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.