Her Ladyship’s posts about recruitment cuntsultants brought back memories of loathing and frustration. It’s been two years since I’ve had anything to do with them, but reading her tirade and the follow-up by Kav, made it seem like just, I dunno, just two years ago. In a couple of months I will have to face them again. I’m gawking into my cornflakes just thinking about it.

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.

Saturday mornings used be great. Let the dog out of his kennel. Throw him a few fresh kittens. A big bowl of Wheatibangs for myself. Brew up a pot of coffee. Then sit back from 6:30 to 9:00 and watch back-to-back documentaries on RTÉ1. Two and a half hours of pure heaven.

That’s all changed. RTÉ no longer show documentaries from 6:30 to 9:00. Now it’s 9:00 to 11:00, by which time it’s too late. I have other things to do. Trolley rage. Hoover the fridge. Do some charity work. Take a drive somewhere. Normal Saturday stuff.

Instead I’m subjected to Simple Painting. Simply fekin Painting with Frank fekin Clarke. The plastic Paddy who insists on sticking a big dirty H into Slán at the end of his show. As we say in Ireland, sHlán leat. No we don’t Frank. Fek off! Oh, and leat - well maybe you’re right - maybe you do have only one viewer. This morning it was me. Now, fek off, again!

Follow this with reruns of Bergerac and Magnum PI. The TV guides tag them with an (R). Yep, repeats alright. First screened in the ’80’s so RTÉ figures enough time has elapsed to slip them into the schedule again. Fek it lads, they were crap back then. L-shaped sheets don’t cut it in the noughties. Twenty years sitting a shelf won’t have made them any better. They aren’t whiskeys. Only my mother and my half-wit friend TJ liked them the first time. TJ joined the Guards, by the way.

I only have terrestrial TV so my options are limited. RTÉ2 - kids stuff. Fair play to them. TV3 - Emmer-fekin-dale and Best of Ireland AM. I didn’t know there was a best. I’m not even sure if there could be a Mediocre of Ireland AM. TG4 - A stream from Euronews. “The international community have called on Iran to halt their nuclear programme”. Imagine that. “Ah com’on, will yiz give up all that auld nuclear shite like good lads now”. The same stories repeated every 10 minutes. Gets boring after a while. Maybe there should be an (R) in the TV guide for this too.

Radio. Ah, the wireless. I do love the wireless. But not on Saturday morning. RTE2FM - Dave Redmond. Who? RTE Radio 1, Newstalk, RnG - all repeats of the week gone. I was there lads. I have the t-shirts. No use telling me about it. Lyric FM - No, too sleepy. I want mental stimulation. Today FM - normally my favourite but they have Martin King on. A part-time weatherman, part-time DJ, full-time plonker who goes on the national airwaves once a week and plays requests for John from Santry, Jason from Tallaght, Britney from Clondalkin, Jayo from Ballyier. If you’re Tom from Athenry and want something played for your granny’s 100th birthday you can fek off. This is a Dublin show.

I’m getting a dish.

The HSE are running ads encouraging hospital visitors to wash their hands as part of a drive to reduce the spread of infection, mainly by MRSA.

Now, forgive the pun, but there are a few things bugging me about this campaign:

There is a line slipped in at the end of the radio ad reminding hospital staff to wash their hands too. Is this not a given? Are they not the professionals? Did all those years of study and training teach them nothing about basic hygiene?

Perhaps it is aimed at staff other than doctors and nurses. I hope it is. Last year, when our father was in God’s waiting room there was an MRSA outbreak.  We, doctors and nurses included, wore gloves, masks and aprons, and washed our hands thoroughly going in and out of the ward. On one occasion we were there at lunch time. The caterer came in, distributed the trays and left for the next ward. No gloves. No mask. No apron. No hand washing. We freaked and complained to the ward sister that all our precautions were for nothing if this woman could be allowed to ramble throughout the hospital spreading infection. We were told she was an external contractor and they had no authority over her. (He died of MRSA. They put pneumonia on the death cert but that’s for another post on another day).

There are infection threats other than just MRSA in our hospitals: Clostridium difficile is a major one. You can read more about it here, or here if you have more time, but the basics are as follows. It is called C. difficile because it is extremely difficult to treat. The antibiotics which do work are among the most expensive. It is most prevalent where a patient is being treated with antibiotics for other infections. Catch 22. It can kill those who are weakened by age or serious ailments.

Why don’t we hear about it? Because the HSE are legally obliged to collect and publish statistics on MRSA but not C. difficile. For all we know it could be more common than MRSA.

This is yet another example of the lack of joined up thinking we have come to expect in our state services.

Just read this reply to one of my last mails to a State/Semi-State body:

Dear Mr. ******

Thank you for contacting the Road Safety Authority. Your e-mail will be forwarded to the

appropriate person dealing with this matter and a response will be issued in due course.

Regards
*******
-----Original Message-----

From: *******

Sent: 22 March 2007 07:56

To: Info

Subject: Enquiry_from_Website

Hi there

Why is there only a 'sample chapter' of the new Rules of the Road

available for download? Why not the whole document?

Le gach deá-mhéin
*******

A fairly simple query you’d agree. A fairly simple reply would have been along the lines of: “We will be making the full document available early next week”, or “We are sorry but we have no plans to do so at this time”.

Why do these bodies always reply with “your email will be forwarded … blah, blah, blah”? I get the impression this is Civil Service speak for “look, we’ve answered your mail. That’s the end of. Fek off!” Only once in a blue moon does a follow-up reply actually arrive. My interpretation of in due course is days or at max, a couple of weeks. Theirs seems to be months, years, or seemingly, never.

And why do they have to tell me the email has to be forwarded to the appropriate person? I assume it would be. Just forward the mail to that person and let them reply to me. If you, or they, are not going to reply properly don’t reply at all. Don’t clutter my inbox with trash.

Kildare County Council, I will admit, do actually action emails. Note the use of the word action as opposed to reply to. KCC send the standard Civil Service your email has been forwarded … reply. Usually this mentions the name or at least title of the recipient, and occasionally their email address and phone number. A follow-up mail will arrive within a couple of weeks if they can’t action what you’re requesting. If they can do it, it just gets done, and there is no follow-up.

That works for me. So what’s the snag? Well the replies come as attachments in MS Word format. No messing! It’s true. MS fekin Word. What if I am on a dial-up connection? What if I’m using Linux?

I’d mail the RSA, KCC and other bodies about this but my email would be forwarded to the …

Update: Still no reply, but the full text of the new Rules of the Road booklet is available for download here. No reply either to my mail to them in January asking for clarification on the rules for roundabouts.

MacKozer over at Ireland from a Polish Perspective is hosting a discussion forum where Irish people and Polish people living in Ireland can express their views, good, bad or indifferent, of each other.  A multicultural exchange.  He will be translating English comments and posting them on the Polish language version of his site, and visa versa.

Pop over there and have your say. Or just drop by and check out his photos.

Day 1: Four bets. My Way de Solzen got me off to a great start winning The Arkle at 7/2. Hardy Eustace let me down for the Champion Hurdle but at least we had an Irish winner with the John Carr trained Sublimity. In the 4:00, Juveigneur got a nose past his opponent on the line but unfortunately Joe’s Edge pulled the same trick on my horse and I lost out to a 50/1 shot. After her brother had won on Sublimity, Nina Carberry gave Heads On The Ground a fantastic ride in the Cross Country to win at 5/2.€20 wagered. €40 collected.

Day 2: Not so good. Four bets, five if you count the free bet with Ladbrooks. Just one second. Dempsey at 20/1. Luckily I had him each way so I’ll get something back. He looked like winning. The funny thing was all the experts had him written off saying the track wouldn’t suit him.

€20 wagered. €12.50 collected. Actually, that’s not bad.

Day 3. I learned an important lesson on day 2: Never shout at the TV. The dog interprets it as me being savagely attacked and comes barreling through the door, growling and teeth bared knocking over everything in his path. I didn’t make that mistake today and whispered my horses home instead. It’s not the same craic, but it did work for one of of my four selections: Taranis at 9/2.

€20 wagered. €27.50 back.

I didn’t get to use the free Ladbrooks bet today. Both the Irish Independent and the Mirror printed the voucher on the back of the racing page. The wankers!

Day 4: The bookies got hammered! But not by me. I decided to go for long-shots each way instead of favourites. Still, it was a great day’s racing. Especially when local hero Ruby Walsh rode Kauto Star to victory in the Gold Cup. I cheered him on even though my few bob was on Cane Brake. Eh, another local hero. Yes, my heart was ruling my head.

€20 wagered. €0 back.

Overall - Wagered:€80. Collected:€80. Profit:€0. Excitement: Priceless.

So why bore you with all of this? Just to reiterate the point I was trying to make below: For me the love of horses and racing is greater than betting. Whether you make nothing, make a fortune or lose (as long as it is what you can afford to lose), the thrill of the race is the same. There is a big distinction between those for whom the horses come first and the betting second, and those for whom there is only the betting.  Please don’t confuse us when you talk of gambling.