Archive for March 26th, 2007

Getting Offspring to Blog

Grandad March 26th, 2007

Ron and I are talking again after the GrannyLostThePlot thing.

We went for a pint last night. Dick came along too.

Dick wasn’t in the best of form because his company was just about to sign a big contract with another company, and he had just heard that the other company had gone bust. Ron was in great form because he had just made a killing on the horses, so the drinks were on him.

“So how’s the old blogging thing going?” said Ron.

“Don’t you read Head Rambles?” says I, somewhat surprised.

“Nah. I don’t go in for that sort of thing. It’s a load of rubbish. We just set up the sites and forget about them.”

“Thanks very f*cking much” says I. “Here am I, slaving away, and you dismiss it just like that!”

“Bloggers are egotistical bastards who have nothing better to do with their time” says he “and since you got a tiny mention in the papers and a five second slot on the telly, you have been insufferable”

“You’re just jealous” says I.

“Don’t take it to heart. How’s Herself doing with hers?”

“I think she may be cooling down a bit. It caused a lot of grief, you know. You’re treading on thin ice here.”

“OK. Sorry. I’ll set your daughter up with one if you like. That should be a bit of craic. I’d read that one.”

Dick muttered something about server space and how a lot of it was being wasted on the Grandad clan. I pointed out to him that I had put a lot of business his way in the past, so he shut up and went back to his miseries.

“Offspring won’t blog” says I. “She is too coy about the whole thing. She reckons that people wouldn’t be interested in her thoughts”

“Why don’t you ask your readers if they would like her to blog? They’ve seen your blog and they’ve seen Herself’s blog, so Offspring can’t be any worse”

“I’m not going to ask my readers to cast votes” says I. “They have better things to do”

“You never know” says Ron. “Get enough people asking her to blog, and she might be persuaded.”

“I am not going to ask people to vote. Most of ‘em don’t even bother posting comments, so they aren’t going to bother with that.
Actually, she has written a blog post. She has one of those MySpace thingies and has written a post on it”

“Great stuff!” says Ron “Give me the address, and I’ll read it. If it’s any good I’ll post a comment and encourage her to write more. If it’s as good as you reckon, I’ll set her up with a proper blog.”

Dick muttered darkly in the background, but we ignored him.

“Though on second thoughts, ya can’t post comments on that MySpace unless you’re a member” says Ron “So they’ll have to leave their comments on your blog”

That was fine by me so I wrote out the address on a beermat in large Guinness smeared letters - HTTP://BLOG.MYSPACE.COM/CACKALOO

We are a ship without a rudder

Grandad March 26th, 2007

So the great auction is hotting up.

The political parties are already trying to outbid each other and the election hasn’t even been called yet.

The present government has been in power for ten years now. During that time, our country has been under the influence of a lot of external factors. The Global Economy has been doing well, so of course our government has been taking credit for that. Interest rates are still relatively low thanks to the European Bank. Our government is blowing about that. Fuel prices took an enormous hike, but of course our government said that that was outside their control.

So if things in the world are going well, our government pats itself on the back and says look how well we are doing. If things aren’t going well, the government says there is nothing it can do.

On the domestic front, things are in pretty poor shape. This government has had ten years of the highest prosperity this country has ever known. The coffers are awash. They have billions to spare. We are one of the fastest growing economies in the EU. So why are we in a mess? The government promised us all sorts of things ten years ago, and again at the last election. They were hollow promises.

They now say they are going to reduce taxes. They have been saying that for the last ten years. They are going to sort out the health service. They haven’t sorted it in ten years, so why should anything be different now? They are going to introduce a couple of thousand more Gardai. They had ten years to do that.

Why are they promising to sort out things now? They had ten years and failed abysmally.

They have squandered millions in useless enterprises. Punchestown, the Bertie Bowl, Electronic Voting, Tribunals, the list goes on and on. They revel in corruption. We have heard all about the backhanders and the brown envelopes. We have seen our Taoiseach crying on television for God’s sake. How pathetic was that? This is the same Taoiseach who said he had appointed people to top positions, not because they had paid him [which they had] but because they were friends of his.

And what about the so called opposition? They have been ghosts for the last ten years. We have heard little or nothing from them, or about them.

Over the next months, the opposition parties will be shouting about how they have the answers to all the problems. But all they are doing is providing their own little tweaks to situations that will have much the same [i.e. no] effect.

What we need are radical thinkers. What we need are new ideas.

There is no point is throwing billions into a health service that patently doesn’t work. What we need is for someone to come in and dismantle it entirely and start from scratch. We have the hospitals, the specialists, the nurses. Just overhaul the massive bureaucracy that is wasting the money.

With regard to crime, I would suggest they stop f*cking around with new laws. We seem to have a new law each week. All we have to do is enforce the existing laws. And examine the root causes of crime, not the crime itself.

We have a housing crisis that is mainly outside government control. Property owners are going to cash in so prices are going to rise. But there are things the government could do. As a small example, why not apply stamp duty to the vendor and not the purchaser? It is the vendor who is making the profit and it might make them think about the price they are setting.

Sadly, the people of this country are going to do what they always do. They are going to be bought by the petty auctioneering. Or they are going to vote for someone because “he’s a grand lad” [probably because he shook them by the hand at a funeral]. Or they are going to vote for a party because it is a family tradition.

We are going to end up with the same people who sit in the Dáil doing their crosswords while people die for want of healthcare. The same people who are going to swan off on junkets while schools have to put up with rat infested damp buildings. The same people who are going to claim massive salaries, allowances and pensions while autistic children have to go abroad for a chance of any sort of education.

What we really need now are the likes of Jack Lynch and Garrett Fitzgerald - people of integrity and with no history of scandal and corruption

Who will I vote for? I don’t know. I will examine the individual’s policies and will probably end up voting for the Independents. I have lost faith in all the major parties.