Sauce for the goose does not equal sauce for the gander
I think we are to be good citizens and do as the government says …
Just not as they do.
The government ‘talks the talk but does not walk the walk’.
When it seemed all Southerners were going up North to shop, to avail of lower prices, we were told by at least one government minister that we should ‘do the patriotic thing’ and shop down south. There are many examples of the government and its agencies going outside the state for services, though these services are available within the state. One example is Fianna Fail bringing in a US consultant to develop their new website!
Again in the recent past, members of the government encouraged us to ’shop around’ to get the best price. Seems John O’Donoghue could have done the same and saved us tax payers money. Jennifer Bray in the Sunday Tribune recently gave examples – O’Donoghue racked up a massive €8,439 on car hire on a plush trip to Cannes, but local car-rental firm Avis verified that a Mercedes E Class could have been hired for no more than €1,055 for these four nights. We, the tax-payer paid €990 per night for his hotel when rooms were available in the exact same hotel at €280 per night.
O’Donoghue’s latest example of over-spending was his limousine ride between terminals at Heathrow airport costing approx €450, when the rest of us can avail of free airport transportation, which takes only a few minutes. The excuse trotted out is that ‘officials booked it’!
Another example is The Equal Status Acts 2000 to 2004 which prohibits discrimination on nine grounds: gender, marital status, family status, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, race, member of the Traveller community. This act applies in employment. This act applies in education. This act applies in your local pub. The broadest general exemption to the Act is for anything mandated by an Act of the Oireachtas or EU law. Thus whilst ordinary people have to uphold the act, the government has automatic exemption.
Sauce for the goose does not equal sauce for the gander.
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The recent rugby scandal which “outed” Harlequin’s coach, Dean Richards, started by going after the player (Williams) who supposedly “enabled” the incident by feigning injury. So, here’s an idea… let’s go after the person who booked this… let’s take Conor Lenihan’s stance and say “it wasn’t O’Donoghue who is at fault… it was an “official” who booked it”… let’s go after that “official” and see if human nature follows its usual course. My bet is that it will, and that the “official” will very quickly sing out about whose instructions it was booked under, or the fate that befell anyone in the department whose bookings failed to live up to the minister’s requirements!
Den 15, given all the cutbacks, I would like a little more openness about the expenses WE pay for OUR government representatives. I’d prefer OUR limited money to be used for such things as book grants for schools, grants which have just now been eliminated. If the government is serious about developing a Smart economy, eliminating school book grants isn’t a good start, in my opinion.
Walk the walk, rather than talk the talk.