CrisisJam

Criticism, analysis, response: The BudgetJam live blog. Email your comments here or comment below.

1.32 From Miriam Cotton, many thanks:

Hundreds of people gathered outside Leinster House yesterday evening to protest against the €6 billion of cuts and tax increases contained in Budget 2011. By Alison Spillane

[Photo by Carole Craig]

I am not Irish. I live in Canada. I do research in Ireland and I have many friends and colleagues here, so I have been following closely the current political and economic situation. I am not directly affected by the terms of the latest austerity budget, and thus, I don't have the vested interest in its outcome that most readers of this blog do. Nevertheless, I write this intentionally as an outsider, to share one outsider's perspective.

Criticism, analysis, response: The BudgetJam live blog. Email your comments here or comment below.

(This article originally appeared on Michael Taft's Notes on the Front)

The ‘creepy’ in this budget is in the detail which the Government didn’t reveal.

Social welfare rates will fall by 4 per cent (except for pensioners). Regarding low-average earners this is what the budget tables tell us.

Claiming Our Future this morning launched an emergency petition to save the minimum wage. Their initial aim is to collect 5000 signatures in 72 hours. You can add your name here. The full text of their appeal is below.

Criticism, analysis, response: The BudgetJam live blog. Email your comments here or comment below.

22:35 Remember that Gavan Titley, late of this parish, is a guest on tonight's edition of Tonight with Vincent Browne, later on TV3. I'll be back at 7am to earwig in on more RTE and Newstalk post-budget myths. I'll leave you with this from tonight's support liveblogger, Mary Gilmartin:

Good news for a change. While Iceland was one of the first countries after the collapse of Lehman Brothers to get an IMF bailout, it is, according to this Reuters report published in the Irish Times today, starting to come out of recession.

This will be a week of protests so to help you organise your calendar we've collected a list of events below. We'll be updating it throughout the week, so if we've left anything out please mail us - budgetjam@gmail.com - with details.