IRELAND INC may be in shite (with worse to come before it gets better), but there are still some good things happening which we need to focus on…

It’s easy to get lost in doom and gloom in the middle of one of the worst recessions this country has ever seen. Hell I’m as guilty as the next person of falling into the same old traps because, as usual, it looks like we (and by ‘we’ I mean me, you and every other private sector worker in the country) are going to have to fund the recovery over the next few years whilst others get away scot free. I think I’ve finally figured out what the “Inc” in “Ireland Inc.” stands for too… Incompetent, Nearsighted and Corrupt. So yes it’s true to say that the bastards that caused all this mess are gettig away pretty easy compared to the rest of us, and I wouldn’t even deny that the corruption and incompetence will probably prevail through to the recovery, but there are some side effects of this recession which should make our lives a little easier going forward if we can just hang on in there and get through it.

For starters “Rip Off Ireland” is getting a kick in the nuts at long last. For the last decade prices in this country have been out of control and we’ve been getting royally screwed at the retail and services end of things. Some of those greedy bastards that were raking in our cash are now going to the wall and I certainly wont miss ‘em. So even though we have to take some pain in the short term, the longer term outlook should be better going forward. For example…

House prices are coming down, and will continue to do so for a while yet. Bad news for those of us with large mortgages and negative equity, but good news for the country as a whole in the long term as house prices return to some kind of normailty.  I won’t be shedding any tears for the property developers who go to the wall either; greedy bastards took enough from us as it is, and if the government wasn’t so spinless we’d be getting it back now through the courts.

Car prices are also dropping. Granted those of us who payed a fortune for the big rigs in the boom years are getting hit hard now because the same motors aren’t worth a fuck now in the second hand market, but new car prices are dropping at a huge rate and, given the number of car dealerships closing every month, you can pretty much haggle the arse out of any deal now with them and they will bend over backwards in order to get a sale and keep their job. The same fuckers who wouldn’t let you in the door a year ago because you didn’t look like you were floating in cash will now kiss your arse to get you in to purchase anything at all.

The politicians have been exposed for what they really are, a bunch of self serving, corrupt, greedy, nearsighted and incompetent fuckwits, most of which ought to be behind bars or on dole queues with the rest of us. The downside of course is that this has always been the case, but is only becoming more obvious in recent times given the issues the country is facing and of course the seemingly endless series of scandals and media exposes. On the brighter side, I seriously doubt the Greens or Fianna Fail will get a look in again at the next election. Unless of course they grow a set of balls and actually adress the bloated public sector problems we have in this country. I’m not talking about the teachers, nurses, fire brigade or cops here; I’m not even talking about the genuine folks who do an honest day’s work. I am in fact referring to the massive amount of wasters and wastage that exists within the public sector, the mandarins and beauracrats, the clerical officers and administrative staff who bring no value what so ever to the frontlines, who cost this state billions of euro every year and deliver absolutely fucking nothing in return. It would be nice to see those gits taking some of the pain for a change.

Hell, even the price of hookers is dropping in the big smoke. I came across a website recently which was advertising ‘credit crunch’ deals and ‘recession busting’ hourly rates for escorts in and around Dublin. Even they seem to have realised that in a downturn price is king. Discretionary spend is rapidly going to shrink and unless everyone starts to compete on price they won’t get a look in… Even for the oldest profession in town! That should merge nicely with the hotels dropping their prices dramatically in the last few months too. I wonder if they have moved to a ‘by the hour‘ model yet?

Plus, you can pretty much chance your arm now in any department store, online retailer or service provider, looking for a better deal. Competition is king remember, so why don’t you try calling up Sky Ireland and telling them you’re thinking of leaving for a cheaper service… I guarantee you they will drop their price by 20-25% right then and there on the phone rather than loose your custom. You can apply this same logic to everywhere else and get some deals at last, and maybe even some value for a change.

And remember – when all the dust settles – just remember who got us here in the first place. It’s always you and me that has to fund the recovery, but let’s not forget the politicians, bankers and property developers who got us here folks. Because I can tell you I won’t forget ‘em, and next time I get my hands on one I will gladly ‘remind’ them of their culpability.

And even though you are probably either trying to keep a job, or worse trying to find one right now… just remember to hold your head up hight and fight back. Demand better from your politicians, from your retailers and anyone else who trys to sell you something. Go look for better deals. Don’t just assume that because you have been taking it up the ass for the last decade that you should continue to do so. Challenge the status quo.

Try it! You might just be surprised at the results. And in these recessionary times, any victory is a good victory in my book!

IF EVER you needed a clear sign that the recession is here in full force then look no further than the new McDonalds burger joint in Ennis, County Clare.

During the so-called “Celtic Tiger“ period the clearest sign that our economy was on the upswing was the fact that all the services jobs went to foreign nationals. By that what I mean is most of the jobs in the service industry were being filled by non-Irish people who had migrated here because the economy was booming. Service jobs were suddenly not good enough for Irish people and they ditched them and moved on to bigger and better things.

Conversely the surest sign that our economy is in the shithouse is when the non nationals start leaving the country to head elsewhere and, most importantly, when Irish people start looking at the service industry again as a viable employment opportunity… usually becauuse there is nothing else for them to work with.

And so we come to the opening of yet another McDonalds burger joint, this time in Ennis, County Clare. When they recently advertised for staff, they became overwhelmed by the sheer volume of prospective employees hoping for a chance to join the extended Ronald McDonald family. The noteworthy item however is not just the volume of respondants (over 500), but more the fact that a huge percentage of them are well-qualified Irish professionals, including accountants, architects and bankers, all looking to sign up to serve burgers for a living. Apparently so many people responded to the adverts for the jobs that the opening has had to be put back 2 weeks in order to process all the applications. This tells us two things on the recession-o-meter:

1. There are already too many professionals out on their asses from recent job cuts and now they are looking to do any job possible to bring in a wage, even working at a McDonalds.
2. The fact that Irish are applying for these minimum wage jobs again in the service industry highlights the exodus of non-nationals to other countries.

It’s oficial folks; if you have a job do whatever you can to keep it. It’s going to be a rough 2 years for everyone.

I KNOW THIS SOUNDS PRETTY INSANE, but it’s actually true. It’s a procedure called Osteo Odonto Kerato Prosthesis (OOKP), and it’s just saved the eyesight of a very lucky Irish man called Bob McNichol. 

The story begins a couple of years ago when a freak accident involving hot liquid aluminium exploded into the eye of of Bob McNichol from Mayo. He lost his eyesight as a result and assumed that’s the way things would stay, which I think you will agree is a fair assumption given the circumstances.

After doctors in Ireland said there was nothing more they could do, McNichol heard about a miracle operation called Osteo-Odonto-Keratoprosthesis (OOKP) being performed by Dr Christopher Liu at the Sussex Eye Hospital in Brighton in England, and that’s when the story gets really weird.

You see the principle behind this procedure is pretty wild. It’s a technique which the Italians pioneeredback in the 1960s (I’d love to know what they were smoking when they came up with this one!) which involves creating a support for an artificial cornea from the patient’s own tooth and the surrounding bone.

In this particular instance his son, Robert, donated a live  tooth so that the surgeons in England could perform the procedure on his father. The medical types gave the procedure a 65% chance of partial success, and wouldn’t you know it the crazy thing actually worked.

McNichol’s right eye socket was rebuilt, part of the tooth inserted and a lens inserted in a hole drilled in the tooth. The first operation lasted ten hours and the second five hours; they basically built a new eye socket and foundation based upon a tooth extracted from his son, and now McNichol (senior) has enough eyesight to watch TV and generally get around again.

I guess the thing that pisses me off the most about this amazing story is that the Irish doctors just gave up on him, and weren’t even informed enough to know that there were other potential options out there less than a few hundred miles away over in England.

Still, it’s a happy ending for the McNichols and will provide great hope to others out there who find themselves in a similar – if unfortunate – set of circumatances.

All you need is £40,000 in your pocket, probably access to the Internet, a willingness to do the legwork yourself and a ticket to England it seems.

I HOPED, I REALLY DID… and tonight it actually happened. Last week I heard about the 6 Irish Eurovision song contest entries and the one that caught my attention was the duck turkey from Dublin with the most outrageous idea yet. I’ve always avoided watching the Eurovision because it’s so campy and crap, but this year when I heard that a hand puppet was being entered into the contest with a song called “Irelande Douze Point” – as a kind of protest vote – I just had to tune in tonight to see what happened in the qualifiers.

And would you believe it… the idiots left it up to the voting public to decide who goes through. So of course the voting public decided to push for the biggest fuck-you act possible; they voted in a turkey for the Eurovision. I’m not talking about a bad song, I’m talking about an actual hand-puppet, fowl mouthed, Dublin based ex-builder Turkey with a hand stuffed up it’s arse!

It was absolutely pure class to see the reaction of the judges in the room after the hand puppet performed what I can only call an abomination of a song, surrounded by some seriously dodgy dancers and what appeared to be some kind of drag act/opera cross. This has literally just happened folks, so the video of this act is probably not yet available on the ‘net, but as soon as it is I will link to it from here.

You have to see this to believe it. Really. Words cannot possibly convey how truely atrocious and outlandish this is… and I just love the fact that the Irish public have voted this forward to the Eurovision competition. How the hell will the other contestants react?

G’wan you good thing!

Update: Here is the link to the video of this insane entry into the Eurovision 2008. Enjoy!

I MIGHT ACTUALLY WATCH IT this time around, especially if Dustin is on stage!

I refer of course to the ever-present Dustin the Dublin turkey, a famous muppet puppet if ever there was one in Ireland. This turkey has pedigree. He ran for president of the country for a while before being ousted. I think he even got into politics along the way. Rumour has it he has turned down a top job at the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) in order to concentrate on his singing career and more specifically Eurovision 2008.

And why should anyone care? Well you see Dustin is not just a turkey, he’s a hand puppet. That’s right, this stuffed, insane and manky turkey with a hand up his arse is getting almost as much press coverage as Clinton and Obama here in Ireland, it’s even making some international publications and I love it! Really. I mean Ireland has it’s problems these days, but seriously… where else in the world could you get a turkey with this much talent?

The mad turkey – if he makes it to the final stage – will be singing his song entry entitled “Irelande Douze Pointe”. No doubt some sanity will interfere with the plan, but the possibility of having a hand puppet representing Ireland and delivering a truely aweful song in the Eurovision would actually make me want to watch the damn thing, possibly even sober. Can you just imagine the ensuing carnage from the other competitors that would follow, especially if he scored some points in the process? Mmmnnn… fun indeed.

Ah hell, given the state of the political parties in this country I’d even give the damn bird my vote if he decided to run against the Fianna Failers and their bitches the Greens.

G’wan ya mad thing!

I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING… if you’re anything like me you’re thinking “What the fuck?”

The statistic can’t be right. There must be some mistake right? Wrong.

Unfortunately it’s being reported over the airwaves tonight that last month the Dublin Rape Crisis centre had to help one woman per day during December ’07. Between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve,  the helpline received 12 calls from people who had been recently raped. That’s 31 people who were assisted by the crisis centre and brought to hospital to be treated, in just one month alone! Hell for all we know thats just for Dublin, never mind what happened around the country.

The really scary thing is that these statistics only represent those calls that were reported last month, not the actual figures. Experience suggests the actual numbers are quite a bit higher.

What the hell has happened to Ireland? I remember when a murder being reported on the radio was a big thing, a shock. Now there are murders every sodding day on every news bulletin. These rape statistics are frightening enough, but I did a bit of looking around after hearing of this report and discovered even worse statistics for Ireland as follows…

The scale of the problem in Ireland is probably best summed up by this extract from the One-In-Four website which has taken its statistics from the SAVI “Sexual Abuse and Violence in Ireland” report (2002):-

In Childhood

• 27 % of all Irish children, one in four, have experienced sexual abuse before the age of 17.
• 4.15% of all Irish children, almost one in 20, have been raped as children.

In Adulthood

• 21.25% of all Irish adults, one in five, reported sexual assaults as adults.
• 3.5% of all Irish adults one in 28 have been raped as adults.

Lifetime Experience

• 35% of all Irish women and men, one in three, have experienced sexual abuse or sexual violence at some point in their lifetime.
• 13% of all Irish women and men, one in eight, have been raped at some point in their lifetime.
• 19.5% of all women and men, one in five, have been subject to an attempted rape at some point in their lifetime.

Disclosure

• 47% of those who disclosed experiences of sexual violence as past or the SAVI research had never told anyone about their experiences of abuse.
• 60% of all young men, i.e. under age 30, had not previously disclosed the sexual abuse they experienced in childhood.
• Only 1% of all men and 7.8% of all women who have experienced sexual violence as adults have reported such abuse to the Gardai. This means that 95.7% of all sexual assaults of adults go unreported to the Gardai.

For more information on the above statistics browse on over to the stats page at One-In-Four; it makes for some shocking reading.

Just think about them for a minute. One in three Irish people will experience sexual abuse/violence at some stage in their life. One in eight will be raped and one in five will be subjected to an attempted rape at some stage in their lifetime.

And as if that wasn’t scary enough, while doing a little bit of reading up and research into these numbers for this post I came across yet another dimension to this problem that I really hadn’t considered before. The Rape Crisis Network Ireland website (RCNI) was somewhere I was searching for statistics and publications, but while looking at their home page I came across a link entitled “Worried someone might find out you’ve visited this site?”

Following this link results in a page of details dedicated to helping you erase your browsing history to the site to help protect you in case someone is watching your every move. How fucked up is that?

This is a serious issue folks and the main reason I wanted to post about this was to ensure that as many people as possible get some visibility on the statistics because it really shocked me that they had climbed so high. Something is seriously wrong in this country when a woman per day is getting raped, and that’s just the cases that are being reported.

Castration is too good for the fuckers that do this.

WE VISITED AN ALIEN WORLD this morning. It had been many many years since I’d seen the inside of a church, excepting of course the usual weddings and funerals that require perfunctory attendance but none of the usual alertness I’d associate with the giving and receiving of actual organised religion.

This morning SusiQ and I attended a mass (the reasons for which are not really central to the theme of this post) and as I sat there and looked around at the church, the audience, the priest, the whole interaction I was struck by how alien it all was for me. The church in question was one I’d frequented when I was a young boy growing up in Dublin, but by the time I was twelve I’d basically bailed on the whole organised religion thing and left mass and churches behind in the process, much to the distress of my mother.

And so it was that I found myself back in this church, with my mother as it happens and SusiQ, and the occasion provided me with an opportunity, anthropologically speaking, to observe the alien process in action and see for myself how things had changed in the decades since I last found myself in that church.

For starters, the audience congregation had changed dramatically. I’d say only 25% of the seats were taken up, and of those probably 90% of the participants spectators were at the over-sixty stage. I only counted two kids in the entire church and probably four or five middle aged or young couples, most of whom were eastern European by appearance. Attendances have dropped off significantly from when I was a boy.

My first surprise was when the priest stood up and announced the start of the service for ‘those listening at home’; they were broadcasting over a church radio network. An obvious progression I know, but still I wasn’t expecting it for some reason. As the priest droned on in the usual monotones I took stock of the churchgoers in the rows and rows in front of him and would liken them to robots, going through the well established and comfortable motions, rather than active partipants in any religious ceremony. They came in, sat down, switched off and performed when required. There was no real engagement as such.

Then of course it got weirder, which is only to be expected I suppose in an alien landscape…

The priest kicked in with his keynote sermon and in a nod to modernity he referenced Bono and the lyrics “Still haven’t found what I’m looking for“. As I recall he went on to say that “John the baptist was singing this same song when he was incarcerated in a prison cell” and then he challenged the good folks in the pews with “Does anyone here know what John was looking for?”

Unfortunately the agnostic in me was thinking the answer was perhaps a record deal. Still it seems the real answer was the meaning of christmas or some such dribble. More minutes pass and then sermon is completed to what I can only describe as a vacuum of any recognition whatsoever. People stood, kneeled, sat and mumbled upon command but never really seemed to engage.

There are no alter boys any more; probably because of all the sex scandals within the Catholic church. There are no choirs any more – now replaced by smaller folk-ish groups who still haven’t found what they are looking for either (i.e. some harmony). Pretty soon some coloured rubber condoms were passed around for the collections. In my day it was a wooden basket which was passed around, and the priest used to always announce what the collection was for; however today it’s just a blue condom first, followed by a red condom and no mention of what the money is to be used for or where it’s going.

I sat there, observing and noting the changes from my childhood recollections, but I also took stock of the status of things. My generation (Generation X I think they called us sometimes) broke the mould. We walked away from the church and any organised religions. We embraced sexual ambiguity, abortion, divorce, freedom of choice, multi-culturalism, anti-racism and a whole lot more. We broke the taboos and reported the sex offenders in the priesthood and the christian brothers. We changed the face of Ireland utterly, and all in a matter of two decades. Those that follow us live in a new Irish paradigm as a result.

When you consider that each successive generation is less connected to the Catholic church in Ireland than the last, the long term prognosis is pretty bleak for organised religion in this country. In my day there were entire families in church, kids in tow, every single Sunday. Today I saw two kids in church. The presentation may have changed slightly (church radio, more singing, the odd nod to modernity in a sermon) but the basic content still remains the same and is aimed at the older generation in the pews, which is why organised religion in this country will ultimately fail and disappear within a generation or two at the most.

Faith itself may prevail in whatever form it takes. Some folks need to believe in something more in order to get through the day, and that’s ok. Everyone has the right to believe in whatever they want, but I do not think organised religion has a prayer (sorry!) anymore. It’s outdated, outmoded and just plain out of touch.

As an exercise in alien anthropology I did in fact enjoy observing the process at work in the church this morning. Taking the outside-looking-in perspective allowed me to take an objective stance on familiar things from my childhood. It also brought back some old memories and reminded me of just why I bailed on the whole religion thing, but more than that it convinced me that the future of faith in this country is not in the churches and it’s not with the priests. The influx of immigrants and different races, cultures and religions in the last ten years can only be a good thing. The future of faith I suspect lies in the future generations finding a common platform to communicate, support and identify with no matter what colour or belief system is behind it.

If the experience this morning is anything to go by, organised religion – in my humble opinion – is dead in Ireland, or at least it’s taking some last gasping breaths on the way to closing down completely. I guess it remains to be seen how faith will endure, or indeed if it will survive at all. That particular aspect is up to the generations after us I guess.

I wonder what sort of Ireland will be there for me to observe when I’m at the over-sixty stage of my life.

USUALLY IT’S A CASE of the public sampling Guinness, on a fairly regular basis it has to be said, but this evening I took part in a survey – completely by coincidence – where Guinness were sampling their customer base in advance of potentially huge changes for the ailing company.

Things have not been going well for Guinness in recent years. I used to work there, up until 2001, and even then market share was dropping with alarming regularity. Although overall share prices are on the up for Diageo – the parent company – the Guinness brand is in trouble. Drink driving legislation, take home trade market growth and more ‘fashionable and younger’ drinks are all taking their toll on the old diehard brand.

Guinness of course have attempted to fight back with clever marketing campaigns and adverts, with new products and options for the younger and more discerning drinker (Guinness Red anyone?… Meh!), hell they’ve even developed some “Surge” technology to enable the ‘perfect pint’,  but none of it seems to be making that much difference to the downward slide in performance.

Even when I was working there the rumours of the Brits closing down the St. James Gate brewery were always a regular topic of conversation at the lunch table, or indeed over a pint or two. Up to now it’s been speculation, but more recently this particular rumour seems to have gathered some speed and momentum. Back in June this year Diageo confirmed they were looking at options, but remained elusive on what those options actually were. 

The survey I completed online tonight kind of reinforces (for me anyway) the idea that the Diageo management team are serious about taking a long hard look at their options for the home of Guinness this time around, and in particular they seemed to have refined said options down to just a few fairly key ones.

So, what variations are they looking at then? Well, you might be surpsied to know that there are four distinct options on the menu – according to the survey anyway -as follows:-

1. Option 1: Upgrade the brewing facilities at St. James Gate by building a massive new Brewhouse on the Quays
2. Option 2: Build a completely new Brewery elsewhere (in Dublin) and close down the St. James Gate location
3. Option 3: Build a new brewhouse elsewhere in Dublin, but leave the production of Guinness at St. James Gate
4. Option 4: Business as usual; no change.

The actual survey itself took the form of faked up newspaper articles and radio news items about each potential option, followed by specific questions about how people would react to each alternative and, more importantly, what impact it might have on our drinking habits and trends for the Guinness product itself.

For what it’s worth my money is on Option 3. Diageo have been trying to find a way to get better returns on the acres of prime retail/commercial development space in the Dublin city centre (e.g St. James Gate Brewery) for decades now, and the option to build a more modern brewhouse elsewhere (for all the brewing except Guinness itself) would probably enable them to free up a good few acres of space at St. James Gate for sale back into the property market. Cha-Ching!!

Sadly though, at this stage, Guinness is not really Guinness anymore.

What was once quintessentially Irish and unique is now just another English owned and run company, relagated to the position of an ageing brand within a larger drinks, food and leisure portfolio. What used to be a ‘job for life’ is now outsourced, nearshored, offshored and sub-contracted to a huge array of vendors. Hardly any of the folks I worked with are still there, as ‘Guinness’ employees; they have all been sold off to outsourcers. Like most things, what was… is no more. I think it’s time has passed, and the accountants have long since taken over. The heart and soul has been ripped out and discarded.

So folks, don’t be surprised if you hear an annoucement in the near future about some interesting developments at the heart of Dublin, in St. James Gate. And remember, when the stories start to break about the options under consideration, and the eventual decision… you heard it here first at Howl @ The Moon!

I JUST THOUGHT it was worth giving a quick mention to the latest invention from a student in Dublin. The Dyson design award has been picked up by Laura Caulwell, a 22 year old graduate of the National College of Art and Design (NCAD), for her tree shaped PC that allows users to upgrade parts of the computer separately.

Caulwell, who was awarded €2,000 after scooping the top prize, will now go on to represent Ireland at the prestigious International James Dyson Award held in January 2008. She calls her new PC invention the “Cultivate”.

Shaped as a tree, the “Cultivate” allows each part of the computer to be upgraded separately so that as a user’s needs change, the tree grows. The trunk of the tree houses the motherboard, while 10 branches also hold the central processor, RAM, battery, power supply, expansion cards, storage, two speakers, an ambient light, and a mouse. Any of these components can be “plucked” from the tree and sent back to the supplier for upgrade, recycling or remanufacture.

Pretty clever isn’t it?

The Cultivate computer tree also features silver aluminum “leaves” which act as external heatsinks, cooling down each component. They are attached by the user, and can be bent and curled into all manner of shapes so not only is it functional but you can tailor your own PC to suit your astethic tastes. Well done Laura, and good luck in the International competition!

I GOT A COPY of this in my inbox today and I just couldn’t resist publishing it.

For anyone who has been following the Rugby World Cup this year in France you will no doubt be aware of the dreadful performance of the Irish rugby team thus far.

Before the tournament began we were heading in as a team at the peak of their talents and considered a sure fit into the final stages of the competition. That however was just the fiction. The reality was somewhat different.

In their first game Ireland managed to beat Namibia 32-17, but the fact that Namibia managed to score at all is a testament to how badly the Irish team played. In the second game Ireland managed to scrape a win against Georgia, but only just at 14-10. It was embarrasing to watch.

All eyes were on the third game against France, the clash of supposed titans. Unfortunately the only titans on the pitch were the French and they slaughtered Ireland 25-3.

Although there is an outside chance that Ireland can still make it through to the next round (really really outside chance which involves beating Argentina by a huge amount!) the reality is that we will probably get slaughtered again.

So – in keeping with our reputation as being a nation of begrudgers I give you the latest in Irish rugby shirt design