EVERY WEEK, WE take a look at the best comments left by you, our lovely readers, on TheJournal.ie.

This week, you’ve been talking a lot about next month’s Budget, Naas mayor Darren Scully’s comments on race in his town, charging for medical cards, Kevin Cardiff and the European Court of Auditors, Occupy Dame Street, your favourite RTE presenters and a lot, lot more.

So here’s our pick for our favourite comments of the week:

Occupy Dame Street came in for some criticism from commenters this week. But Jason Kearney, a carpenter who helped build the kitchen for the protesters outside the Central Bank this week, strongly defended the movement:

Also, to put your comment to shame altogether, I designed the new kitchen and put 12 hours work into constructing it on Thursday. I’m a fully qualified carpenter with 10 years experience but due to the recession I had had to return to full time education instead, I waited for a whole year, no work, so college was the only option. I certainly don’t fit into the category of a “waster”, not that I’m bothered too much by your label. Either is anyone else there, we are doing something positive. We even have an Occupy University, where people are educated about political and economic issues on a daily basis. Details here: http://www.occupydamestreet.org/occupy-university.

Mayor Bloomberg’s idea has failed, the Occupy movement can only grow, once people wake up the will do not want to stick their heads in the sand again. It can only get bigger, the more violence the police use, the more evictions that take place, all of this only ignites the fire.

Brian was unimpressed with the rather spectacular pay and bonuses received by the members of the European Court of Auditors:

You’d wonder how they get any work done with so many expenses to file for.

On Thursday, the government announced its major new jobs plan to create 100,000 new jobs in Ireland by 2016. Fizi_water pointed out some problems with the ambitious proposals:

I don’t want to be begrudger, but this plan is way too optimistic. I don’t know what kind of economist is lining this up for them, but I don’t believe Ireland can achieve what they say by supporting just small business as core of this plan says. There is not enough large business in Ireland to make it possible. Ireland has nothing own that produces and export, etc. The only realistic way in my opinion to make here better is to try attract again as much as possible multi national big businesses, Ireland will never be self supporting country likes of Norway or Germany.

The news that Ireland’s most senior politicians can claim €3,500 off their tax bill to cover the cost of (literally) washing their dirty laundry didn’t go down too well with commenters. Here’s Matthew Fitzpatrick’s succinct response:

If you’re spending that much on laundry, the money would be better spent on a doctor’s appointment, cause something is seriously wrong.

With Belgium has now government-less for 531 days, Paul O’Brien had some suggestions for how the country can dig itself out of the mess:

Belgium is really the cultural part of the Netherlands joined to the rust-belt part of France. The two parts should re-join the states they naturally belong to (France and the Netherlands). Problem solved for both. Brussels would then become an independent city state and the capital of the new United States of Europe (since Berlin would never be accepted.) With political-economic integration, the current problems with the Euro would be over. Otherwise, it’s back to petty nationalism and fiddling around with money every time you cross one of those silly borders, with the banks making a profit every time.

In yet another leaked Budget proposal, we found out this week that the government may bring in a charge of €50 for medical cards. Owen Gannon was critical of the idea:

I know they need to make up the money somewhere, but targeting the very poor is the wrong way to do things! Last budget the middle classes got savaged. Looks like it’s the turn of the lower classes this time around.

It’ll be a cold day in hell before they go after the gentry.

On Monday, we found that the Hungary was seeking assistant from the EU/IMF – a year to the day after the Irish bailout. Hot Toddy had some insight into what Ireland could learn from Hungary:

One big difference is that the Hungarian government gave two fingers to foreign multinationals by implementing unfair retrospective taxes.  A weaker currency should have brought foreign direct investment in by the bucketload, but instead they pulled the plug.  Who can blame them?

There is a good lesson here for Ireland and it’s one that, thankfully, the government seems to understand.  Populist measures won’t get the country out of recession.  To get back to growth we need business-friendly policies and not the populist, lefty nonsense I keep reading on this site.

Over on TheScore.ie, Will Martin was interested in how the current Irish squad compares with the class of Euro 88:

The globalisation of football has indeed led to a very competitive “home” market for Irish players, but looking at the CVs of current players players like Keane, Duff, O’Shea etc we do have players who bring that elite club mentality to the team. Why has keane obliterated the goal scoring records? More games against weak competition? Or playing for elite teams at the highest level?

Was too young in 88 to know the footballing landscape but how many of the players that played for ireland then came from the Irish granny ruling? How many quality players were left watching the games on the tv (mccarthy, coleman, ireland, kenny etc) in 1988.

England are like a little kid that got in trouble and told on someone else. I’m sure Ireland got up to a bit of messing around but they just weren’t stupid enough to get caught on CCTV, jump off a ferry, wear a sponsored gumshield or abuse female hotel workers. It’s a bit pathetic that England would try and draw the Irish team’s behaviour into it.

It depends which side the handle faces when it’s opened. If the handle faces west or south or southwest it’s a press and if it faces north or east or northeast it’s a cupboard. This is reversed in the southern hemisphere due to what is know as the “epicotimis” effect! There are exceptions to this rule in countries divided by the equator where it is at the discretion of the ruling government. However when a monarchy is installed they may overrule any government decree but this must be done on the final equinox of a leap year!