Head Rambles

Archive for April, 2007

Electronic voting?

Grandad April 30th, 2007

“Ah J-J-Jayzus, I have it.”

“What’s that, Bertie? The answer to the latest opinion polls?”

“Yeah. Dat and more”

“So how are we going to turn around the decline in our popularity, Bertie?”

“I have been g-g-giving due c-c-consideration to the…. I mean to say up-p on reflection…..”

“Bertie!”

“Wha?”

“You’re not talking to the meeja now, Bertie. You can talk normally”

“Shit! You’re right. No. I’m not worried about the polls. Or even the Poles! Ha Ha. We’ll sort that out a few days before the vote.”

“How, Bertie?”

“Jayzus! We’ll promise de nurses what dey want and sack dat Harney hoor. We’ll promise a 5% tax cut . We’ll promise to abolish stamp duty. Jayzus we’ll promise anyting dey want”

“But the electorate won’t fall for that, Bertie? And we can’t afford it anyway.”

“Of course dey’ll fall for it. Dey have every other time. And if we get back in we’ll just forget about it for another five years like we done before.
Anyway yiz are getting off the subject. My real brainwave is how to beat them French with the electronic voting.”

“Ah, Bertie! You’re not thinking of bringing those machines back again, are you?”

“Jayzus, no. D’ya tink I’m mad? No. Dis is a stroke of genius. Instant voting from home. Dey’ll love it!”

“And how do you propose to do that, Bertie?”

“Premium line voting! Dey can phone in their votes. De public will love it. Yiz know how dey go mad for dat. We’ll charge ‘em a few euro a shot. Tink of de money!! So get out dere and set up some premium lines. Register dem in the name of Michael Moriarty, and divert de funds to de offshore account. Beverly Cooper-Flynn has de details”

“It won’t be that much, Bertie. There are only a couple of million or so voters.”

“Yeah. But wait till dey find dey can vote loads of times. Jayzus, de calls will run into hundreds of millions. We’ll be fuckin minted!”

“But how will anyone know the outcome of the election?”

“Ah, who gives a fuck. We’ll be out of de country by den. Are yiz coming for a pint?”

Election promises

Grandad April 29th, 2007

It has been the warmest April on record.

It has been the sunniest April on record.

It has been the driest April on record.

What’s the betting that Fianna Fáil are going to take credit for this somewhere in their election campaign?

A hair of the dog, and another immigrant

Grandad April 28th, 2007

I had to go for my NCT test yesterday.

For those of you who don’t know what the NCT is, it’s the National Car Test that has to be done every couple of years to make sure your car is roadworthy and standards compliant. It is stringent and the failure rate is nearly 50%.

Normally I’d get the car checked by a mechanic first, but this year I didn’t bother. I didn’t feel like it. As The Accidental Terrorist would say - I couldn’t be arsed. I did clean out the rubbish from inside the car though - all the old parking stickers, the half ton of gravel and the general crap that ends up on the car floor. I even emptied the ash tray.

I arrived at the centre and clocked in. I enjoyed a pipefull in the sun while I waited for my tester.

He came marching over, got into my car, and shot out again as if he had just met the ghost of his great grandfather in the passenger seat.

I wandered over.

“Is something wrong?” says I, innocently.

“Ze car - she is filthy.” Another frigging foreigner!!

There were a lot of hairs on the seats of the car. It’s not Sandy’s fault. She just likes to moult in the car for some reason.

“Just a few dog hairs” says I. That wasn’t strictly true. There are more hairs there than on the dog herself, but they are impossible to clean off. They stick like limpets to car seats.

“I could fail you ze test for zis” says he.

“I could kick you in the nuts” says I.

Well, no I didn’t say that. I felt like it though. What I actually said was

“Car owners are requested to have their cars reasonably clean. You surely can’t fail me for a few dog hairs?” [Few? Heh!].

He gave me a filthy look, got into the car and drove into the hangar where they do the tests. I groaned. He was in foul mood and was obviously not going to do me any favours.

I had a long wait. Others came and went. I had visions of my car reduced to its constituent parts, and my foreign friend x-raying every individual nut and bold looking for metal fatigue.

Eventually my name was called so I left the waiting room and went to the office. There was my friend with a face like a thunder cloud. If he was in a bad mood before, he was in a foul mood now.

“There” says he, as he slammed my certificate and keys on the counter. He stormed off before I could say anything.

I checked the certificate and report. I had passed. Every figure was bang in the centre of the green zone. It was as if the car had just left the showroom. I almost felt sorry for the tester. He would have been happier if even one of the figures had been a little off, because then he could have had something to berate me for.

I felt very sorry for the next victim.

-oOo-

As a footnote to the above, when I was leaving the centre, I saw a woman getting into my car. I thought it was my car, because I was looking at the registration plates. I looked again and laughed.

The woman gave me that strange look that I am so used to.

“Is something the matter?” says she.

“No” says I and pointed at the registration plates.

She came around to have a look. She laughed.

The two cars were side by side. Four years after being registered, the cars were back together again. The numbers were identical except that her number ended in 5, my number ended in 3.

What are the odds on that?

Advertising speed

Grandad April 27th, 2007

The government has produced a new ad for television.

It is a very good ad about the dangers of speeding. It is extremely well done. It is an expensive ad. The special effects are so realistic and horrifying, they can only show it after 9pm.

It is a waste of money.

On the news last night, they showed a group of school kids who were being given a demonstration of cars trying to do an emergency stop at 80 kmph. On kids reaction was that “he thought they’d be driving faster than that”. He was disappointed. He wasn’t there to see the dangers of speeding. He was there to see fast cars. Tosser.

There are essentially two types on the road who speed.

There are the boy racers who think they are playing some kind of Playstation game. They love speed. They love overtaking. They love showing off ["Jayzus, Lads. I gorrup to 190 on de Arklow Bypass today. It was great"]. They are at their worst when they have passengers to whom they can show off. Ads aren’t going to affect them as they are pretty much brain dead anyway.

The other type is the company executive in his fancy company BMW. He is much too important to slow down. He is on his way to a board meeting and has a right to drive as fast as he likes because he is so important. The ad won’t work on him because he sees the ad as being for the plebs.

There is a solution to the mayhem on our roads.

It would cut down on speeding. It would drastically reduce congestion. It would cut road deaths to a fraction of their current levels. It would drastically reduce the cost of insurance even, because there would be much fewer accidents and car crime. But it would be controversial and expensive.

Suppose all vehicles were converted so that a pass-card was required for them to function? To get a pass-card, all would-be drivers would have to pass stringent tests, much along the lines of qualifying as a pilot.

To qualify as a pilot, you have to do something like 60 hours flying time with an instructor. You have to pass several exams. It is expensive.

I’m not saying that driver qualification should be quite so stringent, but the principle should be the same. To qualify, you would have to prove that you can drive in all circumstances - city traffic, rain, open road, motorway, snow, ice, fog, whatever. That can be done on a simulator. The simulator can even throw emergency situations at you to test your reaction.

I would say that a huge majority of our drivers would fail.

And if you get your licence with its embedded chip, and are convicted of a traffic offence, the chip can be deprogrammed. Back to square one!

If you combined the chip system with bio-recognition door locks, the whole thing would be virtually fool-froof.

We seem to think we have a divine right to drive a car. We don’t.

Only safe drivers should have that right.

The wind of change in politics

Grandad April 26th, 2007

I was down the village the other day.

I bought a newspaper and went back to the car, threw the newspaper on the passenger seat and got in.

Sandy [our collie] who had been waiting in the back seat moved forward, and sniffed the paper.

There was a photo of Bertie on the front page [isn't there always?] so she plonked her arse right on his face.

“Good dog” says I.

She then let rip with a long and powerful fart, which is very unusual for her - she’s a belcher, not a farter.

She looked at me and grinned.

Who says dogs aren’t intelligent?

Questions to ask God

Grandad April 25th, 2007

One of these years, I’ll be going to meet my maker.

I’m not being morbid. It’s a fact, and I’m quite happy about it.

But the chances are, I’ll be going sooner than you lot.

There are quite a few questions I want to ask God when I get there. I might have a moment or two with Him before they realise I’m in the wrong place and throw me out. So I’m compiling a list, so that I won’t forget any. If I get the answers, I’ll post them on this blog. Here goes…

Exactly how big is infinity, and don’t give me that ‘forever’ guff?

Where do all those odd socks go to?

Who did shoot John F Kennedy?

What’s beyond the Universe?

What was there before you invented time?

What are wasps for?

Why did you allow George W?

Why did you give our bodies two of most things but only one heart and one brain? The most important bits!

How did you fit ALL the animals in an ark, and how did you stop them eating each other?

Why don’t insurance companies sue you for “Acts of God”?

If we are all descended from Adam and Eve and their children then we must all be the result of incest. Isn’t that bad?

Did you invent PMT for the laugh?