Things I learned this week

Just because somebody says they didn't do something, doesn't mean they haven't done it.

Just because they said they did it doesn't mean they did either.

That saying about early to bed, early to rise, makes man healthy, wealthy and wise ... is a myth.

If you watch live football on the internet the picture will always freeze just before a goal.

Cd cases are very handy for cleaning snow off the car window.

You should really take the cd out before you do that.

Getting a cd wet can affect it!

Home made soup is hard to beat.

In some households you might be prevented from having soup until you have lit the fire.

It can be hard to light a fire without firelighters.

But it's not impossible.

When you don't have firelighters and you use paper and old milk cartons, you will definitely go through more matches than you'd anticipated.

At least one match will break.

If you try to light that broken match, there is a good chance that you will burn your finger.

Most people will suck their finger if they burn it.

Even if they already have soot on it.

Adults seem to like the Late Late toy show as much as children.

Perhaps even more!

Ironic as it might seem, some people will still buy monopoly for their children this year.

It might be even more ironic to think on the reasons why some people can't afford to buy monopoly this year!

When I haven't written a blog, I usually write one on things I have learned.

These are often harder to write!

But not impossible...

‘Twas the Month Before Christmas

‘Twas the month before Christmas, and all through the land,

The Taoiseach on tv said, “sure everything’s grand;”

We have enough cash in the pot til next summer,

We don’t need any help that would be a bummer.

But the people just still couldn’t sleep in their beds,

As visions of bankers danced all round their heads;

Yet Brian and his cohorts settled down for a nap,

Thinking it was still grand to spin out the same crap;

But out there in Brussels there arose such a din,

“It’s time now said Europe to reel those boys in.”

“If they feck up our euro it’ll be a disaster,

we’d better go show them just who is the master.”

So the talks they began, but were kept under wraps

And our Ministers continued to say ‘no collapse.’

So night after night on such shows as the news,

Ministers came out and they tried to confuse.

On Frontline, on Primetime, on Six One and more

There’s no bail out they said, sometimes starting to roar;

We might need a loan, but sure that’s not the same,

So please don’t say ‘bail out’ and use the right name.

And of course we said might, doesn’t mean that we do,

We’re just planning ahead, they said in their spew;

And the ordinary people, afraid and bemused

Watch from their homes bewildered, confused;

Then what to their wondering eyes should appear,

But the EU Commissioner – old Olli Rehn, dear;

“He’s just here for a chat, we don’t need his oul help,”

The boys spun the same line again with a yelp;

But over in Brussels, they had hatched up a scheme,

And to a man they agreed they’d just send their own team;

So in business attire from his head to his foot,

Came the IMF chap with his sack full of loot;

A bundle of orders he flung from his sack

And said ‘I’m now in charge, youse boys all stand back,’

“The Germans and French want this crisis to quell,

Oh and remember the British? You have them back as well!”

And still on tv our leaders were brazen

“No we are not ashamed, we don’t have a reason;”

“And sure haven’t we said all along we’ve a plan,

it’s to hang on in power as long as we can.”

“There’s great pay and expenses and lovely big cars,

free flights and late nights and booze and cigars.”

“We make hard decisions, sure aren’t we great men,

and the people, well surely they all won’t mind payin’”

“They can pay and can pay and can pay on for years,

what odds if it causes some hardship and tears?”

“We’re all off to the airport to open the gate,

we’ll sit back and relax and leave all to its fate”

Then we heard them exclaim as they drove out of sight,

Happy Christmas to all – we’re still not contrite! 

It’s the economy, stoopid

I was going to just cancel the blog this week, but now in keeping with the general trend of the news, and largely because I couldn’t think of anything else to write I have decided to write about the state of the economy.

I know, I know, everybody’s fed up with this and everybody has heard and read enough about it all, but still…

Okay, I have to admit right now that I’m not really qualified to write about the economy and I am not all that well versed when it comes to understanding the ins and outs of all this economic jargon, but, let’s boil it down to this - it all seems pretty scary.

All this stuff about bonds and rates and percentages and balance of trade surpluses and deficits, hard currency, soft currency, liquid assets and equity, the list goes on and on and it’s all very confusing.

I don’t know a lot of this stuff, like for instance what a tracker mortgage is and maybe I’m just being a tad simplistic here, but until recently my understanding of how things worked was something like this.

If I spend a euro, then somebody somewhere makes a euro, or at least part of a euro. I get what I wanted for my money, whoever made and sold that item got something for it and we’re all happy.

And if I didn’t want to spend my euro I could go along to my bank, put the euro into my bank and the bank - a great guardian of money - would keep it safe for me until I wanted it back.

Umm, unless the bank goes bust that is.

Yep folks, here we all were putting money into banks and then, POP, banks go bust all over the place quicker than a bag of balloons in a hawthorn bush.

But now what I want to know is how did this all happen?

I mean if the banks don’t have our money and the governments don’t have any, who the hell has it?

Surely all of our efforts should be put combined to try and find whoever it is that is taking all of the money and wrecking all of the economies.

Unless of course nobody has really taken it and it has all just been sucked into a big black hole in outer space where it will swirl around for all eternity with all the odd socks.

That does remain a possibility, except for the bit about it swirling around in outer space (I think).

I mean isn’t it all just numbers on some computer screen somewhere? I’m pretty sure the actual cash doesn’t disappear in an instant (I really do think that only happens in cartoons), so the money has to go somewhere.

But, where? That is the question!

Well according to my e.mail spam folder there seems to be quite a lot of retired generals or retired generals wives out there with big wads of cash, maybe they have it all. How they got it is anybody’s guess, perhaps they were able to retrieve some of the Anglo passwords when nobody else could.

Wherever it is, the money seems to be gone, yet the funny thing is, from what I can make out, one of the ways we are supposed to help is to, umm, spend more money.

A while back we were all supposed to tighten our belts but now I think the message is - if we haven’t got a belt, we’re supposed to go out to the local shop and spend money buying a belt.

But what happens if you haven’t got a belt and you haven’t got the money to buy a belt? Personally I wouldn’t worry too much about it.

Everybody knows you can’t take britches off a bare ass!

The thin edge of the wedge…

Hey folks, no need to be depressed anymore about the cold dark days of winter, the country’s impending budget of doom or the fact that you might be struggling to pay your bills because our trusted leaders have a plan to make things great again.

Umm, sorry, I meant it’s more like they have a plan to make things ‘grate’ again.

Yep, as people up and down the country brace themselves for the worst budget ever, as hundreds of thousands are out of work and most people struggle to survive from week to week, the government’s great plan is to hand out cheese!

Yep, you’ve read that right folks – CHEESE.

Now forgive me for struggling with this concept, but isn’t this the same government who bailed out the banks to the tunes of billions of euro.

You know the banks, the ones who are in a large part responsible for putting the country in the mess we’re now in.

The boys who continued even after the bail-outs to give themselves big bonuses cos that’s what is expected in the banking industry.

Yep, those banks get billions of euros, and the people who lose their jobs in the fall-out as the economy crashed and are struggling now to pay any of their bills – will get cheese!

Now don’t get me wrong, I like cheese. In terms of the stuff you can make with milk it’s right up there among my favourite things with butter and chocolate, but seriously folks, is this the best the government can offer.

I can just imagine them all sitting around the tables last week planning their budget strategy when somebody suggests that they will need to offer ‘some crumbs of comfort.’

And of course, now that all the dough’s been used up, they have no bread crumbs to offer.

And so we get cheese.

The announcement was made by the Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith and he seemed to suggest that the cheese would be available for distribution within a fortnight to ‘people in need.’

This, of course could be a problem, unless the government has planned ahead and actually defined what a ‘person in need’ actually is.

Definitions though, have not been a strong point for this group of politicians.

Remember a few years ago when we were being warned of a possible economic meltdown and their response was a kinda – ‘define economic meltdown for us. No, you’re exaggerating, we’re grand here. Now don’t youse be scaremongering.”

And then of course they struggled with that whole ‘reasonable time’ thingy regarding the election in Donegal South West.

Still, if this cheese is coming off the EU’s cheese mountain (I think those food mountain places would be a great tourist attraction, we should ask the EU if we could have them here on a 6-month stint like the Presidency) then I expect that the EU might have all sorts of mumbo-jumbo red-tape and forms to fill out before the cheese is handed over.

They might even have particular specifications like their farming grants.

“Vat’s siz you say, you do not ave a thatched roof? Vell then, you do not qualify for ze cottage cheese hand-out.”

We will have to wait and see how the whole thing works out, but in the meantime I guess we’re all supposed to be happy.

Apparently after this, things might be on the up churn…