Journal 5: The Budget

I've decided today to compare and contrast how the budget was reported last week (in the Herald AM) and the front page of today's Irish Independent, to show how the fallout of the budget has been handled by the country's newspapers.

Last week on Wed 15th of October the Herald AM ran with the headline "What are you looking you so pleased about?", with an accompanying picture of Brian Lenihan holding the controversial budget and smiling. The front page also has bullet points outlining some of the main points outlined in the budget, e.g "Families face €2bn in new tax" and the most controversial point: "Over 70s lose medical cards". This is the main story as obviously the economic crisis is the most important event at the moment and the budget has been brought forward by a number of weeks for just this reason. The Herald as a newspaper is clearly displeased with the measures laid out in the budget and so the paper has printed a headline deriding the Minister for Finance's content appearance.

Nearly a week later, and the country is in chaos. The Irish Independent today prints a picture of Finian McGrath, a Fianna Fáil backbencher who has decided to resign over the continuing 'medical cards fiasco' which is eroding Brian Cowen's Dáil majority, and a larger photo of Gardaí arresting a student in UCD protesting Brian Lenihan's arrival at the college over the €600 increase in college registration fees - a move which I discern as a smokescreen for the arrival of actual college fees. The headline reads "Independents on brink of abandoning Cowen" with a sub-heading that says "Others likely to follow", indicating the possibility of further bad news for the Taoiseach. On both of these papers there are no BP1s, which has been largely the case for the past week as this Budget has created a fallout which is consuming the country with outrage, anger , resignations, protests, denials, and generally a crazy political debate amongst anyone who has an opinion in this country (and a lot of us do).

Apart from the papers I heard a very impassioned and moving speech from the actress Brenda Fricker on Newstalk 106, outlining her outrage at the government over the over-70s medical cards decision... She pretty much summed up the feelings of hundreds of thousands - everything from bewilderment to incredulity to outrage, anger and disgust.

More on everything in the week to come.