A bee in the bonnet

Here's a good one! You'll like this, being the fiscally-minded types that you are.

MOTORISTS OF IRELAND (Henceforth MOI): Very kind of you to say so. We always look forwards to your little nuggets of information.

MYSELF: Well, nugget me this. Some fine upstanding fellows have done a few off-the-cuff calculations and deduced that the average Irish motorist - "people like your good selves" - stuffs €2,000 each year into the public coffers in taxes. VAT, VRT, 60-odd per cent tax on petrol . . . the list goes on. Them cunning fellers in the Department of Finance have their hands so deep in your pockets they could scratch the ankles off you.

MOI: But that seems reasonable, wouldn't you think? We need all the money we can get to subsidise the health, education and social welfare systems, do we not? And we fail to see how you, of all people, can complain. Are you not a devout socialist?

MYSELF: Jaysus, not that word. Bertie has us all tarred with the mucky brush of association with him. Anyway, 'tis long discredited, the aul' socialism. Even Freddie Engels warned Karlito Marx about it -€"the equal division of labour and property is grand on paper, but when there's raw cash involved . . ." So, no more socialism for me. Joe Higgins rushes in where Engels feared to tread, to paraphrase a smarter man than I.

MOI: So, what is your objection?

MYSELF: Well, it's like this. I don't mind coughing up, as long as it's spent properly. You wouldn't be too pleased if a mechanic you paid up front to do vital work on your transmission and brakes blew the cash on fancy lights and go-faster stripes instead, would you?

MOI: No, but we're not seeing the point you're making.

MYSELF: The money, your money, it's all being wasted on pap. Don't you see? It's not being spent where it's needed, it's doled out to consultants and advisors and ministers, an exercise in presentation and trying to sucker us into thinking everyone involved is great. All mouth and no trousers, so they are. I reckon we get rid of politicians altogether, have the country run by the civil servants. What use are politicos, other than at blowing their own trumpets? What does some publican or lawyer or accountant with a few rich friends and a mate in the local cumainn know about running a country, eh? Answer me that.

MOI: But what about all the new roads, what about the great work of the NRA?

MYSELF: The who, begod? What's Charlton Heston and his gang of gun-toting buddies got to do with it? By Jaysus, there'll be murders if I find out my tax dollars are funding them bloody-thirsty lunatics.

MOI: Calm down, you're confusing matters. We refer, of course, to the National Roads Association, not the US rifle fraternity. There's no guns involved, to our knowledge.

MYSELF: Ah, right, my mistake. Still, I've often had me suspicions about that NRA. All that cash poured into their coffers each year to spend as they please. Nobody asked me for my opinion, did they? Nobody asked me if I knew of some other crowd of navvies who'd do it for half the price in half the time. Which, as a matter of fact, I do. Navajos, I think they like to be known as, being Indian.

MOI: (Think about it, let it lie.) My, my, we do have a bee in our bonnet today, don't we?

EDITOR aka Iriseoir (I.): Ahem, excuse me for butting in, but may I inquire of you, Mr Doyle, as to whether or not this is going anywhere?

MYSELF: Good question. It appears to be motoring slothfully towards an inevitable fiendish denouement, one centred on an unutterably cringeworthy trilingual quip about a conversation between Moi, Myself and I.

I: As I thought. That really is dreadfully taxing, dreadfully taxing altogether. Perhaps you'd best desist.

MYSELF: Perhaps I'd best.