the money is still in your pockets”.  Oh, how we would have laughed at that one. It would probably have gotten us through the depression.

3. Tax: The VAT rate wasn’t lowered for anything, but to be honest I don’t think this would have made a difference to anything.

4.  Buy Irish: We are now definitely reluctant to come out and say that we want to buy Irish goods and services.  For some reason there is a kind of sarcastic “pffft” every time somebody brings this up as an important part of regeneration.  The standard reply is that somehow this relates to Lenihan’s comment in the budget six months ago that there was a call to patriotic action and that this mirrored Samuel Johnson’s saying that “a call to patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”.  Well, in the aftermath of 9/11 in the US, there was a significant call to people in the US to go out and spend their money on American goods and services and nobody said anything about scoundrels.  So, I’ll say it.  If we buy Irish goods and services, then even if they cost a little more, this will benefit the country, so when there are two alternatives facing you, buy Irish.  That means things like: don’t change your car, ‘cos it aint Irish, save the money and buy a kerry cow instead.

5. Costs: There were three main stories yesterday - the cost of government is being reduced (will save a few millions in the next  year); the taxes will be increased (will bring in about 4 thousand million in the next year); the toxic debts will be bought up (will cost about 25 thousand millions in the next year).  So, even though the government junior minister thing is totally insignificant in real terms and no economist worth his/her salt mentions it, it occupied the same billing or even higher billing than the real issues in some newspapers and in the run up to the budget.  It is somehow like saying that criticism of Hitler’s crap artwork is as important an issue as his decimation of the jews during WWII.

Overall, I think I am now being paid about 15-20 percent less than last year.  Not quite sure exactly how much until I get paid next month (cannot work out the tax system, so I leave it to the university).  This is going to make life difficult as I have too many debts.  Have to go to the bank and restructure some of the debt - stretch some loans out for longer periods etc.  Also, I am not going to go abroad for summer holidays - money will be spent here in Ireland.

I have a few more thoughts, but these are the main ones.