Tag Archives: bludget

Some thoughts on budget 2013 and why it’s so sneaky

The expression ‘at least Dick Turpin wore a mask’ is used to describe the times somebody robs you blind right to your face. This week I’m sure almost every person in the country could identify with that statement as they watched the twin forces of Michael Noonan and Brendan Howlin unleash cuts that hurt just about everybody, at least they didn’t discriminate. A few weeks ago I wrote about the way that politicians will hammer regular people always and without fail, a few of you wrote back saying it didn’t have to be like that, and my response was (and is) that it remains the fastest and easiest road to take, which is why people of every political ideology end up doing it.

Bludget 2013

The term ‘bludget’ is from a garbled sentence made by Marian Finucane when she went to say ‘budget’. That’s the fact of the term, what I prefer to think of it as (and in my head I rule supreme) is as a mash up of ‘bludgeon’ and ‘budget’ because it tends to be a good combination of the two, a budget with a financial beating thrown in. The budget will become virtually all of the financial news this week, the big changes for most of us will be the new property tax, and then dealing with whatever stealth method that is used to make us less well off while not ‘raising tax’. This charade is old and well versed, for instance, a few years ago the tax rates weren’t raised but the bands were lowered meaning you would start to pay the higher rate of tax earlier, that higher rate of tax now kicks in at €32,800 while the average industrial wage is about €35,000. So if you are ‘just average’ in earnings, for about 10% of that you are ‘above average’ in terms of the tax rate you’ll pay, which is where the rate more than doubles from 20% to 41%.