This letter in today’s Irish Independent gets it just about right
Never one to choose his words carefully, our Great Leader has announced that deferring the Government pay rises is “a good example of our goodwill” (Irish Independent, December 12).
Goodwill? Is it me or does this language suggest the actions of a kindly monarch who deigns to bestow favours, unasked and undeserved, on his lowly subjects?
Like Marie Antoinette’s people who might eat cake, we are a fortunate lot of peasants that Bertie would stoop to bless us with such signs of his goodwill.
I wonder was that the royal “we” he used?
Newsflash, Bertie — you were chosen by (some of) the Irish people to serve your country, and they would expect more from such a person than “goodwill”. On a salary of €270,000, the Taoiseach is no more a man of the people than was the Sun King. Not since the excesses of Versailles has so much been paid to so few for doing so little for so many.
DAVID ROBINSON
MAIN STREET, COLLON, CO LOUTH