Archive for June, 2007

Financial wizardry

June 25th, 2007

I think Beverly Cooper-Flynn is an amazing person.

bevflynn.jpg

For those of you who don’t know her, she is the daughter of Padraig Flynn who was a slime-ball politician who thankfully has been thrown out of public life. Beverly is cut from the same cloth. She was a politician and a banker and was exposed by RTE for promoting offshore bank accounts to avoid tax [slightly illegal]. She was thrown out of Fianna Fail and became an Independent TD.

She then sued RTE for defamation of character and lost. As a result, she faced a bill for over €2 million in legal costs which she owes to RTE.

She offered them €600,000, which [surprisingly] they refused. They are now demanding €3 million off her as there is a little bit of interest accruing. She said she was broke and didn’t have the money.

So RTE brought her to court and is trying to declare her bankrupt.

Now, if a sitting TD [member of the Irish parliament] is declared bankrupt, they have to resign, and she didn’t like the idea of this, so she is appealing the bankruptcy case.

This is where the interesting bit starts.

Suddenly, in the space of less than a week, she comes up with €1.3 million which she paid to RTE. Maybe Bertie or his pals gave her a loan? I doubt she could have made that much on the streets unless she’s selling drugs? Maybe she found it down the back of a cushion?

Anyway, she has now declared that she has paid RTE in full. I like that. Next time I owe someone €100, I’ll pay them €45 and tell them the bill is paid. But I don’t think RTE see things in the same light. I think they are better bankers than Beverly, and can see a slight discrepancy.

Bertie has now seen her in a new light. She is a fellow soul who is able to conjure up vast sums of money to save her skin. She has no financial morals. She is obviously his kind of bird, so he is welcoming her back into the Fianna Fail Party with open arms. There is even talk of a ministerial position.

She should become Minister for Finance. With her amazing financial wizardry, she can sort out all the countries financial problems, and still show a profit.

I can't get it up, but I can get it down

June 24th, 2007

I was going to write a post today.

But my Interweb connection is guntered again.

I can download like greased lightening. But I can’t upload to save my life. It takes me several attempts to even send a simple e-mail. So posting is out of the question.

I suppose this means I’m in for one of those nightmare phone calls where I speak to someone who can only understand Urdu, and who is going to blame me for everything anyway.

I’m taking bets on the following responses:

  • There is nothing wrong at our end. We have had no complaints. [evens]
  • According to our records, you are not a subscriber [evens]
  • I’m sorry but that is not a technical problem [5/4]
  • You have a virus [5/4]
  • Your firewall is preventing traffic [8/1]
  • Trees have grown up in the way of the signal [33/1]
  • There was an earthquake in Azerbaijan [40/1]
  • Sunspots [45/1]
  • Yes. There is a problem and we will dispatch our top engineers to your home immediately [1,000,000/1]

Maybe I should record the call and put it out as a podcast?

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be

June 23rd, 2007

So what kind of holiday did I have?

A quiet one.

It was a very nice hotel. For some strange reason it was full of people from Norn Iron [for you foreigners, that's Northern Ireland, but that's the way they pronounce it and who am I to argue?]. Maybe they were all trying to escape their new smoking ban? We were all of a respectable age. There were a few children in their thirties, but they behaved themselves.

On the first night, when the locals had been thrown out, about thirty of us got a little merry and started on about the Good Old Days. Someone put some Beatles on the CD player and someone else brought out a huge stash of Mary Jane and soon the entire pub was awash with nostalgia and the smell of pot.

Do you honestly think that we older folk spend our time moaning about arthritis and pretending we can’t hear anything? That’s just an act to get you younger folk to run around and fetch and carry for us. We know how to enjoy ourselves once you are in bed.

I think it was Megan from Belfast who was the first to get carried away, in the middle of Strawberry Fields. Off came the clothes and the next thing we were celebrating the Sixties in style. Anyone who wasn’t p*ss*d was high. And anyone who wasn’t high was p*ss*d. and a few of us were both.

The following morning was a bit confusing, as quite a few woke up in strange bedrooms and had trouble finding the breakfast room. No one minded because we all put it down to failing memory [hah!].

As the young people were around again, we had to revert to the walking sticks, and the limps and the hard-of-hearing act, but we didn’t mind. We had the evening to look forward to again.

You young people haven’t a clue how to enjoy yourselves.

Charity links

June 23rd, 2007

I have been tagged again.

Cormac has asked me to nominate 5 charities of my choice, which is a hell of a lot better than asking for “a list of five things I wouldn’t do in front of Herself”, or whatever.

This Charity Link Meme was started by SEORefuge on May 16th.

The rules are simple, copy the list of charities and links (grab it from whomever tags you) and add your 5 favourite charities or non-profit organizations to the end (link to their sites with anchor text of the causes they champion). Of course finish things off by tagging 5 other webmasters/bloggers and then publishing the post or the webpage.

-oOo-

The big problem is that he nominated my charity of choice as his number one, which leaves me in a quandary. So what I will do is list my charities and say why I think they are deserving, even if they are already on the list below.

My first choice has to be the Jack and Jill Children’s Foundation. They do great work for that forgotten niche in society – the parents of severely handicapped children. If you have a handicapped child, it is frequently a 24 hour job looking after him or her, and that is a very isolating experience. You get no respite, and damn little help from the government [the governments attitude is that there is no point in providing aid for a child under two, as it will probably die anyway. That's pushing bureaucracy a bit far].

When our Sean [my grandson] was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy they were a lifeline for our K8. They provided invaluable help and advice, but most of all, they provided respite care, so that K8 and TAT could have a day or a night off from time to time.

I have persuaded Ron to host their web site and to look after it, as their previous hoster was actually charging them for hosting [and for their domain name, which should have been free because they are a charity]. Ron didn’t take much persuading.

Another, which is already on the list is the Irish Cancer Society. Again I had the misfortune to have close experience with their work, as my father died of cancer over thirty years ago.

Yet another, which is already there is the Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind. This is another charity I would love to work for, but I don’t have the patience for training dogs. If I can’t get our Sandy to behave, then what chance would I have training these marvellous dogs that are a lifeline for so many.

One charity I think gets a hard time is the RNLI. The lifeboats save so many lives a year, yet it is all done on a voluntary basis. All the crews literally put their lives on the line to save others. I think the ‘Royal’ in the title tends to put people off in this country, but the RNLI make no distinction as to nationality.

Another one I admire is the Barretstown Castle [Hole in the Wall] Camp. This is the one set up by Paul Newman. This provides a break for children with cancer, and if anyone deserves a break, then they do.

So that’s my five. I’m afraid I have only actually added two, but the others are so important to me [especially Jack and Jill] that I had to give them some emphasis.

Here is the full list so far….

Now I have to find five more people to annoy.

So here goes -

  • Michele Neylon, because he is loaded and hates these tags.
  • Richard in Red Cardinal, because I haven’t heard from him in a while.
  • Ian, because if anyone knows about charity, then he does.
  • IrishFlirtySomething, to take her mind off men for five minutes
  • And finally, to prove that there is a glimmer of humanity underneath that crusty exterior [and I'm taking my life in my hands here] – Twenty Major. Come on Twenty. I know you have a rule about these things but it’s for charity!!

And if anyone wants it, here is the latest list – updatedcharitylinks.txt

The Prodigal Collie

June 22nd, 2007

While we had our drunken orgy quiet holiday, our K8, Puppychild and the Mad Dog looked after the house and Sandy.

They stayed on last night and K8 cooked a lovely dinner for us. In return, I looked after Puppychild this morning. Her latest hobby is face-painting, which she does with coal-dust so all this morning she was the living image of Adolf Hitler.

But I digress.

As they were leaving at midday, somehow our Sandy got out. She did it very quietly so we didn’t realise she was gone.

Then there were a couple of loud claps of thunder.

Our Sandy hates thunder. It drives her into a frenzy and she acts very irrationally -a bit like a woman with PMT. So I went looking for her to make sure she was OK, and had enough blankets to cover her head or whatever. That’s when I discovered she was gone.

I walked up and down the lane in the rain whistling my head off. No sign. I began to get worried as thunder induced irrationality can have strange effects on her. Then, to make matters worse a neighbour stopped to say she had seen Sandy about a quarter of a mile away slinking into a hedge.

So I got in the car and drove up and down, and back up again. I drove sideways and up to the bogs and down to the village. I stopped and asked total strangers [most of them foreign]. I gave my phone number to the nice looking women I met and got chatting to the bloke who is building a house for our K8. Loosing dogs is a great way to meet people.

Finally Herself rang me to say a man had her [Sandy, not Herself] down by the village. So down I went and collected a very embarrassed dog. She was wringing wet, filthy and stank to high heaven of sh*t. but then so do Herself and I, so we don’t mind.

I suppose if we hadn’t found her, we would have to have been headline news on ITN, and the world’s meeja would have ended on our doorstep as we made impassioned pleas for people to keep an eye out on their holidays.

But all’s well that ends well. Sandy is back after her little adventure and is busy leaving muddy stains on all the furniture.

Sandy relaxing

All I have to do now is find my pipe which got lost in the panic.

It’s the second damn time I’ve lost it today.

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