It's been a while since my last post. Just letting the days go by I suppose. Maybe it's because I'm becoming very drained by my commuting situation. The train bridge is still not fixed so I'm relegated to the bus still.
I must say that Dublin Bus has done a surprisingly good job of putting on plenty of buses to serve our town, but it still adds 45 minutes each way to my commute and also means I have to leave an hour earlier to avoid traffic. If I arrive at the bus stop anytime past 7 am, then the traffic on the highway into town is way too heavy and it becomes a nightmare. Oh well, I'm sort of getting used to the early mornings but I do yearn for the train to come back.
On other notes here in Ireland, it looks like there will be a public sector strike coming soon. Public sector workers have been told they'll have to take a 7% pay cut to 'do their bit' during the recession. This on top of the 5-7% pension levy they also had to pay. While Ireland does apparently have the highest-paid public sectors in Europe (and by the looks of things, the most bloated), this is a bit steep. I'm not public sector but this still raise my hackles. Especially when AIB Bank, which is now effectively owned by the government and taxpayer and something like €80 billion in the hole, has just voted themselves a 3% pay rise.
I also wouldn't mind paying my share if I saw a solid government plan for getting out of this deficit. Taxing your way out of a recesssion doesn't work, neither does continually cutting wages. Let's face it, this country is in a very bad state, and the government has no clue how to get out of it. Banana Republic economics all around.
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