Men at War

Went for a drink in a late bar in BÁC 7. Sipping my pint I noticed 3 barstaff, male, all glued to the TV - Setanta Sports...think it was called UFC (Ultimate Fight ...). It's a particularly vicious "sport", which involves boxing, wrestling and kicking. Opponents wear boxing gloves but are barefoot.
In the ring, 2 men, fighting... bigger man winning... smaller man trying to hang on...bleeding, blood everywhere... hand-prints of blood on the fighting ring floor. Bell goes at the end of a round and losing man is cleaned up and psyched up to go back out and fight again...
He doe's - and is battered into bloody submission!
Then I observe a woman waiting to get served at the Bar. She is looking at the TV, and her face says - "OMG". She looks horrified. There are 4 more customers, all male - glued to the TV, grinning... happy... enjoying... egging on the combatants...
Then it came to me - all the wars, all the suffering, guns, bombs, Gaza, etc.
It's just men!

Financial Crisis - What Crisis?

It's January, it's wet, it's cold, it's stormy.... I'm GRUMPY

As the financial crisis deepens and the State's coffers empty there IS light at the end of the tunnel for our beleaguered Government!
Because they literally have a license to print money.
Here's how it works.
I recently got a letter from the Garda Traffic Corps telling me that I had broken the speed limit in my car and that I had to pay a fine of €80 (along with penalty points on my driving license). The offence took place on the dual carriage, 3 and 4 lane Dublin Airport road, at the lead-in to the M1 motorway - which has a speed limit of 120 kph. Only this stretch of 3 and 4 lane dual road has a speed limit of 80kph. So a lot of people THINK they are on the start of the Motorway and after leaving the frustrating gridlock of the city behind at Whitehall "put the boot down". OK, it IS signposted as 80kph, but nonetheless a lot of people are caught out. How many?
500 PER DAY TO BE EXACT.
I know this because I met a man who knows one of the Gardai who operates a speed camera on this road. This Garda goes to the airport road every day, sits in an unmarked car with his camera and stays there long enough to "capture" 500 cars. (It's also known as "shooting fish in a barrel"). I estimate that he catches 10 cars every minute at a busy time of day, so therefore in less than an hour he will reach his target. It's as easy as taking candy from a child.
Do the maths.
That's €40,000 per day. Let's give our hard-working, crime-fighting, Police officer a day off every week. In 6 days he will still rake in €240,000 - that a quarter of a million to you or me, give or take a few coins. In a month it's a cool €1 Million. Multiply this scenario by ten... by twenty cameras and you can see that it's a nice little earner.
OK, so where does this money go? Road improvements, road safety, crime prevention? Don't be silly. It goes into the Governments coffers to help balance the books because our leaders have blown our wealth and we are officially skint.
Our Gardai are therefore being used to collect taxes for the State, instead of fighting real crime which is what they are supposed to be doing. But maybe tax collection is more important that 2 men being executed in a car in Summerhill?
P.S. In England I am told that the Police position a "dummy" Police car on busy roads to frighten people into slowing down. This is also known as road safety!

Jim Cusack Sunday Independent - World's Worst "Journalist"

From the Balcony, A Publisher's Blog: Can reporting can get any worse than this?
It's worth reading Máirtín Ó Muilleoir's blog re Jim Cusack of the west-brit "newspaper", The Sunday Independent

Oxford Dictionary - new word!

It's usually heard on the Northside of Dublin. ( well, in Bar 52 anyway) Phonetically it's -
" hee a ah.."
Possibly it means...Hello... excuse me... can I have a drink please...?
Answers on a postcard please

And Talking About Coffee...

On Tuesday of last week I bought 2 Espresso coffees in Porto, Portugal and they cost me €1.20 (60 cent each).
Today I bought 2 Espresso coffees in the Coachman's Inn near Dublin airport and they cost me €5.50 (€2.75 each).

And the coffee in Porto tasted ten times better!

Go to the back of the geography class Mr Starbucks

My friend Katarzyna spotted this strange notice in Starbucks Cafe on College Green recently.

I must say that Starbucks have THE best coffee in town, their Cafe's have a great atmosphere and friendly staff ...
But 10 years in the UK?
Er.. we are not in the UK Mr Starbuck!

Oh well, I suppose it's hard to be good at everything!

The Blizzards' Niall Breslin talking a lot of sense...

I read an interview with The Blizzards frontman, Niall Breslin in a recent Hot Press magazine. Must say this man talks a lot of sense! Here is an extract from the interview.

" Staying on the theme of alcohol, what does Breslin make of the government's recent decision to curtail off license hours to 10pm?"
"That's one thing that pisses me off", he fumes. "I was listening to Newstalk recently and this guy was going that alcohol is so cheap ... have you been to southern Spain? You can get a bottle of wine for a euro and you don't see locals walking around puking. This country is being run by old men. Old, boring farts who need to cop the fuck on and stop closing off licences at 10pm and closing nightclubs early. The whole thing stinks. It's turning us into Communists. They're not even giving us a fucking choice about this - that's the worst part about it. Don't bloody lecture us on being bloody democratic and shit like this when you don't give us any choice in it. And if we do protest, we get our arse kicked and thrown in jail. I don't give a fuck about Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael or any of them - they're all the same essentially - and, at the end of the day, they only give a shit about being in power. What they're doing now is trying to take away any bit of fun we're having.
I do understand that there's a huge problem with alcohol in Ireland, but I don't think that's the fucking way to go about fixing it."

Niall Breslin for President?
p.s. Check out the Blizzards latest chart hit, the infectious "Trust Me I'm a Doctor"