Contrast these three snippets from recent Irish newspaper articles. (Headlines underlined)

Katy on life support after heart attacks

… Katy’s failure to respond to treatment is viewed as so serious that doctors have ruled out moving her to a more acute hospital in Dublin … Close friends revealed Katy was …

Read the full piece from the Irish Examiner.

Tragic Katy dies in sister’s arms

… Katy’s heartbroken parents were also at her bedside … A team of consultants are understood to have examined Katy in Our Lady’s Hospital yesterday afternoon.

Read the full piece from Irish Independent.

Top model Katy French dies in Navan hospital

… Ms French (24) was taken to Our Lady’s Hospital in Navan … French celebrated her 24th birthday …

Read the full piece from the Irish Times.

Spot the difference? Top marks if you noticed the third one is journalism. I don’t know what you’d call the other two, but certainly not journalism.

The Irish Times is the only paper that has covered this saga impartially and professionally over the last few days. They have not lowered themselves to the lovey dovey style of familiarity the others have.

And rightly so. I didn’t know this woman. I never heard of her until this happened. You probably didn’t either unless you read society/gossip columns and their ilk. Being seen at parties and functions doesn’t achieve anything. It doesn’t stop wars, feed the hungry, advance life-saving technology. Not even help old ladies across the road or cats down out of trees. Nothing. So why the familiarity?

There are few exceptions for reporting on a first name basis. One was the Robert Holohan case. A child was missing and later found dead in a ditch. The whole nation empathised. The whole nation worried. The whole nation was united. Lines like “Robert is now missing three days” were acceptable. No, we didn’t know him, but it was as if we did, because we could imagine what his family and friends were going through. Our genetic programming triggers protective responses where the young are concerned. “Robert is now missing three days” = “A helpless child is now missing three days”.

This is not the case here. Despite its flaws, it would seem the Irish Times is the sole surviving newspaper in Ireland.

Dear Van Drivers Listen here, wankers! Yeah, you. You in the Celtic/Mar U/Da Pool jersey. You with the Star/Mirror/Mail wedged on the dashboard between the paper coffee cups and left-over breakfast-rolls. Know who you are now?

Why can’t you shower of langers be like your big cousins, the truck drivers, and have some respect for other road users? We all know you want to be truckers when if you grow up. Some of you think you are truckers. But you’re not. Face it lads - you drive a scuttery Hiace/Transit/Ducato. Cars on steroids. That’s all. You aren’t in a big 18-wheel Scania.

You don’t scare me. Find that hard to believe? Well it’s true. It is pointless driving right up behind me. I’m not breaking the speed limit just because you’re up my ass like Freddy Mercury. I honestly don’t give a shit if you really must get to the next Centra/Spar/Mace for an emergency breakfast roll.

I know you don’t give a shit either. The van is not yours. You can drive it into the ground. Not your money. The boss is paying for the extra fuel you burn by overtaking above the speed limit. Not you. The boss will pay for tyres and engines worn out before their time. The boss will pay for the clipped mirrors and scraped paintwork. The boss will pay when you whack the van into a ditch.

There’s a phone number printed on your van. I’d call it and complain but I’d probably get you on the other end. You’d take the call too, while driving. Because you know van drivers are exempt from using mobile phones while driving. After all, you are on the way to the next Centra/Spar/Mace for an emergency breakfast roll.

What you don’t know is that there is another number on your van. It’s called a registration number. You wouldn’t know that being a Mirror reading, Mar U supporter. The three of you who have gotten visits from the cops this month and the one of you who will be in court on the 2nd of August will know my name. That one of you will have the pleasure of meeting me face-to-face then. (Pity really - I would have liked to meet you two other guys too. But then we’ll meet soon, I’m sure). I wonder if your boss will pay your fine? I wonder if your boss will pay the extra insurance? I wonder if you will have a job?

Yours sincerely

Just cop on!

I always look forward to Sarah Carey’s column in the Sunday Times. Even more so I look forward to reading the full version on her blog. She wrote an excellent piece a couple of weeks back on how non-believing Irish parents are being forced to have their children baptised etc. You can read it here in all its unedited glory.

She points out that the majority of our primary schools are owned and managed by the catholic church. Religious education is part and parcel of the curriculum. Parents can opt to have their children excused from these lessons but come first communion time these children want to participate, simply because the other children are. Children usually have one burning wish – to be like all the other children, she wrote.

This is something which has been nagging at me for a long time now. I have friends who took their daughter to Euro Disney the week her classmates were having their first communion. They felt she had to be distracted from the peer pressure. She is an extremely bright individual and now that she’s older she is nonplussed that her pals are in confirmation mode.

Other friends, a Lutheran and a non-practising catholic, have had their kids baptised in a catholic church, partly to placate the paternal grandmother, but mainly, as they explained, to mark the occasion of the arrival of these new family members.

In both cases there was an occasion to be marked. The latter is obvious, the former less so. First communion is usually at the age of 7. This is when a baby becomes child. They know right from wrong at this stage. Again, at 12, confirmation time, another change takes place. They become teenagers. They reach puberty.

There are rites of passage here. All societies down through the ages have had these. A boy’s first hunt. A girl’s first period. More rites than you could shake an anthropologist at. Modern western society has some subtle ones too. First drink. First car. First sexual experience. Yet there isn’t a modern rite to mark passing from infancy to childhood and then through puberty. Perhaps first communion and confirmation fill this void. Perhaps there is a subconscious need in us all to mark these milestones and both parents and their young sense this. Perhaps my friends were marking an occasion by taking their daughter on her first foreign holiday rather than just avoiding peer pressure.

Sarah hit the nail on the head in her article. I’m just giving it another tap and hoping I’m not splitting the timber.

Everything has a password or a PIN* these days. I have PINs for bank cards, my house alarm (and three neighbours’ alarms), one to reset the car radio, a PIN and a PUK for my phone. I’ve go a PPN (which used to be a PRSI number), a student ID number and one for online banking. I’ve got six email accounts with different usernames and passwords. Logins for a few webservers. A login for my ISP’s account server. A login for Google, Statcounter, Polldaddy, about ten job sites, WordPress, Blogger, Irish Independent and more. A WEP key for my home network. A voicemail code. And on top of all that, there are account IDs for clients’ machines.

All of these, we are warned, must never be written down. We must memorise them and eat the slip of paper they came on and possibly shred your crap, just in case. You never know what geek has hacked into your pipework and hidden a poo-cam in your loo.

My fear of forgetting one of these, passcodephobia, (not to be confused with passcodaphobia which is a fear of going to the toilet after eating fish - the bones you know) has been getting gradually worse.

Passwords are not too bad. I tend to use about ten base ones in a variety of combinations which gives me about 50 unique codes. Numbers I remember by directions or shape. 9713 is a square. 0856 is up, up, right. Get the idea? Try it on your phone.

Yesterday I cracked. For the first time. I could not, not matter how hard I tried, recall my phone PIN. Having exhausted everything from isosceles triangles to down, outside, left-a-bit, I had to resort to getting my PUK from the website and resetting the PIN. No big deal. No harm done. But now my passcodephobia is worse than ever. If I forgot a PIN I use frequently what about all the others.

My head is just too full of codes. It can’t take any more. Now what’s my WordPress password so I can post this?

*Have you ever noticed how we all say PIN number? Personal Identification Number number. And we say Automated Teller Machine machine.

MacKozer has been doing a fair amount of bitching about Irish banks lately. In his last post he surmises that AIB stands for Absolutely Incompetent Bank-staff.

Well it’s my turn now. Step away from the keyboard, Mac.

Let’s face it. The AIB runs the Financial Regulator. Just as eircom runs ComReg. AIB are the big boys. They can do what they want and get away with it. They pwn the regulator! Extrapolate that and you realise they pwn the government too.

When other banks offer better rates and deals to attract customers, the AIB just might, if they feel they can spare 0.00001% of their billion euro profits, do the same, months later.

Because AIB are the biggest player they can offer the biggest range of services. With the exception of BoI the other banks are just credit unions with alloys, spots and go-faster stripes. AIB has it all and that’s why I’ve stuck with them this long.

When AIB announced they would be offering free banking I looked into it immediately. All I would have to do would be to pay one bill online or by phone once a quarter. No problem. I do that anyway. And I would have to make one purchase per quarter using my Laser card. Oops! A snag here. I didn’t have one. I had an old fashioned Banklink card. But the nice people in AIB knew this and wrote to me telling me how to replace my Banklink with a Laser. So I phoned the nice people and asked them to go ahead. No problem, sir. You will have your new card in two weeks.

That was so long ago I can’t remember what year it was. God was still sporting short trousers then. And I know we’ve all passed a lot of water under the bridge since.

I do remember calling six weeks later for an update. We are unable to process you request over the phone, sir. You will have to visit your branch. My account was opened at a branch in another town 24 years ago. With internet and phone banking there was no point transferring it to a local one. I couldn’t be bottomed visiting my branch so I left it at that.

This gave me time to think. I pay a government stamp duty of €10 on my Banklink card. I would have to pay €20 on a Laser card. Well, not exactly. I could pay €10 if I used the Laser only in ATMs or if I used it only for purchases, but if I used it for both I would pay €20. But to qualify for free banking I would have to use it for purchases and it would be no use to me if I didn’t use it at ATMs. So free banking was going to cost me €10 extra. The difference between the extra duty and the savings I’d make wasn’t great enough for me to bother switching.

The nice people in AIB wrote to me again this week. I am being automatically switched to a Laser card. I have no choice. The letter was dressed up to look like AIB were doing me a favour. I would have greater protection against fraud with chip and PIN technology.

I can’t help wondering if AIB are pandering to the revenue commissioners on this one. Here lads, how’s about we get you €10 extra from all our customers and you can owe us a favour?  We have a few things in mind.

The thing that’s really bugging me is the government stamp duty was brought in by Charlie McCreevy as a tax on banks. Not on customers. Or at least that’s what he told us at the time. But neither he, nor his successor, batted an eyelid when AIB et alia passed these taxes onto the consumer. But then, AIB pwns the government.

Ted Walsh is many things. As he proved on RTÉ’s The Restaurant, he is a great cook. He is a great husband, father and neighbour, well liked and respected by one and all. He is an accomplished horse trainer, best know for his successes with Rince Rí, Papillion and Commanche Court, and as a jockey, was champion amateur 11 times. He is a natural wit and pundit.

But one thing Ted Walsh is not, is a politically correct waffler. He is a straight talker who says what he thinks. Whether he is chatting to someone on the street, a stable lad, a rich owner, a talk show host or as a TV commentator himself, Ted is Ted. Just like his cooking there are no airs and graces. Like it or lump it.

This is the man who threatened, live on Channel4, to knock John McCririck* through the window of a commentary box. Who’d blame him? Watching the RTÉ coverage of Fairyhouse yesterday I thought his co-presenter, Robert ‘Mouth full of Marbles’ Hall, was going to suffer the same fate on two occasions. Neighbour, colleague and friend or not, Ted wasn’t taking Hall’s pandering to the powers that be.

Hall made a remark about the number of horses which had been balloted** out. A red rag to a bull. Ted pointed out the flaws of the HRI’s^ balloting system and the lack of joined-up thinking in that authority. There are hundreds of horses that will never see a racetrack. Granted they may get their allocation of 5 bumper^^ runs and any number of point-to-points^^ but that’s not real racing and is a big disappointment for the owners who have invested financially and emotionally.

Meanwhile, another arm of the HRI is investing heavily in promoting racehorse ownership. And doing a great job of it. They have made it easy for everyone to participate through clubs and syndicates. There were 1,500 of these in 2006. In Ted’s opinion they are doing far too good a job. What is the point of the HRI encouraging new owners into the game when they can’t guarantee them being allowed play?

Hall unsuccessfully tried to defend the balloting system on the grounds that it was the only solution. Ted just said it doesn’t work and they need to think of another way.

A trainer was fined €250 for withdrawing his horse at too late a stage. His real crime? He said the ground had become too firm from the third last in. Other trainers had used excuses like stone bruises and, the old chestnut, off feed. Here, Ted pointed out, was a man being fined for his honesty. Hall backed up the stewards saying they declared the going good, the trainers had walked the course that morning and concurred, therefore they had no right to be calling it good-to-firm or firm now.

But what Hall was missing was the simple fact that, while the ground had been watered overnight and was good that morning, the warm day and the breeze had dried it out since. Ted could see this. Even TV viewers like myself could see it. There was dust rising.

For readers with no interest in racing who have managed to get this far, let me draw some parallels with our state institutions.

Like the HRI who encourage more owners and horses into the scene but fail to provide them with a chance to race, our county councils allow housing developments but fail to provide for the backup facilities like schools, water supply and sewage treatment.
Like the stewards who made up their minds that the going was good not firm and would not be told otherwise or re-evaluate their decision, our government have decided the election will be on a Tuesday and will not be moved. This, despite the fact that so many voters who work or study away from home will be denied their constitutional right.

There are too many stewards and HRI-like officials running this country and not enough Teds. Perhaps too many of us are taking it lying down like Hall.

* From Kav’s image bucket.

** Balloting is the process by which horses are selected for a race where the number entered exceeds the number permitted to run. Considered unfair by most owners and trainers. I haven’t aksed the horses. More here if you’re really interested. You will have to be really, really interested to read it though.

^ Horse Racing Ireland. A body charged with the administration and promotion of horseracing in Ireland.

^^ I’m fed up explaining things. Google them. Sorry - just lazy today.