Softening us up to make us hard?

WHILE THE Chilean miners were still half a mile underground, alive but waiting to be rescued, scores of people were closeted in rooms, feverishly analysing every twist and turn of the saga. They were not psychologists working to understand how best to help the trapped men retain their sanity, nor were they engineers refining the drilling route. They were scriptwriters, each hoping to be the first to pitch their screenplay to a major director and reap a harvest from the story of other people's misfortune and ultimate salvation.[private] There is no doubt that would-be dramatisers of our current crisis are busy collecting newspaper clippings and soundbites in preparation for the big production that will tell the tale of the Irish boom and bust. It would be good if we could see that future script now, and telescope in time the relentless and insidious leaching of the national spirit with 'revelation' after 'revelation' that things today are worse than yesterday, and that tomorrow will surely be worse still. While there is no doubt that the next Budget will be harsh, and all kinds of leaks about property tax and health and education cuts are more than likely to be borne out, we should not let this softening-up process make us into hardened mé-féiners. It is in the nature of the powerful to lean on the powerless. That is why there is so much emphasis on telegraphing cuts which will affect the bottom tier of society. What about the high earners? What about those who represent the people at a rate of salary and expenses that bear no relation to the experience of the average citizen? By all means let there be an examination of social welfare rates. Just as we see waste at the top of society, we can also see it at the bottom, in which people with no visible means of support other than social welfare enjoy a standard of living which the average working family would welcome. Let there be more rigorous assessment of eligibility for highly expensive one-on-one provisions such as SNAs. But we cannot hurt the genuinely poor and newly desperate. It is vital for the sake of rescuing some remnant of the social cohesion that our partisan boom destroyed that those at the top should be seen to pay their share, at a higher top rate of income tax. Some of it may be 'optics' but perception counts for an awful lot. The next government, and it can hardly come too soon, will have to shun all the mercs and perks trapping that are enraging the people. If there is to be a hair shirt, it must be seen to scratch all.[/private]