Twenty Major - Still smoking in Dublin bars

Something to brighten up Friday

Twenty Major — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:00:33 +0000

Brilliance from The Onion (via Irish URLs).

Depressing

Twenty Major — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:01:10 +0000

The last 48 hours have been depressing.

Despite huge disaffection with the government, the disgrace that is NAMA, the bankers riding roughshod over the rules now that they’ve got their bailout, the public and private sector workers being set against each other, strikes and a nasty budget on the horizon, politicians that continue to steal our money with their expenses and get away with, a rotten economy, high unemployment, lack of opportunity in the jobs market, a property market still on the slide, sweeping corruption throughout state bodies with more revelations about FÁS, increases in crime levels, a public health service being destroyed slowly but surely by Mary Harney to bring about a two-tier system to make money for her friends in high places, a pathetic Green party helping to prop up FF to maintain their little bit of power and the basic fact that everyone in this country is going to suffer for years of a small minority swilling at the trough, the only thing that has sparked widespread public reaction of anger and outrage is a fucking football match.

How sad.

Stick to rugby, Bock

Twenty Major — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:56:19 +0000

Ireland went out of the World Cup last night when Thierry Henry cheated and France scored. Of course emotions run high and it’s easy to point the finger of blame at one man when that misses the big picture entirely.

But it goes deeper than that. According to Bock the Robber, Thierry Henry knew before the game France would qualify. He says:

He knows this because he has been told it before the game kicked off. Thierry Henry knew his team would be going to South Africa before they played one second of the first leg in Dublin.

Why?

Because we now know clearly that soccer has no credibility whatever. We can see now that soccer is a profoundly corrupt activity, with no purpose except to make money for people like Thierry Henry and his masters.

Frankly that is beyond stupid as anyone who knows anything about the game of football will tell you. A game was played over 120 minutes, there was no pre-determined outcome. Yet Bock uses words like ’scam’ and ‘fix’, when clearly it was nothing of the sort. It was unfortunate for Ireland but it wasn’t a fix.

I mean, did FIFA fix it for Kevin Doyle to miss a great chance with a header? Did FIFA fix it for John O’Shea to be found free at the back post only to hoof the ball over the bar like a GAA player? Did FIFA fix it for Damien Duff to be clean through on goal only to miss a great chance? And did FIFA fix it for Robbie Keane to be one on one with the keeper only to fuck it up by trying to be too clever?

If they did that’s impressive work, isn’t it? And on top of that, did FIFA fix it so that Paul McShane, instead of doing what any Sunday League defender would have done and actually defended, fucked up so badly he allowed the ball to get through to Henry to handle it? A proper footballer would have cleared that ball, we wouldn’t even be talking about a handball now, we’d probably be moaning about the injustice of penalties or something similar.

While everyone goes on about Henry handling it did anyone count how many times Robbie Keane controlled the ball with his arm last night? Lots. And once late on in their box too. If he’d gotten away with it and scored how many people would be moaning about cheats today? The only difference is the referee saw Keane, he didn’t see Henry, and you can see why he didn’t see it. It was on the far side of the player, he didn’t put his hand too far out, he got away with it. If the ref had seen it he would have given a free kick, end of story. It’s a shame for Ireland that he didn’t, but shit happens.

Bock goes on:

In an office somewhere, or perhaps on a laptop, if you knew where to look, you’d find details of next year’s World Cup winners, and probably the final score.

Tonight, soccer lost whatever little credibility it had left. It’s over. It’s dead.

It’s bullshit.

No, your post is a load of bullshit, Bock. Thierry Henry might be a ‘cheating fuck’ but he’s not a stupid fuck who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

The handball was a factor in Ireland not qualifying for the World Cup but don’t lose sight of the fact that Ireland could, and probably should, have had the game sewn up by then. Our failure to score another goal and our failure to defend a bog-standard free kick is just as much to blame as Thierry Henry.

And the authorities had nothing to do with any of it.

Do you know what’d be awesome?

Twenty Major — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:09:09 +0000

If you were a bank worker and you got wind that you were going to be subjected to one of those ubiquitous ‘Tiger kidnappings’, and using your advance warning you went and stayed in a hotel that night and filled your house with man-eating Bengals.

Wouldn’t be long before the criminals lobbied to have the name changed to ‘Puppy kidnappings’. Which by their very nature would be much more playful affairs.

Have AIB just pulled a fast one?

Twenty Major — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:26:21 +0000

AIB announces new managing director is to be:

a) appointed from within despite a search for an outside candidate that apparently found nobody suitable for the job

b) to be paid more than the €500,000 per annum cap Minister Lenihan put on bakers salaries.

There is uproar on the airwaves and in the Dail. “Bankers are back to being bankers after they get their bail-out”, and so forth.

Today, it is announced that Colm Doherty will wear his €500,000 salary cap and assume the role of ‘managing director’ of the bank, taking over from Chief Executive Eugene Sheehy. Crisis averted, pandemonium over. Then there’s this from the Irish Times:

The bank plans to appoint current chairman Dan O’Connor as executive chairman encompassing the two roles of chairman and chief executive to run the bank alongside Mr Doherty in the lower-ranking role of managing director.

So, the fuss over the salary thing has fudged the issue. Firstly that the appointments are coming from within, so it’s more of the same. The people who were part of fucking up the banks are being asked to change their habits completely and clean things up? Unlikely. It’s like this government trying to clean up the mess it has made when it is clearly unable to do so – it’s like asking a lion to stop eating gazelles and antelopes. That is what they do. And are we really supposed to believe not one external candidate was good enough?

Then there’s the dual role of Chairman and Chief Executive:

The Labour Spokesperson pointed to the Grant Thornton report on corporate governance, commissioned by the Irish Stock Exchange and published earlier this year, which recommended that one individual should not be allowed to be both Chair and Chief Executive of any company.

Speaking at the time of the report’s publication Paul Raleigh, managing partner in Grant Thornton, referred specifically to the records of Anglo Irish Bank and DCC, companies where one individual had held both positions.

So despite the Grant Thornton report all good advice has been ignored and the banks can carry on doing what they’ve always been doing. A system which was flawed and therefore abused has not been changed and will therefore be abused. Maybe I’m too cynical or maybe there’s something I’m missing. I’m sure there are more financially astute and knowledgable people reading who can shed some light on it if I am.

Bottom line though, nobody’s talking about those things. Only the salary issue.

But at least the chappy is only earning €500,000. That’s a win for us, right?

Young Greens just like Old Greens

Twenty Major — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:13:28 +0000

Hands up here who would allow themselves be lectured to by a 22 year old student in NUI Galway about the state of chassis the country is in?

Not many hands. Yet you, you, have left a certain 22 year old with a deep sense of betrayal. Andrew Murphy, responding to a previous IT piece about emigration, says in today’s Irish Times:

My generation thought we had escaped this obligation, and for once would be handed down something perfect – a wealthy state with jobs and opportunity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our “misfortune” is compounded by a sense of betrayal. Those who came before us had a chance to do something brilliant with the wealth but instead they blew it.

They meaning me and you and them over there and everyone but him and his generation, I take it. Can I assume the only reason the Irish Times published this is because it’s one of the most laughable, self-indulgent, witless pieces of writing that has ever been submitted to them? It’s the only thing that makes sense.

When I was growing up, I was often told about the 1980s. That decade became a byword for despair. Folks, we’ve all been watching and this isn’t the 1980s.

Folks? Fuck off, you patronising little cunt. And what the fuck do you know about the 80s apart from what you were told? He bleats on about how we educated ourselves and when we weren’t educating ourselves we were, and I quote, ‘J1-ing and inter-railing across the world’, as if both things were interchangeable. You either educated or you travelled, apparently. That was the 80s right? Because Andrew says so. He was told often, you know.

There are, I’m sure, many people in this country, myself included, who are anxiously awaiting the budget in December before making decisions about their future. It may well be that Minister Lenihan might make their minds up for them. Things might be better elsewhere. And then think about the 800 unemployed solicitors (as reported in today’s paper), the architects, surveyors, construction workers and those involved in associated industries who have two choices – do something different or go somewhere else to do what they do. And that’s not to mention those working in unrelated areas who struggle to find work in their chosen professions or the thousands of people who are fighting every day to keep their heads and businesses above water. A decision to leave Ireland won’t come lightly to any of them, yet this 22 law student in NUI Galways says:

Those who want to give up and emigrate have bought into the lie that this country cannot change, when in reality the only certainty is that it will change. We may be children of the 1980s but we are not prisoners of the 1980s. We have the ability to lead and change this country, if only we can stay around long enough to do so.

Give up? What a sanctimonious little shit he is. I wonder if he can explain to people how they can stay around long enough to change things when they can’t afford to pay their bills, pay their mortgages, support their families and the rest. They should stay and ignore opportunity elsewhere because of some sense of nationalism, is that it? As if leaving is treason? A bit of hardship now is worth it for the greater good, you see. The situation we find ourselves is not simply caused by the few, because:

… you all took the tax cuts, you all demanded more tax cuts, you never asked the questions you should have and you left us in an economic hole.

Oh, and here was I thinking that it was the government’s fault, and their powerful friends who got rich beyond their wildest dreams suckling from the cash-laden teat of the property bubble that the government manufactured and sustained despite warnings it couldn’t last. Instead, the people should have said ‘No! We want to pay more tax! Please don’t lower rates, Mr Minister for Finance, sir. We can see the bigger picture here’. The ones whose taxes funded the lifestyles of the few so the government could give tax break after tax break to property developers. The people who worked as hard as they could to buy a house, a home for their family, and paid mad prices because this boom wasn’t temporary, it was permanent. Yes,many took advantage but we, the majority, are not responsible for the mess we’re in now.

Government have used phrases such as ‘we’re all in this together’, ‘national responsibility’, but I can tell you this, I don’t feel the slightest bit of responsibility to ‘Ireland’. I won’t be told that to emigrate is to ‘give up’, especially from a student who has yet to experience the real world. Andrew Murphy can start lecturing people when he’s got responsibilities of his own, when he’s got a family, bills, a mortgage. And we’ll see how principled he is if he finds himself right in the shit like so many Irish people today.

You won’t be surprised to learn that young Mr Murphy is a member of the Young Greens. Such trite ideology runs from top to bottom in that party. A bunch of fourth rate politicians who were suckered in by a government who would have done anything to stay in power at the last election. They knew they could grease up Gormley and ride him when they wanted, and so it has panned out. Thanks to the Greens we’ve got NAMA, their senators and TDs bleating on the radio and on the web and Twitter about their role in bankrupting the nation. Well done to you, we won’t forget.

But Murphy gets one thing right. He says:

Instead of rewarding governments for doing what is popular, we have to accept that as an electorate we must punish them for taking the easy option.

I cannot argue with that. And let’s remember that when push came to shove the Greens took the easy option. They could have showed some kind of moral fortitude and brought down this shambles of an administration. Instead they chose to back the very people who have brought this country to its knees. So when the time comes to dish out the punishment, I hope the Greens and Fianna Fail get what’s coming to them. I hope there is no Green Party left for Andrew Murphy to be part of – or if there is it’s some kind of breakaway group that has some sense of what is right and what is wrong, and not a shower of halfwits blinded by self-importance and power.

And if the Irish Times might please consider their readership before publishing this kind of sub-ragmag shite in the future I’d be most grateful.

Expenses problem solved

Twenty Major — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:18:41 +0000

You know, for all the complaining and belly-aching, it makes me glad that I live in a country where justice is meted out as efficiently and effectively as it is here in Ireland. Not a few short weeks ago we were up in arms about TDs expenses and the fact they were, almost to a man, claiming money for all kinds of stuff without having to provide reciepts for anything.

Then we got rid of John O’Donoghue as Ceann Comhairle and now the whole problem is solved. Well, I assume it is because nobody’s talking about it anymore, are they? No. Now it’s Public Service v Private Sector in preparation for the inevitable civil war. It’s teacher against plumber, Garda taking on shop worker, Fireman vs waiter and nurse against hairdresser.

Let’s give credit where it’s due. We couldn’t have this kind of battle if we were all worried and outraged about politicians expenses so big up to the Gubbernment for sorting that out with such alacrity.

When the budget is released in December and we are taxed to the hilt to pay for the mistakes and the greed and the fraud perpetrated on the people of this country by a very small few we’ll be able to take solace in the fact that politicians have led by example. We can be proud that they got their own house in order first before telling us what to do, eh?

What a good example they will set by taking a pay cut. ‘Hey! Look at us. We’re prepared to take a hit … now it’s your turn’, and we’ll know deep in our hearts that they can no longer offset any pay cut by simply bumping up their unvouched expenses. We’ll take comfort, as we munch our freezing cold gruel, that TDs no longer get an extra payment for simply turning up to work, that those overnight stay expenses have been shelved and all the other perks that they enjoyed in boom time have been consigned to history.

We can look the UK where they’re engaged in the costly process of prosecuting some MPs for fiddling their expenses and we can feel sorry for them. Sorry that they don’t have a system like ours. Sorry that they have to go to the bother of finding replacements for those in public office who have systematically defrauded the people they were elected to represent. As we go toe to toe with our defined benefit pension enemies, for once we can look down our noses at the English because we solved all our problems by taking a gammy cloak and a gavel away from one man.

Damn, we’re good.

Tranquil

Twenty Major — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:56:24 +0000

“Quiet in here tonight, eh?”, says Ron.

“Yeah”, I say, sipping my pint and looking around. Dirty Dave is at home trying to fix his bathroom. He got it done up but forgot to have toilet put in so he’s been shitting in the sink for two weeks. Now the pipe underneath his sink is like a fat man’s colon, thick with impacted, mouldy faeces. Stinking Pete got himself a taxi licence so he’s out working and giving the evil eye to black drivers and country drivers who, he says, will take you anywhere for a tenner. I’m not sure that’s true.

Jimmy is away seeing his son in Florida, Lucky Luciano doesn’t come out much anymore what with having triplets and a wife who has a tongue more vicious than the bang off a knacker’s gooch and Splodge has taken to coming in late but gives no reason why.

Paddy and Larry are at the far end of the bar, talking like they always do, while old Charlie and his new dog McGillucuddy come in every day for a few pints but that’s early on. Passing trade was never a big factor, Ron’s is not the most welcoming bar in the world. From time to time you get the odd straggler or a local who can’t go the next closest bar because he’s had some kind of a run in with someone, usually one of the barmen. Ron doesn’t mind, he’ll serve them and they’ll be shush, or they won’t be back.

I can hear the clock ticking on the wall. There’s no loud music. There’s no braying laughing, no guffawing, no shrieking, no wits or wags, no TV (news is over and there’s no football), the odd siren blaring out there, in the distance, and inside just a man, his pint, his well thumbed book and the occasional hacking cough of the bar owner.

“Quiet, all right”, I say.

“Yep”, says Ron. “Fucking great isn’t it?”

Sunday Times and RTE – Savage cunts

Twenty Major — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:15:30 +0000

Some time ago I was walking through town and I neared the top of Grafton Street. ‘Comedian’ David McSavage was there with his guitar and his amp spewing his ‘unique brand’ of aural pollution. A man and his daughter passed by the circle of cretins who were standing around listening to McSavage.

Ever the wit he said something to the man about the girl being a bit young for him. Classy. The man ignored it, the girl asked her Dad something, I decided it would be perfectly acceptable for me to go and hit McSavage in the face. I was persuaded by my companion on the day that while undeniably pleasurable it would probably not be worth it in the grand scheme of things.

I did not punch him in the face and to this day I regret it because he really needs to be punched in the face. If I had the powers of Manimal, who could transform himself into animals, I would turn into a donkey, stand in front of McSavage and kick him right in the teeth.

The reason I mention this man is because he has a new TV show coming up. Called ‘The Savage Eye’. Yesterday’s Sunday Times ran a big two page spread on him in the Culture section. And not once did they mention that McSavage simply is not funny. And not only is he not funny, he’s a cunt.

This is the same Sunday Times that likes to slate pretty much everything. I’m sure when Liam Fay gets around to reviewing the TV show he will give it a good hammering, which is what he does to every TV show he reviews. I’m not sure why they employ a TV reviewer who doesn’t like anything on TV, but there you go.

A publication that, certainly from an Irish perspective, sees reviewing as the art of criticising something, had nothing critical to say about a man who has proven time and time again that he is to comedy what Josef Fritzl is to babysitting.

Maybe they’re keeping onside with the Andrews clan, what with cousin Ryan now hosting the Late, Late (and I wonder did he help facilitate the production of this monstrosity), and now a man of real influence if limited talent.

How is it that Ireland, a nation famed for writers, wits and performers, has provided a 6 episode platform for an outright cunt to prove to everyone he is as funny as cancer? I know a man who has a genuinely funny sitcom yet he can’t get near anyone to produce it, least of all RTE. Yet they have the money for this wanker? And the Sunday Times don’t have the balls to say anything about it? They’re wankers too.

The country is in a bad enough state already without foisting this twat on us. That they are using licence fee money to pay McSavage should make it perfectly legal to never pay the licence fee again.

I haven’t seen him around town much lately but if he deigns to perform on the public streets again and I hear him make a ‘joke’ like the one about the man and his daughter, I won’t be dissuaded from giving him the smack in the chops he deserves.

—-

More on McSavage here and here and here on boards.ie (lots of stories of him being a cunt to wade through) – and there was a brilliant YouTube clip of a voicemail he left for the manager of the Sugar Club. The video is set to private though, anyone have a copy?

This man is a legend

Twenty Major — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:22:00 +0000

Spotted earlier on Lexia’s Twitter, this upstanding gentleman was still outside Dubray Books when I passed by this afternoon.

Legend. The faces of the two cops looking on as nobody queued to see the scuttery little shop-steward of a cunt of a former Taoiseach were funny too.

Click for big.

And Bertie’s book is available online for anyone who might want it … for free.

Twenty Major - Still smoking in Dublin bars

Something to brighten up Friday

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