Would I lie to you?

After weeks of telling us that auction politics is bad for us the Taoiseach gave us a big dollop of the bad stuff last Saturday night. Tax cuts and spending commitments galore even if many of them are reheated from 2002 and even 1997 in some cases.

Of course he mentioned absolutely no time frame for the increases or whether or not any change in economic conditions would cause the whole lot to be reneged on.

It is like visiting your in-laws who are telling you not to eat fatty food, and then they give you a huge sticky gateau for dinner. No meat, no veg, just cake. Let's take a look at the main ones in detail.


2% off PRSI: Does the Taoiseach even know what is the difference between PRSI and income tax? PRSI is meant to fund pension and social insurance related, meanwhile the party suggested they would increase €300 per week, how do they plan to fund it? And how does this link up with Seamus Brennan's comments about perhaps having mandatory pensions

And he didn't mention if employers PRSI contributions will have to increase to compensate. Can't see that as going down well with employers.

Index linking: This would be most welcome but why did his government not do that for the first 3 years of this term? And the link to increases in "wages"? What does that meant exactly. How is that measured? Is it linked to the levels in the national agreements? How does that link to the private sector? Or is it linked to the price of a haircut?

Doubling Ph.D graduates: Really? You can commit to double the numbers in the intake but you can't guarantee the output unless the government is going to go crazy with grade inflation as well as everything else.

Pensions up to €300 per week: If inflation averages 5% per year then more than half of that increase will mean nothing to pensioners as it is eating up by general price increases. And what about heating and fuel costs? If the government had committed to program of grants for changing the heating sources to renewable sources for older people who frankly need the heat. And it would reduce the cost to them of heating in the winter.

I suspect that FF strangely have walked lock, stock and barrel into a trap. Either they lied to the media, and a media that is still smarting from

So, they lied to us for the last few weeks and they lied to the press, they lied And somehow we're meant to believe them now? Who would believe them now? The FF manifesto is One lie too many.

It is all one big lie too many. When the FF party campaigned in 2002 they said things they knew were not true, those aren't just broken promises they were in fact lies. They knew then, and we know it now. The promises from last weekend were again lies.

And who would believe them now?