Ireland has just had a two day budget. It was an inevitably dispiriting experience like watching the X Factor final but with the added horror of knowing that everybody loses. There wasn’t even an appearance by Louis Walsh comparing Enda Kenny to a young Rick Astley to lighten the mood. No one gets to enjoy the hail of sparks and cloud of dry ice that greets the crowning of an X Factor winner either. Instead, we all have to sit glumly in the corner and think about what we’ve done. 

One of the inconvenient facts of my current existence, aside from being so pale that I am practically translucent, is that in order to be with the woman I love (cue emotional string section), I need to live in Dublin. Back in the days of the Celtic Tiger when leprechauns danced about the place throwing gold at builders, that wouldn’t have been such a problem. But right now, Ireland feels about three days away from being purchased by a cartel of rich Texans and converted into Blarneyland, the world’s biggest begorrah-themed amusement park. 

Still, Ireland has many things going for it including: Tayto crisps, The Rubberbandits, the real-life Lovely Girls competition that is The Rose Of Tralee, the fact that people are, by and large, a lot nicer than in London and, of course, the craic. Unfortunately, in these straightened economic times, the good craic is quite hard to come by and many people are forced to settle for the value craic imported from the Ukraine by Lidl. 

In the absence of a permanent job offer, juicy freelance contract or a reply from the good folks at From Our Own Correspondent to my suggestion that they appoint me as their man in Dublin, it can be easy to forget that I’m even in Ireland at all.

Some days, following friends in England on Twitter and listening to 5Live, I can feel like a boy in a British bubble. But then I look out of the window, read Irish on the street signs and watch a couple of tracksuit clad lads pass by riding on a pony and trap. It’s a cliche but it’s a cliche I see at least twice a day.  

And after the regressive measures announced in the budget, steered through by the second most ludicrous coalition in Europe (Cameron and Clegg just edge it thanks to their homoerotic buddy movie antics), it feels like images that seem ripped from a bad movie about the suffering Irish might become depressingly common. Fingers-crossed there’ll be jobs for us as green-coated attendants in Blarneyland. I’ll man the Potatocoaster.