Archive for August, 2011

Orders from Berlin

August 5th, 2011

Last night I was browsing around the Interweb and found a post by my old friend [and spiritual advisor] Ian.

He is talking about the “Memorandum of Agreement” between our gubmint and the Reich’s leaders.  It is not a pretty document, but worth a glance.

For a start, don’t be fooled by its description.  This is not the kind of memo that floats around an office reminding people to put their names down for the Christmas Party.  Oh no.  This is very much a direct order from our masters in Brussels.  It wouldn’t surprise me if the original didn’t have an eagle and swastika watermark.

The meat of the document starts on page 10 -

Revenue measures to yield €1,500 million in a full year will be introduced, including:

  • A lowering of income tax bands and credits.
  • A reduction in private pension tax reliefs.
  • A reduction in general tax expenditures.
  • A property tax.
  • A reform of capitol gains tax.
  • An increase in the carbon tax.

OK, so there isn’t any big surprise there.  We know most of that.  We know that even the lowest paid are going to be hammered to pay of other people’s debts.  We even know that the property tax is to be €100.  Note also that the carbon tax is a blatant tax that has fuck all to do with the environment.  It’s just another money spinner.

At the bottom of page 15, we learn what is in store for us a year later -

Revenue measures to raise at least €1,100 million in the full year will be introduced, including:

  • A lowering of income tax bands and credits.
  • A reduction in private pension tax reliefs.
  • A reduction in general tax expenditures.
  • An increase in property tax.

So having introduced property tax, they are already increasing it.  The knife is in, and now it’s to be twisted.

There were a couple of sentences that caught my eye too.  They were tucked away on page 9 -

    • Government will introduce legislative changes to remove restrictions to trade in sheltered sectors, including:

      • the legal profession, establishing an independent regulator for the profession and implementing the recommendations of the Legal Costs Working Group and outstanding Competition Authority recommendation to reduce legal costs.
      • medical services, eliminating restrictions on the number of general practitioners (GPs) qualifying and removing restrictions on GPs wishing to treat public patients as well as restrictions on advertising.
    • The Irish authorities will agree with the European Commission Services a time-bound action plan to implement the recommendations of the study of the economic impact of eliminating the cap on the size of retail premises with a view to enhancing competition and lowering prices for consumers.

So here we have it.  Let no one be under any illusion that Brussels is merely meddling in our financial affairs.  Now they are meddling in our legal affairs too.  Will someone please tell me what the legal profession, doctors and the size of retail premises have to do with repaying debts?  Nothing!  But why will I not be surprised when some giant German supermarket chain starts building massive retail centres and putting indigenous Irish retailers out of business?

They have us by the goolies now and boy, are they making the most of it.  I can hear the jackboots marching down O’Connell Street.

The sooner that fucking EU edifice collapses, the better.

Slavery makes a welcome return

August 4th, 2011

It’s nearly time for the old holliers.

In four weeks time I shall be heading off for a bit of warmth and many gallons of wine.  I’m not really a wine person, but just as we keep the good Guinness for ourselves, so the French keep the good wine for France.  And it’s dirt cheap very reasonably priced.

There has been one small change to our plans – Sandy has decided not to come.  She announced this a couple of weeks ago and no amount of persuasion will change her mind.  She says that she is not used to driving on the wrong side of the road [which isn’t true] and has heard that the country is infested with poodles.  She is determined to stay at home.  She says poodles are gay.

In the meantime of course, I had booked her a kennel for each way on the ferry.  They call it a kennel, but it’s actually just a steel box on the car deck.  So now I have a kennel with nothing to put into it.  I did suggest that Herself would be more at home there than in a bed, but she declined the offer.

I phoned Irish Ferries and told ‘em I wouldn’t be needing the kennels and could I have my money back, thanks very much.

They said no, thanks very much.

Fuck!

So now I have booked a return journey and have paid way over the odds.  Hate that.

Now I wasn’t born yesterday [or the day before, for that matter] and there are always ways of getting the old money’s worth.  I demanded an upgrade to the cabin.  I had originally booked a two star, two berth cabin with a window.  They said they had no three star cabins left and would I like a four star, two berth with a window?  Does a bear shit in the woods, I replied.

I have just been checking on-line as to the differences between two star, three star and four star. 

Apparently I will have my own personal steward.

Boy is that bloke going to earn his pay!

Heh!

Uses for an Aras

August 3rd, 2011

I wish they would drop this Presidential Election farce.

It’s bad now but it’s going to get a hell of a lot worse.

Yesterday we had Norris dropping out of the race which saddened me a little as he added a lot of colour to the whole affair.  Not that I would have voted for him – I wouldn’t have been able to take all the feeble jokes about a queen being a president.  I like him as a person but he just ain’t presidential material.

What the fuck do we need a president for anyway?  We aren’t even a country any more, just a little back yard in the Fourth Reich.  The whole business costs a fortune, and the Aras in the Park could be put to much better use.  It would make an excellent brothel?  A pub?  A dosshouse for the homeless?

aras
The Aras

With Norris out of the way, the dross that’s left doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.  There isn’t one who I would be happy to have as my representative, and some that would make me want to hand in my citizenship.

Unless of course you want me to be president?

In which case, forget everything I said.

Running through treacle

August 2nd, 2011

For various reasons, I have to use Windows at the moment.

I fired up my Mail thingy and the last mail that I had downloaded was dated last February.  That indicates reasonably fell my fondness for Windows.

The Other Fella tells me that this is a fairly good laptop.  He says it has a Double Core Processor, which sounds like some kind of kitchen yoke for mashing apples.  He says it has four gagas of memory which is more than I have.  He also said something about sixty four bits, but he didn’t say what they are bits of.  He’s weird. 

Leastwise, it is supposed to be a fast machine.  I wish someone would tell Windows that.  The fucking thing is driving me mad.  It is so fucking slow that I swear I could work things out faster with a pen and bit of paper.  It keeps nagging me about updates for various things and I keep trying to ignore it, but it is so fucking persistent.  It just keeps nagging on and on and on.  It’s worse than Herself, and that is really saying something.

They say that the majority of offices use Windows.  It is no fucking wonder that the world is in a state of chassis.

And the games are fucking crap as well.

Study my arse

August 1st, 2011

I was browsing around this afternoon and came across this.

“Researchers from Oxford University studied the eye sockets and brain capacity of 55 human skulls from 12 different populations across the world and found that the further human populations live from the equator, the bigger their brains.”

Can anyone tell me how this “study” has in any way advanced the sum total of human knowledge?  What is the point of it?  What fucking idiot came up with the idea of plotting eye socket size against latitude anyway?

Presumably these people are being paid for stuff like that?  As it’s Oxford [and I thought they had a good reputation] at least I have the consolation that my taxes aren’t going towards it, but somebody must be paying for it.  Though it wouldn’t surprise me if the fucking EU had a hand in it somewhere, in which case I am paying for it.

The reason these studies piss me off is that every now and then another equally trivial “study” comes up with something that affects me directly.  Someone tabulates lifespan against hair colour and decides that salt is bad for you.  Someone else tabulates the television programmes we watch against the number of times we sneeze and deduces that we should stop drinking stout.  Someone else counts the number of Natterjack Toads being squashed on the road and deduces that the sun only has another couple of billion years to run before burning out, and that we should all live with our curtains drawn to save on the use of sunlight.

Have these people really nothing better to do?

Why don’t they just do a definitive study into the idiocy of studies?

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