There is no way I know everything contained in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and any subsequent amendments between the Irish government and the ‘troika’. I am sure I am not alone in this. And that is at the core of the problem when it comes to drafting the budget. People I talk to just want to know what the score is in clear and understandable language and not in the double-speak of technocrats. Just plain and simple, so ‘we can get on with it’.

But whatever the message is and the decisions that are to be made regarding the Irish budget, they must be fair and equitable to all, and balanced between the needs of the people and the demands of the moneylenders. Burdens and sacrifices need to be shared.

With cuts to child care allowances and assistance to the elderly being discussed, the perception is that the government is actually considering taking food out of the mouths of children and giving less support to the older generation as a means to free up money to satisfy the terms of the MoU.

These cuts may not come about, but what is disturbing is that they are even being considered. It may be true that some reforms, including means testing, are necessary. But should we not implement reforms first before implementing such cuts across the board?

I am nearly fifty, and have five children aged nine to 21. I have worked through all my pregnancies, and when the children were babies, toddlers, and going off to school. My childminders were there for all their special moments. My fourth child has special needs, and when my mother developed senile dementia and other health problems she came to live with us, so I had no choice but to stop working.

My husband has supported us on his chef's salary for the last ten years, and I have scratched around trying to get work from home, or work that would fit in with his hours (including cleaning, cooking, promotional work, and working in local restaurants). He lost his job in September, and we have desperately tried to get him any work, anywhere. His age is against him, as is mine, and our lack of third level degrees.

We have one child in third year of TCD (showing that economically deprived children DO need free university places), two more in secondary school, and two (including the child with special needs), in mainstream primary. Our second child has been invited to UCD to participate in their math labs for gifted students, on the basis of the results of his Junior Cert honours maths paper. I cannot afford the bus fares for him to get to Dublin without raiding the electricity bill money, or the grocery money.

I understand fully what Elizabeth Dwyer is going through, as my 13-year-old is the only boy in the rugby team who wears second or third hand boots, jersey, shorts and even socks. (€10 for a pair of rugby socks: can’t do it.) My 16-year-old went on a Transition Year school trip with €4 in (very) small change from his nine-year-old sister's piggy bank, as we had nothing else, literally, to give him.

In a recent brief exchange between Oscar Guardiola Rivera and Walter Mignolo, responding to an impossibly broad question about Europe’s current crisis, Guardiola Rivera quipped that Europe was colonising itself. Just think, he said, of the racialisation of Greek, Spanish and Italian people: lazy and corrupt. And with that the debate moved on. But his thought of Europe colonising itself has haunted me: as a diagnosis it is chillingly brilliant.

We have known for many years that the major neoliberal international institutions – the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, etc – were developed to impose massive economic reforms on ‘failing’ states. It has also long been noted that the imposition of neoliberal reforms in Latin America and South East Asia was a form of economic colonialism. Down the barrel of a gun, ‘the West’ imposed changes that destroyed domestic protections and lead to economic collapse for ordinary people. Crucially, these reforms were colonial or neo-colonial because they facilitated the flows of capital which benefited and were controlled by the West. In this way, old sovereign relations of colonial power were reinscribed through the market.

However, in the last fifty years there has been a material shift away from corporations with a national base and outlook. The multinational, while often retaining symbolic connections with particular states (Coca-cola, Starbucks, Mercedes), looks to a global stage for both material production and consumption. The corporation, and capital more generally, has de-territorialised in the sense that it is no longer deeply bound to its original geographic bases. This de-territorialisation means that there nothing necessary about the relation between Europe/USA (as metropole) and the rest of the world (as periphery). There is no longer a clear territorially determined colonialism, where the rape of India would fund the economic stability of Britain in the 19th century. In essence, the colonial metropole is no longer a territorially defined entity.

AONTAS, the national adult learning organisation in Ireland, hosted a community education conference on 17 November 2011. The only topic on the agenda, both hidden and overt, was the threat to community education in this Shock Doctrine era as attempts are afoot to colonise community education for market ends. While many civil society groups are suffering acutely in the present environment of hostility to community emancipation, those working in community education are under particular stress. They are aware of the imminent danger of being press-ganged into providing ‘job-ready’ classes, where the perfect CV is seen as the solution to unemployment, instead of programmes underpinned by the philosophy of personal development and social transformation. In other words, the community education field is currently being co-opted like the education system has been.

A few years back, we had a Taoiseach who blamed US banks for the onset of Ireland's recession. Bertie Ahern claimed again recently in an interview that it was Lehman Brothers wot dun it, his imputation being that locally elected politicians could not be blamed for this economic crisis. We now know differently. This crisis is global, but, as Enda keeps reminding us, we are in this together. As European politicians try hard not to look like bag men for global banks, here in Ireland we are being force fed rumours about a budget that will, in all likelihood, cut the heart out of a struggling domestic economy. The clusters of half-completed houses around the towns of this State are sufficient reminder of the local effects of this very global crisis. Right now though, we are being asked to get active locally and ‘fix’ our communities.

I am a separated mother, paying a mortgage and raising a young son. I live in a small cottage in Dublin. I work hard for an NGO. I believe in equality, social justice and human rights. I am a socialist and a feminist. I do volunteer work outside of my job. I will never be rich. I am happy except for those times when I struggle to get to the end of the month with enough food to feed my child.

Never before in my life have I ever availed of benefits, state aid or any kind of charity. But last month St. Vincent de Paul had to help me feed my child and they might have to help again this month.

The size of the mortgage has me considering walking away from my home and posting the keys to the bank. When my partner and I were together we had two incomes - not rich, but enough to keep us comfortable. On my own I am drowning. If the government brings in the house levy or any other kind of new tax I will surely lose my home.

After my bills are paid I have €39 to get me through the month. I have stripped back my expenditures to the bare minimum - food, mortgage, bus fare, heat, electricity. But €39 is all I have to cover emergencies, birthday gifts, doctor visits, Christmas. I haven’t been to the dentist in 3 years and my son needs braces that I just cannot afford.

I am not special and I am not a desperate case. I make a good wage when so many people are in much worse situations. Then there are all the people who have always been failed by our government even when there was money to burn. Instead of getting better when the times were good, successive governments ignored the social inequalities that have oppressed so many people for so many decades, and let the gap between the rich and the poor widen ever farther.

A re-imagining of Enda Kenny's State of the Nation address, by Brian Stafford.

Ladies, gentlemen, Mary and Michael middle Ireland, let me start by assuring you that Paddy still likes to know what the story is. So in the spirit of keeping Paddy informed I have decided to level with you out there in what I like to call the ‘vice gripped median’ (Note to self - get party to repeat this ad nauseam). This government is ready to take the tough decisions necessary to grow the economy.

I ask Eve and Eric equidistant Éire to consider the hole. Indeed, consider the hole. For the hole is truly a magical thing like our very own Leprechauns and fairies (Note to self - throw in an off-the-cuff remark about how the Leprechaun museum is a great example of the Irish entrepreneurial spirit). Yes the hole. We all know the riddle about taking away from a hole and it getting bigger. Well the economic council has been pondering this deeply and has come to some sound economic conclusions. So I present a new Five Point Plan because Fine Gael and the Irish People are not afraid of change.

...because, as I say, that's been a burden on me for quite a while now.' Mark Malone on the State we're in. {jathumbnailoff}