Ireland the brave?

While Scotland cowers like a tim'rous beastie at the merest whiff of a health fanatic, and sporran-jockey Alastair Darling imports his country's cowardly nature to England with the sly introduction of the biggest duty rises in alcohol and tobacco for a decade, Ireland's Finance Minister is made of sterner stuff.

Big cuts in excise duties on alcohol have been announced in the Budget.

Duty on beer and cider falls by 12 cent, while there is a 14 cent drop in duty on a half-glass of spirits. A bottle of wine falls by 60 cent.

There will be no change in duties on tobacco as the Minister said the high price was giving rise to tobacco smuggling.

Give that man a pipe, deerstalker and violin for such detailed detective work.

At least Irish Finance Minister Brian Lenihan has finally recognised that the loss of €500m per annum is something that isn't going to be tackled by further increasing the disparity between Irish tobacco duties and others on the continent. Previous strategies have led to Ireland boasting the most draconian tobacco taxes in Europe, bar none.

Incredibly, anti-smoking nutters believed the way to tackle the problem would be to massively incentivise the motivation for smuggling with huge tax hikes.

Yet people still listen to these quite insane delusionists as if they have a valid and reasoned outlook on the tobacco issue.

Congratulations, Mr Lenihan, for getting a whiff of the common sense coffee. Now, if you could just apply the same logic to a smoking ban which is systematically killing off your world famous pub culture, and tourism into the bargain, your place as the saviour of the Irish economy would be set in stone.

Just a hunch, but I reckon Lenihan's keen, and brave, magnifying glass will be conveniently obscured when directed to focus on that particular elephant.