You know what really grinds my gears?

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I have been sadly neglecting my brewery. The reasons are many-fold, but in short I have been kept mightily busy by a few pots I have put on the boil since falling foul of the recession a few months ago. A fair bit has went on since I last had the chance to think about any of it, so instead of trying to ignore it and hope it goes away, here is a list of some of the things that have been fucking me off over the last number of weeks. Its in a different font because Ice Broadband are the worst ISP in the history of the universe and in no particular order because I’m lazy.

So, to whit, I give you….

SOME OF THE THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN ANNOYING ME OVER THE LAST FEW WEEKS

Permanent TSB Interest Rate hikes

So here we have an institution that was so crooked and incompetent that they needed a massive dig out by the tax payer. You know, you. And me. And all the other people. So the government went and charged us all a levy on our wages to stop the shit being slung and to keep the bank nice and liquid. So here we all are. Paying another few bob on our salaries to keep them open regardless of them flat refusing to loan anyone any money and thereby choking small businesses who need finance to operate, unemployed people who want to start a business so they can contribute, and just about anyone who wants to do anything that will cost any money.

This all begs the question…. If a Bank won’t lend money, then what’s it’s purpose?

Oh! That’s right! It’s purpose is to return a dividend to stock holders and to pay fat salaries to managers at the expense of just about everything else. So what we are left with is a huge institution that is sucking the public coffers dry and contributing nothing in return. It is, in all respects, a big black hole in the economy that the government are just fucking money into by the bucket-load and we, the people, are getting nothing out of it. No car finance. No mortgages. No hope. No change there then.

Now, they want to raise mortgage interest rates. Lovely. This exemplifies perfectly the sort of absolute tosspot it takes to run a bank in this country. We are paying more tax to keep you open, now you want to take MORE money out of our pockets in a declining economy in which people have less to give. Correct me if I’m wrong, but shouldn’t the fact that people are already paying a few points more to directly fund your operation straight out of their pay-packets mean that it would be hugely immoral to squeeze them even tighter? Even thugs running extortion rackets have the cop on to know that if you squeeze a business to tight you are going to close them down, effectively putting you directly out of pocket. However, bankers seem to be thinking that people can and will pay as much as they are told to. How? We have now entered a race to the bottom as far as ethical trading in the financial sector is concerned. The last thing any bank should want is a load of negative equity stricken home owners handing back the keys to houses that they will refuse anyone else the finance to buy. Where is the sense?

I suppose it comes down to the scumbag nature of the people running the show and the will to try to find out how much they can get away with before people start crying foul. But, knowing Irish people, that won’t happen (See my next point) and even if it does the government will be available to stand up for the thieving bastards in our financial sector and remind us all how the hunger, misery and unemployment caused by their actions in supporting these moral cesspits with our money is systemic to keeping us all afloat.

Floating on what, I ask.

People who bitch and moan and then do nothing.

You know, there are two things in this life that you have to do. You have to pay tax and you have to die. They are the two big inevitabilities that we are all faced with. Everything else in the world is caused by the consequences of people’s decisions. Its beautifully simple really. Your life is the way it is because you made many, many decisions over the years, the consequences of which have all conspired to lead you to be reading this right now. That makes me feel kind of important, but that’s not important right now. What is important is the fact that sometimes people refuse to make decisions, which leads me to believe that there are people, and quite a few at that, who are only ever happy when they have something to be miserable about.

Here’s how it works. If there is something in your life that is causing you pain or unhappiness then change it. If it’s beyond your power to change then its pointless complaining, because complaining will change nothing,. If it is in your power to change, and most things are, then take the steps that are needed to rectify the situation. Don’t like your job? Get a new one. Hate your partner? Dump them and get with someone who interests you. Its really that simple. So here is the new rule. If you have a gripe about something but are not willing to do anything about it, shut the fuck up. You loose your right to bitch. End of.

Blasphemy law

An outstanding parking fine notwithstanding, I am a law abiding citizen. I cause no trouble for anyone and I try to live life for the good of myself and everyone around me. I do my best not to step on anyone’s toes or be a nuisance. Sometimes its unavoidable, but that’s life, isn’t it. I can annoy people sometimes. Sometimes people annoy me too, but I’m an adult and I deal with it. I realise its hard to agree with everyone and the best you can hope for sometimes is to just agree to disagree and get on with your lives. Lets not forget, this road of life we’re on is a long one, full of twists, turns, peaks and troughs that can confound the best of us. In my opinion the best we can do is to do the best we can and in doing so hopefully make the journey as pleasurable as possible for you and your fellow travellers. This is our life and you only get one.

Ah! But hang on a minute! If you life your life in suffering then surely another life awaits you that’s better for your suffering in this one, right?

Wrong.

You’re born. You live a few years. You die.

That’s it really. Its what’s in the middle that counts to me, because living your life in deliberate denial, eternal penance and fear of judgement is the worst possible way to spend any time at all, let alone your whole life. I can have no love for any supposed loving celestial creator who’s overriding interest is in the prevention of masturbation, the surety that his closest adherents will never reproduce and the constant grovelling and snivelling of the rest of them. But of course, now I am a criminal for uttering such things if you, the reader decide to be outraged by them. I’m not sure if this is the first time that the measure of the severity or even existence of an offence has been left solely to the aggrieved party to decide, maybe we could use it as a template for the rest of the laws in our fair isle. How about we make murder a crime only if the aggrieved party complains that they are outraged post factum? Or here is a better one… how about we make collapsing the country’s finances a crime if the population are suitably miffed. I’m pissed off about that one for sure, but where is the law protecting my sensibilities from outrage about the fact that the country has been brought to its knees by a circle of goons bent on protecting themselves and their friends at all costs? Why does the outrage of some god botherer why may be forced to even consider the fact that their imaginary friend doesn’t exist come before the fact that thousands of the rest of us have been outraged about being forced to consider loosing our jobs, homes and even families because of the mess we’ve been dumped in by the people who are now more concerned with legislating to criminalise the likes of me without casting a thought towards any sort of punishment for those who have not merely offended sensibilities, but have destroyed lives in deed?

Again, we have been shown outstanding ineptitude, short sightedness and populist claptrap instead of the leadership, bravery and governmental fortitude required to tear this island kicking and screaming into the twenty first century. God knows we need it.

Government stupidity and arrogance

Its all about spin, you see. Its not about what’s in the report on the Irish economic crisis, its how you read it and how you lie about it to people who haven’t read it. Its about telling people that they can’t have cancer screening services because they are better off without them. Girls can’t be vaccinated against cervical cancer because they are better off not being. Increased taxes are not being put into job creation because there are better places to put the money that have no benefit to the public who are paying it. The Catholic Church don’t have to compensate the victims of institutional abuse because the richest organisation in the world needs the Irish taxpayer to bail them out too, the consequence of which being that after being paid off by the state the victims have no more recourse against the perpetrators of the stain on Irish society which will can only be remembered as a holocaust perpetrated against the poor, defenceless and most needy in our society, perpetrated for the good of the children who were better off away from parents who the church deemed unable to care for them. Of course, this is for the good of the victims so as not to have the indignity of a day in court thrust upon them. It’s about not giving a damn about people loosing their homes in favour of legislating to protect defaulters from jail only when it became a reality for the powerful. Its about taking money necessary to educate our children, feed our hungry, provide health care for our poor, and heat our elderly and redirect it to protect the interests of the people who will only have need of such things if they are allowed to suffer the losses that their own gambles have accrued. Its also very much about watching the Irish economy go down the pan while sending the already over-stretched state police force to protect the interests of the multinational that Bertie Ahern handed all our national natural resources to for nothing in Co. Mayo. It’s about watching billions and billions worth of oil and gas sail away from our shores on tankers flying a big fuck you flag to the people who will see nothing from it, bar the VAT the government will receive out of all our pockets when Shell sell our own gas back to us. 

I have a major issue with anyone who pisses away ever penny they have been entrusted with by others (you, me and everyone else who has ever contributed a cent in tax to support our country and social order), and then expect the same others to dig even deeper to cover their arses when they fuck it up.

The Television licence

The television license fee was introduced as a way to fund the national broadcaster, RTE. Back in the day, a fair few people didn’t own a television, so they assumed it fair enough for people who owned one to contribute to the viewing, rather than pay for it out of the public finances thus charging people who didn’t have access to the national broadcaster an unfair fee. Fair enough.

I own a television, but I don’t have RTE. I have a satellite dish that picks up free to air Italian television so Mrs Orgasm can have access to some of her native culture. Personally, I don’t care much for television. I think its a distraction from more fulfilling (for me) pursuits as well as being a unidirectional method of disseminating important information regarding global and national affairs. Television has been the tool of choice of opinion manipulators over the last half a century, and I for one don’t trust the motives of news editors and social commentators who are depending on the powers they are supposed to be casting a critical eye over for their funding. Look at the grovelling RTE did after they dared to run a report about someone else who took the piss out of our glorious leader HRH Brian Cowen. But that’s just me. All this notwithstanding, I don’t see why I should contribute to an organisation that supply me with nothing. I’m paying the price of my admission ticket regardless of having no interest in or method of viewing the show. I don’t see why.

So there you have it. There is also the question of people who vote “No Opinion” in sky news text polls, the issue of how I broke my surfboard and the tall tale of how I may be singularly resposible for two very nice Canadian people running away scared out of Ireland. But they are other stories, for other days.

Up Munster.

Down? How About a Kick in the Nads!

As if we didn’t have enough problems. Scumbags running the day to day affairs of our towns a cities, scumbags in suits taking money from our wages to keep them rich, inept and corrupt officials using Joe Public as a piggy bank, more people loosing their jobs than you can shake a stick at, people coming out of hospitals sicker than when they went in with hunger and poverty being all the rage these days.

Now to top it all off we have an impending global flu pandemic.

Brilliant.

Like we really need another way in which the government can be useless. Mary Harney has been doing her best to dismantle the health service for the last few years, preferring to spend money on shafting BUPA so Sean Quinn (who incidentally doesn’t seem to be subject to “Risk Equalisation”) could diversify out of Anglo.

A few years back they issued us all with iodine pills in case of a nuclear attack. Remember that? Just vaporised by a lunatic Muslim? No bother! Here’s an iodine pill for you. That’ll sort you right out. Now I can see them cancelling mass or something equally vapid and useless for the sake of being seen to be doing something without actually having done anything at all to save lives that might in any way cost them any money, the bastards.

I’m actually half looking forward to seeing how much of a balls they make out of handling this, should it reach here. This country has become a parody of itself. Thick Mick just blew his first pay cheque and now he cant afford to go to the doctor. You know, it would probably be hilarious if it wasn’t so fucking infuriating.

End Game

I remember sitting home last year watching a rugby international and trying to get The Bean interested in it. Ireland were playing Canada in Thomond Park. Keith Earls scored a fine try the first time he got his hands on the ball in his first international. Outstanding stuff. Ireland trounced them in effective, if not rather an ugly fashion. Of course, The Bean was coming up on eighteen months old. Try as I might there were mega-blocks to be chewed, walls to be crayoned and many, many things to be thrown into the toilet. There just wasn’t the time for rugby in his busy evening which came to an end shortly after with bath, a visit to the tooth brush and an attentive tucking in.

In his cosy world he has no concept of the other thing that happened that night. Later, as he slept safe and sound in his warm bed.

A man. A short chase. A gunshot. Darkness.

We all awoke to the news. We were horrified. Somewhere inside of us we probably knew that this was going to happen eventually. It was only a matter of time before someone got caught in the crossfire. As terrible as the thought may have been, we got on with our lives regardless all the same, on many levels not really giving a shit because all this was happening in another world we never ventured into. Well now this world had ventured into ours. As unwelcome as it was uninvited. Like it or not we had death and violence thrust onto our doorsteps by people who were now testing new boundaries. Like a child will see how close he can get to the fire before he is told definitively to stay away, or gets burned, Limerick’s underclass were now in new territory. Right on the hearth, waiting to see where the heat was going to come from.

I’ve said many times before that criminals, like politicians, like bankers and builders, will operate within the parameters they are allowed to by wider society. Bear this in mind as you read on.

Maybe I was being overly optimistic at the time, but it seemed like the national outrage at the time might have started ringing bells in higher up places. In places with the tools to take action and try to close these people down. But, as it turns out all we had was the same hot air from the same people meaning the same thing.

Nothing.

In proof of this point, yesterday I drove past the funeral of a man who was shot in the back because his brother testified against one of the people involved in Limerick’s drug wars. After Shane was murdered we were promised action. All we got was a slap in the face from the criminals to remind of our place and the fact that there will always be ways for them to get to us should we be brave enough to take a stand. Shane died in a case of mistaken identity. They thought he was one of them. Last week Roy Collins was deliberately targeted as an outsider. As an innocent man. He was deliberately killed so that you, me and all our kind will know not to get in the way of the drug dealing scumbags who have now shown in no uncertain terms that THEY run this city, and they, and only they will be the arbiters of who deserves to live and die on their streets.

We heard the usual shit from the usual people but I have no faith in them anymore. I ‘m sure they’ll do nothing just as they have done nothing to save us from economic collapse, job loses and failing health and education services. As we have been told to tighted our belts to save ourselves from bankruptcy and reposession we will be told to bolt our windows and doors to protect ourselves from the scum that they allow to run our streets.

I’ve gone beyond being angry about it, and I think that’s the wider problem. We have accepted it. This is now normal behaviour from the criminal fraternity. Innocent people who want to protect their families, neighbourhoods and business interests are now legitimate targets. The boundaries have been extended and now society’s delinquents have a new field to play in which we, the wider society, have opened up to them through collective inaction.

Shame on us all.

Hindsight is Always 20/20

I see Limerick’s latest gangland death was the recipient of a volley of shots in salute to him during his procession through St Mary’s Park last night. I also read this morning he was laid out in his bullet proof vest.

Shame he didn’t have the foresight to purchase a matching hat.

The End.

Evident Failure in the Humour Department

I have to say I’m very disappointed about the lack of cojones shown by RTE in rolling over and apologising for this;

 

And this;

 

They didn’t actually say sorry for the paintings (they didnt paint them), they unreservedly apologised for running a report on it.

Newsflash -

ITS FUCKING FUNNY.

However, apparently it was offensive to the Cowen Family. The Da in the household is fat. Shocker, ha? Now the  Gardai have been draughted in (they have nothing better to be doing, you see) to serve a warrant on Ray Darcy’s radio show on Today FM in order to get the contact details of the offending artist so they can charge him with having a sense of the ridiculous and showing Brian Cowen to be human, with the icing on this particular cake being the calls from FF ministers for the resignation of the Director General of RTE for airing this grossly offensive and misrepresentative story. Yeah, sure boys. If you were ever unsure, here is your definitive proof as to the the dry, shitty, bitter, cold, unsavoury and down right fucking begrudgery ridden nature of the people elected to lead us through our darkest hour.

Here are the shower of bastards who recon they have the master plan that will get their mates in the banks off the hook  save us all from economic doom and they cant even take a fucking joke.

Brian Cowen is a human being, right? I’m assuming he wears underpants and uses toilet paper. On what end I’m not sure but there you go. I’m sure the Gardai have better things to be worrying about, and I know for a fact Brian Cowen has better things to be worrying about.

If Joe fucking bastard FF TD has nothing better to be worrying about then hand back your fat salaries and greedy pensions and fuck off back to the primary school or law firm you came from and let the piss takers take the piss and the ministers minister. There is no place for you here. I’m no great fan of Brian Cowen, but I do have more respect for him than I had for Bertie Balls seeming as Brian had the minerals to at least try to be seen to be doing something about the flaming, screaming, burning plane crash of an economy under our arses and didn’t just up and run like that other cunt. However, if Brian Cowen is implicit in this wasting of Garda time and resources, as well as being a plain old bad sport, well then I guess its just one more reason to add to the long, long, long list of reasons to avoid the fuckers like the plague next time your in a polling booth.

I Agree with the Catholic Church

Here is some wisdom for you.

Its a quote by the pope on a visit to Africa.

The Catholic Church teaches that fidelity within heterosexual marriage and abstinence are the best ways to stop Aids.

I agree, your… Hatness, or whatever. I’m not sure. But I definitely agree that fidelity within heterosexual marriage (assuming your partner wasn’t infected before you got married) and abstinence are the best ways to stop aids

I agree with another fact.

If your wall is dirty the best way to stop it being dirty is to paint it.

How about that? All clear so far? Cool.

Now.

Lets take it a step further.

Say your wall has pipes running through it, or underneath it, and one of them springs a leak. Of course you realise as soon as the marks appear again that you can paint the wall all you like but the watermarks that caused it to be dirty are going to return before the new paint has dried. So you realise, as would most people of approaching normal cop on that you need to get to the root of the problem, fix the causes and maybe chase out the pipes to repair them (which will be a pain in the hole but its the only solution), then fix up your wall, paint it and Roberts your mothers brother.

In short, you realise that your solution isn’t working and even though you don’t like what you have to do you are smart enough to realise that it needs to me done and you are big enough to do it. Let me break it down even further.

Walls. Dirty.

Aids Epidemic – Real

Paint – Metaphor

People – Suffering

Children – Dying/orphaned/abused

Abstinence – NOT FUCKING WORKING.

Preaching a doctrine you know hasn’t helped, and using your political clout to enforce it to the detriment of the people who will follow you blindly because they believe in you and trust in you is simply nothing short of abuse of that trust and belief and, frankly, criminal. Its 2009. Not 1422. Lets wake up and get with the program Benny. Your policy has been failing for 20 odd years and only serves to worsen the problem. The Aids epidemic in Africa is the result of complex social, political and environmental problems you probably don’t understand and as such the best thing you could do is look to the rest of the world where awareness and responsible sexual behavior with condom use at its core has pretty much stopped the Aids crisis in its tracks. People are still being infected all over the world, but the problem isn’t compounded by poverty, war and plain old keeping people ignorant as it has been in Africa by priests who have no problem in letting you starve should you not happen to be Catholic.

The Catholic Church teaches that fidelity within heterosexual marriage and abstinence are the best ways to stop Aids.

In Reality,

The Catholic Church teaches that they have no problem with a good idea so long as you don’t point out to them that in order to implement the idea in any meaningful way you might have to drag them kicking and screaming out of the dark ages and possibly force them to take a self inclusive critical look at the world around them and how their lies are killing people. Who will be left to pray for you when they are all gone? But why should Benny care.

They didnt vote for him, did they?

Food is the new Treason

I’m not sure what to think about the mindset that would allow someone to point a loaded gun at another human being and pull the trigger. And I have thought about it. I’m sure we all have. When we were kids we played with toy guns, or upside down hurleys, or sticks. I regaled Mrs Orgasm this very weekend about my adventures with peg guns as a nipper. Eye gougers so they were. Made from elastics, nails, springs and a piece of door frame salvaged from the pyre on bonfire night. But a peg spring in the arse doesn’t really compare with knowingly and willingly looking someone in the face and then consciously deciding to end their life. Its on a different level to the one people like you (probably) and me (definitely) operate on. But I’m sure some people see it differently.

Some people have their motivations and the justifications are there, regardless of how ramshackle they may appear to the rest of us. Disillusionment seems to be a hallmark of male youth. Sometimes it can be beneficial to people who use it as an impetus to learn more about the world that surrounds them and to become active in society, because surely the education and engagement can only lead to a consolidated world view. For my own part, I have been strongly opinionated regarding certain matters. Some savoury. Some not so. However I have learned in my modest years that the only way to a lasting understanding is through compromise and understanding towards mutual benefit. Eventually the problems go away, but only if we let them.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve led a comfortable life. Surrounded for the most part by good people with my best interests in mind, and a million miles from the sort of troubled society that can thrust ordinary people into extra-ordinary circumstances in a flash and a bang. One which all to often calls upon the disillusionment aforementioned and moulds it into a lasting anger bordering on the dogmatic. From where I sit its easy to stroke my chin and be philosophical about such goings on.

However, some people dont have the luxury of detachment, those who sit by the bedsides of their loved ones who’s only crime this weekend was to deliver a pizza to the wrong address. Collaborators. No better than the occupiers they were complicit in feeding. No better than the minimum wage they earned. One young man from Northern Ireland. One young man from Poland. With names. With mothers. With fathers.

Of course, the perpetrators of this will pass no apology for targeting occupiers and facilitators of that occupation with no realisation of the fact that tomorrow they will be bemoaning the slow service from their local pizza delivery outfit. Some of the drivers didnt turn in today. The cheek.

There were two more young men. Two young men who were having their last meal before leaving these shores forever. Two young men who, once seen to be defenceless were cut down with no regard for who they were or what their crimes may have been other than choosing the wrong career path. I very much doubt either had ever pulled a trigger in anger. Regardless, once seen to be vulnerable they were then made incapable through a volley from a safe distance. Then, when they were seen to be made safe they came to stand over them. With misguided and terrible disillusionment in their hearts they decided that these two young men would be no more. 

And such they now are.

Two sons no more.

Two friends no more.

Two young men, no more.

More Death at Eleven.

Sometimes you need to take an objective look at how the world is. Its difficult at the best of times as objectivity can be highly subjective most times, you are seeing things from your point of view and its hard to let that go and drop your prejudices towards any given topic. But sometimes it pays to take a long, hard and often painful look at who people are and what motivates them.

Step back in time.

Its summer time, 2002.

Big Brother is broadcasting its usual fare of voyeuristic car crashism, featuring a fat girl with a fatter mouth who, for some reason, endeared herself to the viewing public by being annoying. People gobbled it up more eagerly than she gobbled the man parts of one of her housemates on live television. She got drunk, fell over, shouted, swore and generally made a rather large tit out of herself and still we laughed, we cried, we nodded at how normal she was and tuned in every night to see normal people doing normal things. We bought the newspapers to see this beacon of mediocrity become animated into a cultural icon through the release of a workout video and a racist tirade.

She then became all that was wrong with society. Mouthy. Drunk. Indebted. Vulgar. Unrefined. The very things that made her dear to everyone were now the things that made her stand out as everything we dared not admit to..

We saw ourselves.

And we didn’t like what we saw.

We came to realise that in putting normality on a pedestal we were faced every day with our own failings. We shunned her. We hated her. We used her as a target against which to pin our self loathing without ever coming to the realisation that it was the very likeness of ourselves that we were drawn to in the first place. Or didn’t we? Maybe that was the very thing that turned the tide in the first place. Maybe, on some deeper level, it was when we became aware that it was ourselves we were looking at did the tide turn. Maybe after we realised what we were looking at did we try to smash the mirror.

When the drunken, mouthy racist in all of us went on show we decided that we didn’t like what we saw and tried to change the channel. But there we were again. On every channel. On every newspaper. In every magazine. We were there. We were drunk. We were shouting. Our relationships were falling apart. We had no money. We had debt. We hated ourselves now that we saw her for what we all saw in ourselves and we couldn’t escape it.

Now she is going to die, and we’ll all be there too.

I’ve been trying to understand what makes people want to watch so closely, and I think I’ve figured it out. I think in seeing her die we can try to fool ourselves into believing we can see everything rotten we saw in us die with her. In some dark part of our souls we want to believe that we can forget about everything she forced us to see in ourselves and once she is gone, we can go back to watching stars fall from grace and forget about it when we change the channel because they are not like us, so we are not like them. Their failings are their own. Not ours.

I’m sure we’ll have a minutes silence when she is gone. But at the back of our minds we will be glad to see the end of a terrible era of introspection and a time in which we were forced to realise that this is what we all are. Mouthy, drunken, indebted, flawed people with a most unhealthy taste for the macabre far beyond that of anything that has walked the earth before us.

Until of course the new queen arrives to become the next cess pit into which we can dump all our failings. Big Brother 2009 is just around the corner.

Line up ye hopefuls. Reality beckons.

The New Ruling Class

Its been all over the news the last few days about 13 year old Alfie Patten and his girlfriend Chantelle. They recently had a baby. I’m sure you heard. Alfie was 12 and Chantelle was 14 when she conceived. They now have a daughter called Maisie.

I saw a picture on a tabloid website today and Alfie looks about eight years old. I also heard him being interviewed on the radio and he sounds about five years old. The interviewer asked him how he was going to manage financially.

He asked the interviewer “whats financially?”.

Now it’s come to light that two other boys, one would have been 15 and the other 13 at the time of Maisie’s conception are claiming paternity, or at least saying there is a chance that they might be her father. Poor Alfie is in a bad way. He’s 13. Chantelle’s parents have confirmed that more than one boy was spending the night with her at their home.

Now, I’m not going to bang on about the morality of it. That’s not what struck me as wrong about the whole thing, as morally dubious as it obviously is.

What did strike me is the fact that had a 14 year old boy been sleeping with twelve year old girls, impregnating one, the media response might have been somewhat different. The first question I had to ask myself was why in godses names is this girl not up on statutory rape charges?

Secondly, in the most practical of terms, it is clear that Chantelle’s parents knew she was sexually active and enabled it in allowing her boyfriends (yes, they were boys) to spend the night with her. Surely they must take culpability in this whole sorry mess. Now, we have a 13 and a 15 year old with  a new baby and wholly irresponsible grand parents who have in real terms proven themselves to be probably less qualified to look after Maisie than her young parents. Surely she deserves better. What sort of a life can she be given by the people who are supposed to be providing for her?

A 13 year old father who doesn’t know what the word financially means, a mother who, at 14, was sleeping with too many boys to take an educated guess as to who the father of her child is, one set of grandparents who allowed and enabled their daughter to get into this position in the first place and another set of grandparents who hired Max Clifford as soon as the news broke.

Max Clifford.

He’s a publicist in case you didn’t know.

The future reads like a maths problem that poor Alfie wouldn’t be able to crack.

Q: Maisie is no years old. Her dad is 13. What age will Maisie’s dad be when Maisie is five?

A: Just turning old enough to sign on.

Having said all that, best of luck to them. Fuck knows they’ll need it.

Lazy Journalists State Obvious on Slow News Day

Commuters were not surprised today to read nothing they didn’t already know in the early morning papers. Due to the nationwide discretion of perverts and the hitherto good character of most politicians in the current cabinet, hard pressed journalists were forced to fill their columns with stories of medium wide ranging interest based on general hearsay, common assumption and some baseless conjecture.

 

Where most readers would normally hope to find mildly ire raising stories on corruption and scandal in political, business and sporting circles, this morning offered nothing more than speculation on the web surfing habits of a local man with diminished mental capacity and a mildly defamatory commentary on a local publican known to be up to no good. Local papers were hardest hit, due to lack of funding to cover potential libel cases, however the editor of one local publication commented that due to their limited circulation the chances of any major celebrity ever finding out they were actually slandered are slim.

 

Although hopes remain high within journalistic circles for an upswing in anti social activity, most writers plan on spending the remainder of the day sitting in Limerick Courthouse with a view to needlessly padding out low level larceny cases and building up the reputation of what were up untill now ignorable youths in hoodies.