Head Rambles

Grandad March 28th, 2007

Is the government totally insane, or am I missing something?

At the end of the month another one of their incredibly inane laws comes into effect.

Since they came into power, this government has wasted billions at a time when they had a chance to really do something worthwhile. The Health Service is still in a shambles. Don’t even mention the elderly or special needs. We have a housing crisis, a spiralling crime problem, drug problems.. I could go on but you get the drift.

But this government is obsessed with smoking.

I’m not in favour of smoking, so don’t start whining at me. I enjoy the odd puff of the pipe, but I’m not a cigarette man at all, at all.

First they introduced the ban on smoking in public places. Pubs are now closing at the rate of one a day. The government won’t admit this – they put it down to other factors, but the publicans say that it is a major factor.

Now they are banning the sale of 10s. You can only buy 20 fags at a time. What, in the name of all that is holy, is the logic here?

I had my first cigarette when I was in school. We used to buy one on the way home. Yes – one. I think it cost 3d, including a match.

I didn’t get hooked. Many’s the time we wouldn’t bother. I suppose I smoked two or three a week. We did it for the laugh. In fact, in my last year there, I didn’t smoke at all. It wasn’t until I went to college that I started buying them in packs of ten. Then I had them in my pocket, so I smoked them. I got hooked. I switched to the pipe a few years later, but that’s a different story.

I presume the logic behind the new law is to dissuade kids from starting. How? If they can’t buy ten, they’ll buy twenty. It’s as simple as that. Kids these days have money, so it won’t make the blindest difference. It just means they will smoke more, because they have bigger packets.

One sector of society that doesn’t have much is the pensioner. They have to eke out their pensions, and a pack of ten fags can be important to them. But they can’t afford twenty. So they either have to spend money they can’t afford or they have to go without.

According to Lynn Swinburne, Health Promotion Coordinator of the National Youth Council of Ireland -

“92% of young people report that they are not asked for ID when purchasing cigarettes. I am certain that if the provisions of the 2002 Public Health Act are enforced, whereby shopkeepers found to be selling cigarettes to minors will be banned completely from selling tobacco products, asking for ID will become the norm”

So here we have a typical Irish solution – instead of enforcing the existing laws, we have to introduce new ones.

Harney -you are worse than useless. You are a liability. You are spending money like there is no tomorrow. You are pouring billions into the health service and for the last years all we ever hear is that it is “going to improve”. Jam tomorrow, but never today.

And now you are costing even more by bringing in a hair brained law which is going to exacerbate the smoking situation, rather than enforce a law that has been there for years that would actually work.

• Politics , Smoking
• Comments(25)

Grandad March 27th, 2007

Yesterday was an historic day in Northern Ireland Politics.

Yesterday’s first meeting and agreement between Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams was hailed as a historic, reconciliatory and transforming moment in British-Irish history.

Bertie is going to claim all the credit for this, and will endlessly tell us so for the next six months.

For once he is right.

What he won’t tell us is that prior to the agreement, Paisley and Adams met privately for a quiet meeting.

“Jayzus, Ian. I can’t take much more of this.”

“You’re right Gerry. Anything is better than this.”

“What are we going to do, Ian? If I have to listen to any more of that stuttering little f*cker, I’ll go mad”

“I don’t know about you, Gerry, but I can’t understand a word he is saying. He’s a head-wrecker”

“I’ll tell you, Ian, I’m within an inch of shooting the little c*nt”

“Same here, Gerry. We have to do something to shut him up”

“How about it, Ian?”

“You mean….?”

“Yes. Let’s bury the hatchet. It’s been a long forty years, but anything is better than listening to that stuttering stammering little gobsh*te and his waffling nonsense”

“You’re right Gerry. We’ll do it. At this stage I’d kiss the Pope’s arse to get rid of him”

“OK. Let’s go tell them”

• Politics
• Comments(3)

Grandad March 27th, 2007

I fired my opening salvo in the election campaign yesterday.

Most commenters suggested I run for the election myself. I suspect that was tounge-in-cheek [or I hope it was]. Except for MacDara who seems to be taking the line of ‘piss or get off the pot’.

Well, MacDara, I would only there are a few obstacles.

Firstly, I don’t have the health or the finances.

Secondly, I don’t consider myself qualified to run.

Which brings me to an interesting point. What are the qualifications to be a candidate? Let’s take an example.

Yesterday, it was announced that Frank McNamara is to run for the PDs. Now most of you will probably never have heard of Frank McNamara so here is what I gleaned from memory and from the radio yesterday, when he was interviewed.

• Occupation: musician
• Claim to fame: used to be Musical Director of the Late Late Show
• Political views: none
• Knowledge of politics: none
• When asked what the Old Age Penion is: don’t know
• Reason for standing: because Mary Harney asked him to
• Political Party: Progressive Democrats
• How long in the party: one day [joined when he was asked to become a candidate]

So why did Harney ask him to run? Was it because of his refreshing political ideas? Obviously not. Or was it because he was a reasonably well known name, and probably a friend of Harney? Much more likely.

So here we have a candidate who is blatantly unsuitable for the job. And by the laws of logic he should get about 20 votes – I will allow that number for friends and family. But he will get a lot more. Why? Because people know his name. Because he’s a nice lad. Because the PDs tell them to. Because his face will be splashed over a thousand lampposts. But no-one will be voting for his policies, because he doesn’t have any. Presumably, before the election, he will be told what his policies are by Harney?

If ever there was an example of how the current set-up is a farce, then this is it.

I wrote a while ago about how I had a new idea for the electoral system. That was, as they say, half joking; half in earnest. for the first time in the history of mankind we have access to instant computing power throughout the land. There is no longer a necessity to elect one person to represent us. We can represent ourselves. In the coming election, candidates will be elected because they have promised to get a voter housed, or because they promise to fix the pot-holes in the road. For all the votor knows [or cares] that candidate may have disastrous policies on health care or foreign policy.

Once a candidate is elected, they have free reign to do and say what they like, for the term of the government. The Electorate [us] have no say whatsoever. The chances are, they won’t even fulfill the promises made on the doorstep.

The new system would take years, even decades of planning. But it could work. We could have a system where each and every individual could have their say on each and every matter.

We would, for the first time have government for the people, by the people.

• Election , Politics
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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

• Around the village , The Family
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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.

• Election , Politics , Rants
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