You'll have noticed that we have a Budget to endure later today.
We'll be updating on the main points this afternoon. But for all the hype, we're not expecting anything world-changing. Maybe we'll be proved wrong, but this Budget will be more about laying out an election manifesto, rather than anything more substantial.
Apart from anything else, there's not much the government can do right now. After all, it may not be in power come the summer. So any big changes suggested by Alistair Darling this afternoon are hypothetical.
The real budget will come after the election. It's only then that we'll get any idea of how – or even if – the government is going to try to tackle Britain's massive debts.
One thing's for sure, we probably won't be following Ireland's example any time in the near future. And that's good news for anyone holding gold, as we'll explain in a moment...
Ireland had to slash public sector pay
There's a lot of talk of a 'spring of discontent' over here. British Airways workers have gone on strike. British Gas workers have just voted to do the same.
So the idea that we could slash public sector pay without facing a complete societal breakdown seems far-fetched to some. Yet over the water in Ireland, that's exactly what they've done.
Libby Purves wrote a piece in The Times this week, marvelling that the average public sector pay packet had been cut by 13.5%. And yet, despite plenty of grumbles, "Ireland has not ground to an indignant halt… the country has not imploded into the chaos of suicidal strikes, unburied bodies, closed schools and garbage mountains, which the UK or France would expect as a matter of course if a government did any such thing."
How are the Irish different to us, that they can accept such hardship, yet maintain a stiff upper lip? Purves wonders if it's down to a stronger sense of community. Or perhaps Irish civil servants have a better understanding that "a secure and pensionable job is a privilege". Or maybe, she says, the Irish are just nicer than us.
It's fun to indulge in cod philosophising about cultural differences. But it's also nonsense. The reality behind Ireland's apparently meek acceptance of a grim situation is nothing to do with national characteristics. It's far more prosaic than that. The Irish realised that whatever they did, they were stuffed. And one major reason for that is the euro.
There is no easy way out for Ireland. They don't have their own central bank, so they can't devalue their currency as Britain has. So they have a choice. They can take their medicine, in the form of slashed public spending and improved productivity. That means deflation, unemployment, and falling house prices, until the imbalances of the credit bubble are corrected.
Or they could abandon the euro, and swap it for the 'punt mark II'. That would devalue their currency all right. But the hit would come all at once. The punt II would collapse against the euro. Ireland would effectively turn into Iceland overnight.
