The limits of 'Sunday Times’ snarkiness

SUNDAY TIMES Ireland Editor Frank Fitzgibbon has more media resources than most when it comes to putting his point of view or developing his own agendas. In the paper he has his own weekly half-page of space to tell us of the world according to Frank.

It is usually lightweight stuff, occasionally humorous where he focuses on some aspect of the week's news, rightly often poking fun at the inconsistencies of those who wield power and influence in Official Ireland today: that corrupt, bankrupt state on the edge of Europe, run by muppets who just won't give up the reins of power.

Frank's columns are also often an exercise in snark (‘sarcastic snide journalism’) not satire or comic reporting but just plain snarky. It makes for interesting reading on a Sunday but will it help solve any problems on Monday? I don't think so, Frank.

This week, Frank has a go at Sinn Fein's 2011 Budget submission, There is a Better Way, and has Photoshopped the heads of Arthur Morgan, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin and Gerry Adams onto the Marx Brothers under the caption “Sinn Féin Slapstick”.

The party has upset Frank by proposing €4billion in revenue-raising to meet the Budget deficit. Fitzgibbon's headline is “€4billion tax hike is a bad joke”.

But he seems to have forgotten some important details. The first is that his paper's front-page headline just a few weeks ago, on October 10^th in fact, informed us:

Income tax to rise by up to 2%.

Citing a “senior Government source”, the Sunday Times reported that a 1% increase in the 20% rate and a 2% increase in the 41% rate. There was no snark about tax hikes that day from Frank Fitzgibbon.

For the record, Sinn Féin are not proposing to increase either tax rate, Frank, and so the middle-income and low-income workers will not be affected by Sinn Féin's proposals to reduce tax reliefs from 41% to 20% and a new 48% tax on high-income earners – individuals earning over €100,000, who make up less than 5% of the workforce, and many of whom enjoy generous tax breaks already.

Yesterday's Sunday Times also reported on the front page that a Red C poll commissioned by them found that “two out of three” voters don't want to pay water charges. Sinn Féin is opposed to these stealth taxes but this is also ignored by Frank. More than half (54%) of those polled favoured income tax increases to other charges, so maybe he is out of step with his readers.

Or maybe it is that Sinn Féin's proposals involve more fairness in the tax code, which means high-income earners paying more tax, many of whom have contributed little to developing the Irish economy but have done a lot to harm it.

Maybe Frank doesn't want tax fairness; maybe he wants the same old system so he can write the same old way from the sidelines about the same old muppets who got us here in the first place.

Maybe.

• See also: ‘At least one party gets it’: Michael Taft looks at Sinn Féin’s Budget plan