Perhaps my last blog

No I’m not planning on disappearing again, but I am starting off this week with a gripe about the Limerick School Project apologising for allowing a copy of the Charlie Hebdo paper being shown to a class where a Muslim child took offence to the image of the prophet Muhammad. What a titanic heap of bullshit. Which is why this perhaps could be my last blog as by this time tomorrow I could be stoned to death, or beheaded, or some such thing.

If truth be known, and don’t tell this to anybody, when the news of the Paris massacre broke I wasn’t really paying attention and my first thought was who would do such a thing over a Snoopy cartoon, never check out the news after a bottle of my homebrew!

What are my issues, well I’ll tell you, in bullet points because I’ve just found the button.

1. I’m a devout atheist, let’s get that one said early.
2. I find it sad and disturbing that an eleven year old has been already so indoctrinated into a religion that they would find offence over a cartoon and not over the deaths of twelve people.
3. I have never had the honour of talking to the guy but I don’t think the cartoon is a particularly good likeness, to be honest it could be a caricature of Laurence of Arabia, and since all the text is in French, a language I am even more unfamiliar with than English, I would be none the wiser.
4. I have to get out of these bullet points before I go ‘bullet point crazy’, it’s a real condition, look it up, suffered mostly by IT, HR, PHD, perhaps PMT (could be a different sort of bullet I’m thinking of), and some other letters I can’t think of right now.

Do I believe an apology was warranted, in short no, not any more than if some child took offence to ‘The Life Of Brian’ being brought into a Catholic school, or a DVD of the full series of ‘Monkey’ being brought into a Buddhist one.

So before you go sharpening your stones, or picking up machetes from the local quarry, I’m not anti Muslim, Islam or any other such thing, I’m just plain anti religion.

In this age of science and understanding I find it a difficult concept to understand the having of faith, and yes I do applaud loudly (under 80 decibels just in case the noise police are out), everything that Stephen Fry said in his tirade.

1. Yes I’m at it again, the madness is taking over, though I have to look up the rules to see if this should be 1 or 5, but I’m trusting the button to know what its doing.
2. There are close to a squillion (I am going to squeeze that word into every blog), different religions in the world today, either their all wrong or there’s a shit load of gods floating about up there having afternoon tea and laughing at us.
3. If there really was a god, would it have created the Scots? Well that’s not up to me to say.

The Pope, I’m led to believe he’s important to somebody, recently made comment that slapping a child was okay, but not in the face, as that would be humiliating. Are you off your cassock, since when has hitting anybody let alone a child been anything other than humiliating for both you and the poor recipient. Though I might convert to Catholicism under those rules since it might make my visits to the supermarket more enjoyable.

To date there are seven out of nine Catholic orders who have failed to come up to scratch with child protection guidelines, it seems that they have to report again in nine months’ time, not the most auspicious of timelines if you ask me.

If I wasn’t already an atheist, what would have done it for me was when some years ago a pair of conjoined twins were born in Cork, the parents were quoted as saying ‘they’re a blessing from god’. I rest my case, either their god has a more sick sense of humour than me or he, she or it is just one sick bastard.

Playing the blues

No I haven’t taken up the guitar, though maybe I should since it might be the last thing I can do without the government trying to tell me it’s bad for me and charge me money to do it. But hey doesn’t playing the guitar give you arthritis, watch out Eric Clapton don’t come to Ireland to live, but if you do, don’t be planning on going out busking in Dublin, not without your thirty euro permit and that’s providing you play unplugged.

What the hell is the deranged Scotsman banging on about now? Well I’ll tell you, in between listening to BB King playing ‘ten long years’ and Otis Redding banging out ‘cigarettes and coffee’.

Okay the smoking ban is a little over the ten years in, and I should be over it by now. Well I’m not, the Cork jazz weekend has never been the same since, let’s be honest it was difficult enough to listen to jazz, but without a smoky bar room to sit in it has now become unbearable.

I was fairly getting on with it, but now we have Leo ‘I’ve found a new way of making you miserable’ Veradcar announcing the new bill to put a lower cap on the price of alcohol, to stop us ‘binge drinking’. I’m sorry minister your too bloody late, the exchequer has already done that with the USC.

What’s next a tax on unhealthy food, surely not, that could never happen!

I don’t need a nanny, I drink, I smoke, I’m Scottish I think low fat food should be illegal. Should I take out an injunction to stop you legislating against me? Is you being raciest?

Now we have to have calorie counts on all menus, I surely don’t have to be a chef, which these days I am, (I might go for rocket scientist next, I’ve tried everything else), to know that butter or cream on a menu means high fat. You also don’t need to remind me that deep fried is bad for you, I was brought up in the heart attack central of Europe, if not the world.

So what are you doing, you are pricing me out of my couple of drinks, you already made me a cold social pariah, I can’t have a Donner kebab on the way home from my one pint I can afford, (believe me don’t do it, it’s not the same as after ten pints), without realising I could feed half of Africa on the calorie intake.

I’ll tell you what you’re doing, you’re legislating for fecking idiots. I know in general, (sentiments vary), I’m not a fecking idiot. Funnily enough nobody I know is a fecking idiot either.

Let’s be honest, what you are looking for is a tracksuit bill, that way you are hitting the people who have no issue with having a grossly overweight child, (probably because they can’t see them behind the mounds of McDonald’s cartons), and think that Cummins Sports is the place to shop.

No wait that’s not going to work, we already have unemployment benefit.

Leo do your bloody job, we have a number, let’s be honest, is heading towards squillions, of people lying on trollies in A&E, some from alcohol issues, but most are basically sick and need treatment. We don’t need you making up daft legislations or ones that are going to unfairly hit the normal citizen to make up for the few who really should have a special carer, what we need is for you to fix our broken health service.

You are the minister for health, just look at what you could cause. I’m just a Scotsman, if I stop drinking, smoking and eating unhealthy food, I am liable to live to a ripe old age, cost the tax payer and my family a tonne of money and be around for too long annoying people, are you happy now Leo?

 

BB King has just finished banging out ‘The Thrill Is Gone’, and so it would seem, I’m playing the blues, I can’t drink, smoke or eat fat without your finger wagging at me, but I’m a Scot, ha, I cook for myself, I roll my own, not from Poland honest minister, and now Sticks McGhee has come on with ‘drinking wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee’, and I’ve found homebrew.ie, no payments have exchanged hands for that plug but you know where I am homebrew.ie.

He's back

He’s back, yes he’s back, guess who’s back, well if you’re on this blog then you know it’s me. And Jesus it’s been a long time, (sorry do we still have a blasphemy law?).

What has occurred in my long absence, or what occurred that enforced such a long absence, well let’s be honest just life, it wasn’t the ‘man’ locking me up for the few deranged ramblings that I put to virtual paper, but perhaps that’s what they told me to say!

The more important question is what has been going on, a shit load would be the easy answer, and take a lot less time to type. There’s been wars, ethnic cleansing, many a murder and the queen visiting, but enough about Dublin for the moment.

There’s been terrorist attacks, a global depression, a black president (in Uganda), alien abductions and natural disasters (no I’m not talking about the last general election). But hey, that stuff goes on all the time, we have the water charge looming! I’m glad I came back in time.

I am of course a poll tax baby and was an integral part in bringing down the rule of Satan (of course you knew her as Margaret Thatcher). When I say integral, what I mean is I stood in a few crowds and shouted, which for a Glaswegian was unusual out of a football stadium, and occasionally sat on somebody’s sofa to stop the sheriff officers taking it away, you could say I was an armchair rebel.

Am I getting old? Well older perhaps. Am I getting softer, well round about the waist maybe. Have I lost the fight after my countrymen sold out to commerce again, not at all, and let’s face it, just in case the blog title confused you, I don’t live there anymore and the commercial problems weren’t going to affect me.

So why am I not out there reliving my youth, putting a poster up in my window, (since nobody can see my windows a bit of a waste of paper, just my bit to save the rainforest), out marching and shouting or chaining myself to my water stopcock. Well to be honest it’s not a protest I find valid. The rest of Europe pays for it, and I’m sure most of Africa would pay for it if they could. Do I relish more money coming out of my pocket, hell no, I am Scottish, but I also know things have to be paid for somehow.

Yes there’s squillions of gallons of water wasted due to our antiquated and ill kept water infrastructure (on average around 40%), there’s squillions also wasted by the sorts of people who give their dog a bath instead of getting out and throwing a stick into the river for them, let’s face it, dogs smell, get over it or have a scented candle as a pet.

  So if I pay for the water I use none of that’s my problem anymore, but it might shake up the doggy dunkers, fifteen minute teeth brushes, the green and pleasant lawn brigade (we never quite have a drought fit to destroy your perfect green carpet), and perhaps it will get the water company off its soggy ass and fix some of the problems that are now going to cost them money.

At this stage I can hear the cries of ‘but we already pay for it in our taxes’. Very true but let’ take a look at that. We have mothers dying before, during and after childbirth, is it 1898, no, it’s partially due to the baby Jesus, but mostly due to our inadequate health service. Where are the hordes of marchers for that? We have homeless people freezing to death on our streets, who’s foot stamping for them? We have special needs children having support withdrawn due to an inadequate education system, I know I’ve been constantly tripping over protest camps about that. We have more than our fair share of crime, let’s not blame the criminals, there undereducated, of poor health and probably homeless, and we can’t afford enough police to catch them. Bandits please take to the streets and change this injustice.

Yes we all do pay our taxes for all of this, (except perhaps the criminals and shame on you, have a bit of civic duty), and do I mind paying for my water if I believe that the money saved from my taxes would go to save pregnant mothers and homeless people, give resources to the disabled, the disadvantaged, those soles in need, and putting some criminals behind bars, then no I don’t.

I hope it works out that way, but I am a realist, and I guess that the money my water charge will save is likely to go into a fund to make sure our politicians can earn money far over their weight and standing, and we continue to have an overstuffed public service, but I may be getting old (and obviously less Scottish), but I would rather march against something that touched my heart and not just my pocket.