I remember going on an afternoon sesson during first year college and persuading my classmates to go to a bible scripture session or whatever it was called for the laugh. We walked into the room and sat down, and it suddenly dawned on us that being asked to talki about our favourite bible stories after six cans of Druids cider was a bad idea. We immediately walked out again.
The raging from the Sindo today that a few of their staff writers aren’t going to meet the Queen is gas. A few hacks like Ruth Dudley Edwards, Myersy and Eoghan Harris apparently created the Peace Process and were expecting a knighthood or something. 
There are also two other non entities moaning, they were already on the honours list for their work but feel they should have been invited to afternoon tea with her while herself was in town.
There are two seperate articles moaning about it, it’s actually a lead story and there’s also comment* by uberkunt Brendan O’Connor.
*a pitiful rehash of the lead story.
Some outrageous articles on their Internet version alright. Sir Anthony would be proud.
:lol:
Ah, this is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in ages. I thought Myers was just a wum, looks like he actually takes himself seriously.
Holiday rip-offs at home will send you flocking to the sun
Thinking about a staycation because you’re too broke to travel abroad? Think again, writes Louise McBride
Sunday June 05 2011
IT’S about 10 days since government ministers urged Irish people to do their bit for the country and holiday at home. Yet you could be fleeced if you take up their advice. The Sunday Independent tracked down five of the biggest Irish holiday rip-offs.
HOLIDAY HOMES
You’ll easily pay a few hundred euro more to hire a holiday home in wet and windy Ireland than to head off to the sun for a week.
A couple interested in hiring a holiday home in Ireland this summer could easily pay €650 or €700 a week to rent one. The same couple could have snapped up a package deal from Panorama Holidays last week for a holiday in Bodrum, Turkey – including flights and self-catering accommodation – for €496.
A package holiday for a week in Lanzarote – again, including flights and accommodation in self-catering apartments – could have been snapped up from Falcon Holidays last week for €538. Package offers like this – particularly if booked last minute – pop up continually over the summer.
Offers on holiday homes around Ireland – particularly in popular tourist spots – are few and far between, however. A couple heading to Achill Island this summer will be hard pressed to find a holiday home for hire for less than €550 a week – or indeed, for less than €650 a week if holidaying in the first two weeks of August.
Couples will generally pay through the nose to hire a holiday home in Ireland as prices usually don’t reflect the number of people staying in the home.
If you’re travelling with a big group, holiday homes usually work out better value. But even then, a group could have to pay almost €1,000 to hire a holiday home for a week – particularly if it’s described as a “luxury” home.
Fanad Head Lighthouse in Donegal is one of the most photographed lighthouses in Ireland. It attracts many tourists to Fanad Head. The Sunday Independent found a nine-bedroom luxury holiday home in Fanad which costs €975 a week to hire in July and August.
In Downings, north Donegal, there is a luxury three-bedroom waterfront holiday home that costs €800 a week to hire in July and August.
CAR HIRE
You could pay at least €500 a week to hire a family car for a summer holiday in Ireland – as well as the cost of car seats (if you have young kids) and fuel.
Let’s say you’re a family of five and you’re heading to Donegal from Dublin or further south next Saturday. You decide to fly into Donegal Airport rather than drive for half a day to get there. You want to pick up a car from the airport and you don’t want to pay in advance for the hire. It will cost about €491 to hire an Opel Zafira from Hertz from next Saturday until June 18. The quote worked out cheaper – at €449 – if you paid in advance.
Hire the same car for the same week in Marbella, Spain, however, and you could pay about €150 less. Avis last week quoted €300 for a week’s hire of an Opel Zafira in Marbella if you pay in advance – €346 if you pay when you return the car.
A spokesman for Hertz said car hire prices in Ireland compared well to average prices across Europe.
“There is a seasonal aspect to car hire and in particular to family cars such as the Zafira,” said the spokesman.
“Demand only peaks during the three months of summer – demand drives up the price and lack of demand has the reverse effect. This would have reflected in our price for say February, March or April, where we averaged €225 a week.”
The spokesman said that prepaid hires cost less as an incentive to the customer to pay in advance. “This gives us the ability to plan our fleet requirements more securely as there is a very small ‘no-show’ ratio on prepaid rentals,” he said.
Some car-hire companies charge customers through the nose if they don’t pay in advance.
If you’re heading to Kerry and want to hire a people carrier from Kerry Airport next Saturday for a week, Avis last week quoted €499 if you paid in advance. At €698.60, the quote was about €200 more expensive if you decided to pay for the hire on return of the car.
BAGGAGE CHARGES
Another thing that could put you off flying to your rural hideaway is the massive baggage charges you’ll be hit with.
If you’re planning to fly to Kerry next Saturday and return on June 18, you could have snapped up a return flight with Ryanair last week for €68, including the flight, online check-in charges and EU levies.
If you want to check in a bag, however, you’ll pay €40 in baggage charges for the return flight (more if your bag weighs over €15kg), which brings the cost of your flight to €108.
It’s free to check in a bag that weighs less than 15kg with Aer Arann – as long as you’re on a domestic flight. If your bag weighs more than 15kg, you’ll usually pay a €10 baggage fee to check it in for each leg of your journey or €20 for a return flight.
If you’re taking a set of golf clubs on a flight with you, prepare yourself for a nasty shock. The baggage fee for checking in sports equipment with Ryanair is €40 for each leg of the journey; €30 per one-way flight with Aer Arann.
HOTELS FOR SINGLES
Ireland is now one of the cheapest places in western Europe for hotels, with the average room costing €79 a night last year, according to hotels.com.
If you’re travelling solo, however, you could pay between 25 and 40 per cent more for your room than a couple would.
A major Galway hotel, for example, is charging €140 for a single room on a Saturday night in mid-August. But a couple could stay in the same hotel for €200 – that’s €100 each.
Most hotels also charge a hefty fee if you order food to your room. Service charges are usually €5 per person regardless of the value of the meal booked – and some hotels charge €8.
TRAIN TRAVEL
Irish Rail has just launched a summer offer where you can get tickets for half price – if you book them online and if you’re travelling on Saturdays or Sundays.
If, however, you can’t buy your ticket online and must buy it at the station, you’ll pay a small fortune.
A return train ticket from Dublin to Killarney costs €72 if bought at a station – which is more than you could pay for a flight to Kerry. If you’re travelling to Galway for the week, you’ll have to pay €48 return for your train fare if you buy your ticket at the station – more than twice what you’ll pay on the bus.
This has to be the laziest piece of jounalism ever.
HOLIDAY HOMES
This one is fair enough although its pretty obvious they looked around for the most expensive stuff they could find.
CAR HIRE
Why would anyone fly from Dublin to Donegal if they had a car? Sure by the time you’d be in the airport checked etc you’d be in Donegal.
BAGGAGE CHARGES
Does she think baggage charges only apply on internal flights? This is the worst one.
HOTELS FOR SINGLES
She says Ireland is one of the cheapest places in Europe to hire a hotel then moans about the cost for singles. Again do single supplement charges etc. only apply in Ireland?
TRAIN TRAVEL
Train travel is a rip off alright. But she goes €72 return to Killarney when you could fly to Kerry for the €68 she mentioned earlier. Eh you’d have to pay the €68 on the way back aswell and pressumably you weren’t planning on staying in Farranfore so you’d have to find a way out of there. Using the car rental she bemoaned earlier perhaps? This is all apart from the fact that she was complaining about baggage charges earlier.
The train to Galway is more expensive than the bus :o shock horror. Why didn’t she just say save money take the bus. Its not much longer anyway.
It’s all about terms and conditions, not about the actual prices themselves. All those terms and conditions (online booking, paying in advance, baggage etc) are fairly universal alright. Well done Julio. I had forgotten to be enraged by the Indo this weekend (didn’t get to read Sadlier) but I’m satisifed again now.
Her holiday homes arguement is pile of cock. Sure you could get one for €600/700 but you could also get one for €200/300 and it would be a damn site nicer than an apartment block in Turkey.
I know a lad who has a house booked in Kilkee for the end of June for €210 for the week.
www.dreamireland.ie
After about three years of threatening never to buy the cunting thing again I have abstained from the indo for about two months now. Still read bits of it online though.
I don’t buy any Sunday Paper now as the times is full of English Rubbish on a Sunday and the red tops are just gash.
The business post isn’t bad but theres only so much business news you could be arsed to read.
Couples will generally pay through the nose to hire a holiday home in Ireland as prices usually don’t reflect the number of people staying in the home.
This line really annoyed me. You must be able to book at ten bed villa in Spain with just two people staying in it and they’ll only charge you for one room. <_<
The Times is probably the best of a bad lot now, but as you said it’s too English orientated once you get beyond the first few pages, some amount of magazines with it too.
How many Irish people fly to their holidays in Ireland?
Even taking Dublin as your base you’d be in any of the main west coast holiday counties in around 3 hours by road.
The single supplement argument is just bizarre. “A major hotel in Galway charging €140” I guarantee you I could go online now and get a room for the same week for less than €100. It must have taken serious research to go onto Hotels.com and order by the most expensive single room. The hotels in Galway are fucked, almost all of them and would bite your arm off (not literally) for the business.
It’s really beyond belief that people can get that drivel printed in a national paper.
they are outdoing themselves lately. a series of articles on the online version public sector bashing at the weekend. One dangerous cunt praising Ronald Reagan for sacking a heap of air traffic controllers in the 80s about how to deal with public servants. It was one of many fairly vicious pieces. Leo varadakar seems to be their new poster child replacing brian lenihan.
ffs he may as well stay in limerick . why didn’t he pick somewhere nice to go?
€105 for return flights to Venice and couch surf for a week with a couple of Italian birds. -€15 for a bottle of Baileys (present). Irish blarney free of charge.
Emotional tributes, Sindo style:
http://bigmentaldisease.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/sindo.jpg
http://bigmentaldisease.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/sindo-11.jpg
You not posting on sporting matters at all anymore ?
Bizarre
Two adds for shops disguised as obituaries. Wierd.
Christ that’s weird. Dedicating her modelling career to Rory. Christ almighty. Pretty shameful form of advertising.