Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Paddy’s Day is great, isn’t it?

Had the day off, and the roads were relatively quiet on account of so many going to the parade in town. Bliss.

But that’s not such a patriotic blog entry for the day that’s in it. So let me do my bit for the Paddy’s Day Industry and bring your attention to that symbol of real Irishness, the National Leprechaun Museum.

Last Tuesday’s MetroHerald had a 60 second interview with Tom O’Rahilly, a director of said concern, and he had some insights on the subject of Irishness.

It seems that the museum is the “first-ever visitor attraction dedicated to the world of Irish myth and opens up a magical world of fascination folklore and enchanting stories. The 45 minute experience will take visitors to the heart of Irish cultural identity and imagination.”

So there you have it. Leprechauns are at the heart of our cultural identity, along with Riverdance and those annoying pipe things that people in Aran sweaters play. And bodhrans.  And the GAA.  And the Catholic Church. And "De Language". And all the shysters in the Dail.

And it doesn’t get much better than that, does it?

I’m off to the fridge.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.

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Monsignor Maurice Dooley with Colm O'Gorman on clerical child abuse

I’m always amazed how “the faithful” can keep on keeping “the faith”, even now,  when confronted with the Catholic hierarchy’s failure to deal with its clergy's child abuse over the decades.

How anyone can set foot inside a church and actually genuflect in front of  these people is a genuine mystery – in the secular sense – to me.  But maybe that is why the term “flock” is used in relation to the church's followers?

I’m not just talking about what the priests, nuns, brothers and bishops did - thanks to their stranglehold on Irish education guaranteeing a ready supply of young victims - but their arrogance in dealing with the outrage now.  Don't they see that their discredited organisation is on its last legs here?   Have they never heard of the term “damage limitation”?

Have a listen to this guy, Monsignor Maurice Dooley, defending the cover-up on Today FM to Colm O’Gorman.

You really have to  hear it to appreciate the petulance.

Today FM - Colm O'Gorman interviews Monsignor Maurice Dooley on child abuse cover-ups

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David Barrett's Irish National Party: Newstalk debacle ends name-change dilemma

It was a nice dilemma while it lasted for Ireland’s most recent budding, openly-racist, mass party.   Or so he/they liked to think.

The problem with naming your fantasy organisation the “Irish National Party” (INP) is that it sounds as though it might have quite a lot in common with the “British National Party” (BNP).  Most people might have spotted that one coming, but not our master race of white Irish nationalists.

Of course, being associated with a party that peddles racism, promotes bigotry, tells lies, conducts racist attacks, and blames immigrants for all of society’s ills, might not be a problem.  But one having the word “British” in the title definitely is. 

So a name change was needed.  And like any good fascist party, based on good dictatorial principles, the INP put it to a poll.   Now I can’t imagine Hitler ever doing that – smacking as it does of indecision and weakness! See below:

I’d go for   “Sciath na hEireann” (“Shield of Ireland”) myself.   It’s relatively short, and might just about fit on an armband.  What’s more, it has a nice mythical ring to it.  You could almost imagine Cuchulainn himself roaring it out as he charged into battle with old Erin’s foes.  Or Odin, even.

But what’s this?  It seems that the INP’s website has disappeared from the web since its prime mover David Barrett’s (pic right) fateful slot on Newstalk last week. 

On the programme, Barrett tried to tone down the overtly racist “values” of his putative party in much the same way that the BNP try to present an air of respectability to the public nowadays.   Sadly for him, he was caught out when the presenter repeated a couple of things he’d posted on Facebook.

Gems like:    “the dirty Jew that lives next door to the parents was in her garden today with a hose washing the patio, there’s a f*cking water shortage! And people wonder what Herr Hitler had an issue with.”   

And:   “Wier mussen die juden austrautten!” (sic)  -  Presumably a very bad Babel Fish translation of   “We must exterminate the jews!” 

So much for respectability then.   And one other thing: despite the proposed name changes to the tongue of the Gael – presumably for what he sees as added Irish authenticity - he doesn’t speak it.  

Ooops!                     Big thanks to    CutbladeBambi

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Did I ever tell you I once met Miss World's legs?

I once met Miss World’s legs. Rosanna Davidson’s. Her knees to be exact.  It was a surreal day, a few years back, when I took a jaunt down to a nearby car dealership. Lotus had just started selling its sports cars in Ireland and I thought it would be nice to have a look at its new Elise, and maybe get a test drive.

When I got there, the very nice saleswoman told me that Rosanna Davidson (who had been crowned Miss World a year or two before) was arriving for a photoshoot, but yes, a test drive would be no problem.

As it happened, I had just managed to shoehorn myself into the driver's seat of the tiny Elise R-111 (they are about the height of a pedal car) when she came along. Well, her knees at least, because that is all I could see from where I was sitting, peeking out of the car’s little slit of a side window. 

I went out for the test drive with the saleswoman in the passenger seat and we passed Miss World on the way back as she was walking towards town after finishing the shoot. She noticed, waved, and gave us a  big smile as we drove past. Not every blogger can say they’ve been waved at by Miss World now, can they? That's about as glamorous as it gets in the world of blogging, I’m afraid.  The reports in the showroom, by the way, were that she was very nice and pleasant.

But what about all the stuff in the gossip pages? A €60,000 trip on a private jet to somewhere or other with a developer, whose company owns the very building that Nama is based in. It seems the same developer once had Pavarotti sing to him and his friends on one of his birthdays.  Ah yes, the Irish elite – such class and taste!

Now I wouldn’t be one for celebrity tittle-tattle. I’ll admit my life is boring enough, but it’s enough to keep me occupied all the same.  But you really have to marvel, that even when the developers’ loans are being taken on by the taxpayers – who are being hit from all angles, assuming they still have jobs at all - that this elite does not even have the grace or PR sense to tone it down a bit. Do they still think it’s 2006?

Sure, due to the secrecy and lack of transparency surrounding Nama, it is not currently possible to comment on the state of each developer’s relationship with the bank's loan book - sensitive information, you see.  But you’d have to wonder if any developer has possibly been unscathed, given the scale of the collapse. And you’d have to wonder if any of them will really have to change their lifestyles, even when it is all done and dusted.

Probably not. It’s Ireland after all.


PS. Didn't get the Lotus in the end  -  not with the waiting times for orthopaedic consultants.  And VRT.

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HSE informed of unchecked X-rays at Tallaght Hospital

Our hospital consultants are possibly the most highly paid in Europe, and there seem (my perception) to be rather of a lot of them – yet if you need to see one you can be waiting months.  So long, in fact, that you can die before you get to see one.

Now it seems that 58,000 X-rays taken in Tallaght hospital were not reviewed by a consultant radiologist, and two patients – so far – received a delayed diagnosis as a result. One has since died and the other is now being treated for cancer.

Tens of thousands of X-rays taken during the period between 2005 and the end of 2009 were affected due to “systemic and process failures” according to hospital chief executive designate Professor Kevin Conlon, quoted in today’s media reports.

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Joan Burton: will Gannon use profits to pay off Nama debts?

BANAMA REPUBLIC - BUSINESS AS USUAL

The following links concern a property developer, who is being bailed out by Nama, but was awarded a lucrative storage contract by the State only two months after the Nama legislation was finalised.  The first link is to an article which appeared in the Daily Mirror, by Aine Hegarty, and the second is from Labour TD Joan Burton's webite.

The contract will make €8 million in profit for the developer, and Burton – not unreasonably –  asks if any of this money will go towards paying off the debts?

Will he use EUR20m to pay off his 'toxic' loan to Nama? GANNON'S PAYDAY - Daily Mirror article.

Joan Burton Dail question

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Brian Lenihan and Nama don't impress the dragon, then.

Did you ever see that programme, “The Dragons’ Den”? The Irish one?  It’s awful.

Four follically challenged males, all with faces displaying varying degrees of po, and one very stern looking looking female – all considered successful entrepreneurs – sit in chairs and judge the business ideas of masochistic hopefuls who stand quivering before them.

The programme starts with the five strutting purposefully – or pompously – along the docks, I think. All look very satisfied with themselves, in a grim, po-faced way. I think people who look at RTE think of them as celebrities.

One – I can’t remember his name – just sits there with a permanent scowl on his face and once had a pop at a guy who was trying to flog locks of ginger “leprechaun hair” in sachets, on the basis that he was making a laughing stock out of Ireland, or some such. Obviously, this dragon has never been inside a Carroll’s souvenir shop. Or the Dail.

Another one, Bobby Kerr, is co-owner of a coffee shop chain and is probably the least po-faced.  He even seems capable of smiling and saying something nice now and again.  Mind you, I did only look at the show twice (the second time to confirm it was as bad as I thought it was the first time), but that’s the impression I got with that brief exposure.

Anyway, it seems that Bobby would send Brian Lenihan packing if the finance minister were to appear in front of the dragons trying to flout his Nama project.    “It’s too complicated”, he is on record as saying in a Newstalk 106-108 FM interview with presenter Claire Byrne, “it’s costing the taxpayer millions. It was forced on us as a kind of ‘the only alternative’… I personally don’t think there as enough debate around the alternatives”.

Quite.  I certainly do not remember that we, the taxpayers, were ever given the opportunity to collectively say “I’m out!” to Nama.

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UCD report on Irish property market - uncomfortable reading for real estate dinosaurs

There’s been a property crash, right?  So you'd think that Irish estate agents would be snapping at each other in a life-or-death struggle to get what little business is out there, wouldn’t you?

As regular readers will know, I’ve been looking to trade up to a somewhat grander manor – or as grand as you can get out this way, anyway  – for some time now.  Prices are falling, and that little pile of Ansbacher cash under the mattress is becoming more valuable by the minute.

The week before last, we viewed a prospective abode with extra-large shoe storage for the Lady of the Manor, and she phoned the estate agent back on Tuesday to ask a few questions:  “No, Mr Blah-blah is not availabe right now. He will phone you back this afternoon”.  No phone call.      Yesterday, same thing: “I'm very sorry.  Mr Blah-blah will phone you back straightaway. ”   No phone call.

Either Irish estate agents are the canniest business people in the world, or they are the dumbest, slowest-to-adapt-to-new-circumstances, smallest-brain-as-a-percentage-of-body-mass creatures since the brontosaurus. I’d go for the latter.

I wonder what they thought when they turned on the radio and heard the UCD/DIT report, led by Dr Brendan McWilliams, on the housing market?

    UCD/DIT report main points

•  345,000 homes and apartments currently vacant – 17% of all housing stock in the country.
•  Excluding holiday homes (and I would say there are people in trouble with these), derelict properties and the like, there are still 170,000 more houses and apartments than required.
•  One-in-five homes empty outside Dublin, one-in-twelve empty in the capital itself.
•  Vendors “unwilling” to reduce prices, but study finds further price drops are “inevitable” due to over-supply.
•  Nama, and other market interventions which attempt to “prevent downward price corrections” likely to “delay rather than prevent market recovery”.
•  House prices still at “very high” multiples of average incomes.

"Duuhh...  what's that big, fiery, red thing flying towards us from the sky?"

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Dublin Council motor tax form or Mr Chan's spam. Which to ignore?

Usually when you get something through the letter box “as Gaeilge” it is best not to ignore it, even if you can’t make head nor tail of it.  It will be a demand for money or a summons of some sort.

I recently got a tax renewal form from my friends in Dublin City Council – purely in Gaelic.  Thankfully, my young days of being traumatised by big, ignorant, bullying oafs whose educational speciality (or only-ality) was attempting to beat a lifelong love of The Tongue of the True Gael into their charges stood me in good stead - I could make out the odd word (like "hatchback", "salun", "jip" and "bus").  Enough anyway, to bin the form and renew my tax online in the vernacular of the country.

So all those shit-scared, humiliating years under their cultural nationalist tutelage was not wasted in the end. And let’s face it – it d-d-d-d-didn’t d-do me any h-harm.  Apart from the odd unsolved murder here and there of course.    Mister O'Muireadhaigh, you’re next, you child-bullying piece of… what’s the Gaelic for "shit"?

But anyway, I digress. I don’t know if Dublin City Council’s extortionate tax demand in Official Irish was part of their Gaelicisation drive Dublin City Council to ban English-language placenames... if you let them, or they were just trying to get rid of all those forms they had printed up.   But I’d like to know what any citizen from beyond our screwed-up land, and trying to get to grips with our language – English - would have made of it.  “Tough”, I imagine DCC might respond.

But what about this? A reader of the blog sent me in details of a spam e-mail in the following gobbledeegook emanating from China:

Tб mй an tUasal Patrick KW Chan an Stiъrthуir Feidhmiъchбin agus Prнomh-Oifigeach airgeadais Hang Seng Bank Ltd, Hong Cong.     Tб mй togra gnу brabъsaн leasa choitinn a roinnt le leat; Baineann sй leis an aistriъ suim mhуr airgid.    Fuair mй do tagairt i mo cuardach a dhйanamh ar dhuine a oireann mo chaidreamh gnу molta.   m Mб tб suim agat i obair liom teagmhбil a dhйanamh liom mo trн r-phost prнobhбideach (mrpatkwchan52@yahoo.com.hk) le haghaidh tuilleadh sonraн

Which I am told is some kind of automated tranlsation from the Chinese (hence the - even more - inexplicable cyrillic characters) meaning:

I am Mr. Patrick KW Chan Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer Hang Seng Bank Ltd, Hong Kong.   I have a business proposal of common interest to share with you;  It concerns the transfer of a large sum of money.  I found your reference in my search for someone who suits my proposed business relationship.  If you are interested in working to contact me through my private email  for further details.

Mr Patrick Chan

Full Boards thread:   Mr Chan's extra spammy spam

Nice try, Mr Chan, but no claymore pipe.   Perhaps, as sender Mike1972 suggests,  you should apply to the Irish Government for a grant?   Or Dublin City Council.

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Planning permission equals more bob for the builders.

You would have thought that with over 300,000 homes lying empty in Ireland (not including nearly 50,000 holiday homes), according to a study by the National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis, the last thing you would want to do is build even more empty dwellings, right?

It hasn’t stopped Shelbourne Development putting in a planning application for 11,500 homes only up the road from the moribund Adamstown mega-development. Similarly, Capel Developments has applied for planning permission to build 260 dwellings in Ashtown.

Now, I pass the apartments at Ashtown every day on the train. The once-bustling sales office is boarded up and covered in graffiti, and when you go by at night the number of darkened windows is a tell-tale sign of how many of them are lying empty. So why the hell would a developer want to build any more?

Mark Keenan, writing in the Sunday Times, offers the only plausible explanation. It seems that having land approved for planning permission, even in today’s climate, can increase its value by between 10% and 15% in outer Dublin, and up to 40% in areas such as Dublin 4. So, given the perilous financial state of many developers, getting their land planning-permission approved is the obvious way to perfume the balance sheet before the banks come sniffing round, post-Nama valuations.

Taking into account that any putative development should be considered against the background of sustainability, and given the fact that Dublin is already blighted by ghost estates, you might think that the only possible response of a properly functioning local authority would be to refuse any further requests for planning permission. Unless they accept it is simply a ruse and they know nothing is actually going to be built, at least not in the short or medium term.

But that would hardly be ethical, would it?

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Trevor Sargent and the assault in Balbriggan

It's not often that you'll see expressions of sympathy for politicians on Gombeen Nation, but there actually is a small amount for Trevor Sargent with regard to the Balbriggan affair.

Sargent, despite once calling for Gaeilge to be used as the day-to-day language of the Dail, seems intelligent and sincere enough. He had nothing to gain by approaching the coppers on behalf of a constituent who was charged with  "threatening behaviour" after he had been head-butted by a neighbour with previous convictions.  The man who was assaulted, Dominic McGowan, had no connection with the Greens and was a victim, not a perpetrator.  In short, it was hardly the the Sheedy Affair.

Why was the man charged in the first place?  He saw some brats engaging in vandalism on his housing estate which is burdened by a high degree of anti-social behaviour.  He told them to stop and played the gambit of threatening to tell their parents, to which they reacted with unconcern.  Thinking he was calling their bluff, he led one of the brats to the wellspring of its existence to be met by more apparent unconcern.  Things got verbally heated, and he ended up being headbutted in the face by the aforementioned resident (and upstanding parent of one of the other brats) who seemingly did not share the complainant's regard for the well-being of the Balbriggan estate. 

The rozzers came and charged Head Butt, one Stephen Mulvany, with assault and threatening behaviour, and decided to charge the complainant - who no doubt was understandably agitated and angry - with threatening behaviour.  A cynic who was not witness to events might conclude that the coppers were after convictions, and weren't too fussy where they came from, annoyed as they were at being forced to leave the comforts of the station.

If I were a politician sitting in my clinic, and a local came and related this story to me, I would want to know why the man had been charged too, and ask - as Sargent did - why he was not simply being called to court to attest against the scumbag who assaulted him?  That's all he did. 

The other worrying aspect here is the propensity of the coppers to leak information.  From what I understand, the letter was initially ignored before finding its way into the public domain - yet Sargent was not charged with any offence by the coppers.  It follows the recent Willie O'Dea affair - a man I'd have no sympathy with on any level whatever - who allegedly repeated slanderous information he had been given, off the record, by a Limerick garda. 

Two questions.  1) Why was the victim in the above case charged?  and 2) When are we going to see resignations from the Garda for leaking information and for rumour-mongering?

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What's the crack with all the ARSEs?

There was something in the morning freebie last week about a guy who parked his car in the vicinity of a LUAS stop, perfectly legally, in order to take public transport to work. Fair play to him – I hear you say - for saving the planet, improving the city’s air quality, and saving the lives of sundry cyclists, pedestrians and drunks by not driving his car over 30 km/h in the city centre.

Not everyone was so appreciative however, as when he returned from his hard day’s slog he discovered his car was minus a windscreen wiper. “Random vandal” he thought. The following day he discovered his windscreen covered in some oily substance. It seemed that somebody – with the leisure time to sit in their living room all day, twitching the curtains - didn’t like him parking on the public road, outside his/her house.

You get it around my locality too, but even here they are too civilized to resort to wanton vandalism. But someone from the residents’ association called around with a leaflet a while back, complaining about people parking on the roads near the local train station.

As I say, here they are more subtle, but every bit as petty. Their preferred method is to place those little yellow plastic cones – obligingly supplied by the boys and girls in blue – on the miserable bit of road in front of their houses. I should also point out that we all have off-street-parking here, in the form of driveways, so parking is not a problem for residents.

Ironically, not that long ago there was talk of increasing the size of the nearby train station’s car park, but the residents didn’t want that either, citing “increased traffic” as their grounds for objection.  So, if people can’t park on the public roads due to residents objecting, and if a decent park and ride facility can’t be built because the residents object to that too – what the hell are commuters expected to do?  Sit at home all day, presumably in some subsidised form, listening to Joe Duffy and gawping out the window?

As far as we in Gombeen Manor are concerned, people can park wherever they want on “our” street, as long as they don’t create an obstruction. But then again, we work for a living. As such, we don’t have the time nor the inclination to hinder other people who do the same thing, but happen to live further from the train station than we do.

You’ve all heard of NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yarders), I’m sure?   Well, here it looks like we have a lot of ARSEs getting into a sweat about where people should park their cars.  

Any Road Somewhere Else.

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Ireland's property crash - too much positive thinking is bad for you.

It was not that long ago that B-B-B-Bertie was giving after-dinner speeches on how to emulate Ireland’s economic miracle – a topic quietly dropped since the miracle turned out to be a credit-fuelled mirage, which the few of us with brains in our heads pointed out even as the whole misguided bandwagon hurtled towards the precipice.

As we all now suddenly know, and some of us always knew, the phenomenon was caused by a devil’s brew of Government property-based tax shelters/breaks and careless lending by the financial institutions, which we all have to pay for now (including those of us who did not get sucked into the “be an instant property tycoon” nonsense).

Not so “legions of taxi drivers”, as reported in last week’s Irish Times, who bought investment properties in Bulgaria. Properties in a development in Varna, it seems, “where nothing was built before the Irish came a-buying” have dropped in value by 80% in two years. Now, according to the same source, Bulgaria has “probably the highest proportion of recently-built ghost-towns on beautiful beaches, mainly funded by Irish investors.” So everyone’s a loser then, apart from those who built the apartments, blighted the landscape, and made a killing. Sounds familiar.

Likewise, a two-bed apartment, part of an investment-boom development in Wexford, sold last week for €65,000. Other would-be tycoons trying to flog similar apartments in the same complex had been looking for €149,500. Maybe it’s time to reconsider that asking price, folks?

And if you thought the Bulgarian 80% price drop was dramatic – if not unexpected – how about this? Yesterday’s Sindo reported on a Commercial Court case in which Bank of Ireland was pursuing a developer for “unpaid loans” on two parcels of land: one in Kildare, and one in Athlone. The Kildare plot had been valued at €17.5 million during the height of the boom, and the Athlone one €31. According to current valuations revealed to the court they are now worth €4 million and €600,000 respectively. I suppose that makes the Kildare transaction a relatively shrewd purchase. The sitting judge, Peter Kelly, was “shocked”, remarking that this experience suggested that land prices had fallen by “only” 70-80%.

In the light of the above, it is ironic that there has been a recent spate of seminars by our self-appointed “movers and shakers” (or schemers and shysters, as I’d prefer call them) exhorting us to be “positive” and “confident” as a means of getting the country out of the economic mess it’s in. Do these people seriously believe they have earned the right to be taken seriously?

Maybe too much positivity and confidence, along with a large helping of Government encouragement, incompetence and stupidity, was the catalyist for the case studies presented above?

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Irish Blog Awards 2010 - Gombeen Nation gets a mention!

Today I heard that Gombeen Nation is on the Irish Blog Awards nomination list for Best Irish Political Blog, 2010. OK, there are another 35 nominees in the mix, but it was nice to be put forward all the same (and it wasn't me - so "thanks" to whoever did!).

To be honest, I’ve no idea how these things work with regard to nominees or winners*, but if any Irish political blog has been at the forefront in bringing the genre to the public (and John O’Donoghue’s) consciousness, it is Gavin’s Blog.  So hats off to the tireless Gavin and his hands-on role in cleaning up Irish politics.

It is a pity that there is no category for “foreign” language blogs such as IrlandInside, which also covers the political, personal, and humour categories – and whose author possibly sees Ireland from a more objective standpoint than many an indigenous blogger. NewsausIrland and IrlandErleben are two other German language blogs I am aware of, and I am sure there are lots more from other non-Irish citizens living in Ireland.

As far as Gombeen Nation goes, it has been great to witness the growth in popularity and support for the blog over the past while. It shows that there is at least some appetite out there to challenge the culture of gombeenism, cute-hoorism, corruption and clientism that is such a major part of Irish life.

*IBA judges 2010, please contact  Gombeen Man at the email address, left, for details of your free (no-obligation) gift.

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Head for the pills! "Head shops" burnt out by concerned criminals.

There’s been a lot of lurid publicity in the tabs lately about Dublin’s head shops.  Head shops sell “legal highs”, it seems.  Stuff that might fit the “naughty, naughty, naughty” description of the Shamen’s 90’s hit Ebeneezer Goode. But not quite as naughty, or as good (I imagine).

In fact, they sell a lot of cannabis smoking paraphernalia – pipes, and the like - but not the actual cannabis. They also purvey incense and bath salts, with names like “Flake”, “Charlie” (I’m sure it’s not), and “Snow”.

As keen horticulturalists obviously frequent head shops, they do a nice line in “plant foods”. The Nirvana shop advertises one of its “legal highs” thus: “mint mania are [sic] a very popular plant feeder. For best results, make sure your plants have plenty of fluid, and keep them away from heavy machinery”.

I know a lot of new-agers are in an apparently vegetative state much of the time, but it’s still  a funny way to refer to your clientele. Despite that, head shops seem to be blooming, with “one a week” opening in Ireland last month, according to Wiki.  I make that four.

Whatever about all the above, I suppose the real issue is the unregulated nature of their wares, and the ingredients that make up the “highs”. I suppose Guinness and Jameson’s have to tell us what’s in their products, and are subject to licencing, so there is some argument there.  On the other hand, I don’t know if these products actually “work”, or if they are more likely to contain saccharine than strychnine?

No such ambiguity, of course, with the illegal drugs trade, which is the most dangerous and unregulated of all, and whose products are "cut" with all manner of deadly ingredients, including rat poison.   I’m not aware of anyone dying after a “trip” to a head shop, but am aware of many who died from street drugs.  And alcohol abuse, come to that.

Now, in the space of a week, and on foot of hysterical tabloid alarmism and concentrated coverage on Joe Duffy's Liveline (what kind of person has the time to listen to Joe Duffy's programme? They can't work, anyway) two Dublin head shops have been set alight. There is speculation that the arson attacks may have been carried out by:

A) Citizens of the north inner city concerned about their children’s welfare and moral well-being,  or  B) Local criminal drug dealers concerned about a threat to their trade.

I think a walk around the north inner city or a visit to the Children’s Court can dispel theory “A”, so we are left to conclude that theory “B” might be the most likely explanation.

If so, we can expect more of the same - as if any group is truly above the law in Dublin, it’s the criminal drug-dealing fraternity.

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How about some instructive Irish road safety adverts, for once?

Had a well-earned day off yesterday, and went for one of my spins through Wicklow, taking in the Pine Forest, The Sally Gap, Roundwood, Glendalough, The Wicklow Gap, Blessington, and back to beautiful Dublin 15.

As you can imagine, the recent spell of snow and ice has done little to enhance the road surfaces in the Wicklow uplands, with a new proliferation of craters and potholes (especially on the road from Sally Gap towards Roundwood and Glendalough). My car has a suspension like a solid block of Ruhr steel and sits around 2 millimetres above the road surface (made for Autobahns, you see), so if you find any of my fillings or lumbar disks lying around on the road out there, please get in touch.

But the really scary bit was the M50, coming home. The good news is that they’ve widened it to three lanes now. The bad news is that if Irish drivers couldn’t use a motorway with two lanes, they haven’t a hope in hell of using one with three.  In fact, I expect Ireland to (again) buck international trends and become the only country with a higher death rate on its motorways than on its single-carriageway roads.

The M50 is a frightening place, with traffic going faster in the inside lane (assuming it's not just left empty) than the overtaking lane (which contains the most traffic). The middle lane changes in tempo, with traffic sometimes travelling faster then either of the other lanes, sometimes slower.  All trucks occupy the middle lane, without fail. The truth of the matter is that most Irish drivers simply have not grasped the principle of the motorway.

Sadly, that’s unlikely to change, as the Government and the RSA don’t seem interested in educating them – opting to go for silly, sensationalist, driver “education” as featured in the ad above, where little Oisin gets flattened in the garden by a mascara-wearing drunk’s somersaulting, ESP bereft,  banger.  “Could you live with the shame?” it says. What, the shame of starring in such an embarrassingly awful advert? No.

How about some ads simply informing Irish motorists how to drive? Especially on those new-fangled three-lane motorways.

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Dunnes Stores, The Irish Times, and the worm in Brian Cowen's head.

There is a little worm peeking out of Brian Cowen’s right ear. The next time you see him on telly, have a good look. You can see the head – about the size of a pixel – if you record it and put your DVD player on hold as you play it back. Scientists working for Britain's secret services developed this worm in a very secret laboratory somewhere in Wiltshire, England.

This worm has been created to bring about the downfall of our wonderful little land. It is designed to multiply prolifically and is genetically coded to eat inside the brains of our TDs, implanting them with information to destroy the country. The early stages of infection include talking utter gibberish, a bloated sense of importance, forming unsustainable economic policy based on credit and property tax breaks, and planning to transform the country to an imagined, Gaelic-speaking, paradise.  

Due to clever genetic engineering, and cleverly controlled mutations within the DNA cytosines, each minister is affected to a different extent and may present some, or all, of the above symptoms. So Eamon O’Cuiv might spout a different kind of gibberish to, say, Martin Cullen - but all will speak gibberish of one kind or another. 

When the worms accomplish their task in one TD (as with Charlie McCreevy – their first victim) they crawl to another.   Every Irish government minister is now infected with the worms, and they are crossing the floor to infect the opposition.  George Lee was the first casualty there.

The British will only be content when we are all back living in crannogs, speaking Gaelic, and all the multinationals have left because you cannot get Wi-Fi in crannogs and you can't have a Gaelic-speaking call centre. Or call center.

The only way for us to beat the Brits is to adapt a wholesome diet of cabbage and potatoes, as the worms cannot get the nutrients they require from these. That’s because cabbage and potatoes cannot grow in Britain, and that’s how they never thought of it.

The internet is great, but you don’t half read some rubbish on it. I’m one of the dwindling band of punters who gets a newspaper every day. But it’s getting more and more difficult.

I went to Tescos this morning for the Sunday Times and the Tribune, but for some reason the Tribune wasn’t there, and has not been for some time. I wonder if Tescos have now adapted a similar aggressive policy to stocking newspapers as “The Difference Is We’re Irish” Dunnes Stores?

Dunnes Stores recently changed their industry-standard payment method to newspapers from direct debit to monthy cheque.  As a result, The Irish Times stopped supplying their product, and you can't get it there anymore.

If Tescos have done the same with the Tribune - or for any other reason - it is only a matter of time before it becomes so difficult to get the newspaper of your choice that younger generation of waverers just won’t bother. Domestic news feeds will dry up, more journalists will be on the dole, and there will be fewer people to find real, verified, authenticated news items.

Then stories like the one above will be all we have left.

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“Going! Going! ...Erm, not gone". €4 million site “makes” only €0.5 million at auction.

There was a time when any lucky property owner in Ireland – in possession of their own house, their own land, an investment or an accident-of-birth/death inheritance, could have Great Expections when setting off for the auction - hoping each successive bid would be Pipped by another higher offer.  Now it’s more like Hard Times… and it’s not Bounderby any better for some time yet.*

An auctioneer put a 91-acre site in Tipperary up for grabs last Monday, which included included “top-class” land and a substantial range of machinery. The asking price was €4 million. Now, while I don’t know much about agricultural land - except that it sometimes contains cows and sheep – and know even less about this particular site, that kind of asking price does sound sooo 2006 to me.

According to The Irish Times, the auctioneer’s opening four-mill gambit was met with “stony silence” in the bidding room, and attracted only one offer of €500,000 after five minutes of desperate cajoling. The property was withdrawn and the bidder was invited to “private negotiations”.

The auction had, according to the article,  attracted “significant interest, as it was expected to provide an indications of the current state of the property market and to land values.”

Now, how much are we being  made pay for NAMA?

* Two Dickens novels and their characters were grieviously harmed in the writing of this blog.

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Tramore rubbish collection for early risers only

You’d want to get up very early in the morning to have your bins collected in Tramore, if the following report from the Munster Express is anything to go by.

It seems that a Fianna Fail councillor has put forward a motion compelling the good burghers of said locality to put their bins out at 6am...  and also be responsible for taking them back in should the refuse-collection people not bother to turn up. Local government Irish-style. 

Even in Fingal we've have had nice pet/seagull-proof (though not skanger-proof) wheelie bins for a couple of years now.  As for asking people to rise with the gulls at 6am in order to get their bins out... I doubt that even Dublin City Council would expect that one to work.

Article below.

Tramore Council wants people up at 6am to put out refuse sacks
By Tom Young.

A Tramore Town Councillor wants householders to get up early and leave out their recycling bags for collection, rather than doing so the previous night.

Cllr Pat Finnerty wants the County Council to adopt a bye-law prohibiting the bags being left out overnight. And furthermore he wants the bags removed again if the service provider fails to collect them on the appointed day.

Proposing a motion to that effect at the Town Council’s February meeting, he said bags left out through the night were being split open, sometimes by roaming pets, and the contents scattered all over the place. The Council then had to expend valuable resources cleaning up the mess.

Cllr Tom Raine enquired of Cllr Finnerty if he really expected people to get up at 6 am to put out their bags for collection. He said he did.

Cllr Lola O’Sullivan agreed that certain areas were awash with litter too much of the time, a contributory factor being that animals were attracted to waste bags containing food containers which were not properly cleaned for disposal.

Cllr Ann Marie Power accused Cllr Finnerty of wanting to punish people who did the right thing, putting the relevant rubbish out for collection rather than disposing of it illegally. She submitted that the measures he was proposing would lead to a mass exodus of customers from the Council service to private operators. “If that happens we are shagged”, she suggested.

Despite that, however, the motion was passed by a majority vote.

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Councillor Andrew Montague's 30 km/h speed limit - let's have compulsory helmets for cyclists too.

Let’s face it, the recent 30 km/h speed limit in Dublin – championed by keen cyclist Councillor Andrew Montague – has split opinion into two camps, those who are pro-car and those who are anti-car.

But before the cycling lobby – whose members are perhaps the most lawless and unaccountable of all road users - gets too smug, it might do well to reconsider its actions in invoking the nanny state to frustrate motorists in the city just for the sake of it.

Surely if health and safety is the be-all and end-all, and we dumb citizens need to be protected from our own actions, it is now time to make cycling helmets compulsory? Better still, why not also make it compulsory for all self-righteous cyclists to wear the lurid, day-glo, latex gear some of them don voluntarily? At least then we pedestrians (and I am one, as well as an enthusiastic petrolhead, and sometimes walk the 11.2 kilometres  from my house to work) can see them as they scythe through us on the pavements and at traffic lights.

They can’t have it every way. Last year, only 28 cyclists were prosecuted for breaking red lights, whereas 1,847 motorists got penalty points for the same offence – and rightly so, as this is the most dangerous road traffic infringement in my view. And before you say a cyclist breaking the lights won’t kill someone, that is very debatable. A cyclist going  full pelt into someone, particularly an older person, could very easily do so - or at least cause serious injury.

Now it seems that the Labour councillors on Dublin City Council are breaking ranks, after party leader Eamonn Gilmore described the new law as “impractical”. Dermot Lacey is now planning (according to the Sunday Tribune) to scrap the new limit on the quays, and introduce a 40 km/h speed limit in the city centre proper. Lacey originally voted for the proposal but now admits that “I tried driving down the quays [at 30 km/h] along the Liffey and it was nigh on impossible”.

Perhaps the good councillors should have tried driving down the quays before they voted on the matter?

You can contact Councillor Montaque at andrewmontague@eircom.net


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Dublin City Council 30 km/h speed limit. Know your local muppets.

Dublin City Council's decision to impose a 30 km/h speed limit in the capital has proven to be a controversial one – finally provoking some kind of reaction from the city’s public.

One of the three councillors who voted against it, FG's Gerry Breen, is calling for its reversal and even Labour leader Eamonn Gilmore has been forced to enter the fray by questioning its practicality.

When the 30 km/h limit, championed by Labour’s Andrew Montague, was discussed at the Council meeting on October 5th, 34 of the councillors present voted in favour of it.  Only three, Fine Gael’s Gerry Breen, Fine Gael’s Bill Tormey and Independent Nial Ring voted against.

Counicllor Breen has branded those who voted for the go-slow “a shower of muppets”,  adding “I will not be associated with, or take flak for, this stupidity… Over the past year, I have seen the cycling extremists take centre stage in the traffic affairs of the council.   Their unstated aims seem to be the removal of all traffic from the city. Seemingly everything these days can be run under the guise of health and safety.... It is important councillors take into account all the interested parties and stakeholders in coming to decisions and this speed limit in my opinion is neither fair nor balanced. I will seek to have it reversed.”, he was quoted as saying yesterday.

The issue continues in today’s Metro Herald, with Breen welcoming Gilmore’s intervention in slapping down “cycling cavalcade” upstart Montaque. “I welcome the fact there is some practicality coming back into the argument and not just ego-driven and ideological politics that allow no room for realities”.

A first for Dublin City Council, surely?

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Dublin city 30 km/h speed limit.

Once again, our rulers in Dublin City Council’s bunker have enforced a law, with no cognisance of reality, on the passive citizens of the metropolis. Giddy from their recent decree to ban the use of the English language for future place and road names, they have now enforced a blanket 30 Km/h (18 mph), 24-hour, speed limit on much of the city. 

They say the speed limit is all about “saving lives”, that same supposedly argument-killing mantra used by quota-chasing, laser-wielding coppers on the dual carriageway stretches with inappropriately low speed limits . The fact is, no figures have been complied by Dublin City Council featuring a detailed breakdown of road fatalities in the capital: the number, the type, the locations, and – most importantly – the causes.

All we get from Dublin City Council is that you are more likely to be killed by a car moving at 50 km/h than at 30 km/h. Sure, you can equally say that if you impose a nationwide speed limit of 30 km/h, even on the motorways, the subsequent collisions due to motorists falling asleep at their wheels would also feature fewer fatalities. But every single journey would be an odyssey and each car making it would be on the roads for longer, meaning our highways and byways would be constantly chock-full of crawling traffic, taking forever to go anywhere.

I work in town and see potentially fatal road situations every day. The most common would be:  Ignorant motorists breaking red traffic lights when lines of pedestrians are stepping out to cross the road, enticed by the green man.  People walking out, lemming-like, in front of oncoming traffic in places where it is madness to do so. Trucks with blind-spots turning left, oblivious to adjacent cyclists. Other cyclists who consider breaking lights and carving through the crossing pedestrians, and racing along crowded pedestrian streets, a right conferred on them for "saving the planet".   I was out walking at lunch yesterday, and witnessed three of the above scenarios in half-an-hour… I kid you not.

Let Dublin City Council take the trouble to identify the specific causes of road deaths in our city. Perhaps the odd councilor might emerge from the Bunker now and again to witness the all-too-regular wreath on a pedestrian crossing?   Then let them do what needs to be done, but not this half-arsed, lazy, tokenistic nonsense they do so well.

Whenever I work on a Sunday, I take the car, as there are no trains when I finish up. Driving home in the evening along Aston Quay and Wellington Quay - past Temple Bar - there is no way I would contemplate exceeding 30 km/h, as there are too many unpredictable (and drunk) pedestrians spilling from the footpaths. I never have - regardless of speed limit.   But I know the next time I'm up the other end of the quays, with not a soul in sight, I'll be watching my speedo more than the road in case some sneaky copper is hiding up ahead waiting for a chance to hit their monthly target.

It is only the application of roadcraft and common sense to take it easy around the busy streets where there is a high degree of pedestrian activity.  But Merchants or Inn’s Quay in the early morning, or late at night? That’s another matter.

And that's where you will find our friends hiding with the laser guns, out “saving lives”.

And if you believe that...

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Road gritters and the unappreciative Irish motorist

A couple of months back, The Sunday Times described this blog as “satirical”. Mark Keenan referred to it as such in his excellent column when writing about “Comical Ken” McDonald’s (once plentiful) upbeat pronouncements on the moribund property market.

Now, while it was great to get a mention in the paper, the sad thing is that the blog is perfectly serious, not satirical. All the stories on Gombeen Nation – mad and all as they might be - are frighteningly real. Or what passes for reality in Ireland. Here’s an example, inspired by the return of the cold weather.

You know the poor buggers who drive the gritting trucks, and get up at all hours of the night/morning to make the roads as safe as they can, given the limitations of our Keystone councils? It seems that they have been on the receiving end of motorists’ bile while gritting the roads to keep the very same bilants out of the ditches/shrubbery/lamposts.

Irish drivers - possibly the worst in the world - don’t like it when confronted with a road gritter up ahead as they blithtely skim along the icy motorway, in the overtaking lane, on their mobiles, smoking a fag, stuffing a breakfast roll into their faces. No, they get quite abusive, in fact.

The Tribune recently quoted one such grit truck driver and supervisor, Lucas Swiatek, saying “I get an awful lot of abuse from motorists… I would see them sticking their fingers up at me and swearing at the top of their lungs, or beeping their horns because they have been hit by some of the salt." On one occasion the man was surrounded by five motorists, all shouting at him.

Things are so bad, that the company he works for, M50 Concessions, has had to advise its staff how best to deal with ignorant motorists who plainly don’t know what’s good for them.

Maybe the gritters should just pull over and let them race ahead into the next very hard, unyielding object, via a patch of black ice? 

We can just call it natural selection.

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Knock down ghost estates, says IAVI head.

It’s a question often asked on Gombeen Nation: “Where else would you get it?”. 

The head of the Irish Auctioneers and Valuers Institution has suggested that the only thing for some of the nation’s empty housing developments and apartment complexes might be to knock them down.

While the blog is not critical of the notion of flattening the “Celtic Tiger” follies dotting our lovely little Gombeen land, it is critical of the Government and local councils for actively encouraging their construction in the first place. 

Some estimates put the number of empty dwelling units in Ireland at 300,000 –  in no small measure thanks to the Government’s property-based tax incentives which whipped up an investor frenzy, where budding tycoons bought houses and apartments off  the plans in godforsaken shitholes where nobody would ever want to live.  Ever.

According to the Sunday Independent,  the IAVI head spoke to  reporters at that organisation’s annual conference last Friday, saying that as a result of poor planning and a lack of infrastructure some of the country’s newer housing stock may never be required.

Scuppering hopes of the Government buying the ghost estates from their builder buddies for use as social housing, she said:   “… that housing might be in locations where it’s not required.  Is it fair to ship people out to that location just because there happens to be an empty house there?.........I haven’t heard any viable proposals about what to do other than to potentially knock down some of these developments”. 

After the Irish economic miracle that never was, maybe we can now save face and create the world’s first-ever deconstruction boom?

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Always Look on the Bright Side of Lies - Gerry Adams' funny relationship with the truth

It’s funny how Gerry Adam’s ratings went up slightly in the last Irish Times/MRBI poll, despite his recent contradictory statements about his knowledge/non-knowledge of allegations of child abuse in the 80s against his brother, Liam, who subsequently worked on youth projects for the Shinners in Belfast and Dundalk.

According to Liam Clarke in the Sunday Times, Adams told a conference in Dublin that “rich lawyers” with whom he consulted advised him that the press “can publish anything, [including] total untruths” with impunity, and that the only thing that stopped him from suing them after some reports on the scandal was the prospect of legal costs.

Journalists might disagree. In fact libel laws in the Republic are particularly stringent, with certain colourful businessmen just waiting to pounce and shut down any newspaper or media outlet that slips up and falls foul of them. And then there’s Martin Cullen, of course. So it would be interesting to hear the full Sinn Fein position on freedom of the press.

Perhaps any prospective prosecution by Adams might be made more difficult given the fact that no one can seriously believe a word the man says? He says he was never in the IRA, for example. Now, years ago, when the “troubles” were in full swing, that was a necessary tactical denial - but is there a need for him to keep it up now? Also, when Jean McConville was kidnapped and murdered by the IRA, Adams said he was in prison - a claim disputed by commentators.

Then there’s the behaviour of the Sinn Fein leadership during the hunger strikes, as alleged in a book by a former IRA member, who says that they let their own members die even after Thatcher had conceded on key points. If that's the case, some of them died soley in pursuance of the Shinners “ballot box in one hand, Armalite in the other” electoral strategy.

A more harmless porky, in the scheme of things, is that Adams cites Monty Python's Always Look on the Bright Side of Life as one of his iconic prison memories, which he and other inmates/POWs sang after being beaten by prison guards.

Trouble is - the song was not written until after his release.

Gerry Adams "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" video




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Developers' Special Incentive Tax Rate costs €800 million.

Bertie Ahern, Eamon O’Cuiv, Bono and Charlie McCreevy are the four apocalyptic horsemen of the blog, galloping ahead of the plentiful field in the Featuring on Gombeen Nation Stakes.

One of them, Ahern, today defended a Fianna Fail tax dodge introduced on his watch for the party’s developer buddies: the Special Incentive Tax Rate. The break allowed developers to pay tax of 20% on their landbanks, rather than the previously applicable rate of 42%.

The move was ostensibly intended to “encourage” developers to release their landbanks for building. Nonsense of course, as with any of the other property tax measures, the builders/developers simply waited and sold their assets at whatever inflated amount the banks were prepared to recklessly advance to buyers, then pocketed the extra profit.

Ahern is quoted defending the squalid scam to RTE by saying that “the place was disastrous” when the tax incentives were introduced. Well it's a lot more "disastrous" now, Bertie, isn't it?

What he also neglects to acknowledge is that this particular measure was introduced in 2000 (it may even have been 2001) when the property bubble was already inflating alarmingly. All in all, the Special Incentive Tax Rate cost the exchequer €800 million by the time it was finally scrapped in 2009, while also contributing to unsustainable asset price inflation.

And which finance minister introduced it? Yes, fellow horseman Charlie McCreevy. He, along with Ahern, of course, recently denied they had any part in creating the current economic mess.

And I thought the horse wore the blinkers.

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No money for road repairs.

Have you seen the state of the roads? Ever since last year’s biblical floods, and the mini ice age that gripped us as we saw in the New Year, they are like something from the Somme. There are potholes deep enough to swallow a whole party of spelologists, never mind banjax your tyres/wheels/suspension/spine.

Not very encouraging then to hear, in a country with woeful – or none in some places - public transport, that no extra money is being allotted for necessary road repairs.

I say necessary, as they are. Such roads not only represent a danger to your vehicle’s integrity, but also to your life – and this applies particularly to those on two wheels, whose stability and safety can be severely compromised by even minor surface imperfections.

It’s particularly galling when you consider how much we pay for road tax in Ireland compared with our nearest neighbour. In the UK, a road tax disk will set you back £405 at the very most, while vehicles in the lowest band are exempt. In Ireland you’ll still pay €104 for the humblest of runabouts, right up to €2,100 at the other end of the range.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, we pay way more for our cars in the shape of excise duty – also known as Vehicle Registration Tax – in some cases nearly twice as much as UK motorists. In addition to all of this, we also pay road tolls. Which prompts the question, where do our motoring related taxes go?

Surely if this Government and our local councils can waste money on countless frivolous projects (lots on this topic elsewhere on the blog), they can at least honour the vast sums they extract from motorists with safe roads. But the truth is, motor tax is not ring-fenced, it can go anywhere. Motorists who live in isolated areas, who are dependent on their own transport, will increasingly experience this in the years ahead.

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Blanchardstown Shopping Centre - Buggy Wonderland.

I’ve just come back from the nearby Blanchardstown Shopping Centre, and the place was heaving. Whatever about consumer spending being down, there’s still a heavy footfall – and Liffey Valley was the same yesterday.

What’s really remarkable though, is the number of buggies in these places. Bloody hell, both the Blanchardstown Centre and Liffey Valley were like two massive crèches, with a plague of screaming brats pushed along by battalions of aggressive, shellsuit-clad mothers (always the mothers). My heels still bear the bruises as a result of not getting out of their way quickly enough. Next time I’m taking the hiking boots, or I might don a priest's attire in order to keep them away from me.

You might have guessed by now that I’m not exactly the paternal sort: the pitter-patter of tiny feet and the thought of spending my hard-earned on packets of Pampers (when I could be spending it on beer) are things that never attracted me – but that’s just me, right? And let’s face it, when it comes to popping them out there are no shortage of volunteers in Ireland.

So, given that a recession is possibly the best time to start a business - with lower rents, cheaper premises, and reduced start-up costs - here’s a top tip for you. Get yourself a Mothercare or Mamas & Papas franchise, and remember me kindly when you really start coining it in when the economy improves in 2020.

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Dublin City Council - Irish only placenames.

Dublin is a city renowned for its writers. The likes of Joyce, Swift, O’Casey, Wilde, Shaw, Beckett, Stoker and Synge have been massively influential in shaping the canon of English literature, and their works are famous the world over.

More recently, and up to the present, Dublin can still boast of Murdoch, Binchy, Doyle, O’Connor, Connelly and more. It is a cultural heritage of which the city can be truly proud.

Now, however, Dublin City Council wants to ban the English language – our proud and unique version of it – from future placenames in the city. Up until now, Dublin’s street names have been bilingual, but if those in the Wood Quay Bunker have their way all new streets will be in Gaelic only. English will be forbidden...

Likewise, the naming of future developments, estates and buildings has been a matter of choice up until now. In Dublin City Council’s brave new world it will be forbidden to refer to them in the vernacular of the city.

I, for one, am sick and tired of being ruled over by a gombeen political “elite” who ride roughshod over us with impunity. They only do it, of course, because they consistently get away with it. Let’s make a start and don’t let them get away with this nonsense.

Please read the relevant section from the notice below and tell them where to go before March 12th. E-mail them at development.plan@dublincity.ie (submissions MUST include your full name and address).

DUBLIN DRAFT DEVELOPMENT PLAN (Section 17.9.2 Names of Residential Estates)
"All new street and development names shall reflect local historical, heritage or cultural associations and the basic generic description (i.e. Court, Quay, Road etc.) must be appropriate.

The Planning Authority will approve the naming of residential developments in order to avoid confusion in regard to similar names in other locations. Street signs must be bilingual, and all house numbers must be visible.

Developers shall agree estate names with the Planning Authority prior to the commencement of development. Such estate names shall be in the Irish language only and shall reflect the history and topography of the area in which they are located. The names of public roads shall be in the Irish language only." DUBLIN CITY COUNCIL

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Forget Sherry Fitz - get a St Joseph home selling kit

Trying to sell your house? Coming to the conclusion that selling snowballs to the Eskimos might be an easier option? Worry not, for divine help is at hand.

Today’s Sunday Times reports that would-be Irish sellers are resorting to religion in an attempt to shift their overpriced shoeboxes, and are enlisting the services of no less a deity than Saint Joseph, Jesus' stepdad.

It seems that as well as being the patron saint of carpenters, Saint Joseph also represents the home and, by extension (sorry), estate agents. So what you do is buy a statue of Saint Joe and bury him head-first in your front garden, facing away from your house, preferably near your “For Sale” sign. I kid you not, this is what I am reading. Either that, or somebody slipped some LSD into that last coffee.

A spokesperson for Veritas, the religious store based on Abbey Street, is quoted as saying that sales of St Joseph statues are booming in the bust, increasing by 500% over the past year. The practice is popular in the United States too – unsurprisingly – with dedicated home-selling kits that include special prayers, St Joseph oil (?), a St Joseph print and, of course, a statue of the man himself. See St Joseph home selling kits

For those who want that extra bit of shove from above, a deluxe kit is available which features a statue of St Jude for good measure. The more devout among you will recognise straight away that St Jude is the patron Saint of lost causes, which is especially apt.

If none of the above works for you, it might be time to drop your asking price...

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The Cold "Snap" - Don't wait for Dublin City Council to get a grip

Right, this is out of civic-mindedness and humanitarian priniciples. I'm not making any money for advertising these, nor am I expecting any sneaky brown envelopes to pass through the Gombeen Manor letterbox. No personal gain, right?

I had to traverse 100 metres from my workplace to the train today in Dublin city centre and nearly broke my pert little bottom on at least two occasions during the odyessy. So bad were things, indeed, that people abandoned the paths to share roadspace with skidding traffic in a vain attempt to remain perpendicular.

All this was after Michael Phillips, chief engineer with the the society of clowns otherwise known as Dublin City Council (the same lot inflicting Gaeilge-only placenames on us see here) was on radio saying they were not going to be gritted, as "resources were not available". And we still have another ten days of freezing weather to come.

I'm trying not to curse, as I'm determined not to let the high standards drop on Gombeen Nation. I'm trying, trying hard not to curse. Really. If you'll excuse me, I'll just pop outside for a minute.

Where was I? Look, if we wait any longer for these complete and utter incompetents to sort out the paths and roads we'll all be lying on trollies in the grounds of the local A&E, roaring with hip fractures and broken arses, as there won't even be enough room in the corridors.

So if you do any amount of walking at all on our treacherous footpaths, get yourself a set of these Yaktrax. It looks like they fit around your existing shoes, boots, trainers or slippers, as the case may be.

Then let me know if they work, as I'm very curious.

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Bertie autobiography gets tax exemption

Readers of the blog will be heartened to hear that, even in these cash-strapped times, the Revenue Commisioners have granted Bertie Ahern tax exemption for his autobiography.

The artists' tax exemption scheme was introduced by Ahern's Mentor, Charlie Haughey, in 1969 – ostensibly to provide encouragement to struggling artists working away in their dingy garrets.

Predictably, it ended up being used as a vehicle for multi-billionaires U2 and their rock-star friends to avoid paying income tax. One unnamed beneficiary pocketed €10 million in one year without paying a cent on it, just before it was capped in 2006, according to today's Irish Times.

In order for a work to be granted exemption status by Revenue, it must be “original and creative” and “generally recognised as having cultural or artistic merit”.

While we doubt that Bertie’s account of his life in and out of politics contains much cultural merit, we are sure our erstwhile leader will give Stephen King a run for his money in the creativity stakes.

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A sprinkling of snow and the place seizes up.

I was one of the unlucky souls who had to work on New Year’s Day. Usually I take the train, but on Sundays or bank holidays that’s not possible as the “service” is too infrequent to deserve such a description. As for gettting back home, the last train out of town to my place on such days is 8.48pm.

So I drove in with the other half and left the car in the Phoenix Park, and we walked/slid our way along the quays to get the benefit of a bit of exercise. The plan was that I’d go in, do my shift and get picked up when I had finished.

When I got into work I heard that all the buses had been cancelled - just like that - and there were poor sods waiting at bus stops for buses that were never going to come. I can’t verify this, but people on the Boards forum claim that Dublin Bus had nothing about the sudden cancellations on their website.

Later on I heard that the Phoenix Park gates were closed due to icy conditions on the park’s main road, which is an important artery running out of town to Castleknock, Blanchardstown, Clonsilla and beyond. Many of the roads around Chapelizod were closed too, so bang went the idea of getting a lift back home. The only thing for it was to take an early cut and get the (early) last train. At least I had that option - those living in places served only by Dublin Bus were well and truly snookered.

Even last Saturday, when we headed into town again (we had to), the Phoenix Park was like an ice rink. What’s more, the place was jammers with people who evidently had no idea how to drive in such conditions. That same evening, the park gates were shut again.

Question: Why did the Powers-That-Be find it necessary to shut the park? Haven’t they heard of grit?

Bloody hell. A couple of centimetres of snow and the whole country literally seizes up.

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Man Utd 0, Leeds Utd 1. FA Cup 3rd round

It's got nothing to do with the blog really, but...



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