Eat, sleep and die: a recipe for life in 2014?

RADIO REVIEW:IT HAS BECOME a bit like an episode of Countdown. The clock is ticking. Who will do their sums first? Who will get the right answers? Are there any right answers? And will Ireland meet its budget deficit target of 3 per cent of GDP by 2014? Pick a number, vowel or consonant . . .

Before Labour and Fine Gael were given access to the Department of Finance's maths books this week, Ivan Yates asked Fine Gael's Damien English on Monday's The Breakfast Show(Newstalk 106-108, weekdays) when his party would release its budget proposals, and if they were indulging in pre-Budget "smoke and mirrors".

English replied: “I’m after saying to you twice. We will absolutely publish our details. We have no problem doing that whatsoever. But give us a chance. Let us get the figures first and do the sums. Like, c’mon! The Government haven’t published anything, and they know the figures.”

Yates asked Labour’s Joan Burton about Fine Gael’s reported three-to-one spending cuts over tax measures. Here’s what followed. Burton: “Some of this stuff sounds very like the Nigella Lawson school of budget cookery.” Yates: “I’m very fond of Nigella.” Burton: “You add in a little bit of this, and a little bit of that . . .” Yates: “She sticks her fingers in and licks it . . .” Burton: “This is the real economy. This is about people’s real jobs and real lives and getting people back on their feet.” SMS for Ivan Yates: it was a little too early in the morning for that.

Following on from the recent panel discussion on The John Murray Show(RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) about the movie Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,Arts Tonight (RTÉ Radio 1, Mondays) with Vincent Woods discussed Enron, a play about the fall of the US energy giant, which bombed on Broadway but has just had a Dublin Theatre Festival run at the Gaiety. Woods said the play "has raised questions about the world economic crash, and how we respond to it socially, politically and artistically, and how we move forward."

Socially, politically, artistically and every other -ly: that was a tall order, even for a panel as distinguished (as Woods described it) as this.

The behavioural economist Pete Lunn was the most refreshing panellist. He liked the trajectory of the play, from razzmatazz to a lonely prison: “As an economist, it was a bit of a busman’s holiday for me.” The journalist Aditya Chakrabortty noted the journey by those off the stage: “In the second half, the mood in the theatre during Enron just curdled completely.”

Woods finished by asking Helen Meany, editor of Irish Theatre Magazine, about the cuts in arts funding, a staple question on arts shows. Meany replied: "One of the heartening things that's happened in the past year was the development of the National Campaign for the Arts,which has been really,

I think, very vocal and has a high profile and is trying to suggest to people that culture has a value in Ireland . . . We don’t just get up, eat, sleep, go to bed, make money and die. We are sentient human beings who care about other things, making meaning, making sense of what it is to be alive in this culture at the moment. I think theatre is part of that, but also our novelists, our visual artists, and they’re working at a different level. It’s symbolism and it’s imagery and it’s not necessarily quantifiable, but it is incredibly valuable, and I think it is one of the things that we can take some hope from, after all this very gloomy discussion.”

The National Campaign for the Arts doesn’t have to suggest how important culture is. We know that already. And Meany is right: nor do those who work in business or financial services or construction just get up, eat, sleep, go to bed, make money and die. Their life’s work is not so easily quantifiable either, whether they work with bar charts, with Petri dishes or washing dishes rather than with symbolism and imagery.

David Begg, general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, was also talking about fairness and the Government's budget deficit target on Tuesday's The Last Word(Today FM, weekdays). He favours a tax based on land value as opposed to a property tax: "You get a situation with people in old age who have become asset rich but cash poor." (And let's not forget younger homeowners who are both asset and cash poor.)

Begg was back on Morning Ireland(RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays). It was abuzz with the Economic and Social Research Institute's report on Thursday supporting Begg's argument that the Government should extend the 2014 budget deficit target. "It's the first crack in the establishment edifice," Begg said, overlooking all the cracks that have gone before. Just before nine o'clock, the presenter Cathal MacCoille said the programme had planned to talk to the European Commission but, in an eerie twist of fate, it too ran out of time.