Sickening stuff there. Many people work at jobs that aren’t their ideal employment but it must be particularly nauseating to have to write shite like that and leave your name with it. Bunch of cunts or bunch of spineless sellouts. It doesn’t really matter.
I could only bring myself to skim that article. Did it read like a cry for help to anyone else? I reckon he’s projecting his own deep-rooted misery on to, from what I understand, every single public sector worker.
[size=“3”]Babs calls on GAA to review standard of sliotar[/size]
By Martin Breheny
Thursday July 01 2010
BABS Keating has called for an urgent review of the standard of hurling balls currently in use, arguing that they are ruining the game.
He believes that the entertainment value is being seriously diminished by the distances the ball travels and that, ultimately, the public will be turned off.
"The way we’re going, we’ll have goalkeepers pucking the ball to each other, end to end. It’s getting easier all the time to drive the ball huge distances.
“It spends most of its time in the air, flying over lads’ heads. You hardly get any midfield play anymore and now puck-outs are dropping in behind half-back and half-forward lines. It’s making a mockery of the game,” he said.
Keating believes that if sliotars weren’t travelling as far, it would result in greater excitement where players engaged with each other much more regularly.
“You would have at least 30pc more actual play. What you have now is the ball the air most of the time and fellas trying to work out where it’s going to drop,” said Keating.
"It’s crazy altogether when you have a wind blowing, as happened for the Offaly-Galway game last Saturday evening where the puck-outs were dropping right down on the opposing team’s goal.
"You have juveniles pointing ‘65s’ quite easily nowadays. There was a time when the strongest of hurlers could hit the ball no further than 80 or 85 yards.
“I just can’t understand why we’ve arrived at a situation where the ball can be driven so far. It’s not helping hurling.”
He believes that the improvement in the standard of sideline cuts is down to the texture of the ball and while it’s a skill to be admired, there are damaging side effects to the ‘poc fada’ game.
"I’m hearing more and more people complaining about it.
“Hurling would be far more enjoyable if there were more balls dropping in the half-back/midfield/ half-forward area, but that’s not going to happen when lads are driving them the full length of the pitch,” said Keating.
He is also unhappy with the disciplinary system, which doesn’t allow a player who has been sent off on two yellow cards to be replaced.
“If a player commits a serious foul, then he should be red-carded and not replaced but if he picks up two yellows for fairly harmless fouls, a sub should be allowed on.”
- Martin Breheny
Breheny and Babs :rolleyes:
I heard Babs was bitching about the puckouts in the Offaly Galway replay. He never mentioned how they were only landing down that far from the keepers pucking out with the wind at their back, the fucking clown.
I don’t think anyone takes him seriously apart from Breheny. And absolutely no one takes Martin Breheny seriously.
On just €196 a week, it hurts to part with the pennies
Life on the poverty line challenges you to discover a bargain in everything you buy, says Alison O’Riordan
Imagine having to make every penny count and map out a weekly budget with almost military precision. I put this to the test, by living on a social welfare payment of €196 for a week.
Surviving on the dole, or on the minimum wage, sounds less than ideal and close to impossible, but for many out there it is the norm.
Widespread unemployment and job cuts mean many have to grapple with the realities of coping on slim earnings, and instead of having more money as they grow older, they have less.
The truth is that it is possible to live on this amount a week, as so many people out there do, but as they tell me, to call it ‘living’ is to use a very loose definition. Welcome to my week on the poverty line.
I began by abandoning my car and walking everywhere. Then I ditched my bill phone and was mobile free for a week. Thirdly, instead of buying coffee every morning, I made it in my modest kitchen.
The sole luxury I refused to give up was my apartment – or my financial prison of negative equity.
I began this test in trepidation, fearful of the fact I would not be able to survive in Dublin, one of the 50 most expensive cities in the world.
Each minute of each day I found it painful to part with the pennies and the pounds as I paid for transport, food, clothes, household goods and the odd bit of entertainment.
With discount shopping being the priority, I had to abandon the sweet-smelling baked bread aroma of Superquinn, in favour of the price imperative Aldi in Rathmines. I found it very hard to ditch the big boys, Dunnes and Tesco, for the new German chains. However, I had no choice but to embrace the slashed prices in the no-frills warehouse-style store.
In my pre-poverty days I would have been inclined to ignore them – the dreary sameness of the products and the no-basket policy would drive me mad – but reality soon bit and I continued with my cardboard box in hand.
Simple changes in spending habits can make a huge difference to precarious financial situations and I was overjoyed at the till as I parted with just half of what I would normally pay for a weekly shop in Tesco or Superquinn – including a jumbo packet of Extra chewing-gum.
As I loaded my fridge with chorizo, salami, cheese, mushroom pate and Tuscan-style ham, it was bargain land at its best and it made for good packed lunches, instead of three-course lunch menus on the quays, surrounded by solicitors in smart suits.
I found myself visiting the free-to-enter Natural History Museum and the National Gallery of Ireland on Merrion Square. As I wandered the corridors I saw many young people like me discovering the meaning of frugal living, by taking in local treasures in order to tighten purse strings.
I even froze my gym membership and joined the vast numbers of joggers on the streets each night, the whole lycra-clad herd of them.
The love of pounding the streets was a cost-effective way of keeping fit without dishing out €70 to Westwood each month. I managed to get my hair cut for €10 in the House of Colour in Capel Street by a student – it even included a free blow-dry.
Not to mention blagging samples of shampoo and conditioner from the receptionist afterwards.
As a movie lover, I was rather put out that the silver screen proved too expensive, but luckily, there was a free cinema night called ‘Cinema In The Open!’ at Dundrum Town Centre. Watching my all-time favourite movie Mamma Mia meant myself and my stoney-broke friends had a fun-packed evening under the open sky.
With my newly adopted income for the week, it was imperative that I should cut down on my going out, from twice at a weekend to once.
So, I treated myself and a friend to a night in with the Marks & Spencer’s meal for two offer designed to appeal to cash-strapped couples.
This meal came with a dessert and a bottle of wine for €12.50. As we watched re-runs of Gossip Girl on box set, with teabags for eye masks and olive oil as cleanser, your humble journalist felt she was living like a queen.
A Saturday afternoon would normally consist of hitting the high-end boutiques of Clarendon Street to find a new outfit for that night but yesterday, those pipe-dreams were forced to fade into oblivion as I embraced cut-price fashion fixes.
As I wandered through Dunnes Stores it yielded surprising results. I was amazed to see fashionable pieces that challenged the collections of London, Paris and New York.
Later, I passed Topshop and looked longingly through the window, like a love-sick puppy. However the new bargain-hunter inside me insisted that I head to Penney’s for the affordable yet trendy clothing.
As I had to save rather than splurge, Saturday night on the tiles consisting of having drinks in a friend’s house with bargain-basement grisly beer stuff.
I gritted my teeth and sucked it up; this was simply all I could afford. The era of gulping down Cosmopolitans was long gone.
Later that night, when we ventured out to a bar, I did not buy one alcoholic drink; instead I had a naggin of vodka in my back pocket and topped it up with coke every half hour. As I went up to the ladies toilets, I saw that I wasn’t the only one doing this.
As the night progressed and my vodka diminished, I had no choice but to go on the dry for much of the night. Being off the gargle was tough at times, especially as the beery romanticism and boozy goodwill got underway and I was really starting to enjoy myself. However, the same can’t be said for many people living in this situation long term. It is predicted that more than 120,000 people – or 5,000 a month – will emigrate by the end of next year to escape unemployment.
This means the equivalent population of an Irish city will leave over the next 18 months. My future, like many, was once rich with promise and is now filled with uncertainty and disappointment.
A week like this leaves the lingering belief that emigration may be the only way to a decent life, instead of sticking it out and just about surviving each week.
There is only so much of walking the hills, picnics in the park, borrowing a bike and bring-your-own-booze party one can take.
I was forced to go where the best value was and to get the bargain.
The financial impact of this week has taught me to live more frugally, despite refusing to replace my Brennan’s bread and Barry’s Tea, and is not something I think I will ever forget.
Others, however, have a different story to tell and a week like this can so quickly develop into months of hardship, when the prospect of proper employment seem to grow more distant by the day.
As they face into winter, the general economic turmoil will only worsen.
Sunday Independent
:blink:
No boutiques on Clarendon Street? No Cosmopolitans?
[size=“7”]OMG[/size]
Which specimen of plankton wrote that?
“my finacial prison of negative equity” - FOAD
How much do the Indo pay for an article these days? I hope she declares the income next time she goes to sign on.
Oh don’t worry Mike, “poor” Ailison ain’t drawing the dole, she’s just imagining what life would be like if she had to.
Not sure if it was a slip of the tongue or if he meant it but nice of Marc Coleman on Newstalk last week to thank the Sindo’s Carol Cunt for her contribution to his show.
:lol: :lol:
Ah yes
Found this on The Property Pin. The tard has a public Bebo page.
http://i3.bebo.com/017a/12/large/2006/09/20/17/12145583a2073607128b459457272l.jpg
The fucking state of her. And her friend.
A classic of its genre
:o :rolleyes: :lol:
Purveyors of bad news are selling us down the river
The negativity of the ‘doom and gloom’ merchants threatens the economic recovery, writes Marc Coleman
Sunday August 15 2010
THEIR dispatches are little more than dumbed-down diatribes. Their self-promotional tactics would make Jedward blush. And their forecasts of recession were made so often and early that, like a broken clock, they were bound to be right at least twice a day. Our politicians take them seriously, but that just goes to show how superficial they are.
Unfortunately, the dime-a-dozen divas of despair are also darlings of a media addicted to reporting the next apocalypse. A media that has completely missed the huge positive angle on our economy. That’s because, to get the positive angle, you have to look back – and forward – over a longer period than two years.
Yes, the economy has shrunk by 10 per cent since 2007. But it grew by 413 per cent in the last four decades. Would it kill anyone to point out that a big step backwards has come after four equally big steps forward?
Or that, even if 100,000 emigrate, our population has grown by 300,000 in the last three years and by a million since 1996?
Or that, despite emigration, our strong rate of childbirth should ensure that any population shrinkage will be modest and short-lived, and that our population is still on target to grow to five million by 2020?
And that if we get our competitiveness house in order, we should be able to create enough jobs to bring the emigrants back by 2016?
The media thinks that bad news is the only news that sells. For personal and political news stories, it is probably right; but when a recession is on, it’s a different ball game.
Sure, in a boom we need a bit of constructive negativity. In a bust, we need the opposite. Like the drone of vuvuzelas in the World Cup, it’s time to bring an end to the drone of the divas of despair.
Having driven a nation to stash its cash under mattresses out of sheer terror, negative comment has pushed our savings ratio from a (too low) rate of four per cent to a (too high) rate of 10 per cent.
While job loss was inevitable in the recession, this means that tens of thousands of jobs more than was necessary were lost, hundreds of millions more tax revenues were wiped out and – perhaps the most devastating indictment of the irresponsibility of the divas – we are paying tens if not hundreds of millions more on our government debt interest than if commentary on the economy had been calm and measured. Thanks a lot, lads.
Like zoo cleaners looking after incontinent elephants, we now have to run behind these guys with a bucket and shovel. Recently I was appalled at some of the infantile comment on our downgrading by Moody’s. In June, in Hamburg and Munich, our Ambassador to Germany, myself and a team from the German/Irish chamber of commerce were busy promoting Ireland’s recovery – and in September we go on to Berlin and Dresden.
Now the tide is turning. Our bond spreads are coming down, easing pressure on the Exchequer. But nerves still have to be steadied back home: bringing down our savings ratio a notch or two will be crucial to stabilise spending, jobs and taxes at this critical economic turning point.
If the divas even had a credible solution between them, they might at least be useful. But their ideas are either derivative or just plain stupid. Take leaving the euro, for example. There is a school of thought that Ireland is now a net contributor to the EU and that we are “subsidising farmers” in the former Eastern Bloc. Ireland will, in fact, remain a net beneficiary of the EU until 2013. And, even if we were at last giving after all we’ve taken from Europe, what would it say about us if we turned our backs on those who helped us at the very moment when it was our turn to give something back?
Revealingly, the divas apply the same selfishness and cynicism to their policy prescriptions as they do to their cynical interpretation of our economic narrative at our expense.
They are also clueless about economics: citing Uruguay and Argentina’s devaluation of their currencies as a model for us to follow in leaving the euro ignores how those countries were able to use vast commodity exports to survive devaluation.
But our exports depend greatly on multinationals who were attracted here because of the euro. Leaving the euro would also beggar the Exchequer – due to high interest rates – within a matter of months, if not weeks.
In one TV programme on the housing market we were shown the scary sight of a row of boarded-up houses, allegedly representing the collapse of our housing market. The houses were, in fact, in Moyross and were boarded up because they were being evacuated for social reasons.
Another showed an empty hotel in Dublin’s Grand Canal Dock – surrounded by buildings that were full and thriving – as if it was the first sign of nuclear winter. What wasn’t shown was the empty wasteland of rats and rubble that the whole area constituted 20 years beforehand.
For every 10 buildings built since then, nine are busy and thriving. But only the negative 10 per cent gets noticed. It has to change.
Marc Coleman is Newstalk’s economics editor and presents ‘Coleman at Large’, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 10pm-midnight
- Marc Coleman
Sunday Independent
The brain drain truly is a positive alright. fucks sake. His book had some interesting ideas but this population growth argument is a nonsense.
There are some situations where it could be seen as a positive
Cant see it as much of a positive at the moment. More social welfare, demand for school places, subsidised education, travel etc etc
Well played.
I think I was talking to Alison O’Riordan tonight but I can’t be sure. She was a complete tard though so I’d say it’s 95% certain.