It’s a tradition as old as the budget itself. Santa and/or Scrooge takes a trip to Donnybrook to face the listeners. Good use of the license fee. A healthy sign of our robust democracy at work. And there’s always the hope that Santa or Scrooge will be tripped up by a listener.

This year I tuned in as I always do and found that Santa had brought his favourite elf with him too so listeners had the chance to interrogate two ministers! After the budget, the smell of blood was in the air and we all wanted answers.

And then. And then. Was there pain? Was there blood and skin flying? I wish I could say yes but a sense of paralysis hovered over the whole thing. I found myself not caring for each caller’s problem. I had heard it all before. The answers were rehearsed but what’s worse, the questions were too.

Was there a reason for this? 

Some of it is fear. A post-Reynolds, post Aras-gate may have sent programme makers running for the hills marked ‘safety first’. Or the government was so afraid of real dialogue with the Citizens of the state, they demanded questions before hand.

Or previous Santas were better actors and could read their lines as if it was real speech. 

But we need more. The budget was so severe that real people will feel real pain. Real pain is raw. It makes us think. It makes us want to hold those in power to account. It makes us ask real questions and demand real answers.

Real pain asks us to listen intently. It doesn’t have us switching off or tuning out. It asks us to look for alternatives. It asks us to be active citizens in a democracy. 

Life isn’t a bad Christmas movie where lines are clichéd, scenes are staged and we know the ending from the opening line. Life is real. Cliches and wooden acting are for bad movies and budget phone-ins that tell us nothing about what is really going on.