Other people’s money.

” When the people find that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury, that will be the end of the republic.” Benjamin Franklin.

If you wanted to identify a statement that summed up the problem at the heart of Irish society, there it is, right there. I once had a row with someone (Yes, I do have a lot of rows with people, don’t I?) when I suggested that social welfare payments are essentially society being charitable. I was told that it was their right to get the money. Their right? If they had paid a similar amount in PRSI, then fair enough, but other than that their right to that money involves me being deprived of my right to keep my money, which I created through work. Yet in Ireland, the right of working people to keep their money is regarded as a lesser right than the right of those to get that money. Why’s that? And where’s the party that challenges that?

This isn’t right wing “tax is theft” nonsense, this is about simple fairness. Every euro given by the government to someone involves the government taking it off someone else. As a society, we have all consented to that. But let us be honest about it, not pretend that money from the state is some conjured-from-the-air “right”. 

Cameron: My butler is committed to using the NHS.

Cameron: Not just for his butler, but indeed ALL his domestic staff. You can't get more committment than that!

Conservative Party leader David Cameron MP has stressed the Tory party committment to the NHS by stressing that his butler would use nothing else. ” Whether Jennings has his hand severed operating a spinning jenny, or loses a eye reloading a blunderbus to disperse a pack of savage street urchins, let me be clear: Under a Tory government, the NHS will always be good enough for the likes of him.”