I was visiting a client, a farmer, in one of those areas the other day. Small talk is the foreplay of business and on this occasion we chatted about how the Irish Farmers Association (IFA) had acted so quickly, organising truck loads of donated fodder be sent to aid farmers in the west whose winter feeding stocks had been ruined. What Tom told me left me quite shocked.

Yes, the majority had acted as asked and gave whatever they could spare. Others, however had been quite unscrupulous and took the chance to rid themselves of their rubbish – 3 or 4 year-old stock with little or no feed value; rotten bales of silage; dust ridden hay and straw. Disposing of such rubbish is a costly exercise and the flooding provided a golden opportunity.

Think of the cost to the IFA of shipping this. Think of the cost of weeding out the dross and disposing of it. Think of the farmer in the west whose livelihood is all but ruined seeing a glimmer of hope but opening a bale only to discover it is unusable.

As I was leaving, Tom suggested I swing by one of the estates affected by the floods. “Take a look in the skips”, he said. “Call me back if you can figure out what you see. I can’t”.

I took a look. I haven’t called him back.

Maybe you the readers can explain this to me:

Among the sodden flooring, clothing, furniture and other items I expected to see were some strange items indeed.

Why would anyone throw out radiators? How could something whose sole purpose is to carry water be flood damaged?

Likewise how can plastic furniture be damaged by water? Or cups, plates etc? Soiled perhaps, but easily cleaned.

How could a wide screen TV that had been, given the visible mountings, on a wall have gotten wet? I seen no indication it had been. No staining whatsoever. Had the fuse in the plug blown and the entire set scrapped?

Most perplexing of all was why the need for a security guard to protect supposedly worthless goods? And why did he ask me to leave when I took out my camera phone?

Then the recession came. Cars were not being cleaned. The bands were not getting bookings. He took a job with one of the private security firms providing bodyguards in Iraq.

I met him recently. Home for his first break in over a year.

The eyes were the give away. Darting. Piercing. Narrowed. He was a coiled spring. In 12 short months the once natural chit-chat and banter had become forced and strained.

I have seen this before. A man I was in school with and an American I was later to work with had both joined the French Foreign Legion in the ’80s. Both had been in the reserves. Both deserted during overseas postings while on R&R. The slightest provocation would set of uncontrollable rage. Both carried knives. And used them.

In contrast, an ex-SAS instructor who now lives near me and has worked privately in Angola, Nigeria, Iraq and Afghanistan to name a few hotspots, arrives home relaxed and calm after each contract. (Most believe him to be an oil engineer and he doesn’t correct them). A big gentle giant who laughs off any slagging or anti-British insults.

It takes a certain type of person to take on the role of professional fighter. Playing soldiers at weekends doesn’t make one that. The vetting by private security firms doesn’t test for that. Nor do the psycho-technical tests done by the Legion.

Vincent’s family are coaxing him into not going back.

Lewis Hamilton became the first ever black Formula One champion.

Will Smith was the highest paid actor in 2008.

What a great year to be black.

Michael Jackson must be fucking kicking himself!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

To cap it all, I was told of yet more horror stories yesterday by my new neighbours. A couple from Poland.

The guy is a HGV driver with six years experience. On arrival in Ireland he even took a HazChem course in case his Polish ticket would not be recognised here. That, by the way, was the cuntsultant’s idea. She didn’t know, or bother to find out, if his own ticket would suffice. There would be no problem placing him she said. She had a number of clients screaming out for drivers.

Sure enough, the call came. He would be starting on Monday with such-and-such.

On his first day he was given a pair of gloves and shown into a large shed. The job was sorting rubbish on a conveyor belt! Now he’s not proud. In fact he worked there for two weeks until he got a driving job. But he was baffled as to what the cuntsultant was thinking. Me, I’m more baffled as to how she wasn’t thinking.

Jan’s partner is a highly qualified riding instructor. This being Kildare, her cuntsultant assured her that she would have an enviable choice of work. Her first interview was the following day. In Dundalk! She thought this a bit strange but decided to go anyway. She didn’t want to seem ungrateful and maybe it would actually be a fantastic job. After two buses, one taxi and four hours, she arrived at the stud farm. The owner hadn’t been sent her CV. He didn’t know she was coming. And worse, he was hiring a gardener!

Luckily both are now working. In jobs they are qualified to do. But jobs they found without the help hindrance of cuntsultants.

The more I think about it, and the more I gawk into my cornflakes, it might be best if I bypass recruitment cuntsultants. It could prove difficult but I would retain my temper, sanity and self-respect.

ps. When MacKozer is finished bitching about banks he can add recruitment cuntsultants to his list of examples of poor customer service in Ireland.

pps. Cuntsultant has been added to my dictionary. I am probably hoping to make a Freudian slip the next time I’m mailing one of them and not notice.