EMISSIONS: Kilian Doyle's weekly gasket
I was speechless. I've got to give it to the silver-tongued devil. Moneybags McCreevy and his illusionary Budget had me completely lost for words. No tax on petrol? A mere 3 cents on diesel? Loads of extra dosh for roads? Was he mad? Had he picked up a joke script by accident? Or had someone set him up?
I scanned the face of De Boss' for a barely-suppressed snigger, waiting for him to crack up laughing any second. We all know they don't see eye to eye, but this was just childish . . .
Remember, Charlie is a man who has had to swop his champagne for a flagon of cider down by the canal, a chap who has been telling the world and his wife for months that there's no cash left, that it was good while it lasted but we've spent it all and it's time to go back to our rightful place of being Oirish and downtrodden.
"De boooom ish over," he proclaimed as we squirmed in apprehension, skin crawling with the thought of the sackcloths we'd be wearing, drawn tightly around our waists. (And to make matters worse, Charvet stopped making hairshirts and tight belts years ago.)
For all the squandering of wealth and conspicuous wastefulness of the past decade of devil-may-care prosperity, one lasting thing that we've spent cash on is cars, hundreds of thousands of them. And what do they all need? Fuel. Surely that's got to be the most obvious target for a man in need of a steady flow of extra cash, we thought? We're all screwed. There'll be a new bicycle under every Christmas tree in the land.
But then . . . nothing. Over 90 per cent of motorists exhaled simultaneously as he strode confidently along, ignoring the ever-so tempting 20 cent rise on a litre of petrol. All but the diesel mongers sighed the sigh of the pardoned. But those who reckoned they'd got away with it had another thing coming.
For he wasn't even getting warmed up yet. Thinking of buying a nice new 2-litre car next month? Have you got a spare two grand handy to pay the extra VRT? Ah, well. Need a service? Whack a few quid on top of your estimate to pay for the VAT. Need new tyres? Same again. Hoping for lower insurance when the sneaky 2 per cent stamp duty is abolished? Tough.
He's a bit of a geezer, is Charlie. Giving with one hand, pickpocketing with the other, smiling all the time and reassuring you that he's got everything under control. Would you trust this man with your money? I'd no more buy a second-hand car from him than let a crackhead mind my wallet and house keys while I got the Book of Revelations tattooed on my back by a blind dyslexic granny with Parkinson's Disease.
Take his magic trick of pulling €209 million for new roads seemingly out of nowhere. Just when we think all is not lost, he comes up with this little beauty. But then it dawns on us that Charlie's got a whole village of tollbooths ready and waiting to scrape every penny of it back into his treasure chest.
And then the coup de grâce . . . the sleveen waits for two days for the nation's temper to die down before shunting Environment Minister Martin Cullen out to announce a 12 per cent increase in car tax, the highest in a decade. I give up. What more is there to say?
Anyway, what am I complaining for? Sure, I could be a 40-cigs-a-day, diesel-driving pensioner with a massive monthly prescription bill, a yearning to buy my first house, a provisional driver's licence and a predilection for alcopops. Now there's something to look forward to . . .