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Comparisons to the 80's are everywhere, for christ sake I've being singing "To Shy" by Kajagoogoo for weeks now and leaving my stubble grow for that "Miami Vice" look.

But wait, here are 5 reasons why we should welcome this recession with open arms...

1. Builders will have to learn English and manners, if they are to have any chance of selling anything. "F##k this and F##k that, and F##k off will not cut it with potential customers
2. Construction workers will now be paid a "reasonable"  wage and not €1.40 per block which was the norm. And they wonder why they have been let off "to expensive and shit quality" thats why, enjoy the dole.
3. Auctioneers now will actually have to work for a living, they'll have to call back when they say, and they'll have to tell the truth to prospective buyers, as the buyers now have time to check out the bona fides given.
4. Banks will never lose, but its nice to watch the bastards squirm, bastards, ah a bit of luck one might fall over.
5. The consumer might get back his/her place ie being the spender on goods and prices that offer quality and value, we have for to long being arse raped its now our turn to box clever, after all its our money

We have this opportunity let's use it..............................

PS Just read that there are 15000 more women than men signing on , so if you are a single bloke looking for love, check out the local dole office, its cheaper than pubs.

"Did you know that having a job is good for you"

Well I'm outraged, I know that I live in Ireland and you are probably wondering how does this effect him?.

Simple this kind of thing catches on,the Irish Sea is'nt that big, if foot and mouth got here, a poster and its message will get here too.

Before you know it there will studies carried out telling us this myth is true. Next thing its reports published with graphs and anything published with graphs is always right.

There will  be a press conference held to launch the report, jigsawed to new Government policy "outlining the way foward" ie getting you work harder and longer possibly for less money.

Clearly its a lie, if you d'ont believe me look around on your commute to work, how many people are smiling?, how many look unhappy?.I'd hazard a guess a say the unhappy ones have it.

Working is shite, you work to make money so that you can buy food, pay for your home,and to live, working is'nt good for you, its necessary. I appreciate that many people enjoy their work, and more luck to them but coming out and declaring "Did you know that having a job is good for you" is simply irresponsible.

At this feckin rate two bottles of wine at night will be bad for you, wait and see its coming and there will a poster campaign to launch the policy, is some hotel during,yep, a wine reception......

Reallyannoyingshit.

"Crude oil dropped 4.3 percent to $123.30 a barrel in New York, extending its decrease from an all-time high of $147.27 this month to 16 percent. Natural gas retreated 14 percent to $9.084 per million British thermal units, bringing its three-week drop to 33 percent."

Of course the news that we all received last week was that gas prices were meant to increase by 17% in Ireland and 20% in the UK, with further increases likely in Jan 09, and all this when MMBtu prices are falling our prices are going up.

I accept that many utilities enter into foward contracts to ensure continunity of supply and gas is priced accordingly on the foward market, I also know that many if not all of these contracts will have "get out clauses" with an appropriate fee being paid, which you can bet will be a lot less than the 33% reduction that they have enjoyed on the wholesale market.

So everyone's a winner except you and me, and frankly this is beginning to really annoy the shite out of me.

Should the utilities decide to pass on this saving on to us I'm predicting 2050, not 10mins to 9pm but the year 2050ish.

We need to start exercising our sense of outrage................. otherwise they will always win and it'll be all our own fault.

I do remember The Rise of the Silver Surfer, the disappearance of Madeline, demolishing the garden shed, and a few other things really got my goat during the year, but here's my top ten....

1. Gordon Brown
   Continuing to annoy me. He became Prime Minister, bottled an election, quietly signed the Lisbon treaty passing further powers away to the EU, promised a government of "all the talents" then lost the personal details of 25million people, had a party funding scandal, pledged an end to spin while in the same breath claiming to have reduced the rate of corporation tax (not quite, there was an increase for small companies - the so called backbone of the economy). The Tories say he's the wrong man, but of course they would, wouldn't they! 
2. Carbon footprint
   In 2007 our carbon footprints became big business. The Chancellor has been rubbing his hands in glee at the prospect of being able to introduce new types of taxes, and companies have been dressing in floral prints designed by their marketers. This latest fashion of "social responsibility" is being paraded on the catwalk in front of us mug consumers. Meanwhile there seems to be a whole body of evidence accumulating to suggest man-made C02 plays only a minor, insignificant role in climate change. When trying to finds the facts on Google I found instead near Freudian hysteria and contributions from people who seem to think they're in a movie. The consequences of man-made climate change, wrote one budding actor, will be "worse, much much worse......eventual extinction".
3. Nobel Peace Prize
   In keeping with "the year of the footprint" this year the Nobel Prize for Peace was shared between an organisation and Al Gore. They each get half a prize " for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change".  Why did Al Gore get a prize for his video? There's even doubts it was actually true, like, get down to the bookies - there may yet be a chance of Jeremy Clarkson winning in 2008 for his continued work on Top Gear.
4. Virgin Media
   Launched on February 14th, V-Day. Steve Burch, CEO of NTL, was quoted at the time as saying "Virgin Media will shake up the market by bringing the Virgin traditions of value-for-money, brilliant customer service and innovation to the world of entertainment and communications."  However, a bungled negotiation with BSkyB led to the loss of popular channels such as Sky 1, Sky News, Sky 2, Sky Travel, Sky 3.... 40,000 customers fled in the first three months, perhaps they knew the virgin traditions of "value for money, brilliant customer service and innovation" are a branding screen thrown up to hide a normal company. They don't mean anything. Did we see our TV charges reduce with less channels? No. Did we see phone charges increase? Yes Sir we did!
5. Windows Vista
   The biggest technological disappointment of 2007 despite an R&D bill of £10bn, Windows Vista, actually seems to be an operating system designed for teenagers to help organise their media files. It seems a ridiculous use of hardware to spend on unnecessarily indexing every file and on fancy graphics like transparency which don't add anything and, in fact,  hamper the experience.  First set of tasks to do if you're a consumer stuck with Vista and you can't return it - turn off windows sidebar, un-tick all files in Indexing options, change update settings, change control panel to classic view, change start menu to classic, and yes, download open office as you won't be able to use Excel. 
6. HMRC
   It doesn't look like we'll ever see a video podcast or a YouTube channel explaining the ongoing delays to VAT applications which continued throughout 2007. The HMRC website, now in 2008, still displays the same notice since 2006, "Please be aware we are currently experiencing processing delays with both paper and online applications".  Applications can take up to six months to process, clearly inconveniencing small business. No practical guidance is given by HMRC on what to do during this lengthy application period. They just don't care, they're opening premise - "everyone's a crook" - guides all policy.
7. Tesco
   What's Tesco becoming? On my last visit of 2007 to Tesco Express in Port Solent my conclusion was a village. It has it's own pharmacy, a Costa Coffee, a supermarket, what appears to be an Argos, a department store, a Krispy Kreme Doughnut, and an opticians. The trouble is the supermarket is a mess, boxes on the ground, empty shelves, off products and staff pushing cages everywhere. You have to literally dodge the cages because they can't see what's in front when they're pushing. And there are plans to add a dentist practice to this village. I'd actually prefer if they brought in another supermarket chain, a company that knows how to run a supermarket, because Tesco seem to have forgotten.
8. Celebrity Rehab
   Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse, Pete Doherty, Lyndsay Lohan et al, all seemingly gone off the rails. They go into rehab, they come out, they get drunk or spaced, get pictured without their underwear, get spaced, go into rehab, and it's all front page news. I'm just not intersted. Why can't they just get a grip?
9. Open Season on the Games
   The 2012 logo was launched on Monday the 4th of  June and was almost instantly and unanimously derided (including by me). The jagged, graffiti design was likened to Lisa Simpson performing a lewd sex act. Within three days almost 50,000 people signed an online petition calling for the logo to be scrapped, an animated version had to be pulled from broadcast over fears the effects cause epileptic seizure. It was open season on "the Games", all year in fact, the underlying theme being, it's being run by a bunch of incompetents who don't know what they're doing. It'll be wrong and over budget. Guffaw! How could they forget the VAT? See point six above on HMRC, who in the end decided they couldn't register.
10. Big Brother
    Following the celebrity Big Brother race row, the ugly bullying of Shilpa Shetty, and Carphone Warehouse withdrawing sponsorship for the programme, we quietly hoped 2007 would be the last year of Big Brother. But no, it's continued....

Happy New Year and God bless for 2008

People go into hospital to get well, and all the nurses,doctors and other staff do a good job, but the grule that the "Catering Dept" shovels out on a daily basis to sick people is simply sub-standard shite, that quite frankly I would'nt give to a dog, let alone a person.

Apparently the food is cooked 3 days in advance and then frozen, only to be re-heated and then issued to the sick masses, this is feckin wrong.

The HSE spends €14.8bn on the health, I know that most of this is spent on care but for feck sake could they not spend a few bob on trying on giving sick people a meal that would'nt consist of rock hard turnips or dried gravy, you never know it might speed up the healing process of the patients, or at very least it might show a little respect for them.

The Jelly & Ice-cream is fine, but how could you feck that up?

I found this poor Yoda through google images, and decided to give him a home here for Christmas.....

Thing's like this never go away, you, or more correctly me had to deal with it, what did I do stuck my head up my arse, right next door to my now unnatural ball. I never listened to the advice, I chose the path of "always being right" and it,ll be alright eventually, again gobshite talk.

I grew up a little today and decided to go to the hospital and have it looked at, I was there with a close friend and went through the process, Admission, Triage, ( Lorraine thank you for being so gentle and kind) to meeting the doctor, I became concerned when he said "Christ thats a big one" in and Indian accent. I was left to myself after the initial exam and they were lonely hours, my brain was filled with "what ifs" my mind was swimming in the sea of styx and I shed a tear, not for what may or may not lay ahead of me but for being such a gobshite. Eventually once the doctor had finished with other patients he returned and said, "I need to do one small test before I allow you to go home ", "go home?" "feck it I said to myself maybe I'm okay". He performed a simple test and told me to pull up my trousers and "we'll have a chat" in that Indian accent. Again my head filled with fear, but I said to myself, "if I'm that sick they'd hardly let me out", still I was afraid.

"Jack" the aforementioned, Indian doctor came back and said that he has arranged a consultation with the Urology Dept to have a "small operation", then I decided to ask the question "Is it malignant?" "I d'ont know but my professional opinion is unlikely, you look fit and healthy, if it was malignant and,you did not do (gobshite me) anything for 9 month's I would be looking at a very sick man right now, you are not a very sick man", my heart leapt, all that was need was a small operation and I'll be okay.

The reallyannoying thing about this is that I could have had a less worrying past 9 month's but due to my flaws, I chose not to listen to my family and friends, should any of you out there have something that you feel is'nt right d'ont be a gobshite like me, go and get something done, listen to the people that are around you, if they did'nt give a shite they would,nt offer advice. Be brave, or as my friends say "be responsibile".There are a multitude of people out there that can and will help, all you have to do is not be a gobshite.

I learnt something today, and it did have a taste of humble pie attached to it but, I'm now a little wiser, still stupid, but a little wiser nonetheless............

 The building clearly doesn't compliment the landscape in any way. Instead it interrupts it, it shuts it up mid sentence, and is just simply plain ugly in its surroundings. Any one care to guess how it might have been approved?

   "Could I get a glass without ice?"

A four star service? The barman took the glass back, threw the ice out of it and handed the same glass back, rather than getting a clean one. Mental note: don't come back here in a hurry, clearly either the staff aren't being trained or they just hire dipsticks.