Who makes up these polls? Just reading on the breakingnews.ie website “Irish people spend 9.5 hours moaning each week.” No reference to who conducted the poll, how, or even when. It actually looks like something some lazy journo made up in his/her spare time to fill some space. I decided to search Newsnow for ‘moaning’ to see where else this poll is published or where breakingnews might have sourced it from. Interestingly, the only results come from the Examiner and the Enniscorthy Echo – both publications, like breakingnews, of TCH. A Google search for ‘Ireland moaning poll’ also throws up the same article, word for word, in the Irish Independent and Belfast Telegraph.

Who copied who?

Who actually carried out this poll?

Did you get a call?

Do you moan for 9 and a half hours every week?

I would like answers please!

Well it’s 7 days before I leave for Ireland. The New Zealand Immigrations service has got it’s $140 from me for another blue sticker in my passport so they’ll let me back into the country when I come back. Airfares sorted. Travel insurance sorted. Spending money sorted (my New Zealand dollars buying me shag all Euro). All that’s left now is to pack my suitcase and get my phone set up for roaming. Not that I’ll be answering any phone calls when I’m away, but it’s handy to still be able to send and receive text messages.

Hopefully the weather when I’m flying out is better than it has been this weekend. Just had 3 days of stormy weather here in NZ and looks like it’s not over yet. Luckily for me I’m off to warm sunny Ireland!

Jon Landau came into my video store during the week. He was in the shop for about half an hour with one of our regular customers. I didn’t know who he was, he was just this friendly chatty American dude who seemed to know an awful lot about all kinds of movies. I guessed he was somebody involved in movies as we get a shitload of movie workers through our shop what with being in the centre of Peter Jackson’s movie empire and all that. It wasn’t until he paid with his credit card and I spotted his name on the receipt that it clicked. Post production is still going on here in Wellington for James Cameron’s 3D sci-fi epic Avatar, which Landau is producing. Anyway, he was a very friendly customer so hopefully he’ll be back.

Here’s the song that’s on rotation in my head at the moment

My friends in An Post are gonna love this. Well it’ll give them something to do when nobody’s sending any letters any more because of the recession email.

Rick has been getting mail just addressed to ‘Rick O Shea, The Radio’ so I left a comment on his blog saying more people should send imaginatively addressed letters, and he has taken up the mantle and encouraged his readers to do so.

So get writing! Send your friend a letter or a postcard, or send yourself one, and see if it gets to you. If it does, post it on your blog, and let Rick know!

Seeing as Brian Cowen doesn’t like the fact that RTE reported on the wonderful portraits of him that found their way into the National Gallery and Royal Hibernian Academy, I thought I would make it a bit easier for people to send the wonderful paintings to their friends.

I made a Facebook gift app

It’s a shit one, it took all of 30 seconds to make, but… here you go…

Send your friends a Brian Cowen portrait

I left Ireland on September 29th 2006. Cork still had a hurling team (beaten by Kilkenny by 3 points in the All Ireland Final). Europe won the Ryder Cup at the K Club. Arsenal could still finish in the top 4 (just) and Bertie Ahern was still not remembering whether it was sterling, euro or dollars.

I had planned well in advance to have my last Guinness at the departure lounge bar at Shannon Airport. When I got there it was 2 deep with American tourists trying to catch the single barman’s attention. I gave up after 20 minutes and had my last ‘proper’ Guinness at Heathrow.

Anyways. Look what ye have done to the country since then.

I’m coming back to sort things out. I’ll be returning to the alma mater in June for 3 weeks.

Expect fire, brimstone, and the consumption of copious amounts of alcohol. Well… when in Rome… (and Limerick)

I’ll be flying back on an Airbus A380.

I believe it looks something like this

airbus a380

I’ll have a lot of work to do.

Nearly a month since my last post. Will slap myself across the wrist later if I remember. Anyway, I have been following with interest the Twitterings, or ‘tweets’ from the Irish Blog Awards. (Yes, I joined Twitter, sheep that I am, or maybe they would say tweep).

Anyways, I have managed to hack into the Cork Airport Hotel’s nearest Spar’s database and pulled the following pie chart of what has been purchased there since they opened at 7am this morning. It makes for interesting reading.

I am, of course, just utterly envious that I couldn’t be there myself!

Congratulations to all the winners, nominees, and everybody who took part.

Maybe, maybe not, and I know some diehard Moz fans aren’t liking it, but I’m loving it at the moment. Short and very, very sweet, the sweetest 2 and a half minutes you will hear this year.

Jesus

Ever been to boards.ie?

I pay a visit there every now and again. I have posted there a few times. It can be a useful place to get info.

I went to the Radio board today to see if there was any opinion there on the aforementioned dumbing down of 2fm. There wasn’t.

But what I did find was lots of threads on how everybody hates everything and how horrible every radio show is.

A thread on how awful Newstalk is… 525 posts!

How terrible Tom Dunne’s show is… 323 posts!

Two threads on how people can’t stand Ray Foley. (Apparently from reading the threads there were lots more, and he’s a regular victim of the boards bile, and when poor Ray himself actually went on to defend himself they banned him!)

I scroll down. Another thread is full of Des Cahill hate…

I went to page two. Surely somebody might have something nice to say about something… there’s a post full of Ray D’Arcy hate… 701 posts! 47 pages long!

Tell me something.

Do these people radios not have an off button?

Well they may as well have. They’ve turned some of Ireland’s most talented radio presenters into wedding djs.

I’ve been a radio head and a 2fm listener since I was knee high to a grasshopper. I remember hiding under the blankets with the radio listening to Lorcan Murray and my favourite show for ages was Gerry Wilson’s night time phone in where his listeners educated me on all sorts of insane stuff like ouija boards and other naughty things.

I’m well used to my favourite shows just disappearing though, so the latest news that the 2fm head ‘honchos’ (lead by that guy with the personality of a cardboard turnip that does the sunday jukebox thing) have decided to clip the wings of some of the most talented presenters on radio, while disappointing, is not a huge shock to me. Remember, these are the same people that stabbed Marty Whelan in the back and cancelled his show while he was off on his family holidays.

Anyway, other people have put it more passionately and eloquantly than I ever could, so go read these

Sunday Tribune - Idle chatter set to return as 2fm bans all daytime talk

Darragh Doyle - Of all the surprisingly stupid management decisions…

K8 The GR8 – January Dogs Bollox

UnaRocks – Another Bad Move from 2fm

UnaRocks – I listen to 2fm’s Rick O’Shea show for Rick O’Shea

On The Record – Gong! Gong! Gong! First media awards for 2009 already in!

And go sign up for the Facebook group

And go send 2fm a virtual  steaming turd via email