Todays Independent

For anyone who reads the independent online, todays homepage is pretty interesting. It looks kind of like the govenrment had realised that the thousands and thousands of people who can't afford to buy a house may actually vote in the next election. My God Bertie, thousands of pissed of people who might vote Fine Gael. Feck, they may even vote for the Greens.
The top story is on the Bailey brothers. As moves are made to stop them running a business again, there is a very clear stance being took. The government doesn't like these tax dodgers making a fortune in the building industury. And of course the Flood Tribubal, which really did nothing except waste taxes, showed us all that the government does not take brown envelopes of cash any more. I'd say they accept visa, but given the fiasco in getting broadband, e-voting, a centralised Garda computer system etc working, I doubt they are capable.

The bottom story, Ahern fury at property speculators shows the U turn. No more look at the building, isn't it great, look at all the Celtic tiger money, aren't we a great government. Now it's oh, look at those bad people selling development land to make money. No, we never encouraged that. Even back when we did accept brown envelopes.
So the government is trying to look like they were worried about all the people who can't buy houses afterall.

There are another two stories, Aer Lingus sees profits soar. Of course, that's why we're selling it now, it's started to make money. And now that it's making money we'll still fork out for pensions for all those people who went on strike every time we booked a holiday.

Last, but by no means least, is the insurance companies. €1.22 billion in profit, and insurance set to rise. There was €624 million made on motor insurance alone, if we give an estimate of 2 million vehicles on the road (based on the only figure I could find on the web), then we paid €312 too much per vehicle in insurance this year. This story is nicely balanced out by the 2 ads for Quinn Direct insurance.