RadioReview:Media-wise, it was the most previewed Budget ever - which meant a testing time for radio listeners who tuned into news and current affairs programmes.
Criminal overuse of the expression "the country's awash with money" was becoming nearly as blood pressure-raising as the talk of Brian Cowen's "generosity" - as if the Minister for Finance was giving away his own money instead of redistributing our hard-earned taxes.
As the week went on, RTÉ's preview coverage in particular, especially those mini-features intended to show how Cowen's decisions might change people's lives, plumbed ever dafter depths. On Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1, Wednesday) John Murray, in yet another item on the woes of first-time property buyers, talked to a 23-year-old student who - poor thing - had no hope of getting on "the property ladder" unless he went in with his brother and sister for a mortgage. Instead of briskly telling him to cop himself on - he's 23 and there's a great big world out there where he should be heading instead of dreaming of a semi-d - Murray persisted in plodding through this young man's property angst. As this was recorded in a coffee shop it was heard against the noisy backdrop of the whirring sounds of a cappuccino machine - perfectly in keeping with the frothiness of the previews. There has to be a more meaningful way to cover the now seriously over-hyped Budget. Ditching so many preview fillers would be a start.
Far more enlightening this week were those reports on how our money is being woefully mismanaged - such as the excellent report (Today with Pat Kenny, RTÉ Radio 1, Tuesday) on orthodontic services for children, where you'd be lucky to get your child on the end of a four-year waiting list. It'll be easy to spot the children of poorer parents in the future - they'll be the ones with gobs like ancient graveyards full of wonky tombstones.
All week the BBC's World Service has been running a fascinating and all-encompassing season called Generation Next, exploring what childhood means in different societies and cultures around the world and how legal, social and cultural frameworks separate children from adults. Discovery: Understanding the Teenage Brain (Monday, BBC World Service) attempted to explain why teenagers can be moody. It's all to do with brain development, apparently. Brains experience a growth spurt when puberty kicks in and grey matter accumulates in the front of the brain, the part which deals with judgment, organisation and planning. But teenagers continue to use the more emotional areas to the rear of the brain to process information, which might, the programme suggested, explain all that door-slamming.
In Analysis (Tuesday, BBC World Service) the experience of childhood in Europe's poorest country, Moldova, was explored. One in six adults has left to work elsewhere, leaving thousands of children either alone or with relatives. The report found child-centred rhetoric at government level which wasn't matched by action on the ground, where many Moldovan children are abandoned, impoverished and, as a Unicef report discovered, easy pickings for human traffickers.
Alan Torney returned with a new series of his excellent Whistleblowers (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday). His interviewee this week was Mukesh Kapila, who was head of the United Nations in Sudan in 2004 when he revealed to the world the genocide in Darfur. He did it against his employer's wishes and knowing that it would be "the final coffin in my career". For months he'd been lobbying the UN Security Council to support Darfur on a political level but was advised that the UN preferred a humanitarian response - something he knew would not be enough. So he went to the BBC, flying to Nairobi to contribute to BBC Radio 4's Today programme. His message was stark: "This is the worst crisis in the world today, this is ethnic cleansing, this is the greatest humanitarian crisis and I don't know why the world isn't doing more about it." The radio broadcast did what all his lobbying of his UN superiors couldn't do. "Almost overnight, Darfur became headline news," he told Torney, whose interview style perfectly suits his subject. His whistleblowers know their own story and need no help telling it, so he keeps his intervention to a minimum.
Kapila talked of his decision to whistleblow in the context of accountability and the necessity of people in authority to do their job. He was, he said, "exercising the privilege of office to make a difference" - a view of people in power worth keeping in mind when considering the impact of the Budget.
