On wikipedia for some reason the word "gobshite" is listed as a fictional expletive, which would presumably be news to most Irish people I'd know anyway.

The post new year funk.

It always comes year after year, the ''what the hell am I going to do with myself?'' type questions and attendant lethargy. I'm in the same place and job for the past 2 years (all my own fault, I know) and another round of fucking interviews before I can get anywhere else. It's very hard to start looking for something new simply because I'm too pissy and unarsed (if I may use this non-word). I'm not in the mood to blog either or start reading any of the 15 book backlog that I've built up since Christmas, I just haven't got the attention span at the moment. Fuck it, roll on February.

Yea broadband!!

Haven't been posting very frequently lately, problems with the 'ol broadband. It takes an age to load a page or what seems like it, it's at dial up speeds. I'd forgotten how crap that was. Thankfully it's all back to normal.

I see

Also from todays Times, Special forces attack (1) based on "credible intelligence". So is that credible like "Saddam has WMD" credible, or what....?

(1)In Somalia

Cheeky fuckers

From todays Times "Free pub transport proposed for isolated rural areas" So because of new random breath testing (1), pub trade is dropping (3) as people are presumable less willing to drink-drive(2), all other taxpayers will have to subsidise publicans by paying for a rural transport scheme to get theirt customers to the pub? Minister O' Cuiv said apparently that the scheme is "a mechanism to deal with market failure" Please note Minister that being too cheap a cunt to spend money on a taxi to go to the pub is not a "market failure". Surely if this is such a problem it would still pay publicans to organise their own transport for their customers.

(1)Random breath testing seems pretty sneaky to me, along the lines of "If you haven't done anything wrong you've nothing to worry about". The situation previously, was that the gardai needed a "reasonable suspicion" to stop and breathalyse someone. Random breath testing did away with that irritant. But if it's not obvious that someone may be drunk (enough, in order to form a reasonable suspicion), are they really all that dangerous?

(2)Taking publicans at face value, this massive loss of business would imply that many people were drinking and driving before. (I don't take this at face value by the way, this is simply grasping at straws, see 3)

(3)From what I hear pub trade was dropping before this (and the smoking ban) simply because it's cheaper to buy drink in a shop and have your friends over, with the added bonus of quicker service and control over who forms your drinking company.

Idiots

I'm just listening to Marian Finucane (no link yet). Marian and her panel were talking about the judiciary and of course no discussion of this topic is complete without some commentator, in this case Jim Power, talking about the "perception'' that the law comes down on the side of the criminal over the victim. Jesus H. Christ. The whole point of a trial is to determine whether or not someone is guilty of a crime and to safeguard that person constitutional rights from the mob. Guilt or innocence is not determined by "common sense", by what you read in a paper, what you hear on telly or by what "everyone knows".

Of course there is a perception that the law comes down on the side of the criminal over the victim, if every time this is talked about somebody repeats it. People then think "well if it keeps being repeated then there must be some truth to it". Not quite. It's not helped of course by Gardai leaking details of investigations to journalists, which are then quoted anonymously as an "informed source". Journalists accept what their told (at least enough to print it), without thinking that the Gardai might not be a fully disinterested or impartial source.

This perception is also very useful to politicians, "We're doing our best on crime but look it's all the judges fault, uhhh here, look at the monkey. Look at the silly monkey! I'm talking to you Micheal, I fancy myself as a libertarian but that should be authoritarian, McDowell.

Thanks, (now what am I going to do with this??)

I got a tip today (a Christmas one) of a large bottle of whiskey, which brings my Christmas booze haul to 2 bottles of whiskey (good stuff too, eh.. I'm told) and 5 bottles of wine. Now, the only problem with all this is that I don't really drink, the odd (as in one a year) beer maybe. Not that I'm complaining, I just hate getting tips, seems sort of pointless somehow. I never got the point of tipping the postman it's not as though we're on starvation wages, or that if you don't give a tip all your letters will end up in a ditch. Very hard to refuse though as people tend to be either offended or to think that your just going through standard motions when someone gives someone else something,

''Oh you shouldn't have''

....and so on. That kind of crap's a bit fake anyway too.