tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58293815832047509282024-03-23T12:22:43.140+00:00Gombeen NationWecome to Gombeen Nation: a not-so-tongue-in-cheek take on the idiosyncrasies Irish life.The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.comBlogger731125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-84848035357565640622015-08-14T23:35:00.002+01:002015-08-14T23:35:39.155+01:00Flow River Flow - Ding Dong Denny O'Reilly<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">J</span></b>ust to show that the blog is dormant - admittedly for rather a long time now - rather than extinct, I thought I'd "share" this little ditty from spoof Republican balladeer Ding Dong Denny O'Reilly. <br />
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What with 1916 coming up, and all that....</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0yyPiOTLLOY" width="420"></iframe><br />
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<a href="http://gombeennation.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Back to Gombeen Nation home page</a><br />
<br />The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-35490585041482757242015-02-05T10:26:00.002+00:002015-02-05T14:30:25.371+00:00Michael O'Leary, Vincent Browne, gay marriage, Cork<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">N</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">o, this isn't Dermot Morgan swinging his hurley in character as a deranged GAA Catholic 36 years ago on the Live Mike. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is real. Last week.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>A</b></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">nd here's a great version put to music by <span style="font-size: large;">White Boys</span>:</span><br />
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<a href="http://gombeennation.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Back to Gombeen Nation main page</a>The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-57971562163157341702014-07-11T15:39:00.001+01:002014-07-11T16:08:08.475+01:00Garth Brooks Croke Park gigs - gombeen Ireland in action<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBi-ptTPzYp53OpMtcy4FXH63-Cnx3tjUWZESci4eX-7hmwjN6ww3z_OrNtW5g2KaTL2q5z3wz7MVb_twvIWeUrO8K7YAaKNVNxBznH8aNjurrmK0ZEaJnV9MSrB_piv4C2x41ahVCvp4R/s1600/spurs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBi-ptTPzYp53OpMtcy4FXH63-Cnx3tjUWZESci4eX-7hmwjN6ww3z_OrNtW5g2KaTL2q5z3wz7MVb_twvIWeUrO8K7YAaKNVNxBznH8aNjurrmK0ZEaJnV9MSrB_piv4C2x41ahVCvp4R/s1600/spurs.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><br /></b></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>T</b></span>he whole Garth Pukes<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>– sorry, Brooks – thing is yet another
example, as though one was needed, of gobshitery and Irishry.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here’s a summary:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> GAA (</span>Grab All Association) has an agreement with local residents as to how
many gigs can be held at Croke Park.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It deliberately flaunts this agreement and exceeds the agreed number.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The promoter of the Garth Brooks gigs, Jim Aikin, must know this
but sells the tickets anyway - as early as January if comments on The Journal are
to be believed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He only submits his application to hold the
gigs in April, which means by the time due process would be excercised by
Dublin City Council, we are nearly at the time when the concerts were
advertised to take place.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the process, which takes into
consideration residents’ objections, the gigs are refused, as might have been
predicted.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Next, objectors are issued with death
threats and the TV is full of footage of a large Texan in a silly hat promising
he will swim to Ireland to meet with our prime minister to ensure his five gigs
go ahead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Swim, Garth… please).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The bloke who runs those awful O’Carrolls
Oirish tat shops is interviewed<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>on RTE
news, against a backdrop of green stetsons with shamrocks and Garth Brooks in
the shape of Ireland on the front, saying how awful this is for the Irish economy
and Ireland’s reputation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(Never mind the fact that those awful shops
have probably done more harm to our image than anything since the odd few
thousand incarcerated “unmarried mothers”, “fallen women”, and countless
children buggered by our priests, aided by our police force, successive governments, and
"The Peeple" in general.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #38761d;">The whole thing is still rumbling on and
you can’t turn on the telly, read a paper, listen to a radio or look at your
smartphone without hearing Garth professing how much he loves Ireland and the Irish
and how we should ignore our planning laws in order to facilitate a cowboy
and a bunch of money-grubbing gombeens.</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<!--StartFragment-->
<!--EndFragment--><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s business as usual, then.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://gombeennation.blogspot.ie/" target="_blank">Back to Gombeen Nation main page</a></span></span></div>
The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-16294329583025459642014-06-08T16:20:00.003+01:002014-06-08T21:41:20.538+01:00800 Tuam babies' grave. Different back then?<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">W</span>ith all the bullshit of the 1916 rising
centenary awaiting us, it might be timely to consider the “visions” of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>some of its participants, namely the faction
of bourgeoisie nationalists who won out and came to power in the
end.<br />
<br />
Padraig Pearse achieved his blood sacrifice, of course, something he held in
high regard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He envisaged a tee-total,
Gaelic-speaking, Catholic Ireland (see Tom Garvin, Preventing the Future: How Ireland stayed so poor for so long). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s “revolution”, Irish-style.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mercifully, the Brits put a bullet in
Pearse – sadly, however, they left de Valera alive and well in order to impose his vision
of a rural, conservative, Catholic, ill-educated backwater of Europe on the new
State.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He succeeded splendidly.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hence the latest revelation of 800
babies,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>mostly the offspring of
“unmarried mothers”,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">who died in this brave new State’s care at
the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Galway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mortality rate of 35% at this institution was far higher than in general, and the dead babies were put
in a large unmarked mass grave. One might be forgiven for concluding there was a deliberate policy of neglect in order to rid the pure new Ireland of inconvenient "illegitimates".</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
<br />
You might have thought there would be outrage now in Ireland at this, but no.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s just another scandal and it was a long
time ago.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not as long ago as the Vikings, the Norman invasion, the Tudor plantation and the famine, of course –
which many Irish “remember” like yesterday, indoctrinated as they are, and
still swear revenge for. Predictably, the Gaelic version of Irish identity foisted on us carefully forgets the fact that Ireland's original inhabitants – the ones who built Newgrange – were a pre-Celtic people. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But back to the matter of the 800 babies. Things were different back then, you see, when
the Irish State’s genocide of “illegitimate” babies was going on in religious
and State institutions, with the acquiescence of the Garda and the <i><b>Irish Peeple</b></i>
themselves. So move on, forgive and forget and all that. It's all in the past.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/baby-deaths-now-gardai-probe-the-tuam-mass-grave-30337463.html" target="_blank">Irish Independent, Tuam babies' mass grave investigation</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Have a look at this Indo article on the
topic, and how many of the comments on
the article take such a tack. <i> </i><i>“Things
were different then”.</i><i> </i> That’s OK then.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Things were different in Europe when the
Jews were being rounded up and murdered by the then German State
authorities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The difference is
Anti-semitic attitudes in Germany and elsewhere have since been addressed, and lessons
on the dangers of narrow myth-based nationalism have been learned<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The problem in Ireland, is that things really
aren’t that much different at all.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-40991660235524991812014-05-18T17:37:00.000+01:002014-05-18T18:35:54.421+01:00Racist attacks on People Before Profit candidate, Memet Uludag, election posters in Castleknock Ward<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><b>"It's much better than you, you stinkin' Irish pig!"</b></i></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">George Stone, character in film The Untouchables</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i style="color: #38761d; font-weight: bold;">"The cottier's cottages were built with local stone or turf and thatched with rush or straw. Many cottages did not have windows and chimneys. Windows, when they existed, were often too small for a man to put his head though. There was often, but not always, a hole in the roof to let out smoke. Ventilation was always bad. Pigs, poultry and other animals lived with the family, often sleeping in the same room." </i><br />The Great Famine,<i> </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">www.maggieblanck.com/Mayopages/Famine.html</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span></b>ronic then, given the Irish association with pigs in terms of insults and historical connections, to see the following election poster for People Before Profit election candidate for the Castleknock ward, Memet Uludag, defaced in this way. Note that the Fianna Fail candidate above, whose party bankrupted the country, remains unscathed.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglyZyqjCmWcbdl-JdEpjG86527VR_EtItcyrGyaR0Z0vSP6EgvsXe-oQtiTmhSRId1iJhyphenhyphenSi80han_1IaSZ1nh3wUDgLjqY3JSCZ9Ji7rtICdApZZqQMylwToDEybmf9RVAGBhLt0iq27y/s1600/uludag_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglyZyqjCmWcbdl-JdEpjG86527VR_EtItcyrGyaR0Z0vSP6EgvsXe-oQtiTmhSRId1iJhyphenhyphenSi80han_1IaSZ1nh3wUDgLjqY3JSCZ9Ji7rtICdApZZqQMylwToDEybmf9RVAGBhLt0iq27y/s1600/uludag_1.jpg" height="640" width="475" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmQyEMmY-0Z1ZQMTfANg_LLtvFI1l2r2Yzhii0qBhElDIvQxhk-RiXnh4uxmruL2i5nRgl-gAL2tbKyjRJSgNAsRCGVtpENUxGGkYg6HJ_Pm7MPtD8b4aUclizjzPfkeu8Xixy2B6GEZ8J/s1600/uludag_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmQyEMmY-0Z1ZQMTfANg_LLtvFI1l2r2Yzhii0qBhElDIvQxhk-RiXnh4uxmruL2i5nRgl-gAL2tbKyjRJSgNAsRCGVtpENUxGGkYg6HJ_Pm7MPtD8b4aUclizjzPfkeu8Xixy2B6GEZ8J/s1600/uludag_2.jpg" height="640" width="529" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There were several of these spotted on Roselawn Road, Blanchardstown. It seems some ignorant racist scumbag - or group thereof - targeted Uludag, a naturalised Irish person who is originally from Turkey, on the presumption he is a Muslim.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Never mind that fact that someone from a group such as People Before Profit is quite obviously a socialist and an internationalist, and is unlikely to have much truck with fundamentalist Islam or any of its "values".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even when I lived in east London, during the hey-day of the BNP, I never saw anything like this. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Amazing how little attention things like this get in the Irish media, and how little our otherwise forthright and opinionated chattering classes have to say on the matter of racism and prejudice - so rife in Irish society.</span><br />
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<b><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></b>The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-19691340929265175962014-02-26T17:16:00.002+00:002014-02-26T20:15:57.088+00:00Patrick Kavanagh – Epic<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIKYRVBKsmXUU8FWJYgaLMj7ppyz-6FpPQSCKrMU1pc1iiSOkDi-ptAScHNfjROuUWjPCNPd6bduYSjCLuj4pc4htacBUHQlzxz-uHPsUvctvDux173wtHv10zoOcKPLp4bkO3WqkATpeP/s1600/Poet_Patrick_Kavanagh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIKYRVBKsmXUU8FWJYgaLMj7ppyz-6FpPQSCKrMU1pc1iiSOkDi-ptAScHNfjROuUWjPCNPd6bduYSjCLuj4pc4htacBUHQlzxz-uHPsUvctvDux173wtHv10zoOcKPLp4bkO3WqkATpeP/s1600/Poet_Patrick_Kavanagh.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Y</span></b>ou'd be worn out with it all – the <i>same old, same old</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In "the news" lately: Irish judges the highest paid in Europe, ditto TDs, teachers, coppers and all the rest. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Speaking of the latter, there are ongoing (and still unaddressed) allegations of Garda corruption... maybe we'll have a tribunal or Government investigation exposing it all in 20 years' time? Maybe a few of them will get a taste of their own medicine and sample the inside of a jail? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But no, didn't the great Irish public vote against giving Government investigations real powers in a recent referendum? So the corrupt can continue to come out smiling for the cameras whenever such "investigations" take place. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Irish public. <i>"The Peeple"</i>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The same gobshites who voted for Charlie, Bertie, Lowry, Callely and other assorted shysters year-in year-out, decade after decade, all the way back to Dev himself. The same gobshites who voted to keep the senate.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you think about it too much you'll end up going insane... this is what the Irish people want, after all. And you don't want to end up like them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sure 'tis a great little land.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And what better way to sum up Irish parochialism and small-mindedness than this 1938 work by Patrick Kavanagh? </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i> "The Munich bother"</i>, by the way, is the Munich Agreement: when Chamberlain famously appeased Hitler in a hope to stop further Nazi expansion... "peace for our time". </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We all know what happened next... "The Emergency". </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><span style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-large;"><b>Epic</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I have lived in important places, times<br />When great events were decided, who owned<br />That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land<br />Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.<br />I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul!"<br />And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen<br />Step the plot defying blue cast-steel -<br />"Here is the march along these iron stones."<br />That was the year of the Munich bother. Which<br />Was more important? I inclined<br />To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin<br />Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.<br />He said: I made the Iliad from such<br />A local row. Gods make their own importance. <br /><br />Patrick Kavanagh</span><br />
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The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-44311257284731669462014-02-13T16:36:00.003+00:002014-02-14T08:32:01.648+00:00Gardai bug Ombudsman shock?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRSLUNcCO8JQUiMMRkmvM-ZA0HpxoxvOGI-NoSAcux3gax02GXPJxaai4_uak64_GxCO_4HRyXjzjsdCPMxTxhuV2vtabucH_ScboS2N1IzdhuZh-FXv8YI00FTIS6QUcq75ZBZ0cg415r/s1600/morseandjag.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRSLUNcCO8JQUiMMRkmvM-ZA0HpxoxvOGI-NoSAcux3gax02GXPJxaai4_uak64_GxCO_4HRyXjzjsdCPMxTxhuV2vtabucH_ScboS2N1IzdhuZh-FXv8YI00FTIS6QUcq75ZBZ0cg415r/s1600/morseandjag.jpg" height="320" width="253" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>S</b></span>hould it come as any surprise? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Garda have been bugging people for years, in so many ways. Even Justice Morris, who headed a tribunal of inquiry to investigate gardai misdeeds in Donegal in the 90s and 2000s.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />The Morris Tribunal found extensive corruption and criminal behaviour by gardai in that county, some of whom tried to frame members of a family for murder. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They also planted “evidence” on people, and hid guns and explosives which they “found” later and claimed as arms caches, to aid their promotion.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Indeed, Morris himself reported that<b> "The Tribunal has been staggered by the amount of indiscipline and insubordination it has found in the Garda Force.”</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />The Garda also tapped phones of prominent journalists in the 80s, at the behest of the Fianna Fail minister of justice, Sean Doherty.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />Given all this, is it really too far-fetched to think that the good folk at the Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) suspected their offices might have been bugged? And is it any surprise that the last people to whom they might report their suspicions would be the Garda themselves?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Garda are habitually uncooperative towards the GSOC, even sometimes refusing to submit documents to the ombudsman when claims of misconduct are being made. <br /><br />The force also resisted attempts by the GSOC to look into the recent penalty points scandal, in which some gardai wiped the penalty points slate clean for themselves, their mates, their families, certain politicians and GAA “stars”.<br /><br />Let’s play detective for a minute and ask who would possibly want to bug the GSOC’s offices? <br /><br />No need to call Inspector Morse, is there?</span></div>
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The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-71384099369379465312014-02-04T14:33:00.002+00:002014-02-04T19:56:53.893+00:00Neknomination and a tsunami of hysteria <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEszI9_ANgv9FTUAKC_lhMNYlpO4Ctc8IAyptyW1onBOvSUvcw_O3FGMKSEdRxYbUOynpDIOsLASdOp7vk43Qo0RhqCiv15njKCgytE9EVtfXosfJCMDhQIDk2S-UXKq5nUuOxpgi7GVfw/s1600/jagermeister-liqueur-miniature-2cl-35-abv_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEszI9_ANgv9FTUAKC_lhMNYlpO4Ctc8IAyptyW1onBOvSUvcw_O3FGMKSEdRxYbUOynpDIOsLASdOp7vk43Qo0RhqCiv15njKCgytE9EVtfXosfJCMDhQIDk2S-UXKq5nUuOxpgi7GVfw/s1600/jagermeister-liqueur-miniature-2cl-35-abv_1.jpg" height="320" width="158" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">L</span></b>ook, I'm no spring chicken – far from it. Any fluff to be found on me springs out only from my ears and nose.<br /><br />But even I cannot help but have a good laugh at fogey Ireland when it comes to the web. If the reactions of the papers, RTE, Internet sources of less authority than this one, and high court judges are anything to go by, we are facing into an <i>neknomination</i> abyss.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> "<i>Neknomination</i>", if fevered reports are to be believed, is "an online craze" sweeping the youth of Ireland, including our student future elite. You can tell they are students by the fact that they aren't able to spell "neck".<br /><br /><br /> The Irish Independent describes it thus:<br /><br /><span style="color: #38761d;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">WHAT IS NEKNOMINATION?</span><br />Alyson Henry – 03 February 2014<br /><br />NEKNOMINATION is an online drinking game that has gained momentum in recent weeks in Ireland. The aim of the game is to down a pint of alcohol and then nominate someone else to do the same, giving them a window of 24 hours to do so. Most people who take part make a video of themselves carrying it out, and post it on social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter.<br /><br /> The concept of the game has been described as: "Neck your drink. Nominate another. Don't break the chain, don't be a d***. The social drinking game for social media! #neknominate. Drink Responsible".<br /><br />Some try to take Neknomination to extremes, downing disgusting cocktails or aiming to be ever‐more flamboyant or outrageous, sometimes with dangerous results.<br /><br />The deaths of two young people this weekend have been linked to the game, causing concerns as to the impact the trend is having on young people and drinking habits.</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>A</b>ccording to latest reports however, it now seems that at least one of the deaths above had nothing to do with "the craze" but that reporting it so was due to the climate of <i>neknomination hysteria</i>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I see another angle here: that bit about "young people" and "drinking habits". </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You just know where this is going – the authorities raising alcohol prices on the pretext of acting in the interests of spoiled brats who should know better. And where do they get the money anyway? Mummy and daddy, I presume? So where do they fit in with all of this?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">More incredibly, if that most out-of-touch section of the Irish populace – the judiciary – is to be believed, neknomination will result in a tidal wave of murder and rape too. See below:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b>A High Court judge has said if Internet drinking contests continued, they would result in a “tsunami” of homicide and rape prosecutions before his court.<br /><br />Mr Justice Paul Carney was speaking as he was sentencing a 38-year-old Waterford man who, after drinking six to seven pints of Budweiser, raped an acquaintance having offered her a lift home from their local nightclub.<br /><br />The man yesterday received an eight-year sentence with the final three years suspended. An 18-month post-release supervision order was also imposed and the man was registered a sex offender. </b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>W</b>oah! Steady on, Your Honour. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">First of all, the man above is 38 years old. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Apart from that, It's something of a leap – even from comfort of a well-upholstered judge's seat – to equate a stupid drinking game played by young people incapable of actual social interaction with acts of murder and rape. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Surely if all these silly <i>dares</i> take place in front of a PC, laptop or smartphone, it's more likely that participants with be up in their bedrooms with the doors locked, and are more likely to fall into their beds after their Jägerbombfest? They're quite possibly less likely to be outside causing inconvenience to others, as happened in my day. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And rape? Sorry, I am not making light of this, but has Judge Carney never heard of <i>Brewer's Droop</i>? If our pampered youth manage to stagger out of their safe suburban homes after a session of neknomination, they are highly unlikely to be any condition to rape or murder.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No more than <b>Grand Theft Auto</b>, a silly craze cannot be held responsible for such serious crimes. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Someone who does such things will do so without any encouragement. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We are faced with a tsunami of hyperbole and hysteria, more like. </span></div>
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The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-56842692416266865652014-01-27T20:37:00.003+00:002014-01-30T22:59:52.165+00:00Garda whistleblower and penalty points – one law for us and one for them<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnEnHbqVlUhVKrVwM9ghjQO6bY9_fhdKYXWDVO_5aEKg8a0gRmFw6U-a2dkumXC_d9buik-tp8wMigvj4kfxCt56RjCWvJ6us97543gi6KJNbfXHFMTX8Zw-U4EJKeJ5ZVLLSzcu8sr4vv/s1600/garda_crest.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnEnHbqVlUhVKrVwM9ghjQO6bY9_fhdKYXWDVO_5aEKg8a0gRmFw6U-a2dkumXC_d9buik-tp8wMigvj4kfxCt56RjCWvJ6us97543gi6KJNbfXHFMTX8Zw-U4EJKeJ5ZVLLSzcu8sr4vv/s1600/garda_crest.gif" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">S</span></b>ome people think very highly of gardai, that they are there to protect us and all the rest. I must confess that I'm not one... I've only every been inconvenienced by them. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first time I was about 8 years old, and awoke to the sound of banging on the door one early morning. Minutes later, a plain-clothes redneck with his gun holster showing from underneath his substantial lapel was in my – and my brother's – bedroom, blustering the big "Hello lads", in the creepy, voice-of-authority manner that teachers and priests of the time also employed.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The second time I was about sixteen, and had forgotten about a tin of Dandelion Market grass that I had bought months previously. I'd tried it and thought it was crap, before consigning it to a mantlepiece in one of the empty rooms up the house (we lived in the rented ground-floor flat of a rather dilapidated Georgian building). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I thought I'd been had, to be honest with you, and the hustler who had sold it to me had given me a tin of thyme. The bould boys in blue were of another mind, however – apparently it was the real thing. They confiscated it, of course.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They were welcome to it, as far as I was concerned. I thought it was utter rubbish, and felt no effects from it at all. To this day I can't figure out the fascination with cannabis that many people have, including hick gobshites like Luke "Ming" Flanagan. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There aren't too many of you, I'm sure, who can boast about their gaff being raided, not once - but twice, during their childhood? "Why did it happen?" you ask.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well, we had a very bad time with landlords in Yours Truly's formative days. On one occasion said landlord even turned up with some heavies and threatened the old man, who was having none of it, to his credit. I think the old dear then approached some splinter group – possibly Official Sinn Fein (who now make up much of the Labour Party). </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We ended up appearing in their paper, as they took some pictures and highlighted our rather poor living conditions. Before they did that, though, I had to take down my "Leeds United" pennant from the wall – so much for them being internationalist socialists, eh? Even an 8-year-old kid could see something odd about that.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then there was a mad aul'wan who lived down the road, whose hubby was in Portlaoise. The old dear used to chat to her if she bumped into her in the street. She was very fond of animals - I remember remarking at the time - but not so much of people, given the IRA's (and loyalist terrorists) penchant for unspeakable atrocities during that awful era.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Maybe speaking to that aul'wan was enough to get the plain-clothes men out of their Cortina a second time, all those years after the first visit? </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Who knows? </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To this day I continue to be inconvenienced by them. You visit any Friday-night city in the UK, and you will be amazed by the amount of fuzz on the beat in potential watering-hole trouble spots. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then have a saunter through Temple Bar on a Friday or Saturday night, as scumbags prowl the streets looking to rob and batter drunken revelers. It really is a frightening place, and those fluorescent yellow jackets are a puzzlingly rare sight amid all the mayhem.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In fact, the only time I regularly see the gardai is when I am in the car, and spot them pointing their laser guns at traffic on roads with inappropriately low speed limits. Or hiding in the backs of vans with blacked-out windows doing the same thing. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And is it any wonder that they dedicate so much time and resources into applying aspects of "the law" that they themselves are immune from, if the snippet from a recent Indo article is to be believed?</span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d; font-size: large;"><b>Garda whistleblower makes new charges over penalty points</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;">25 January 2014</span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;">A GARDA whistleblower who is due to give evidence to TDs next week has made a fresh batch of penalty point allegations to the Dail's spending watchdog.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;">They include claims a garda arranged for the termination of penalty points for 10 members of his own</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;">and extended family.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;">Several cases where senior gardai allegedly quashed points for other officers are also cited in a letter</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;">from the whistleblower, Sgt Maurice McCabe, to the Public Accounts Committee.</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #38761d;">Also highlighted are several instances where senior officers allegedly cancelled fixed notice penalty</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;">charges even though the offences occurred outside of their district.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;">ADVICE</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;">The new claims come as Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan awaits legal advice from Attorney General Maire Whelan on whether he can stop Sgt McCabe giving evidence to the committee.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;">Sources close to the commissioner have indicated he does not want to have to seek a High Court</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;">injunction to halt next Thursday's hearing and is hoping that a compromise arrangement can be reached.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;">The commissioner believes discipline and order within the force will be compromised if a subordinate</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;">officer is allowed give evidence to the Oireachtas.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It looks like the Garda commissioner is here demanding that honesty within the force is to be avoided at all costs, though baulking at a High Court injunction to thwart the enquiry – which even he might see would not go down too well with the public his members like to hassle.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How, even in a rotten counrty like Ireland, can an an honest copper who is prepared to give evidence against corrupt colleagues be seen as a threat? As a catalyst for "<i>a breakdown in discipline and order in the force</i>" no less?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bizarre... even by the standards of the place.</span><br />
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The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-56591010075368315592014-01-21T21:26:00.006+00:002014-01-22T09:23:20.897+00:00CAPTCHA - so illegible that only spammers can make it out<span style="color: #cc0000;"><br /></span>
<b><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><i>Hello, for all time i used to check web site posts here early in the break of day, because I love to find out more and more. my web-site: best e cigarette review.</i></span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><i><br /></i></span></b>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">J</span></b>ust an example of the numerous spam emails the blog gets (and I know we've touched on this before). Whenever you have spam, of course, you have CAPTCHA – described by Wiki in the following manner:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">"<b>CAPTCHA</b> (an acronym for "<b>C</b>ompletely <b>A</b>utomated <b>P</b>ublic <b>T</b>uring test to tell <b>C</b>omputers and <b>H</b>umans <b>A</b>part") is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You'll be familiar with CAPTCHA, and will no doubt have torn clumps of scalp from your head while trying to decipher it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cracking the revamped WW2 Enigma code was a huge challenge, until those chaps at Bletchley Park discovered the existence of a fourth rotor on the encryptors of the Kriegsmarine. But cracking CAPTCHA? Not a chance (see below).</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGxzAL5GT065lHq8b5khKuNWCPsdugrKHxeKpjmfARGKHqy5fFKiqU1QHt85d8IFaQldDNtpfvHFqoiX4lKlSOE8jodXc5e-Goka33GNbE7KJLQHEYA1GYKp8Tq9gJwPl3DcqpHLZsBf1x/s1600/captcha.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGxzAL5GT065lHq8b5khKuNWCPsdugrKHxeKpjmfARGKHqy5fFKiqU1QHt85d8IFaQldDNtpfvHFqoiX4lKlSOE8jodXc5e-Goka33GNbE7KJLQHEYA1GYKp8Tq9gJwPl3DcqpHLZsBf1x/s1600/captcha.jpg" height="179" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even at that size you can't make head nor tail of it. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It has become so illegible that humans can no longer make it out. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Spammers still can, if my inbox is anything to go by. The other problem is that people post comments that never reach me – I know this as they've complained their contributions haven't seen the light of day. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As if the Sisyphean task of the poor blogger was not uphill enough – eclipsed as his/her medium has been by Twitter, Facebook and all the rest – without this rotten software making the gradient even steeper. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thing is, CAPTCHA had improved recently – it had become more legible with easier-to-make-out text and a photo containing a number. Comments came in unimpeded and the spam box grew no bigger... so you have to wonder why they changed it again.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Turning it off isn't an option, as it means my phone would never stop ringing for spam notifications, so it looks like we are stuck with it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sorry for the inconvenience...</span><br />
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<br />The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-18001657579947403732014-01-11T19:39:00.003+00:002014-01-12T00:11:11.919+00:00Beep if you're Irish - Leo Varadkar and road safety<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkwWRxqkkaHn2ooEpteroMWa0VJv6neHA7qRPPnBVyELajec7ljcpd0934c_G1hbaMBNP_5MRpd1yZPG8kWpGYzFEy5BsTdLnFmzvwklf7bwTKyeBIj5kbFRw3L-fm_xJAY7kmycqBH3Tp/s1600/Replacing-yur-Car-Horn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkwWRxqkkaHn2ooEpteroMWa0VJv6neHA7qRPPnBVyELajec7ljcpd0934c_G1hbaMBNP_5MRpd1yZPG8kWpGYzFEy5BsTdLnFmzvwklf7bwTKyeBIj5kbFRw3L-fm_xJAY7kmycqBH3Tp/s1600/Replacing-yur-Car-Horn.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">G</span></b>iven that we still have the highest birthrate in the EU, it will come as no surprise to you that so many Irish people are forever on the horn. But what about in the motoring sense?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In my experience - and I have lived in the UK, worked in Germany and Luxembourg, spent a bit of time in Brussels and driven as far south as Mazarron in Spain and as far east as Halle in Germany - Irish drivers are bloody awful. Possibly worse than the Belgians.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite the country having more roundabouts per square centimetre than a badly chickenpoxed visage has pock-marks, the Irish don't know how to use them. <i>"Signal, turn"</i> is an abstract concept for them. Either that, or they are trying to save the planet, the polar bears and electricity by not using those orange things on the four corners of their automotive conveyances. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Three lane motorways? The inside lane is usually left empty, with the exception of trucks - often going at higher velocity than private cars in the middle and rightmost overtaking lanes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Red lights? They are like those things matadors wave at bulls, and simply invite a reckless charge. On my miserable little half-hour lunch break in Dublin's city centre, I routinely lose count of how many times I see some arsehole break a red light, when there are pedestrians just about to cross the road, only to get as far as the next set of lights. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The solution for all these ills from our transport minister, Leo Varadkar, is to put average speed cameras on the motorways. Well Leo, it is obvious that only a great mind like yours can qualify for, and get through, seven years of medical college.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But I digress. Have you - apart from your missing tax money that goes towards financing children's allowances - noticed the latest craze for the horn in Ireland? It seems the only part of a car's anatomy Paddy and Mary are familiar with is the button in the middle of the steering wheel, which is often used as a kind of retaliatory device.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've never seen this anywhere else. It is a relatively new thing that's only become apparent in the past couple of years, and is a sad reflection on the generation of gobshites that are the future of this fucked-up little country. It's like an auditary affirmation of their utter arseholery, and saves you the trouble of having to consult BoardsDotIE or PoliticsDotIE.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here's an example. A few months back I was on the road leading from Clonsilla to Castleknock, when the car in front had to slam on its brakes when some half-wit emerged from a side road. Understandably, the driver of the car who had averted an accident by hitting the anchors beeped his/her horn. What was the response from the gobshite who pulled out from the side road? A contrite wave, a finger pointed to their thick head, an acknowledgement of being in the wrong? No, of course not - they beeped their horn back.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Can you think of anything more stupid? To be honest - and maybe I shouldn't say this - if I had been in the car that had to stop, I might well have followed them to the next set of lights and punched theirs out. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And that would have done a lot more for road safety in this country than Leo Varadkar and the RSA ever will.</span><br />
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<br />The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-57770998309016409302014-01-03T11:17:00.000+00:002014-01-03T12:33:52.920+00:00Done Deal car for sale – no "Polish" / "foreigners" need apply<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span></b>his ad, evidently placed in DoneDeal recently by some thick-ignorant gobshite, has – understandably – prompted considerable controversy on the web. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was recently taken down by said advertising site, but here is a cache screenshot so you can see it in all its glory, orthographic inaccuracies included.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But is such ignorance so surprising in a country where a senator can proudly declare he will not get into a<a href="http://gombeennation.blogspot.ie/2013/01/paschal-mooney-non-national-taxi-drivers.html"> taxi driven by "an obvious non-national"</a> and then argue that his comments were "taken out of context"?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Leading by example?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's shocking how little debate there is about such attitudes, especially as they appear to permeate all levels of Irish society.</span></div>
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<a href="http://gombeennation.blogspot.com/"> Back to Gombeen Nation main page</a>The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-39003539237136082132013-12-26T16:27:00.002+00:002013-12-26T19:35:54.033+00:00Off the trolley at Christmas.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghkDnEBqJBRQA4s9EL863aqcLQJh8u9aKy6SUvX2dZ-fMTUoHWFhenPRpYQzJ8phpU3v5Q5cXjMY4j0V1aY_zCefiTMQol7pS01U4gjnjdbHg8dxwrTKnAnYE5eMeoDQsyyrrZdaz7D1Cw/s1600/trolley.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghkDnEBqJBRQA4s9EL863aqcLQJh8u9aKy6SUvX2dZ-fMTUoHWFhenPRpYQzJ8phpU3v5Q5cXjMY4j0V1aY_zCefiTMQol7pS01U4gjnjdbHg8dxwrTKnAnYE5eMeoDQsyyrrZdaz7D1Cw/s320/trolley.jpg" width="178" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">C</span></b>hristmas comes but once a year, and it is just as well in my case. I don't know what category you fall into - Pioneer abstainer, vegan pagan or, like me, blathered blogger; it's difficult to avoid the stuff even if you wanted to.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You see, on the left, a picture taken of a Tesco trolley destined for Gombeen Manor. Well, you've got to have some booze there in case someone drops in, don't you? It would be rude otherwise.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But isn't that what Christmas is all about, as an <a href="http://gombeennation.blogspot.ie/2010/12/happy-christmas-and-all-that.html">older Gombeen Nation post attests</a>? "Christmas", albeit with different names, existed this time of year among the ancients, long before the Christians (and other religious deceivers) came along and attempted to take all the fun out of it. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I remember as a kid finally teasing out from my Old Dear that Santa didn't exist. The next logical question was "what about God?". "YES, HE DOES!" was the unequivocal reply.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So you see, you can believe whatever brand of nonsense you want. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For my part, I'm off for another beer or two before the Leeds United v Blackpool match kicks off. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Another example of the misery that blind faith can bring...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Merry Christmas - in every sense.</span><br />
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<a href="http://gombeennation.blogspot.com/">Back to Gombeen Nation main page</a>The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-53389753836460277712013-12-15T21:44:00.000+00:002013-12-16T17:42:34.810+00:00The Blades at the Olympia Theatre - Boy One. Meantime Bono hobnobs it at Mandela memorial in South Africa<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>"Almost forgot to take you down Memory Lane..."</b></span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span></b>t was great seeing The Blades' "reunion" gigs at the Olympia Theatre this weekend. Not a full reunion really, but a two-off, so we're told. It was a fantastic couple of nights.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Back in the '80s The Blades were Dublin's best band, and I was lucky enough to have seen them as a three-piece at the Magnet on Pearse Street - that's like saying you were in the <i>GPO </i>in '16 or, more important, at the Sex Pistols in the <i>Hope and Anchor</i> in '77. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They also played residencies in McGonagles and the Baggot Inn, had slots in Harcourt Street's TV Club, and played their farewell Dublin gig in the Olympic Ballroom, Camden Street, in 1986. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Inspired by the Beatles as a kid, and the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Jam as a teenager, Paul Cleary - the band's songwriter - was one of the best around. A look at the lyrics of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ6zunywNXM"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">"Tears that tell the truth"</span> </a>- along with a listen to that brilliant bass run - will confirm that for you.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here's a snippet captured with my own fair hand at the Saturday gig, a song called Boy One:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Blades and their contemporaries, U2, shared the bill at the Baggot Inn for six weekends on the trot in 1979. U2 subsequently became one of the world's biggest bands, while The Blades languished in Dublin and never saw fame and fortune. Paul McGuinness must have been doing something right, then... he must have been a miracle worker, in fact.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Interesting so, to see mega-popstar Bono hobnobbing it with the likes of George Bush at Nelson Mandela's memorial do in South Africa last Tuesday, while Paul Cleary prepared for his Olympia gigs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1984, Cleary gave his support to shopworkers at Dunnes Stores who refused to handle produce from the apartheid South African regime and went on strike over the issue. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you'd been around in the 80s, a time of rampant unemployment and emigration, you'd realise what an incredibly brave, principled stand that was. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here's a poster advertising a benefit gig at the time:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjL7u5TzE4mhrxlROlte5nxNMBhV6DpfxFp-AiOXAIJ2IvyJ2s4tbbDETwTo5K2zLWm03zdwC9I9dmMjQvKAqPyPn7rX_Gr5xCe4RwBXKswBAZg9mR8Y4-ksD7shNfk8ubyPBayP2iV5Cc/s1600/Blades+Poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjL7u5TzE4mhrxlROlte5nxNMBhV6DpfxFp-AiOXAIJ2IvyJ2s4tbbDETwTo5K2zLWm03zdwC9I9dmMjQvKAqPyPn7rX_Gr5xCe4RwBXKswBAZg9mR8Y4-ksD7shNfk8ubyPBayP2iV5Cc/s1600/Blades+Poster.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Where was Bono back then, I wonder?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here's to The Blades, Dublin's best-ever band.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-27484175556944291332013-12-10T21:30:00.002+00:002013-12-11T10:39:28.577+00:00O Cuirreain to resign An Choimisinéir Teanga job (Irish Language Commission)<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>he whole planet is in shock.</b></span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the greatest champions of human rights the world has ever known stepped off the stage last week. Things will never be the same.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I refer of course, to Irish Language Kommisar </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;">Sean O</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;"> Cuirreain,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">who made public his intention to resign his post as head of </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of An </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Choimisinéir Teanga (The Irish Language Commission)</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For those of you who don't know, An <span style="color: #333333;">Choimisinéir Teanga</span> is a quango set up to help English speakers, who also speak Gaelic, gain as much advantage as possible in the arena of State employment over everyone else, both native and non-native. Some call them the Gaeliban, others The Irish Language Lobby.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This oppressed minority - who number 2% daily speakers outside an education system where Gaelic is compulsory - are to be found among top civil servants, teachers, Irish Times readers, judges and those who grace the RTE credits at the end of each dire programme the state-subsidised dross-merchant produces. </span><br />
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</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;">O</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;"> Cuirreain</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> isn't, of course, resigning right away... but he has announced his intention to do so in light what he sees as the lack of Gaelic language services for "Gaeltacht residents". As acts of martyrdom go, it's not exactly Robben Island, is it?</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bear in mind, please, that there is <i><b>not one</b> </i>monoglot Gaelic speaker in the country, and many in the Gaeltacht don't even speak it to any acceptable level. There are no poor Paidis or Peigs on rocky outcrops in the Atlantic who are only capable of pursuing vocal intercourse with state agencies through Gaelic. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">More realistically, the kind of person more likely to insist on such interaction <i>as Gaeilge</i> is likely to be your well-heeled middle-class type who speaks Gaelic as a second language out of a Dev-inspired cultural nationalism, or who already benefits from the bureaucracy surrounding the language in the public sector.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Choimisinéir Teanga,</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Conradh na Gaelige, and all the rest want to increase this bureaucracy to ring-fence more jobs for themselves and like-minded enthusiasts by increasing Gaelic requirements for state careers... simple as that. In the past you failed your entire Leaving Cert if you didn't pass Gaeilge – you could have had seven "A"s otherwise – but nowadays they have to be a bit more subtle.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The reality is that there are more grounds for increasing the number of English/Polish speakers, or English/Chinese speakers, in state employment - including the police force. But no...this is Ireland after all, and logic and reason seldom triumph.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As someone who takes the train to and from work most days, I can vouch for the intrusiveness of An <span style="color: #333333;">Choimisinéir Teanga's diktats; having to listen to endless recorded announcements <i>as Gaeilge</i> – especially on intercity trains serving commuter routes where the Gaelic announcements drone on for so long that there is no room to hear the vernacular between stops. </span></span><br />
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</span></span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333;">Last week I had a nice English lady ask for clarification as to where the train was going, as she couldn't make head nor tail of the babble. I told her I couldn't make it out either – nor possibly most of the other passengers – and that Dev and his grandson were to blame. I did, however, know that the train stopped at Pearse Station.</span></span><br />
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</span></span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333;">Likewise, you will see many tourists looking quizzically around them as they frantically peruse their phrase-books, before the doors close and they land in some location they had no intention of going to. How Irish is that, then?</span></span><br />
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</span> <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Instead of humouring the likes of Cuirreain, the government should grab the moment and repeal Fianna Fail's 2003 Languages Act, introduced by aforementioned grandson-of-Dev, Eamon O'Cuiv.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Choimisinéir Teanga should then be shut down, being a commodity of nonsense bollocksology we can ill afford.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://gombeennation.blogspot.com/">Back to Gombeen Nation main page.</a></span><br />
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</span> The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-74043878023666375842013-12-02T11:02:00.002+00:002013-12-02T11:20:31.038+00:00Man set on fire, horse set on fire, woman blinded. Business as usual in Dublin.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKYu2KJ8eS9_6EJ_7s705XWYO_5ww8dA1VX4zI7sh0p9H8mJUQ330Y6aIfwV4Iv_gNMJkcTJ-nj4woQPedvQ2yHk5yJMuitL5uYJsBxXedU7Lir9Wmi7c46DpuLuw44o-qadZQiQ2C8ddM/s1600/devilspawn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKYu2KJ8eS9_6EJ_7s705XWYO_5ww8dA1VX4zI7sh0p9H8mJUQ330Y6aIfwV4Iv_gNMJkcTJ-nj4woQPedvQ2yHk5yJMuitL5uYJsBxXedU7Lir9Wmi7c46DpuLuw44o-qadZQiQ2C8ddM/s320/devilspawn.jpg" width="228" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></b> woman blinded by a scumbag who threw an egg from a moving car, a horse set alight by "feral youths" in Tallaght, a homeless man burnt alive in his sleeping bag in the Phoenix Park. All horror strories that have featured in the news in recent weeks. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the case of the "feral youths", as described by The Herald, children as young as 12 to 14 years old have been flinging petrol bombs at each other in pitched battles, if that not entirely reliable publication is to be believed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If it's true, it would make you wonder about the feral scumbag parents who brought such feral scumbag devilspawn into the world. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"What did you do today, Johnny?".</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"I threw a few petrol bombs at people and set a horse on fire, ma".</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"That's nice, love".</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The really worrying thing about all this is Ireland's demographic. Paddy and Mary are still popping out vile brats like there is some kind of demand for them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I suppose this goes back to the days when the Catholic Church held sway on "moral" issues, contraceptives were an illegal novelty, and people were encouraged to breed without any responsibility once the urchin had vacated the womb.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Maybe the way forward here is to hold parents to account for the actions of their offspring? Or surely if they are unaware of the activities or their children, as they roam wild during school hours, they should at least be done for negligence?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why should their kids be everyone else's – plus the odd horse's – problem?</span><br />
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The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-52109721010429478132013-11-20T21:20:00.002+00:002013-11-23T00:28:38.781+00:00Dublin house sales at three-year-high as ghost estates to be demolished by taxpayers...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkiYmqer4KUqxYZugN-wJAxyUOjTH0BgT1UZxGZ8-VbM7-CNYlTNcO7e_h9NYEJSiLpKW6NSWBgKxte7RnQlxCzJ9hwDZMITTrglir0bDzoblOKoS7VQTNxHwOmRaNEjwB21bbZEfftuEk/s1600/184900831.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkiYmqer4KUqxYZugN-wJAxyUOjTH0BgT1UZxGZ8-VbM7-CNYlTNcO7e_h9NYEJSiLpKW6NSWBgKxte7RnQlxCzJ9hwDZMITTrglir0bDzoblOKoS7VQTNxHwOmRaNEjwB21bbZEfftuEk/s320/184900831.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span></b>t's nearly getting to the point where you could take old Gombeen Nation posts from the archive, change the date at the top, and pass them off as new. Such is the convenience of blogging about Groundhog Day Ireland.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Or maybe it's the same as the chief character in Flann O'Brien's "Third Policeman" who is doomed to make the same awful, and only just bearable mistakes, into perpetuity?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I nearly choked on my Tayto and milk breakfast last week when I read the following in The Irish Times:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The number and value of house sales in Dublin is at a three-year high, according to a new survey from myhome.ie, which also shows that the total value of transactions in the first nine months of the year is up by 29 per cent on the same period last year."</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then there were some "experts" (remember those?) on radio doing their utmost to assure us that we were not looking at another bubble in the capital. I should certainly hope not, we still haven't paid for the first one yet. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the same time ghost estates, built with government tax incentives and dodges (and about which the "opposition" of the time were strangely quiet) are going to be demolished at taxpayers' expense.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then there's all the other stuff...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's a strange little country where HSE top management and executives receive salary top-ups for making a bollocks of running our health service, and where it was recently decided that taxpayers should subvent RTE even more than they do at present... by a body that contains an ex-RTE head. Failed bankers too, have enjoyed bonuses while judges have used the constitution to fight changes to their pensions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> In Greece the Troika took the axe to such wasters, but Ireland is different I suppose. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'Tis a quare place, alright. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://gombeennation.blogspot.com/">Back to Gombeen Nation main page</a></span>The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-73674255022065934932013-11-10T19:48:00.000+00:002013-11-15T00:19:26.283+00:00Varadkar cosies up to Conradh na Gaeilge on Irish road signs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf1CwKO-HFSnQ0ChntZv89BglHi8K5Ee2VMmFZbz_rLK5R6vCWaPJGl16eKD7foj9WIpG1rXccMyToATWxypq-CPg66F7WETny8SUaLKroI2pWEquKsQKSjRIh1jkQRVEdqwxYollBIHvG/s1600/Leo_Varadkar_WinCE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf1CwKO-HFSnQ0ChntZv89BglHi8K5Ee2VMmFZbz_rLK5R6vCWaPJGl16eKD7foj9WIpG1rXccMyToATWxypq-CPg66F7WETny8SUaLKroI2pWEquKsQKSjRIh1jkQRVEdqwxYollBIHvG/s1600/Leo_Varadkar_WinCE.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>"More Irish than the Irish themselves"</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Even as a kid I could see that this officially presented twaddle was utter bollocks. How can you "be more" than what is, in this sense, after all?</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Y</span></b>ou know how there has been a clamour for many things to be tackled since the bubble burst?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Those who made the bank debts public property (the Irish Government of the time) being brought to justice.</i></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The property tax.</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">DIRT tax - the highest in the world. </span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The continuing scandal of Vehicle Registration Tax.</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The fact PAYE workers go into the highest income-tax bracket in, or at around, the 30-grand mark...as opposed to six digits in the UK. </span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Continuing tax-breaks for builders and developers.</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Government massaging the true unemployment figures by cutting benefit down to 9 months, therefore ensuring that people who have paid taxes for decades slip quietly below the radar when their benefit runs out. </span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lots of things.</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">S</span></b>o how do you make your feelings felt when something concerns you? Contact your local TD? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of mine is Leo Varadkar. When we moved into Gombeen Manor here a couple of years ago, when the gobshite investors were temporarily frightened off, we discovered that our broadband was utter w**k. It was slower than dial-up. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We got onto the bould Leo, along with Joan Burton and Peggy Hamill and some other wine-and-cheese-party type from Fine Gael whose name escapes me. Something to do with Queen's Park Rangers, I think.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not one of them responded. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eventually - with a bit of non-lobby enhanced pucking, the provider rolled out the fibre - it seems our bit of Castleknock had been forgotten - and now we are sorted. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, how do you get a politician's ear in Ireland?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Be Conradh na Gaeilge, it seems. These gobshites who, in their previous incarnation as the Gaelic League, helped ruin Ireland's education system by sitting on school governing committees and insisting the Irish education system be geared more toward Gaelic revivalism than education (see Tom Garvin - Preventing The Future). These Government-funded arsebags have got Varadkar's ear just like that. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now if this quango of hobbyists and Gaelic-language lobbyists gets its way, we will have even more nonsensical and confusing road signage than we have at present, with priority (thanks to the odious O'Cuiv's Language Act) given to a "language" that only a tiny minority of elitists and cultural nationalists actually speak...along with their mother-tongue Hiberno-English. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They know what the country needs, begob.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Have a look at this bollocksology:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Green light for plan to make road signs </b></span><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>'more Irish'</b></span></span></h2>
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<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Paul Melia – 08 November 2013, Irish Independent.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Intensive lobbying by Conradh na Gaeilge could result in road signs being changed to give equal prominence </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to our two official languages.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Road signs display English place names more prominently than those as Gaeilge – but Transport Minister Leo </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Varadkar has now given his approval to replace these signs over time with a new version designed by the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">lobby group.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The minister and officials met with Conradh na Gaeilge earlier this week, and it unveiled new sign designs </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">which make placenames the same size in Irish and English.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While no signs will be replaced in the short-term – the National Roads Authority (NRA) has just spent €65m </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">re-signing the road network – the new ones may be used when needed.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mr Varadkar has asked the NRA to consider using them on a trial basis, but new regulations must be passed </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">before they can be put in place.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Existing road-sign legislation stipulates that priority must be given to English place names.</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"I like the new design and I do think there should be parity between Irish and English where it matters, like road signs that people see every day," Mr Varadkar said. "But it's a bit like an election poster – it's only when</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">you put it on a road and drive past that you really know whether it works.</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"I have been in touch with the NRA and they are considering putting up a few signs on a trial basis to see </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">what people think. These would be new signs that have to go up anyway so there would be no additional </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">cost involved."</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If it goes ahead, it means that road signs will be compliant with the Official Languages Act for the first time. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Julian de Spainn, from Conradh na Gaeilge, said the idea was first mooted a number of years ago, but the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">last government wasn't keen.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"It's about the language. All these things make a difference. We teach children about the importance of m</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">language, and they go outside and see that English is more prevalent on road signs. It differentiates us from </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">other countries, too, which can only be a good thing for tourism."</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The NRA said it was an "interesting proposal" and while it did have bilingual signs, it "looked forward" to </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">implementing the idea. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"This initiative is being proposed by the minister and Department of Transport, and we look forward to their </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">direction on it," a spokesman said.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">H</span></b>o-hum. In most other countries, signage is about offering information, direction and clarity. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Ireland, it is all about creating bureaucracy and promoting the deluded notion that we are a nation of Gaelic speakers, long after the Irish ditched their peasant (and spoken only) babble for modernity and progress.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Leo, you seem very accessible. How can we get your ear to change things that really matter to the Irish people, rather than engaging with the type of lobby groups who brought ruin to the country?</span><br />
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The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-43916004921131329052013-10-29T19:37:00.002+00:002013-10-29T19:44:17.721+00:00Fair-haired Roma children and hysterical racism in Ireland<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKHRfPOKR1QBLdqSsMSi_a90oJQvs1CkUNjfeU7ZIqiQZZQuCsgi4Aozrspqqa-s5H2jmaJQpgTvhRCCWLbxSfa_IrxUMewQ3FUlHl8F4djaaKCJ6PRCJmD7J9GbRt78KaJBo2FDhVxMR6/s1600/Garda.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKHRfPOKR1QBLdqSsMSi_a90oJQvs1CkUNjfeU7ZIqiQZZQuCsgi4Aozrspqqa-s5H2jmaJQpgTvhRCCWLbxSfa_IrxUMewQ3FUlHl8F4djaaKCJ6PRCJmD7J9GbRt78KaJBo2FDhVxMR6/s320/Garda.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">H</span></b>ow bizarre it all is.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A friend of a friend works as a social worker, and was recently complaining about how difficult it is to obtain a court order to take at-risk children into protective care. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She also spoke of the hostile attitude of some judges towards social workers, and was greatly stressed by her knowledge of children who were suffering abuse/neglect and were being effectively ignored by the state authorities.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Which makes the recent shameful fiasco surrounding the taking into custody of Roma children with light-coloured hair all the more appalling.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Think about this. We have some racist bigot making groundless "tip-offs" on Facebook, which are then passed onto the police via a journalist. We are then treated to the spectacle of the fuzz raiding the homes of two Roma families, one in Athlone and one in Tallaght, before taking away one child from each family, on the grounds that their hair is fair and their complexions are pale.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The gardai, of course, claimed their actions were because the children were "at risk". Strange then, that they left the other dark-haired children at home with their parents while running away with the fair-haired siblings under their arms.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Keystone Cops doesn't even describe it – only it is no laughing matter that racist hysteria has once more found embarrassing expression in Ireland. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Meanwhile we have a government that is busy taking medical cards away from sick and dying children – plainly putting them in a geniune "at risk" category.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Bizarre" doesn't really do it justice; and nor do the gardai.</span><br />
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<br />The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-26078382204844044592013-10-20T23:55:00.001+01:002013-10-21T12:12:46.817+01:00 An Coimisinéir Teanga<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCsD0M-POcEyEZjVRgrPWXbT4GPKANDRxBnl2BnfsSOFcjZMi_sGIGPn4zx0ba_Nq-PPzNVujGKN2JkABZROFOSd5N-X81zlvCzmvmcYeCJkFDJ48f4V5aCl_wIRABFkgu_yf2zF2jzoRD/s1600/gaeilge_bullshit.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCsD0M-POcEyEZjVRgrPWXbT4GPKANDRxBnl2BnfsSOFcjZMi_sGIGPn4zx0ba_Nq-PPzNVujGKN2JkABZROFOSd5N-X81zlvCzmvmcYeCJkFDJ48f4V5aCl_wIRABFkgu_yf2zF2jzoRD/s1600/gaeilge_bullshit.png" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>T</b></span>wo of the three founding pillars of our wonderful bullshit banana repubic were the Catholic Church and the "Irish language". The other one was their sporting wing, the GAA. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The nuns and priests are on the run, cassocks and habits a-flapping. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The other two are definitely still with us. It might take another 100 years or so, but the<i><b> De Irish Peeple</b></i>, who voted to keep the Senate politicians in jobs, will eventually get it and give them the bum's rush. They're very sophisticated, you see. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How about this, from a reader who works in the Civil Service? </span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">M</span><span style="font-size: small;">y workplace Big Brick Building normally houses 400 – but in this recession this has gone down to 200. Our safety committee had dwindled but had re-convened: and decided to do up the internal safety signage of our Big Brick Building.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Other signage throughout the building was also done up - since it had been drawn before the 2004 language act. However as internal offices changed rooms at times, not every office Had a sign ( eg Accounts office) on the door – most did not. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So as well as safety notices, for example "exit this way", they mostly contented themselves with putting new signs on each floor opposite the lifts - bilingually. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have no problems with this- even though office is squarely in central Dublin- and the public only use the ground floor... therefore anyone getting to the remaining 5 floors are all Dublin-based English speakers. However these signs duly went up and some pointed out a "fada" in the wrong place on "Cead". </span></div>
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<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What amazed me was when our admin staff came into my office and told us to take my home-made typed notice off the door: </span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Parts of my Dept are re-organising – and I am in one of the little set-up offices overseeing the changes - a completely new office- so to aid visitors and service staff I put up a notice: <i> "The ****** Transition Office</i>’. I was told to take it down as it was English only. The Irish Language Auditors were to be in the next day. Of course they told me it was OK to put it back up after they had gone!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, better- NO Sign – in central Dublin - than one in English!</span></div>
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<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Compare the zeal of the Irish Language Auditors (!!!) - Nazis checking our Green stars are on - with the safety inspectors at Dublin city council. Those who let Priory Hall pass due to ‘safety self-certification’- and it it took a suicide to force a solution. two Years Later……..</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Of course the Irish language Nazis could also quickly fine us for any English only signs….. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #38761d;">OK I don't know how often they issue fines- but the zeal of public officials doing a pointless job - when safety in Priory Hall was never an issue...</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #38761d;">If that poor man hadn't committed suicide he could have died instead in a fire there....</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">B</span></b><span style="font-size: small;">ut what does all that matter? Let's concentrate on matters important to Official Ireland and its career bureaucrats. Never mind the real issues, including many other Priory Halls that remain covered up or ignored.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Developers and builders are not subject, it seems, to regulations such as those described below.</span></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Complaints & Investigations </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An Coimisinéir Teanga (The Irish Language Kommisar)</span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: #cc0000;">The Act provides for the imposition of a fine not exceeding €2,000 and/or imprisonment for a term of up to 6 months on a person convicted in court of refusing or failing to cooperate with or obstructing an investigation.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What''s <b>"</b></span><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">safety self-certification" </b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in Gaelic, I wonder?<br /><br />Developers can relax:: knowing they may remain less bothered about the placement of viable fire exits in their buildings than the Civil Service has to be with "fadas" on its internal signage.</span><br />
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The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-89580982933872701502013-10-13T19:39:00.003+01:002013-10-14T19:28:48.177+01:00Liam Kelly half-way line goal against Sweden - a welcome distraction from the Republic of Ireland seniors.<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Y</span></b>ou would have to wonder about the future of football in this country. By "football", I mean "football' as understood by most of the world. Not bogball, not rugger-buggery and not, even worse, the North American variety of the latter, which is played in armour. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I refer, of course, to the beautiful game, Association Football – or "soccer". </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite the odds, this country has produced some wonderful footballers. <a href="http://gombeennation.blogspot.ie/2011/01/john-giles-football-man.html">Johnny Giles,</a> Paul McGrath, Liam Brady, Dave O'Leary, Packie Bonner, Frank Stapleton and, though I hate to say it, Roy Keane are all examples.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But decent players haven't been coming through in recent years, just headbangers like Stephen Ireland with more belief than ability and a bad attitude to boot. I think things will get even worse in the coming years with so many young lads being lost to the dark arts of the GAA and the rugby lot. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All aided and abetted by the utter ineptitude of the Football Association of Ireland. Which means we will never again grace the World Cup finals or the European Championships' final stages. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A work colleague of mine described how his kids have been lost to football thanks to the FA placing too much emphasis on competion at and up to under-12 level.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Basically, if a kid does not make the team he is out on his arse, or stood shivering on the sidelines watching his mates play. I've some memories of this, having partaken in the Home Farm Mini Leagues as a kid, in the capacity described above. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kids don't need to be told they are no good - they are at the start of their football lives and even Europe's top leagues are well endowed with players who developed late on. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is some glimmer of hope, as the FAI have belatedly appointed someone who plans to shake up kids' football in Ireland, with three-a-side non-competitive matches played with small goals and designed to give young players as many touches of the ball as possible. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ruud Dokter, a Dutchman, might sound like a Carry On character, but he could be just the thing Irish football needs to ensure some kind of future.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mind you, with a few more goals like the one below by Reading's Liam Kelly – scored against the Swedish under 19s – things might not be as glum as we think.</span><br />
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<a href="http://gombeennation.blogspot.com/">Back to Gombeen Nation main page</a>The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-10679669639249209442013-10-07T14:58:00.002+01:002013-10-07T16:05:43.591+01:00Seanad stays - Irish democracy elects to keep undemocratic house<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg44hO-CzMD_RDkccHaTYIuOGLHiB2Yj0L97S7W4_iiGphqY5-_k59wtGiM_j2ntwNIZ_UMerl_KBeY_LUEZJISpQMxbvdfyLt0WqkvCaSVc1yMtkEoB9TQyRLQqI_46TbUGx__la2PpgS2/s1600/seanad.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg44hO-CzMD_RDkccHaTYIuOGLHiB2Yj0L97S7W4_iiGphqY5-_k59wtGiM_j2ntwNIZ_UMerl_KBeY_LUEZJISpQMxbvdfyLt0WqkvCaSVc1yMtkEoB9TQyRLQqI_46TbUGx__la2PpgS2/s1600/seanad.tiff" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i><span style="font-size: x-large;">De Peeple</span></i></b> have spoken.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>The “upper house” of elitism and privilege will stay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The chamber whose members are selected by 1%
of the population and by political cronyism<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>– otherwise known as “appointments” (See Irish Times graphic above).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A chamber full of dead wood and dross – graced now and in the past by heavyweights
such as Ivor Callely, Donie Cassidy, Jimmy Harte, Bertie Ahern, and Michael
McDowell – rejected at the polls in his last general election outing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>De Peeple</i> I
am acquainted with never stop banging on about our corrupt and useless political
class, yet when given a gold-plated opportunity to put a few of them out on
their waffling arses arrives, <i>De Peeple</i> elect – the only such input they have ever had into
the Seanad – to keep these wafflers in jobs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Amazing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Dublin chattering classes have much to answer for.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even so-called “left wing” commentators such
as Fintan O’Toole called for a “no” to abolition of the anachronistic upper
house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For once, <i>the culchies</i> led the
way by voting "yes" – from this perspective anyhow – as a clear urban/rural divide saw the <i>city
slickers</i> vote “no’ decisively.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Irish democracy has thrown a fundamentally undemocratic institution an unexpected lifeline.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It gets curiouser and curiouser.</span></div>
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The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-64419396309633646072013-10-02T10:34:00.001+01:002013-10-02T23:03:48.062+01:00Ireland is dying? Pacific Standard article.<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>O</b></span>ur "republic", readers will know, has always specialised in exporting its people - mainly because it's always been such a rotten kip.<br /><br />Some reading this live abroad now, having voted with their feet (or because their parents did); some have lived abroad in the past, and made the mistake of coming back; some will undoubtedly evacuate in the near future.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's so ironic, when you consider that so-called <i>"confidence" </i>of the bubble years...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">B-B-Bertie Ahern was holding lectures on how to run economies. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Vested-interests economists were explaining how the Irish "boom" was "different" and how we were "catching up"...and it made perfect sense that a semi-d in the arsehole of nowhere was worth as much as a swanky apartment in Berlin. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Paddy and Mary were topping up their mortgages to plonk a new S-Class in their driveway every new reg-plate year. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And the gobshites - many of the "blameless" Irish <i>peeple </i>Michael D so adores, the property tax-break politicians (many of whom had/have investment properties), the bankers, the media, the economists and the estate agents were manically dropping yet more incendiaries on the disastrous Ponzi-scheme conflagration.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And now the aftermath. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At least some of us can say we were never surprised.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The following, from the <a href="http://www.psmag.com/">Pacific Standard</a>, was sent in by a reader. Well worth a read.</span></div>
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Ireland Is Dying</h1>
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Why so many people—an average of 10 every hour—are fleeing the Emerald Isle.</div>
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<span class="st_sharethis_buttons" displaytext="sharethis" st_processed="yes" st_title="Ireland Is Dying" st_url="http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/burgh-disapora/ireland-dying-65407/"></span></div>
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Remains of the 12th-century Trim Castle in County Meath, the largest Norman castle in Ireland. (PHOTO:<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trim_Castle_6.jpg" style="color: purple; text-decoration: none;">ANDREW PARNELL</a>/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)</div>
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<span class="date published time" title="2013-08-30T12:42:11+00:00">August 30, 2013</span> • By <span class="author vcard"><span class="fn"><a class="fn n" href="http://www.psmag.com/author/jim-russell/" rel="author" style="color: purple; text-decoration: none;" title="Jim Russell">Jim Russell</a></span></span> • <span class="post-comments" style="background-image: url(http://d1435t697bgi2o.cloudfront.net/wp-content/themes/news/images/icon-comments.png); background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; margin: 0px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 2px 0px 2px 22px;"><a data-disqus-identifier="65407 http://www.psmag.com/?p=65407" href="http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/burgh-disapora/ireland-dying-65407/#disqus_thread" style="color: purple; text-decoration: none;">129 Comments</a></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13930435" style="color: purple; text-decoration: none;">Rest in peace, Seamus Heaney</a>. The latest exodus from the Emerald Isle has reached hyperbolic speed. <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d27e950a-10bf-11e3-b291-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2dShsY9qh" style="color: purple; text-decoration: none;">The <em>Financial Times</em> titillating its readers with data porn</a>:</div>
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Ireland’s rate of emigration is continuing to increase and at one stage one person was leaving the country to live abroad every six minutes – the highest number since modern records began in the late 1980s.</div>
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New figures published on Thursday show 397,500 people have emigrated since Ireland’s financial crisis began in 2008, with most travelling to the UK, Australia and Canada in search of work.</div>
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During the same period 277,400 people have returned or moved to Ireland, giving a net outward migration figure of 120,100. In a 12-month period from April last year, 10 people left every hour.</div>
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Using the same cited data for the same 12-month period, more than 20 people moved to Ireland every hour. Of course, that also means over 30 people emigrated from Ireland every hour. <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d27e950a-10bf-11e3-b291-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2dShsY9qh" style="color: purple; text-decoration: none;">The centerfold shot</a>:</div>
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Almost a third of 15 to 24-year-olds, who grew up during an era when highly paid jobs were plentiful, are now out of work and even those with jobs have seen their wages slashed. More than a third of people leaving the country in the 12-month period to the end of April were between 15 and 24 years of age. Some 50,900 of the 89,000 people who emigrated were Irish citizens while the rest were nationals from other countries.</div>
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Yes, throw some dirt on dear old Dublin. The Celtic Tiger can no longer hunt. Time to put her down.</div>
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Two variables explain much of outmigration, age and educational attainment. I’ve posted quite a bit about <a href="http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/burgh-disapora/the-great-creative-class-migration-64912/" style="color: purple; text-decoration: none;">ties between a college education and geographic mobility</a>. Concerning age, the younger you are (as an adult), the more likely you are to leave. Relatively speaking, <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/irish-birth-rate-soars-over-rest-europe-704414" style="color: purple; text-decoration: none;">Ireland’s population is young</a>:</div>
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In contrast to general European trends, the birth rate in Ireland is soaring. According to the Economic and Social Research Institute’s latest Perinatal Statistics Report, Ireland’s birth rate increased nearly 30 percent over the past 10 years, equating to about 17,000 more births in 2010 than 10 years before. The island boasts the highest birth rate of any European Union member.</div>
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Galway, a small college city on the Irish west coast, likes to tout itself as the “<a href="http://wanderlustireland.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/galway-or-how-we-learned-to-love-curry-cheese-chips/" style="color: purple; text-decoration: none;">youngest city in Europe</a>.” In 2001, <a href="http://old.post-gazette.com/forum/20010321edflor3.asp" style="color: #00bdf2;">40 percent of Ireland was under the age of 25</a>. When the going gets tough, the young and college educated get going. Everywhere, not just in Ireland. All those babies will grow up and go to college. <span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px;">Then they will move away like all the other twentysomethings around the world.</span></div>
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The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-54635188079715136172013-09-25T17:01:00.001+01:002013-09-26T08:24:15.523+01:00Maire Geoghegan-Quinn on Seanad abolition – Sunday Times article<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDCkuipihfsoBed3qFIa_tF1FIj6YLTV3152BwwJxRSMFViCFwgx1u-JkluRFCuvDdWS6iRG-GjLNB2w6CICStbX4z3rGKCqg5vS7IKc0ubyO056hqHO7z5kMLBMSccpMBU5ja7E5xiujU/s1600/seanad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDCkuipihfsoBed3qFIa_tF1FIj6YLTV3152BwwJxRSMFViCFwgx1u-JkluRFCuvDdWS6iRG-GjLNB2w6CICStbX4z3rGKCqg5vS7IKc0ubyO056hqHO7z5kMLBMSccpMBU5ja7E5xiujU/s400/seanad.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span></b>t's not that often you get to vote on something that really matters to you, is it? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I mean, as far as general elections go, you might as well subscribe to international anarchist Emma Goldman's maxim <i><b>"If voting changed anything they would make it illegal'.</b></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And it's so true. When it comes to voting my only interest is getting the ones I like least at any given time out of government, though usually it means they simply cross to the other side of the floor for four years and keep their jobs in the meantime.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The great thing about voting to abolish the Seanad (Gaelic for "Senate" - no wonder so many Irish people can't spell properly) would mean that a whole chamber of wasters, shysters, failed TDs and waffling gobshites - with the exception of Bacik perhaps - will be out of a job. Or one of their jobs, anyway. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">McDowell will have to go back to being a barrister, where the sincerity of ones argument is secondary to its eloquence. So he should be at home there. The rest of them will have to devote themselves to their other earners, or coffee mornings and the like.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You hear Irish people complaining about politicians every day. Let's see what they – a famously conservative constituency – do when they get the chance to actually vote some of them out.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The following article by Brenda Power is well worth a read.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-large;"><b>Seanad fat cats should be left to Their Wounds</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;">BRENDA POWER, Sunday Times, 22nd September, 2013</span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">I</span></b>n what parallel universe does Maire Geoghegan-Quinn imagine that her enthusiasm for the Seanad’s retention will have any other effect than to hasten its demise? </span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;">Rarified ast he atmosphere in the VIP section of Dublin airport must be, which Mrs GQ enjoys at a cost to taxpayers of thousands of euros per year, it cannot have removed her from reality to the extent that she believes her support for the upper house will influence voters next month. In fact, one more such endorsement- from, say, that paragon of parliamentary propriety Bertie Ahem-and the electorate won’t</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;">just stop at abolishing the Seanad but may well burn the whole place to the ground. Geoghegan-Quinn revealed she “cut her teeth” as a minister in Seanad debates in the late 1970s, and it taught her everything she knew about politics and legislation. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;">Evidently, she believes this will convince an awed populace to race to the polling stations on OCtober 4 to support the Seanad’s existence, berating ourselves for ever having considered voting Yes. The institution that taught an archetypal Fianna Fail grandee, now a featherbedded Eurocrat with a €250,000 salary plus expenses, everything she knows about politics? More of that, please. The chamber that instilled in Geoghegan-Quinn such disdain for the hard-pressed taxpayer that she clung to her €104,000 ministerial and Dail pensions, on top of her EU salary, until it was wre.sted away by dint of shame and public outcry? </span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #38761d;">The Seanad that taught her how to bat off queries about enthusiastic use of the airport VIP lounge (in the last six months of 2012 it cost us €5,654 to have GQ pampered between flights to Brussels) by pointing out it was a long-standing privilege for persons of her elevated status- how could we contemplate its abolition? </span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;">There is an argument to be made for a reformed, more democratically elected seanad; Geoghegan-Quinn, however fondly she fancies herself, isn’t it. When the Oireachtas resumed last week, it took two efforts to raise a quorum in the Sean ad because not enough members turned up for the debate. The week before, we learned senator Terry Leyden had made an “honest mistake” when abusing Oireachtas postal privileges to send out €300 worth of invites to a private event. The Seanad could have been reformed years ago had any such impetus come from the people elected to it. But since the senators themselves have shown such cavalier contempt for the chamber which they purport to value, how on earth can they expect the voters to respect it? </span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;">Everything about this unedifying saga - from the taoiseach’s initial journey from reform to abolition while Fianna Fail passed him on the road in the opposite direction, to the cynical posturing of the political debate - embodies those elements of Irish public life the electorate will almost certainly reject on October 4.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;">Meaningless promises, blatant self-interest, ovenweening arrogance, breathtaking condescension, abundant hot air and vastly inflated expense claims are all dressed up as a vital service to a thankless riffraff. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;">Most hilarious of all is that the government’s advertisement campaign is predicated on a gleeful</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"> reminder that we don’t trust a single one of them. “Fewer politicians!” their posters shriek. </span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #38761d;">An even more effective billboard would feature a giant image of Maire Geoghegan -Quinn, a vision of bloated self-irnportance in an executive airline lounge, with the slogan:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;">“Keep the Seanad – it got me where I am today!”</span><br />
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<br />The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5829381583204750928.post-69504686768288717122013-09-15T18:55:00.003+01:002013-09-15T23:14:00.314+01:00World Parks Day, Dublin. Craggy Island isn't in it.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/gXn4qLtJeO4" width="420"></iframe><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">W</span></b>as walking through the Phoenix Park today when I came upon the spectacle you see above. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A "Gathering" event called World Parks Day which put me in mind of the "Funland" Father Ted episode. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The footage is short as I was so embarrassed by it all, to be honest, I wanted to get away as quickly as possible. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Arthur
Mathews and Graham
Linehan had their fingers on the pulse, it seems.</span><br />
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<br />The Gombeen Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05024662128072120489noreply@blogger.com21