New Ink

3 S's

I'm open to correction on whether my grammar is correct in the title but on with the story. I had a nice Sun holiday during the first week of November, back to Benidorm in Spain. I don't often return to te same place but my friend was pretty keen and it was cheap enough. The typical 3 S's in a Spainish holiday are Sun, Sea and sex however my first S is Same. Same prices, same shows, same people, different hotel, same setup, same setlists in nightclubs. A lot of people I talked to said it was one of the best reasons to come back to Benidorm, nothing really changes.

The second S is snoring, cheap drink and cheap cigerettes coupled with late nights and irreguler sleep lead to snoring, my roomie snored his head off, no matter how many times I shouted at him or poked him or attempted desperately to put the pillow over my ears he kept going. It got me thinking as to what it must be like to be married to a chronic snorer. People need sleep, when I fell myself getting unusually ratty towards people I usually need a solid night of Z's with no drink to sort me out. However back to snoring, it's a serious problem, do those snoring rings work? Are there any old wives tales that actually work, it's a show stopper for going away with my mate again. I might see will my neighbour in the army have some industrial strength earplugs I can borrow!

My last S is smoking, I don't smoke but never really minded other people smoking so long as the didn't take the piss, unfortunately smokers often do take the piss. I don't understand why people smoke, I'd hate to wake up every morning and for my first thought to be to reach for the lighter and ciggie pack, then to have it plaguing you all during the day too. Yes, you guessed it, my mate smoked his head off and for 25 quid for 200 you can see why. Smokers say "but you drink" yes I do, but I don't drink every hour of every day nor do I stand outside in the pissings of rain taking a few sips out of a can to keep me going for a few hours. Everyone in Spain seems to smoke, young and old, foreigners and locals. I must see what the Spainish cancer rates are.


I don't think I'll be heading back to Benidorm, I enjoyed it but I'm not at the stage in my life where I just want routine on holidays.

Lastly, hopefully the blog now has some political credibility, not only did I successfully campaign for a no vote to Lisbon(boy they still are whinging about that one) but I successfully tipped Barack Obama to become US president in August, before the financial crisis and the recession. However his change mantra seems to be lacking already with a lot of appointments returning to the white house. There's no doubt Obama can talk, can he lead?

Recession, what recession?

If I didn't listen or watch the news and lived in complete isolation I'd never have guesed we were in the midst of quite possibly the worse economic crisis ever. I was in Dublin city centre a few weeks ago and it was packed, tills rocking away and mobile phones sending picture messages around the land. Traffic since the start of September has been as bad as I can ever remember it except on Fridays for some reason I've yet to figure out.

Last Sunday I went to Longford and tuned into the Sunday sports show for the 20 minute haul. Even they were talking about the recession, Wexford footballer Mattie Forde is out of work and head of the GPA Dessie Farrell was asking anyone with jobs to contact the GPA so he could get top inter county stars some work. It's all getting a bit much.

Interest rates are on their way down, so is inflation, there's more sales then ever, I'm definitely noticing more buy one get one free offers in the Supermarkets, fuel costs are down and so are house prices. The latter not being great news for everyone.

I think Ireland went a bit mad in the past 15 years, what ever happened to buying a house and living in it instead of "a foot on the property ladder" Out of the 30 odd houses on my parents road I can only remember one ever being for sale during the 80's. I'd guess 80% of the people that were there in 1988 are still there yet me and my brother have both moved house once since we moved out each in the past 6 years.

It's going to be an interesting few years, will Smyths toystore have a bad Christmas? I doubt it, will kids stop using mobile phones to text each other instead of talking to the person beside them - of course, will people carriers be the vehicle of choice for parents of one - I think so. Once something is given it's very hard to take back, I'd like to think that the have all generation are going to learn some valuable lessons over the next few years but I doubt it. I think the parents will take the strain of the cutbacks.

I wonder did the ordinary man in 1929 suffer such a media onslaught, were they sick of the crash coverage?

Driving Home

Most days when I drive home nothing spectacular happens over the 60-90 minutes, the odd day I nearly get killed by someone who thinks my car is invisible or is somewhat confused by right of way or how close I actually will be to them by the time they manage to pull out in front of me and get out of second gear.

Yesterday was not one of those days, I headed off just after 5, tuned into the right hook and within 45 minutes the government was on the brink of collapse. FF TD's resigning the whip, independant TD's threatening to vote against the government. The greens call a press conference with 10 minutes notice, it was great stuff. It's days like those that make politics really interesting. Cowan was on the news last night looking very worried trying to confuse the issue of means testing medical cards with Doctor's collective greed.

My positition on the means testing of medical cards is as follows, it's disgraceful. This government wastes money hand over foot but the old reliables were hit in the budget this week. The same doctor who earns God knows how much still gets the same childrens allowance as the guy on minumum wage. I'd have no problem with this being means tested on a sliding scale upwards as I believe having children is a choice, getting old isn't.

The budget had a negative effect on me but that's ok, I earn good money and there's slack in my budget. I earn a good income and don't disagree with those being more capable of paying should pay more tax.

My Dad is 70 on the first on January next year and is not in good health, he's still working, worked since he was 13, why should he have to worry about medical costs? Retirement is a time in your life when you should stop worrying, you'll have spend a lot of the past 70 years worrying about one thing or another. Healthcare should be based on need, the elderly have more of a need, end of story. It is simply the wrong thing to do.

I've never been on a march for or against anything, I was fairly motivated to go on one against Lisbon but never did but I can safely say I'll be on any march against this obscenity. I hope to see a lot of other people there.

Better post something in September eh?

When I first started this blog I couldn't stop posting on it, about 25 in the first two months, I still get ideas all the time but find I'm not as quick to post them, despite my lack of posting the blog has maintained respectable traffic even throughout the droughts. My last post was about the death of an Irish legend and now today we have the death of the Celtic tiger. Officially in recession or negative growth as the economists like to call it. That sounds like an oxymoron is you ask me but they're always good for confusing people. If you're in IT I bet you've used the "false positive" a few times.

I was in Dublin city centre for the first time in about 3 months on Saturday afternoon. Nice day for a walk around town and I was in work in the morning so not too far to travel. Recession my ass, the place was packed, shops packed, pubs packed, tills beeping happily away. I myself spent 120 euro on 3 dvds. One boxed set of Dad's army(which is brilliant), finally got my hands on the 3rd series of the new Battlestar Galactica(see a previous post for a tale of woe regarding this) and another 3 dvd set bargain for 13 euro.

One interesting thing the government is doing is considering a voluntary redundancy scheme in the public sector, surely this should have been done when we had money?? I myself would have over 10 years service and am still in my early 30's, so to make it worth your while they'd have to give you 8 weeks pay per year of service, thats 80 weeks for nh which is a lot of money. It would fairly decimate my mortgage for one thing. Although I'm a firm believer in the fact that if you're not earning money you're spending it so I couldn't realistically see myself doing it but it's an interesting exercise especially if you're closer to retirement age.

In sporting matters I was happy to see Tyrone win the all Ireland last week, anything to break up the Kilkenny & Kerry mundane boredom. Although watching Kilkenny is far from mundane, you'd just like to see them get beaten more then once every 3 years. In my own sporting matters I started playing 5 aside football for the first time in over two years last week and totally enjoyed it again, scored the first goal, got that out of breathness that only comes from lack of physical activity and eventually stiffened up the day after. Around this time of year Darts becomes centre stage as the North Westmeath darts league resumes and Citywest hosts the annual PDC world Grand Prix, no not racing driving, just a week of quality darts with the dreaded double start format. I'm going up for Wednesday and Thursday night, couldn't get tickets for Friday for the first time ever, obviously the olé olé brigade beat me too it. Ah well to be honest Friday is too packed for my liking and full of hanger ons follow the crowd merchants.

Lastly I've finally picked out my next tattoo, gone for a dragon on my back this time, October 4th for the first sitting, then wait a month for it to heal and back for the colouring in. Gonna go for blue with bits of yellow, didn't want to go red as there's flames already there. As usual pics when I have them.

Ronnie Drew 1934 – 2008

One of the most unique people to ever live sadly died yesterday as a result of a long battle with cancer. Ronnie Drew needs no introduction and biographies of his life are well documented online and in books. I must admit not to being a huge fan of folk music but I admired the honesty and the way Ronnie and the Dubliners carried themselves with a no compromise style. They were going to play their music, look like they wanted and were going to drink and smoke on stage if they wanted to. Not because they thought it would make them look cool or that it would inspire their fans to do so but because that was who they were.

One of the tributes I read this morning was from Bono, he said that Ronnie was like the King Of Ireland and we were all his subjects. Personally I couldn't think of anything further from the truth. He was just an ordinairy man doing his own thing in his own way. I certainly don't think he thought of himself as a King nor any of his fans his subjects.

The last interview I saw with Ronnie was on Ryan confidential, he was completely bald and his beard was gone thanks to the cancer treatment but the minute he talked there was no mistake who it was, I can't find it on the internet but I hope RTE repeat it, he sang "The auld triangle" at the end of it unaccompanied- It is not to be missed.

Exclusive American election results predicted here!

I was meaning to have a look at the websites for both american presidential candidates for a while since I've been hearing about them for nearly two years. My instinct based on the tv and radio I saw was that Obama would win the democratic ticket. I have no idea what his policies were or what Clinton's were for that matter but that was just the media impression I got.

So onward to the websites, the initial view of Obama's is slick, well produced and easy to navigate. He has all his different policy plans handily on the top menu and his plans go into a little detail and some costings of how he's going to fund and achieve his goals. Like a true member of the Democratic party he's gonna spend plenty, just glancing at a few key portfolios and Barack had over 50 billion dollars spent already. His policies were easy to read and well presented, although not offering anything out of the ordinary for a democrat I liked the style and the substance.

Onto John McCain, website not as slick, a few pictures of American Eagles and the likes bring you to repetitive, hard to navigate policy ideas which are typical Republican party and nothing really new. Typical rhetoric about helping business and empowering the individual. One interesting thing was that he is suggesting a budget freeze for a year on certain stuff subject to presidential approval. That could certainly prove to be interesting when they get down to the debates.

So all in all, I saw little that would dissuede me from voting for Obama, McCains age has got to be against him and after so many years of the Bush and Clinton families I do believe that Obama has hit the nail on the head with his change campaign.

One other funny aspect is the merchandise sections of both websites, they couldn't give away "I'm backing Bertie" yet the yanks can sell you John McCain party packs!

Anyway this blog confidentally predicts a win for Obama, only drawback will be his dubious Irish heritage which we will no doubt cause more bad publicity for another Offaly native.