And we wonder.......

Taken from the Drogheda Independent

Wednesday April 22 2009

Dear Sir,

I RECENTLY had a long conversation with a friend of mine who lost his job. He was in a reasonably good job and after a little bit of overtime was earning a gross salary of € 35,000 per year.

So I asked him the obvious question of how he was going to cope now with four children to feed and I have to be honest the answer startled me, he was actually a lot better off and now in a position to go out golfing every day when his children are at school.

Frankly I did not believe him until I sat down and did the sums.

On a salary of € 35,000 his annual net income after the mini budget was € 28,854, after all deductions.

Now he's on the supplementary welfare allowance which, with a wife and four children, gives you € 443.90 per week or € 23,083 annually.

As he also has a mortgage he is entitled to mortgage interest supplement which pays all the interest on your mortgage so in his case € 1,200 per month of his € 1,500 mortgage or € 14,400 per annum.

He is also entitled to back to school and footwear payment of € 905 per year for four children, a medical card which we will say is worth on average say € 500 per year (probably more) and a heating supplement which I cannot quantify.

In total he now therefore has tax free income of € 38,888, an increase in his net income of € 10,034 per year working on his handicap.

Based on the calculations after the mini Budget you would need to earn more than € 47,000 per year if you have four children to justify continuing to work. Now this is even before the costs of working like petrol, car maintenance, tolls, lunches etc.

Now in any civilised society and especially a society in a deep recession with a huge welfare bill surely the Government must give people an incentive to go out and work.

Making the child benefit taxable or means

for golf tested later this year is just going to make the situation far worse and encourage more people to give up work and rely on the state to live.

It could even drive our small economy to collapse as the welfare bill gets bigger and bigger as more people, including myself, say why should I bother to go out to work when it is basically costing me money to work?

The country needs to get back to basics, to a system that encourages people to get up off their backside to work, encourages people to take risks, set up businesses, enterprise rather than encourage people to rely on the state.

Unless something radically changes I will be joining my mate on the golf course very soon.

More Please

Another brilliant show, Boston Legal bites the dust. There is a dearth of really good shows out there that can engage the mind rather than vacant it.

I love the writing, the acting and the fact that it makes me think as I watch, it also educates me, and can have me running the gamut of emotions all in 40 minutes.

James Spader explains Scientology in an episode;



Another programme I am hooked on is The Wire. Again both the writing and acting is superb. This series has just started on BBC 2. I had tried before to watch it, but found the American Projects and drug dealers slang hard to grasp. This time I turned on subtitles and it was so much better and I am glad I did otherwise I would have lost on on following this terrific series.

Here, one of the drug dealers explains how to play chess by using the allegory of the hierarchy of the drug dealers and the running of their operation.



There is only so much time I have available to watch shows, RTE have released the Beta version of their Player and I am enjoying it. The quality is excellent. I do have a fast broadband connection but I think anyone with 1mb+ should be fine.

I caught up with The Best of The Panel today :-) I hope this player does not disappear for long before they bring out the final version.

Believe in yourself

Count me in as one of the millions that have watched Susan Boyle's rendition of I Dream a Dream (from my favourite musical Les Mis). (Currently this version has been seen over 25 million times!)

Don't you just love the fact that she is an everyday woman, a woman you would see all over Ireland. Yet for all the knocks she has received in life she had a belief in herself and a dream to honour her Mother, and did she ever! It was wonderful.

I found another recording that she did 10 years ago and her diction today as then is one of the reasons I enjoyed her singing so much. I find many singers today have little sense of diction and it ruins my pleasure in listening. Susan Boyle sings Cry Me a River, stunning, even on You Tube.

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