Loose lips sink ships
Saturday October 11 2008
Well, next week is the Budget -- and that means that civil servants had to dust off the old "Ass and Cart" List.
Yes, this is the name given, since at least the 1930s, to the largely mythical concept of a catalogue of schemes and supports that could be scrapped in any time of fiscal stringency. The comfortable thing about the Ass and Cart List is that it contained precisely nothing that was precious to the Civil Service itself.
Hence, the minister of the day could happily red-pencil whole swathes of Ass and Carts, and the smiles remained pleasantly fixed on the faces of the senior Mandarins. No skin off their noses.
And then a remarkable thing happened. Opposition Finance Spokeswoman, Joan Burton of Labour, misheard the name one day and started referring in the Dail to the "Asgard List". This alternative name has now migrated into the media, so much so that the Asgard List was mentioned on RTE radio the other day.
At least the minister can't red-pencil the Asgard herself. Sadly, King Neptune has already taken care of that fine vessel. But what about the funds to get her raised from the bottom of the Bay of Biscay where she now languishes?
