Less than three weeks to go to Budget day and the buzz of anticipation around Leinster House is almost palpable. The political war of words is certainly well under way.
Both Fine Gael and Labour have been busy setting out their stalls, effectively offering alternative Budgets in advance of the real thing on December 6th. Though, as the weeks unfold, Drapier cannot help wondering if this strategy is wise.
Take Fine Gael. It just cannot seem to get a coherent message across and ends up trying to have it every way at once. On childcare it wants both universal and targeted funding. On tax it wants to split the difference. As for expenditure, well, it says spending more would be inflationary but its new spending wouldn't be.
This week's argument that Fine Gael would have Ireland moving quicker by spending the money more effectively is just not washing. Drapier suspects that the public will need a lot of convincing that Fine Gael will build roads more quickly, have dramatically more houses and make CIE a strike-free, happy place.
Despite this, Michael Noonan has been doing his usual excellent job, going straight for the jugular every time. However, he needs better material to work with, and John Bruton's interventions have not helped.
Take John's support of economist Richard Douthwaite, the Greens' nominee for the vice-presidency of the European Investment Bank in July. He enthusiastically endorsed his candidacy and urged his European People's Party Group to do likewise.
Many Fine Gaelers found this hard to believe as Mr Douthwaite is on record as claiming that the maintenance of a certain level of unemployment might make it possible to control inflation and that economic growth is a prescription for disaster.
Luckily this gaffe got little coverage as poor John, to use the old Willie Whitelaw phrase, goes around the place whipping up apathy.
Word is that John Bruton intends to have a big December push to resuscitate the fortunes of his party. He doesn't want the Government to dominate the airwaves and is launching himself on to a series of passing bandwagons, hoping that one will catch the public's imagination, if not attention.
John's suggestion that there was Government interference in the Omagh investigation and his remarks on the Government's stance on the designation of the "Real IRA" are just two examples. Both John O'Donoghue and Brian Cowen have reacted furiously, and Drapier expects to see both stepping up their attacks on Bruton over the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, over in Ely Place, Labour has been launching its Budget plans. Its approach is to spend £3 billion beyond the Government's original published intentions. This extra spending is to be funded by Government deficits and money taken from the State pension reserve fund.
Derek McDowell and Ruairi Quinn were very proud of the document on the day they launched it. Now both Government parties are acting as if all their Christmases have come at once.
Dermot Ahern was one of the first out of the traps, claiming that Labour's figures didn't add up. He slammed the raiding of the Government's pension reserve, saying the whole package would mean a return to the massive budget deficits of the 1970s.
Drapier would advise Derek to recall what happened when John Smith, then British Labour's shadow chancellor, tried something similar in 1992. Smith's failure to cost his spending plans fully and Neil Kinnock's lack of clarity on tax offered hostages to fortune, costing Labour the subsequent election.
Labour here is now implying that it supports the teachers' claim, so there is £400 million gone without allowing for knock-on claims. Its policy is open to requiring constant change, which will inevitably invite the charge that it was half-baked in the first place; while Fianna Fail's attack on its raid of the pension fund has already had an impact.
To add to its woes, the substantial spending programme announced by Charlie McCreevy on Thursday rips many of Labour's assumptions apart. In effect, McCreevy has, to use a good old Tory expression, shot their fox.
Many around the House are observing that Charlie seems to be more at ease with himself at the moment and savouring the chance to show that he's still a politician of substance.
He might be one of the oddest politicians around and given to major political lapses, but his colleagues are saying that Charlie is determined to play as much of a part in rebuilding the Government's support as he is perceived as having played in its decline.
It also seems that Mary Harney and the PDs feel that they've turned a corner of sorts. Things couldn't get worse than they were. L'affaire McDowell has blown itself out, assuming that the public was paying attention in the first place, and their conference went quite well. Harney has been buoyed by an opportunity to get back to talking about issues and looks as if she is relishing the Budget process.
Colleagues have been relating stories to Drapier indicating that the powers that be at the Abbey Theatre are starting to lose the plot. After 100 years at its current historical location, the Liffey-side luvvies are said to be hatching plans to quit Abbey Street in favour of the less proletarian suburbs of le Dublin 4 sur Liffey.
Drapier may know little about matters theatrical but he knows that this is one farce that won't make it into production. What can they be thinking about? Don't they know that the State has just spent millions bringing the Chester Beatty Library from those self-same suburbs into the city centre in Dublin Castle? Do they seriously think that this northside-led Government will sponsor this flight of fancy south, or anywhere for that matter?
Drapier will be listening closely to see how the much-admired Alex Attwood fares in his party chairmanship bid when the SDLP meets today and tomorrow for its 30th annual conference. Drapier does not know the other candidate so well but has long had a regard for Alex and believes him to be a politician of rare fortitude and courage.
Drapier wishes all his friends in the SDLP well and looks forward to hearing what they will have to say at this important time in the North.