Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Winter arrives unexpectedly... weatherwise in Nova Scotia and financially in Ireland

So there I was the other day, talking to the Queen Dad on the phone, rhapsodising about the benign long term forecast for Nova Scotia for December....

... and here I am tonight, sitting listening to the blizzard wailing outside the house, wondering what the hell happened to our balmy Fall.

Nova Scotia weather. Bah.

Stingier than a Fianna Fail recessionary government.

First off. A big shout out to all my Irish public sector friends who got royally shafted in today's budget. I reckon if I was still working there, I would have taken a hit in my pay of almost EU9,000 per annum.

That is a sum not to be sneezed at.

There are arguments for and against how it all happened and whose fault it was which I am not going to get into (because I'm not qualified to speak on it), but I guess partnership is reaping the whirlwind it sowed when benchmarking took a second bite at the revenues.

Still.

It's not nice to be an essential service provider and get yourself kicked in the nuts because a shower of selfish greedy bankers and property developers (who have plenty stashed in an offshore account for just this eventuality) messed everything up for everyone.

If I were a nurse or a guard now, I'd be keeping a keen eye out for those boyos entering my sphere of influence.

I would.

3 comments:

mylescorcoran said...

€9000 pa? No way! How much were you earning before you left?

(The sliding scale is 5% for the first €30,000 then 7.5% for the next €40,000 and then 10% on the next €55,000. You have to be on €115,000 pa to lose 9000 extra in the cuts. Ignoring changes in bands, levies and all that jazz.)

Queenie said...

I was including all that jazz. The day I make 115k euro per annum I will have won the lotto.

mylescorcoran said...

That's what I thought. We're only here to serve the people after all, right?