All in a day’s work

Head Rambles Posted on by 1

It has been a long day [so far].

Daughter kindly drove me to St Stephen’s Hospital which is a damned awkward place to reach and park. It’s only glory is that it’s beside our two billion yoyo’s worth of children’s hospital [still not finished] which is supposed to be the most expensive hospital on the entire planet, and probably the solar system. It’s also the place where I got my stent inserted after my wee heart attack.

We arrived on time. We had the apparently mandatory one hour wait. My name was called and we were shown into a very small room where we had to wait another quarter hour. It was fucking freezing in that room. Nurse arrived and shunted us into another small room which was at least a bit warmer. We had to wait another quarter hour before The Man himself turned up. He is billed as an expert in all things face and neck, and he is the man to give me a new nose and even a mouthful of teeth. He poked and prodded and was happy with what he saw but most of all he was impressed with my headband [what Daughter made] that holds my glasses up. He was gobsmaked and insisted on taking photographs to show his patients and other surgeons.

Afterward we headed out but had to pay the parking ticket first. The machine rejected the card three times before finally accepting it. The machine then refused to accept my credit card or even acknowledge its existence. Daughter tried her card. No joy. I had to go to an ATM [which actually worked] and take out a few sheckles. Parking machine accepted that so we tried to leave the hospital.

Note I said tried? The entrance was one of those huge glass cylinders with a constantly revolving door inside. About eight or nine of us piled into this device and shuffled as the door swung around. Then it stopped. And it stopped where we could neither get out or go back. We looked at each other and said nice complimentary things about the HSE. In the end we got out by all pushing the door manually until we could escape.

I was only home an hour or so. It was the St Stephen’s nurse. I have to go back there next week for a CT scan.

Fuck!

 

Cowering under a blanket

Head Rambles Posted on by 3

Be afraid!

The powers that be seem determined to keep us in a constant state of fear. We must be afraid of Warble Gloaming because we are all going to starve or drown. We must be scared shitless at the threat of a new pandemic [disease unspecified and non-existent but it will be deadly]. It’s strange that there have been no warnings about nuclear fallout which is possibly a real potential threat. Give them time…

Even on a minor scale we must be scared of a bit of winter.

Yes, all of Ireland is under a Yellow Alert because it is to be cold. We must stay safe and huddle up indoors in case the cold gets us. I have been around for three quarters of a century and have therefore survived over seventy winters. Some have been mild but others have been really fucking freezing. There were no coloured warnings in those days so how the fuck did I survive?

One of the bits of [supposedly helpful] advice is to drive carefully in case of ice on the roads. This one baffles me. Do they think I would go out there and drive like a lunatic when frost or snow on the windscreen has plainly told me that roads could be dicey? I suppose there are some idiots out there who might, but let Darwin take care of them.

The whole thing boils down to the fact that the “experts” think we are all mindless idiots who need constant advice on how to survive. Don’t do this, be careful of that and avoid anything else that might remotely lead to disaster.

How did I survive without their advice?

It’s a mystery.

 

What a bunch

Head Rambles Posted on by 8

I just had a look at my choice of candidates in the coming election.

A grand bunch of crooks, trough feeders and ne’er-do-wells.

Simon Harris: aka Simple Simon. He of the furrowed brow and syrupy sincerity who unfortunately is our Teashop. It is a source of complete and total embarrassment that Wicklow keeps electing him. He’s a cunt.

Stephen Donnelly: aka Humpty Dumpty. Started as an Independent but turned traitor and joined Fianna Fáil. Our Health Minister. Thinks the public purse is bottomless. He’s a cunt.

John Brady: The only candidate I wouldn’t piss on if he was on fire. He’s Sinn Féin but I’ll overlook that He is the only one likely to turn up if there is a problem so maybe not a cunt.

Charlie Keddy: A regular on ballot papers. If I were to vote he would get my number one for the simple reason that I like the look of him and he only gets a few votes anyway. Hasn’t a chance of being elected if the past few elections are anything to go by. Will never know if he’s a cunt.

The rest: Meh! Not worth the shoe leather. I have no reason to vote for any of them. You know what they all are.

I think I’ll stay at home…

 

A simple solution

Head Rambles Posted on by 3

Naturally the news here is filled up with election crap.

Like I cared…..!

One of the items a little while back showed a shop owner collaring Simple Simon [our Teashop] about the exorbitant rate of VAT applied to small coffee shops, hairdressers and the like. I know from chats in my coffee shop just how much those VAT rates are hurting. Anyhows, Simple Simon’s reply was on the lines that if they cut that VAT rate they would have to tax someone else to make up the shortfall.

Why?

One of the biggest problems with gubmints is that they see a country’s finances as just figures on a spreadsheet. It’s as if they don’t realise that they are supposed to treat those finances with respect as they are only the guardians of our money. They have this cavalier attitude to finance with little or no accountability. We saw recently the way they spent over three hundred thousand on a bicycle shed and over a million on a security hut. The two billion hospital is another case in point.

A good while back when I was running my little business I was contacted by a chap on the local council. He told me they were looking for a simple website for some project or other. I said no problem and that I would submit a tender. He told me to send that tender to him first before it went to a committee. I sent it to him and got a quick reply – the tender was grand but if I wanted the job I should add a zero on the end of the costing. He wanted me to charge ten times what the job was worth? He said that the committee would only accept a tender if it looked expensive and my first cost would be considered too cheap and not worthy. I added the nought and got the project. They got their site that was worth a tenth of what they paid.

A decent Finance Minister should do two things.

The first is to ensure that money is spent wisely, as if it were out of his own pocket. Why pay a hundred notes for an item if that same item can be bought for ten in any shop?

The second is to ask why the project is the gubmint’s responsibility in the first place. Why allocate a million for a GAA pitch in the west of Ireland? Why should the people on the east coast pay for something they will never use? The same goes for the Arts. I have no interest in opera so why should I subsidise an opera house? If the GAA pitch or the opera house are wanted, then let the locals and opera goers pay the cost. Hardly a week goes past without an announcement that some local project is being subsidised by vast amounts of public money.

My message is simple.

Stop throwing away the people’s cash and drop the price of my coffee.

Cunts.