The Teflon Taoiseach has finally decided to throw in the towel, even teflon wears out in the end and the non-stick surface was getting thinner and thinner and as the heat was starting to burn……resignation, in the interests of the people the nation and nothing whatsoever to do with the tribunals oh no. I heard the news in Danish, we had the local FM radio going as the ship was heading through the Great Belt in Denmark when I heard”Bertie Ahearn, Sinn Fein and Gerry Adams” in the space of 30 seconds so I knew it had to be big if the Danes were bothering their holes to report it. And sure enough a quick surf on the net confirmed the truth.
Bye bye Bertie.
I only found out after I had moved to Sweden that the state controls the sale of alcohol in “System Bolaget” stores, they are actually very well stocked have decent opening hours and a good selection so it is not all that bad and there are pubs and hotels and restaurants also where alcohol is served but absolutely no carry outs like back in Ireland where a 6-pack at closing time is very popular or was a few years ago anyway.
The System Bolaget is a very popular destination and is always thronged full of people on a Friday afternoon, getting the binge quantity of booze in for the weekend, you’d swear that it was New Years Eve every Friday, unless you have witnessed New Years Eve in the “Bolaget” then it’s like the end of the world. You never see an idle staff member in the Bolaget on a Friday and not many people have less than 3 or 4 bottles, it could be Swedish practicality that one person is buying for many, (and possibly many underage drinkers) unless the gangs of drunken youths are getting pissed on wine gums and low alcohol beer from the super market, they are more than likely getting stuff bought out for them. In the logical manner here they only drink at the weekend, really polluted drunk, then stay sober all week.
Then you have hooch, moonshine or what they call here “Hembrand” or distilled at home, leaves several people blind and dead every year so the technique is not what you would call reliable, but the very expensive spirit price drives production and casualties underground.
Last and by no means least you have private importation. The Swedish drive to Denmark and Germany to avail of the cheap booze there, they have much lower tax in Germany so it is popular to fill up the Volvo Estate with beer wine and spirits, and drive back to Sweden. The customs service is being reduced all the time so nowadays you don’t even have to worry too much about being over the limit, the only thing that you will be done for is overlaoding your vehicle, the cops will stop you if you have more weight in the car than it was designed for, to hell with the booze for a lifetime in the car, the back axle will crack before the customs will get involved. The big irony is that Swedish breweries export vast quantities of beer to Germany in big trucks, to be driven back into Sweden in a fleet of Volvos, so the citizens feel they are getting a good deal, the state feels that it is protecting the citizens from alcohol by controlling the sale and keeping the taxes high, even though the own the company that sells the spirits and they own the company that makes Absolut Vodka , and they have no way of controlling the quantity of booze being privately imported. They also recently lost a case to stop people from importing on the net. If they reduced the tax a bit it would mean that they would make more money from the increased sales volume, but then the anti-alcohol lobby would be bleating about increased consumption, the statistics show an increase as it is, if you counted all the black market alcohol, private imports etc. the stats would be horrible, better to keep the status quo. Never mind about all the waste of petrol and the effect on the environment with all the Volvos shunting back and forth to Germany.
So much for environmentally friendly and logical Sweden.
No need for a whip around now. Just give yourself a massive pay rise. This must be a tactical move to take the heat off, I wonder how the spin doctors figured it out…….
“OK Bertie, lots of bad press at the minute, we have to do something to make you look better in the public eye….”
Lots of head scratching and holding of chins and pointing the frames of eye glasses towards pie charts and graphs, then folding arms across chests, humming and hawing, suddenly one spin doctor has a glowing light bulb over his head and the sound of an old cash register is heard from nowhere in particular…kaching ching….
“OK Bertie we give you a f..k off large pay rise then nobody will think about anything else other than that, and everyone will forget about the other stuff!”
Cheers all round and off down to the Horseshoe Bar for elevenses.
Another victory for Irish politics.
I was reading a blog article on mytelegraph.co.uk by a guy called Brendano about Irish attitudes to Europe called “Europhobia - why the Irish don’t do it”, which I thought was well written and interesting, when I went further on to the comments section I became more and more annoyed by some of the comments from certain readers from Britain. They were slagging off the author for being anti-British and further on saying that Ireland was on the side of the Nazis in WWII because our then leader Eamon De Valera signed the book of condolences at the Nazi Germany embassy in Dublin.
The truth of the matter and the facts of the matter are despite De Valera’s hatred for the British that neutral Éire was neutral on the side of the Allies. Allied & Nazi airmen were captured but the Allied ones managed to slip over the border to Norn Iron, hardly a coincidence. Besides that tens of thousands of Irish joined the British Army to fight against Hitler. It has been said that Ireland tried to capitalise on the Auld enemies weakness and maybe they did, but to claim that the Irish were anti-semitic and pro Nazi because of Devs unwise signature are nonsense.
Can a whole nation be held to answer for the actions of it’s leader? Are all Germans fascist because of Hitler? or all Italians fascist because of Mussolini -No of course not.
Whatever the reasons De Valera decided to sign this book of condolences it can’t be held against a whole nation. I have heard various reasons e.g. to prove our neutrality and because protocol dictated it or even that he had Asbergers syndrome suggested by Brendano the writer of the original post in a reply to a comment.
Maybe more learned readers can shed more light on this topic. Leave a comment if you wish.
Roadsign from early on in the history of the state of Ireland. English versions of place names and their re-gaelicized or gaelicized versions.
I have even seen an angicized version of a name which was gaelicized into the literal version of the already anglicized Irish name, completely mental, a bit like ” an raibh sé tobair?” as the Irish for “was he well?”
From Wikipedia
“Today, Gaelicization is more often a pro active or deliberate process, particularly present in Ireland, whereby placenames, surnames and given names are Gaelicized, or more often, re-Gaelicized, in order to prevent the further decline of the modern language.”
From Douglas Hyde
“how it continues to apparently hate the English, and at the same time continues to imitate them”
and also from Douglas Hyde
“If Irishmen only went a little farther they would become good Englishmen in sentiment also.”
You might think that the 2 statements from Douglas Hyde were recent but Douglas Hyde was the first President of Ireland, he delivered his speech about “The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland” in 1895, he would surely be stunned at the development of modern 21st century Ireland, I read in the Indo the other day that an MP was calling for an invitation for Ireland to rejoin the Commonwealth
Where will it all end?
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