Can your dog put out fires?

You're Fired

2011-03-12T05:47:00.001-08:00

I'm not sure what has happened to my other excellent photos - but here's one we like...

Sean for Pope

2010-03-17T05:36:00.000-07:00

You can't compare today's morality to what happened back in 1975. Sure dem days people used to eat their young. There was no running water and the only person in the Village who could read and write was the Priesteen. I remember 1975. I was 11. Leeds were robbed by Bayern Munich. 2-0 in Paris. The Leeds fans rioted and burned down the stadium but that was OK. Coz back then there was no morality. They awarded Leeds the Cup to keep forever and they renamed The Parc des Prince Stadium the Stade Peter Lorimor after his great disallowed goal.

Hey Biffo - Where's your bleedin' Hat?

2010-03-17T05:30:00.000-07:00

Redneck spotted in Chicago this week. But why no golf rigout and Green Hat???

NAMA average loan sizes

2009-10-19T05:34:00.000-07:00

From the Irish Times last week:

"The largest 10 borrowers, who account for €16 billion of the €77 billion total face-value loans...The top 100 borrowers account for loans with a face value of €38 billion... The top 300 have loans with a face value of €50 billion."

That means the Top 10 each borrowed on average €1.6 Billion. The next 90 each borrowed on average €244 Million. And the next 200 each borrowed on average €60 Million.

So guys walked into the bank, said they have borrowings of €50 million ask to borrow another €10 and the bank says OK. All backed by only go up property. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Certainly not reckless.

No to Lisbon

2009-10-02T06:27:00.000-07:00

No to the Charter of Fundamental Rights - its more mumbo jumbo.

No to reduced voting weights for Oirish people. The EU is a Union of European States not a super state where all peoples are equal. Obviously the Germans and Fronch are more equal.
Let's have a US style senate solution.

No to an unelected President of Europe. Jobs for the boys or what? Ditto for Foreign Minister.

No to a self modifying treaty - this referendum will be our last. God knows what Lisbon will morph into.

No to no plebiscite anywhere bar here.

The debate has been poor. Vote Yes or else the sky will fall in Vs Libertas, Coir and Shinners.

What's going on with Europe anyway? We want to expand to let in more countries, but at the same time we want to centralise power among the Germans, Fronch, Brits and Eyeties. So are we a loose grouping of diverse trading states or an homogeneous Reich?

Why can't I buy a nice car in Britland for half nothing and drive it home here without paying an import tax?

Why do mobile phones cost so much to use abroad?

Why are no German banks serving the Irish retail market?

The treaty is the work of the same smug bastards in their Ivory Towers, Government Jets, 5 star haircuts, and 7 star pensions who cheered on the bubble and never thought asset prices could fall.
This will not stand.

All Blacks

2008-11-16T09:58:00.000-08:00

Ireland were beaten yesterday before the game had even started. Mary Macaleese our cashmere coated talisman never showed up and the All Blacks stuck out their tongues at us during the haka. We should have retaliated by asking to see their world cup medals or at least doing some riverdance. Then the beat us off the park, they live on the edge of the law - every time the ball goes out the line it skips the first lad who is then in no mans land disrupting the defence. Every time we got the ball we pegged it down to Sivivatu who only has 32 caps and lapped it up. Basically the Blacks are the Kerry and Kilkenny of rugby. No one knows how to beat Kilkenny. Cork's strategy is to whine endlessly about de manager and de quality of de setup like, and de framework going forward in an homage to Roy Keane in Saipan. To beat Kerry you field a Tyrone team that takes no prisoners. Kerry do not like it up em. The same tactics should be deployed on the All Blacks. Why are we the ones getting speared the whole time? Why do we get bet up like Graham Geraghty from Meath against the Aussies? We need to get stuck into them from the outset like Munster done in 78. Is it really only 30 years years ago - seems much longer. Yesterday we failed a moral test. They were bigger and tougher and street wiser. The same thing happened me once - against Finchley Northern colts in 1980. They were dirty, cheating, cockney, Brit bastards. I did the decent team and gave up playing.

Diego Garcia plays its part in the War on Terror

2008-02-28T10:35:00.000-08:00

Anxious to do its bit, tiny island Diego Garcia plays host to rendition flights as reported last week. The Brits were none too happy to find out there terror-tory was being used in this way by their wayward unter-partner in world policing. When will the sepos ever learn?

Of course this lark has being going on for ages down in Rynanna - pretty soon only the GIs will be using the place. Not only have the Russians given up flying to Cuba but even Aer Wingless has seen the light.

Of course if we told the yanks to fuck off and not be pissing on our soverignty/neutrality/dignity then all the pharmas and software firms would pack up and take their jobs to the next nearest tax haven, or would they?

As softheaded lefties like Vincent Browne has been repeating for ages we don't have politics here we just have managerialism. Unlike the beloved Fronch (who have their own dirty tricks department and private wars unit but won't help George W) Ireland has no national project, other than to continue doing all right Jack. We are the Diego Garcia of the northern hemisphere.

James Joyce

2007-06-22T04:28:00.000-07:00

One hour long RTE show from last Saturday
link here

Kurt Waldheim

2007-06-15T03:14:00.000-07:00

We note that Old Kurt passed away yesterday. Gone to the great Gaulieters abteilung stempel stimmung in the sky no doubt. He was the last great defrocked Nazi - apart from the odd French bloke. Bizarrely they keep on turning up every few years.
We shall not see his like again. Hopefully.

Las Malvinas

2007-06-15T02:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday apparently was the 25th anniversary of the liberation of Port Stanley - or recapture as we prefer to call it. It seems like only yesterday I was working on the sites in Munich - during my Aufweidersehn Pet days - with some gougers from Liverpool. I liked their Empire Strikes Back T-shirts.
The papers here are full of our boys Churchillian dogged determination against the odds. The Argies would have won if the Fronch Exocets had actually all gone off. Most of them just landed on the decks and lay there - waiting to collaborate no doubt.
Still the Brits are a warlike lot and they revel in their military exploits, Waterloo, The Somme, Islandlwana, Vinegar Hill etc. It has to do with their whole royalist, established church, psyche.
Every now and then they have to kick the crap out of poorly armed opponents and wheel out the Queen to mourn the gallant dead in a nice Church of England service with top notch choral accompaniment.
Maggie should be done for war crimes over the sinking of the Belgrano which was heading for Chile as fast as the lads could paddle it. She seems in reasonable shape for an auld wan and should be good for at least a couple of years hard labour.
Viva Las Malvinas. Viva Diego Maradonna.

Its over for the Greens

2007-06-14T05:20:00.000-07:00

It looks like the Greens got robbed blind by FF.
Not since the man bought the cow for a bag of magic beans has a better deal bean struck.
The Greens have come away with a bunch of promises and very little concrete, apart from the longed for Noise Bill. Huh?
Its business as usual on the M3 dig and down at Shannon.
The Greens will get a well deserved ass kicking at the next election, when their core lefty protest vote will go to Richard Boyd-Barrett and the Stickies.
As Jimbo Jones on The Simpsons said "You let me down, man. Now I don't believe in nothing no more. I'm going to law school."

Vegetable Market

2007-06-13T03:33:00.000-07:00

Are the Greens really going to sellout to FF?
I can't believe it.
Shurely the the rank and file membership will reject what Roger Garland has called an unbelievably bad deal. Or are they such hero worshippers that the will follow the merc chasing leadership cabal?
I will have to shop elsewhere for my sandals in future.

Greens Bottle

2007-06-11T07:04:00.000-07:00

The Greens walked out of the talks on Friday over 4 issues:
* Climate Change
* Education
* Local Govt Reform
* Healthcare.

Why are the Greens getting het up over Education and Health?
The mistake they are making is wanting to go into Government - where they would be collectively responsible for all cabinet decisions. What they should do is agree to support a minority FF Govt. if it does 3 things:
1. Save Tara
2. Reduce carbon emissions by some Kyoto amount.
3. Whatever green issue you're having yourself.
(Build a rail link to the Airport?)

Of course the Cunning One is only playing with them while he sidles up to Pat Smartarse. But if the Greens unilaterally declared their support for FF under simple terms they would out-maneuver the lot of them, coz Pat wouldn't have the "National Interest" excuse to fall back on.
Some chance of that.

FF voters are fecking deluded

2007-06-11T06:32:00.000-07:00

According to my learned friend people who voted FF say:
* FF are wizards at running the economy
* FF created the IFSC
* FF lowered corp tax
* Bertie has answered the money/house thing.

On the economy the perceived wisdom (subscription reqd.) is that inflation has eroded our competitiveness and residual growth is fuelled by consumer borrowing. Oops.
Even Bertie has admitted (post-election) that we are heading for trouble.
Michael Casey (sub req.) argued in the IT the other day that no Irish government has much control over the economy - they don't set exchange or interest rates, they have no control over population growth and as we are a "globalised economy" we are dependent on the performance of other economies. He also points out that "non-governmental experts and specialised agencies make the important decisions."

The dreaded CJH and Der Kaiser must take the credit for the IFSC - which happened about 400 years ago, and the IDA brought the yanks here, albeit with tax incentives etc.

Most FFers believe Charlie was innocent and were more upset over the revelations about Dead Keen than the scrounged millions. They are similarly taking a benign view of the Bert and his unconventional house buying and banking arrangements. Gobshites.

The reality is the difference between FF and The Blueshirts is so narrow you couldn't squeeze a brown envelope between them.

Election Rant

2007-05-28T09:25:00.000-07:00

First off - the results (outgoing seats in brackets)
FF 78 (80)
FG 51 (32)
Lab 20 (21)
PD 2 (8)
GP 6 (6)
SF 4 (5)
Oth 5 (14) - The others are Bev Cooper Flynn (FF), Jackie Healy-Rae (FF), That twat Lowrey (FG) and two old style Reds: Anto Gregory and some bloke called Finian.

Basically with 41% of the votes FF are back in.
Why do we hate FF? Apart from being bent as a three bob note, their only core value is staying in office. When there for the last zillion years they have been very good to their mates/backers the builders, and pissed away the boom. School class sizes are the same as they were 40 years ago when we wore short pants and wellies and fecked horse shite at each other in the yard. My kids will have to live in Meath or Cavan and drive for 4 hours a day to get to work and back...
Why does it take 2 hours to get to work? Because the National Spatial Strategy is a joke. Every town in Ireland is either a "gateway" or a"hub" so the local FF TD can claim he got something. Meanwhile planning is up the left, in spite of the joke spatial "strategy" every village in Cavan now has a massive housing estate stuck on the side. Here is a good example of this sort of thing, its from a couple of years back.
All this is well known.
The reason is that FF stands for nothing, and just gives in to every vested interest they encounter. Viz the public service unions and their infamous benchmarking, publicans, the IFA.
Why are the bogs in the centre of Ireland being destroyed and harvested uneconomically for peat? Because FF won't take on the ESB unions.

Who are these 41% of people? Plumbers, apparently. I also blame old people. And the core FF supporters, nutters whose grandads were among the 10,000 people in the GPO and who fought for the irregulars. And anyone they can arrange day release for out of Homes for the Bewlidered. No one's ever met anyone who owns up to voting FF - but unless we can get Jimmy Carter to supervise the elections and prove otherwise, we have to assume the results are fair. Aside of course from the dead people who vote and guys with multiple addresses.

So why did the Rainbow lose? First reason is Inda Kenny. Gobshite. Bertie made shit of him in the debate but we were afraid to admit it, even to ourselves. Inda never got a glove on Bertie. Anyway what do FG stand for? Big famers. And they too are up to their neck in dodgy planning. FF and FG have always block voted on re-zoning. We all know they'd be every bit as bad as FF given the chance. Worse, they are a law and order party: 2,000 more cops and tougher sentences! We don't need more cops, we can't keep an eye on the feckers we have.

As for Labour - Pat Smartarse has to go. They need a new, good looking, bright, young, media-savvy leader not some jaded 60's UCD lefty.

The only good thing about the election is that the awful McTool is gone and the Shinners slipped up (but they'll be back... they haven't gone away you know). With any luck the Greens will jump in with Bertie and we can at least save Tara!

Save Tara

2007-05-05T08:32:00.000-07:00

It was a mad idea to build a motorway through Tara.
We all knew they'd find more monuments once they started excavating the road and sure enough they have found a henge at Lismullen. Excavation works have now stopped. Under the National Monuments Act the Minister for the Environment has to seek the advice of the Director of the National Museum before proceeding. The Museum will presumably advise against running a motorway through the new National Monument, and the Minister will overrule him and direct that the monument be "preserved by record", which is doublespeak for "destroyed by archaeologists". This, of course, is exactly what we were told could not happen when the legislation was introduced in June 2004. When then Minister, Martin Cullen, was asked by Mark Clinton on RTE's Primetime whether the National Museum had a power of veto Cullen said "Of course they have a power of veto".
The reality is that the Museum doesn't have a power of veto in the legislation, and that the Minister was brass necking it live on National TV. Quelle surpreeze! We should see the proof of this shortly. Let's hope I'm wrong.

Up The Greens!

2006-07-30T06:57:00.001-07:00

It said on the radio that 15% if Dubs will be voting Green in the next election.
Good for them!
Of course we will be overrun with them and the price of sandals will shoot up and that gobshite Inda Kenny will be teeshock but at least the FFers will be out on their ear and that awful Mata Harney with them...
Privatise that!