In the Loop

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I am grateful to my friend and mentor "Grandad" for the following incomplete list of the taxes we are all subject to in Ireland.

  • Airline surcharge tax
  • Airline Fuel Tax
  • Airport Maintenance Tax
  • Broadcasting Charge [tax]
  • Building Permit Tax
  • Capital Gains Tax
  • Corporate Income Tax
  • Death Duty Tax
  • Dog Licence [tax]
  • Domestic Oil Tax
  • Driving Licence Tax
  • Environmental Tax
  • Fishing License Tax
  • Food License Tax
  • Goods and Services Tax
  • Health Tax
  • Income Tax
  • Inheritance Tax
  • Interest Tax
  • Liquor Tax
  • Luxury Taxes
  • Marriage License Tax
  • National Car Test 
  • Personal Income Tax
  • Petrol Tax
  • Property Tax
  • Prescription Drug Tax
  • Recreational Vehicle Tax
  • Retail Sales Tax
  • Road Fund Licence [tax]
  • Service Charge Tax
  • Septic Tank Tax
  • Stamp Duty [tax]
  • Telephone Tax
  • Tobacco Excise Duty [tax]
  • Value Added Tax
  • Vehicle License Registration Tax
  • Vehicle Sales Tax
  • Water Tax
  • Workers Compensation Tax

Growing up here in the seventies and eighties it was a lot simpler. Central taxation was underwriting local Government and as a result, we paid for our water, street lighting, domestic waste disposal, street cleaning and roads among other things via income tax and VAT. Car tax came in after that and it was the first indication that senior Civil Servants were looking for ways to rip us off. Cue property and water taxes! We even pay our bin charges to private companies now. Traditionally when we bought our homes we paid all of the property tax up front in a lump sum called Stamp Duty. You paid for water in the subvention grants to local authorities who supplied it.

This begs the question, what do we pay our politicians and public representatives for? What is it that all those hundreds of civil servants do for us at such a high cost? The answer is truly amazing. Politicians repeatedly claim that do NOT create jobs nor are they supposed to. The 166 of them who collect in Dail Eireann from time to time maintain that they are elected to "MAKE LAWS." You didn't know that, did you? For a hundred grand a year plus the same again in expenses, these joker's sole purpose in life is to make more new laws. And if you look at the laws this current Government have made since entering office you will discover that most of them have to do with raiding your wallet ………. LEGALLY! Oh, and the Civil Servants do what the politicians tell them to do and nothing else.

It has become an infinite loop in fact. They introduce laws to give them more of your money so that they can bribe you to vote for them at election time and the three main parties have been doing just that for years. Even worse, they want you to understand that it is a public service to us. How's that for pure brazenness? 

You couldn't make it up.

Liking Bertie

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I listened to Bertie Ahern yesterday talking with 'Miriam,' (our next President), and two thoughts struck me in quick succession.

Despite what we know and despite what resulted from his light-touch approach while in office, Bertie is still likable. I was introduced to him once and both then and yesterday, it was like listening to an ordinary bloke in the pub. He was down-to-earth without any of the airs and graces normally assumed by our politicians. It is hard not to like Bertie Ahern and many of us believe during the Peace Process that even Paisley began to like Bertie.

Then I also realized that I don't like Enda Kenny for fairly obvious reasons. He led us to believe that if elected he would change the face of Irish politics and we know now it was a damned lie. He opposed Irish Water in opposition and couldn't wait to set it up when in Government. The Mayo schoolteacher feigns a Statesmanlike demeanor when talking down to us but all I see and hear is a haughty teacher. He bluffs and he blusters and mouths inanities before striding away to his State car and driver.

No, I don't like Kenny and more importantly I don't trust the man. I don't much care for his cabinet either though I'l admit a sneaking regard for Varakar. Kenny had barely got his arse in the chair before he began appointing his cronies all around him. For me, this was an utter lie because it was this very practice that he was bleating against in opposition. His references to the 'Galway Tent,' were aways in relation to the practice of 'Jobs for the Boys.' Considering who to vote for at the time, I was taken in by Kenny's apparent sincerity and it was a bitter lesson later to discover it was all a lie. So if he is the leader of Fine Gael then by extension, they are all like him, that is they not to be trusted.

But liking and trusting are two different emotions and it makes me wonder which of those emotions decides the ordinary citizen faced with the ballot box. Even after his credible defense of his time in Government yesterday on radio, I still don't know if I'd trust Bertie. But I neither like nor trust Kenny so I'd probably vote Bertie instead because I like him.

The Homelessness Industry

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Last Christmas we were told that, "€30,000 a year is spent for every homeless person, (http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/30000-a-year-spent-for-every-homeless-person-30804910.html). That amounts to €577 a week or €2,300 a month for each and every homeless person in the State!!!

WHAT? I'm struggling for words here! Why is someone who pockets €577 a week homeless? I brought up two kids, paid a mortgage and ran two cars for almost the same amount of money. But when you read the article you find that the middlemen are the ones pocketing the dough. 

The Department of the Environment and the HSE together spend more than €78m of your tax money to assist the estimated 2,663 people who are currently broadly described as "homeless" but the aforementioned homeless don't get that money. It is given to hotel owners who take them in and the inevitable "Charities" have their snouts in the trough as well. There are now 23 individual charities working in the area of homelessness headquartered in Dublin alone and that's a lot of snouts.

Registering as a charity in Ireland is a matter of who you know, not what you know but if you do know the right people then it is a tax-free ride at the citizen's expense. You do not have to tell anyone what you spend your grants on so all you need to do is mouth the right platitudes once or twice a year, keep your head down and pay yourself richly for fuck-all. 

With the kind of funds currently available, if you just gave it directly to the true homeless people the problem would disappear overnight, right? Well no, because you see the charities and all of their leeches would then be out of work and they would become homeless instead.

Mad, isn't it?

The Knotty Problem of Islam

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Taken in isolation, the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices and the subsequent murders at the Jewish shop are to be condemned because unarmed civilians were gunned down by what can only be described as lunatic fanatics armed to the teeth. Those guys were cowards not martyrs.

It is far too easy for us here though to believe this kind of thing could not happen on our turf. One in every seventy people in Ireland claim to be of the Muslim faith. How or why they have chosen to come to this cold and wet Atlantic outpost is not at all clear but many have fled persecution in their homelands. They have brought with them their culture, food preferences, languages and religion and are free to do so. Indeed our Constitution protects their rights in this regard.

Contrast that with many countries in the Middle East where you can be physically assaulted on arrival for wearing the Christian cross around your neck. In most Muslim countries, peoples from the western democracies are tolerated because of their money or expertise but frankly, they are not wanted there. Muslim clerics warn of the dangers of being "infected" by free fun-loving westerners and our kind are routinely kept far away from the local population, particularly their women. Could you imagine us insisting on that regime for Muslims here?

Dr. Ali Selim, spokesperson for Irish Muslims, was very vocal about the Paris atrocities issuing dark threats to any Irish publication who reprinted the "Charlie" cartoons. While stating that Muslims are tolerant he claims that the cartoons give offense to them. But offense is something that is taken not given. The majority of Irish people would not take offense at such a thing. Unflattering images of Our Lord and elders of the Catholic Church are routinely published in our media and some people like that and some don't. That is the nature of the freedoms we citizens have earned. 

But Dr. Selim doesn't seem to truly understand what it all means. He says he supports freedom but I don't believe his definition of freedom is not the same as ours. Irish people are FREE to convert to Islam but Muslims in their own countries are not free to convert to Catholicism. There are about the same number of Catholics as there are Muslims in today's world. Catholics believe their God is the one true God while Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad has shown them the one true God. In that sense it is a stand-off. 

We Irish though can be dubious about things that we don't understand and have various levels of resentment buried in our National DNA. While we are rightly viewed internationally as generous and welcoming we can equally develop a short fuse for things we feel threatened by. Currently we offer an easy tolerance of others practicing any religion they choose and indeed we hear many people now on the media who profess to believe in no form of religion. Not too long ago such views would have been unacceptable here. 

Fundamentalists of the Islamic faith believe we are 'infidels' as they call us, so we are no better than dogs and this justifies unarmed christian civilians being gunned down on the basis of Jihad or holy war. Deep down then, they appear to view us as inferiors who must convert to their view of the world or be murdered. Now that, I suggest, is truly offensive. Worse than offensive though, it is damned dangerous. Muslim terrorist attacks around the world are carried out because they feel they have a right to do so. That right is conferred on them because of  a twisted interpretation by their elders and justified because we in the West are unbelievers. 

If that was the end of it though, it would be a no-brainer. Just arrest all of the Muslims and send them home. But then there is the actions of America in their self-proclaimed role as the "World's Policeman." Since the turn of the century and before, the Americans have systematically undermined and then overthrown the Governments of several Muslim countries. Their ham-fisted approach in each case has left devastation in its wake. Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are now ungovernable and the rest of the middle-east is tethering on the brink. Hundreds of thousands of young men are left without either a living or a future and are easy prey for the radical elders of Islam. Hatred of the West was spawned on all our behalves by American military action against them in their own countries and the backlash is now coming home to roost. 

We in Ireland have not had any experience yet of radical Muslim action and indeed, in recent years I have met and befriended some Muslims here in Cork. You'll meet good ones and bad ones as with anything else. But even though one of the guys I met was an Arsenal supporter, I was willing to treat him as just another guy but if he'd thumped me for being a Christian I would most certainly have got back up and returned the compliment. And what would that prove?

Where does that leave me then? I'm sixty, white and Irish living in my own country. I do not support what America is doing in its own interests around the world but I also condemn radical Muslims for what they do. As Christians I believe we have a responsibility in Europe, (and therefore Ireland too), to the unfortunates refugees from the Middle East and we should take some of those poor people in. But let's not be fools for the worst of them either.