Archive for April, 2009

Protection money

April 10th, 2009

I received a letter the other day.

I get quite a lot of post here.  You know the kind of stuff – People trying to get me to sign up with their tacky broadband and begging letters from relatives.  It usually all goes in the bin.

This one was from my insurance company.

I was half expecting it, as I know my car insurance is due for renewal.  I opened it.  I read it.  I checked the address on the front.  I checked the car details.  They were all correct, but the fucking premium wasn’t!  €722!  Why the hell should I pay over seven hundred yoyos?

I have car insurance for one reason and one reason only.  It is not to protect you lot against me, but to protect me against you lot.  Occasionally, I have accidents where the other person isn’t insured, so I need protection.  For example, there was the case of that old woman last month.  I was driving home after a nice skin full down in the pub, and this bitch had the audacity to dent the front of my car.  I don’t know what the hell she was doing, walking on that footpath in the dark but I successfully sued her for damages to my front light and wing.  Of course she wasn’t insured, so I had to claim off mine.

Therefore, I have full comprehensive insurance and quite a few nice little additions.  As the actress said to the bishop – you can’t have too much protection.

I rang the company yesterday.

I got talking to a very nice woman and she confirmed that the figure they quoted was correct.  I told her it couldn’t be.  I then told her I had received quotes from other companies for as low as €300.  I hadn’t, but how was she to know that?

She hummed and hawed a bit and there was a clatter of computer keys. 

She muttered about my being with the company since 1972 and having a 37 year no claims bonus, and I could hear she was getting very worried.

‘Can I phone you back?’ she asked me.

I told her she could and hung up.

Half an hour later, the phone rang, and it was my friend back again.

The upshot is that I now have fully comprehensive insurance with full no claims protection, windscreen protection, roadside assistance and a couple of other gizmos for the grand price of €450. 

I did a scout around the Interweb after, just to see was on offer, and in fact, I did quite well.  I have actually got the cheapest premium for the deal I wanted.

Who says it doesn’t pay to haggle? 

Health and Safety

April 9th, 2009

We were having a little trouble with our satellite dish.

It was nothing serious, but I think I may have overdone it with the lump-hammer.  Anyways I thought it was about time to get it fixed.  I phoned The People.

I got onto a nice girl [on the phone – it’s a figure of speech] who said there were no problems, and their chap would be out on Thursday to fix things.  I thanked her and was about to hang up when she started rattling off a list of terms and conditions.

First of all, she said all animals and children had to be locked up.  What?  I have no problem with locking up children but my dog roams free, and I told her so.  She said they all had to be locked up for “Health and Safety”.

Next, I had to provide off street parking.  That was fine, because the nearest street to me is about six miles away.  We have lots of roads around here, but no streets.  Apparently this is something to do with “Health and Safety”.

There were several other things she waffled on about such as wanting to know if I was over eighteen, as an adult had to supervise the work.  I immediately had visions of a four year old complete with tool belt shinning up my roof, but I let it pass.  I assumed it was “Health and Safety” again.

The chap arrived today. 

He was a very nice bloke, but he took one look at Sandy and started to tell me to lock her up.  ‘Scared of dogs?’ I asked.  ‘Nah!’ says he.  ‘Health and Safety’.

We went up on the roof.

At this point I should add that we have a very large flat roof.  It is almost large enough to land a Cessna on, but not quite [as I found out once to my cost].  Access to it is through a door, so it’s a bit like stepping out into a gravel garden.

He took one look around and said that he would have to drill a hole in the wall.  I asked what for, and he said he had to insert a bolt to attach his safety harness to.  I pointed out that he was on a flat roof, that was very solid and that the nearest edge was about twelve feet away.  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ says he, ‘Health and Safety requirements.’  I told him very politely that if he tried to bore holes in my wall, he really would have health and safety worries, so he though better of that one, but kept giving nervous glances at the road, in case there was a Health and Safety Officer loitering around.  There wasn’t.

He had to run an extra cable across the flat roof, which was fine, but then he wanted to nail it down for Health and Safety reasons.  Once again I had to quietly remind him that sticking nails thorough my flat roof would not be good for his health or his safety.

It took him about twenty minutes to fix my dish, and a further hour and a half to run through his Health and Safety checklist, but he did a grand job.

I watched him drive away.

I noticed that he didn’t wear his seat belt.

Stop whining

April 8th, 2009

It is less than twenty four hours, but I am sick to the back tooth of hearing about that budget.

Every fucking niche group is up in arms over some aspect of it.

So what?

So you have to pay more tax?

So you are going to be poorer?

So you are going to lose your job?

Tough shit.

It’s your fucking fault for electing the shower of self seeking arseholes back into office, when you had a chance to bury them.

Watching a coronary

April 7th, 2009

I went for a few pints on Saturday.

Normally I wouldn’t mention such a mundane thing, but this was different.

The difference was that I wasn’t drinking down in the pub.  I was in a different place, that I wouldn’t class as a pub at all.  It was a hell hole of a drinking emporium that almost had me screaming to sign The Pledge just to get out of it.

The pub in the village is a nice quiet spot.  It is a place of quiet chat and conviviality where the locals go for a few pints, a smoke and maybe a game of cards.  The only sounds to be heard there are the murmur of conversation, the clink of the glasses and occasionally the soft thump of Spanner passing out off his stool.  It is an oasis of calm in a hectic life where we set the world to rights and have a laugh.

The place I was in on Saturday was different.

It was one of those modern places, and the first thing that struck me when I walked in was the noise.  There was fucking music blaring out of speakers that seemed to be everywhere.  Where there wasn’t a loudspeaker, there was a television.  This place was like the television section of Power City as there were fucking screens everywhere, and they were all showing football.  Of course everyone was shouting at each other over the background noise and the overall experience was one of sensory overload.

I sat down in the quietest corner I could find, under one of the television screens.  For some reason, all the televisions were on without sound, so it was a little quieter there.

I hadn’t been there long when this bloke came in with his girlfriend and sat down near me.  She was pleasant enough on the eye, so that was something for me to ogle.  All he was interested in though was the football on the screen.  He started shouting at the muted figures and got really worked up over the match.  At one stage, someone obviously nearly scored a goal and Wanker nearly had a heart attack.  He roared at the screen and waved his fists in the air while his poor girlfriend tried to concentrate on the crossword she was doing.  At this stage, I hoped someone would score a goal, as it would be interesting to watch someone having a coronary.

Unfortunately, the blokes I was waiting on arrived so I had to leave Wanker and his girlfriend to it.  We went out the back to the beer garden, where it was cold, but at least it was quiet and there was no nauseating stench of stale perfume and farts.

A while later, as we left, I had a look to see if Wanker was still there but he wasn’t. 

Apparently someone had scored a goal.

The ambulance was just leaving as we stepped outside into the night air.

I want answers

April 6th, 2009

Tomorrow we are to asked to bail this country out of its economic crisis.  A crisis, I may add that is not of our making.

We are told we are to expect an extremely tough budget, and the rallying call has rung amongst the hilltops that we are to be patriotic, bite the bullet and take the pain in order to save our country.

Who has put out this rallying call?

Our government.

This is the government that almost singlehandedly got us into this mess in the first place.

They pandered to the construction industry to an extent that our entire economy was based on a delusion of rising property prices.  They failed to notice the banks were also dealing in illusions of money that didn’t exist.

If I am to help out the country at this time, I would like to know that the people who got us into this mess are also feeling the pain, and thus I come to the point of this musing.

This is a graph of salaries of various leaders:

You will notice that Ireland is in second place.  Our Taoiseach gets paid more than Brown, Merkel or Sarkozy.

This is shocking enough, but now I want you to take a look at the same figures, only taken relative to the populations.

It can be strongly argued that countries like the U.S.A. can support a president on a salary of €292,000 because they have a population of around 304 million.  In fact, in Germany, France and the United Kingdom the average person pays around €0.3c per annum towards the cost of their premier.  In the U.S. they pay €0.01c.  Ireland pays €0.65c per head.

Each person in Ireland pays 67 times more that the Americans.  Sixty seven times more.

I am not suggesting that a leader should be paid according to population, but I am saying that a country of four million should not be paying more than countries of sixty one million.

And so I come to my question.

Will someone please justify the salary we pay our Taoiseach?

Can you give me one single reason why he is worth that much?

Can you give me one reason why he should take home such a massive salary while I take the pain?

Anyone?

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