The Sad Naked Greed of Ireland's Legislators

The entire world is in trouble.
And it is generally agreed, that, well, greed is what has caused the problems for us all.
We - I - have pointed the finger at bankers. And they are, without any doubt, guilty.
But here in Ireland, there is another group which is as greedy. Another group that appears to be in utter and total denial. Another group which seems to believe that it should make no sacrifice whatever in the current climate. Another group that says one thing and does another.
And that is the group of people made up of our elected representatives.

We have 166 TDs, Members of Parliament, men and women elected almost two years ago to represent us in the legislature.
They receive, on average salaries of more than €100,000 a year. Some earn considerably more having been elected a long time ago.
On top of that, they receive an allowance for actually turning up every day.
This size of this historic payment depends on how far it is they live from Dublin. More than 25k - and you can be sure hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens live considerably further away than that - and they pick up around €150. Tax free. Every day.
And incredibly, if they live closer, they receive a payment of a bit more than half that to COMPENSATE them for not living further away. Can you believe it?
They receive tax free allowances for their phones.
They can mail 21,000 items a year, free. They often use this allowance to send Christmas cards to constituents they don’t even know.
They also receive financial help to run their constituency offices - offices that exist largely as part of their re-election campaigns.
Many TDs use state money - our money - to pay members of the families to do this work.
And they receive travelling expenses.
And they receive general, unvouched expenses. That is to say, that unlike the rest of us, they do not have to provide receipts. They just claim the money. Tax free.
Some claim up to €80,000 a year - tax free (I don’t mind saying that again) and on top of salaries of €100,000 or more.
So.
How many TDs have suggested that, as tens of thousands of people lose their jobs. as tens of thousands of others are forced to take pay cuts, as families lose their homes, as people struggle to keep their heads about water, that they, our public representatives, should look at cutting some of what they get?
Correct.
Not one.
Not a single one.
We do not have one TD, one public representative who thinks that what they are getting is, in the current situation, a bit much, a tiny bit inequitable, a wee bit unfair.
Immoral.
We do not have one TD, socialist, Christian or otherwise, who thinks they should give up one red cent of what they get, paid for by us.
We do not have one decent person, one with a conscience, one with the tiniest bit of moral fibre which would nudge them in the way of saying: This is wrong.
They live in their own world of short days, long holidays and, compared with the rest of us, wealth.
And it is desperately, terribly sad that it is so.

Read More......

Economic Analysis Which May Not Be Correct But Is Easy To Understand

I studied commerce in college.
No. Wait.
I tell a lie.
I was in the commerce faculty in college.
I actually went to seven lectures during the entire year. (Well, there was this girl, and she was free during my lectures and....)
And I didn't like any of them.
So maybe that's why this whole world economic situation has me utterly baffled.
OK. I get the bit about how our government made a complete hash of things by chucking money at its builder and developer mates to build houses and apartments which, it turns out, nobody actually wants.
And I get the bit about how, even through we were, briefly, amongst the richest countries in the world, we managed not to build a decent road between either Dublin and Cork or Dublin and Rosslare/Waterford.

We did manage to build a road to the border. But that had nothing to do with infrastructure. That was, wasn't it, to do with something called 'the peace dividend' or some other such rot.
But the world is in turmoil. Nobody seems to have money. Those who have it - banks don't you know - are holding onto it like grim death and won't lend it to anyone.
Thousands are losing their jobs in Ireland. Hundreds of thousands in the US. Millions, apparently, in China.
You see, with my basic knowledge of economics (it was my best subject. I got 25 per cent) I know that the money is still somewhere.
It's possible that there is a large stash of it in the safe of our former 'leader' Bertie Ahern.
But really, it is somewhere. It's not like someone burned it.
It's not like a euro or a dollar or a pound suddenly went the way of the Zimbabwe dollar and became worthless.
The money is about.
And so we can guarantee all the bank assets we like, chuck our money at them if we wish and cosy up to their overpaid, underachieving, cruel, greedy bosses and the good it will do it is nil.
We want the money.
We want it back in circulation.
We want developers to release money even if they have to sell land and buildings at a loss. Make them do it. That's what banks do to unfortunates when they take their homes from them. They force them to sell because they want their money.
Well, we want their money.
If governments can't force banks to release money, to realise assets to get money, to behave, well then, what's the point in democracy?
What's the point is us voting?
What's the point in Barak Obama if he can't make banks do what they should do, what they morally must do?
That's it.
Economic analysis from a buy who got 25 in economics, 15 in maths and 0 - yes zero - in accountancy.
Makes sense to me.

Read More......

Democracy, a Side Show Masking the Greed Which Rules the World

The United States is going to the polls.
The Ukraine is facing a snap election.
The world's biggest democracy, India, is voting next year.
Journalists, commentators, pundits and experts of all sorts are excited.
Indeed, the voting public, the electorate will be quite exercised by the votes in those countries and anywhere else on the planet where they get the chance to choose those who lead them.

Only it's a complete farce. A complete and utter waste of time. A sham.
Because regardless of who it is we elect, no matter whether the odious Sarah Palin gets to second biggest job in the world, no matter who rules the vast population of India, it will make not a shred of difference.
We now know, democracy doesn't work, doesn't even exist.
Sure, on paper it looks better than totalitarianism, dictatorships, ancient monarchies and the like.
But in reality, it's no different.
Leaving aside altogether the way 'model" democracies like the US cheat people out of their votes by challenging those with a legitimate right to vote.
Forgetting altogether the 'hanging chads' and the irrational impatience of the US Supreme Court eight years ago.
Dismissing the long queues for voters in poor (Democratic) areas and the lack of such inconvenience in wealthier (Republican) areas, it is quite clear that George W Bush doesn't and didn't rule the United States.
Maybe Dick Cheney does and did. At least, maybe he and his mates do and did.
Because that's what we know now.
Business rules the world.
Money rules the world.
Bankers, hedge fund managers, investors, speculators, weapons dealers, gamblers rule the world.
The greedy, the immoral and amoral and the uncaring rule the world.
The selfish rule the world.
Vote for whom it is you please, they have, it is so apparent, no control whatsoever over world affairs.
World affairs have been run by bankers and investors and will continue to be run by bankers and investors.
Democracy is a side show, a distraction.
Democracy just hides the evil and the greed on which everything is predicated.
A handful of people, be they in the US, Britain, Russia, China, India - even little Ireland - decide what's what and the politicians fall into line even if they don't know that's what they're doing.
Depressing?
It certainly is.
Because if the rich just gave up a tenth of what they have, we would eradicate hunger, much of the disease that ravages the poor world, lack of education and misery.
But they won't because that's why they exist. To accumulate at the expense of others.
And there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.
Nothing.
Except, maybe, pray.

Read More......

NO. THESE ARE NOT APOCRYPHAL QUESTIONS

Where did it all go? Who has it? Where are they living? Where is it all stashed?
And how did they get away with it?
I'm talking about the money.
(May I just interrupt my self here for a second? Firstly, I'm still not dead. Just still recovering from a Bone Marrow Transplant and up to now most days, frankly, I hadn't the energy even to blog. But some things make the blood boil. Like this economic collapse. And boiling blood isn't good for those who have had Bone Marrow Transplants.

Secondly, I made a mistake on that blog below, the one that just says no Who Is Disabled? and nothing else. I can't get rid of it. I crash when I try. So I'll get off to the help centre when I'm finished with the economic situation.)
There is no doubt whatsoever that billions, trillions, zillions of euro, dollars, pounds, yen - whatever- were generated in recent decades.
Mostly, it was generated doing good things like building homes for people, providing infrastructure where it was needed and helping to improve those countries whose lot it is to be the poorest on earth.
Sometimes, it was generated by doing bad things, like invading other people's countries, wrecking them and then giving your mates billions of dollars to build them back up again.
And of course, propping up nasty but friendly regimes.
But now, the money appears to be gone. Vanished into thin air. Nobody knows where it is.
The banks are going down for billions, and nobody, in the banks or anywhere else, seems to have the faintest foggiest notion as to what to do next.
So it's governments - people that is - who have to cough up. We in Ireland are guaranteeing banks for €400 bn and climbing. The US has stumped up $700 bn and climbing. Britain has forked out hundreds of millions, Greece the same, The Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourg governments have had to dig deep too.
And what's in those deep pockets? Our money, that's what.
But wasn't it our money that was in the banks? Got it in one.
The banks took our money, used it, stuffed the profits in their pockets, went bust and now it's back to our pockets again to bail them out.
I mean, if it wasn't so damned sad, so damned hard for those who will suffer most (see above: those countries whose lot it is to be the poorest on earth) and so damned immoral it would be be funny.
Suckered.
We've been suckered by a few people - and in the context of the world's population it is VERY few people - who have played with our money, our families, our jobs, our countries, and made off with the lot.
And just to make sure, that a few years down the road it can all happen again, we're bailing them out.
Who will go to jail? (Not apocryphal)
Who will be punished? (Not apocryphal)
Who will have their ill-gotten gains removed from them? (Not apocryphal)
You know, we thought our world was run by sometimes inept, sometimes corrupt, sometimes immoral, sometimes greedy, sometimes plain stupid politicians.
But we were wrong.
It is and has been run by always inept, always corrupt, always immoral, always greedy but never, ever plain stupid bankers, hedge fund managers and economic whizz kids who profit from the doom for which they have long been harbingers.
God help us.

Read More......

Off To Beijing In Our Blinkers

Tiananmen Square massacre: If murder was an Olympic sport, China would take the gold.


It's Olympic year.
All over the world, hopefuls are training hard, hoping that, when the big day comes, they'll put in their best performance ever and win a medal.
The world will be there. There will be a team, of sorts, from Iraq. Sudan will proudly fly its flag. Israel will be there. Pakistan will have their athletes competing.
In fact, regardless of whether a country is governed by a benign regime or an odious on, its citizens will proudly march under the national flag at the Olympic Games.
And, on balance, that's the way it should be.
According to the Olympic Charter, established by Pierre de Coubertin, the goal of the Olympic Movement is to contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practised without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.
Admirable.

The problem arises, this year in particular, due to the location chosen for the Games.
Beijing is the capital of a country, which denies basic human rights to its citizens, which is encouraging dissent, and disruption in Africa and which - despite or maybe because of the proximity of the Games - is clamping down hard on opponents of the unelected government.
Recently, I heard one of Ireland's most respected, most successful and most famous athletes say that issues other than sport had nothing to do with the competitors at the Games. He said they would turn a blind eye.
How disgusting is that?
Athletes will turn a blind eye, it seems, to the imprisonment of those who merely criticise the government. They will turn a blind eye to brutality and, perhaps to summary executions.
They will turn a blind eye to the eviction of thousands and thousands of people from their land in the name of progress.
It will be hard for them to turn a blind eye to the pollution spewed out by Chinese industry.
They will turn a blind eye to the jailing of Catholic priests purely for being Catholic priests.
They will probably not turn a blind eye to Tiananmen Square but rather pose there for pictures. They will certainly turn a blind eye to the events there some years ago when unarmed students were massacred.
Still, Beijing is one of Bertie Ahern's favourite places. He admires the mayor. He likes the way they do things. Whether or not he'd like to send out armed troops to massacre his critics in Ireland, I don't know. But I have my suspicions.
The fact is that athletes competing in Beijing are endorsing all that the Chinese government is doing.
They are endorsing the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Fifty or sixty years ago, it mightn't have mattered so much.
Back then, athletes competed purely for the honour of representing their countries and winning medals.
Now, they're competing for money. Now they're competing to make careers for themselves. Now, they even cheat to achieve their greedy goals.
This is nothing to do with Pierre de Coubertin.
His ideals were honourable and had nothing to do with money.
Athletes will go to Beijing this summer, of course they will.
Television stations, including RTE in Ireland, are already boasting about the coverage they will provide.
Sport and politics shouldn't mix, people say.
That may have been true in the amateur era.
Now, when the aim of the athletes is to pocket as much money as possible, it is no longer true.
They can turn their eyes away if they wish.
They will be nonetheless, guilty.

Read More......

Some Things Change, Some Don't

IT’S almost Christmas.
It’s easy to tell how close Christmas is if you live in Dublin.
There are more vomit stains on the street.
There are more drunks and they appear earlier and earlier each day as Christmas Day gets closer.
Nobody will let you out into the ever worsening traffic jams.
Clampers are in overdrive.
Virtually every shopper in every shop is rude, behaving in a way they wouldn’t dream of at other times of the year.
You can’t get into pubs.
There is more violence, both on the street and domestically. It is almost inevitable at Christmas time, that some unfortunate woman will stab her husband, invariably fatally, after he arrives home drunk and penniless without money for food or presents for the children.

More people drink and drive.
Everybody is short of patience.
And children are greedier than ever before.
It’s likely that each of us are at least a little bit guilty (I know, I know, it’s like being a little bit pregnant) of at least some of the behaviour outlined above.
And I know that when someone my age talks about it being worse now than ever, other, younger, people put it down to my being a grumpy old man.
They’re half right.
I AM a grumpy old man.
But I am a grumpy old man because it IS worse than ever.
I wonder how much of Ireland’s new found wealth ended up, literally, going down the toilet?
Poverty, you see, has a disciplining effect. I you haven’t got the money to drink, you can’t drink.
If you haven’t got the money to splash out on ridiculously expensive and utterly unnecessary luxuries to hand out as presents, you can’t buy them.
If you can’t afford cocaine - or the new favourite in Dublin, Champagne, vodka, red Bull with a spoonful of cocaine stirred into it - you can’t buy it.
Nobody wants to go back to the bad old days. Well, not all the way back.
But it would be nice if we lived in a country run by people who were less concerned with their own salaries and more concerned with the fact that they expect pensioners to live on one-twentieth of what they pay themselves.
It would be brilliant to live in a wealthy country that had sufficient schools for its children.
It would be marvellous to live in a country which had a health service rather than a health system.
Ireland is now the kind of country where three young people died from cocaine overdoses in one week.
It is the kind of country where suicide is epidemic.
It is the kind of country where we wonder not if there will be another gangland murder soon, but only when and where it will be.
And it is the kind of country, where Christmas is seen as an opportunity to get drunker more often than normal, where cocaine supplies have been bulked up for the festive season, where prices go through the roof, where selfishness abounds and where, it seems, there is more concern about what’s on television or what is going to be the Christmas Number One, than there is about people and more especially, the people who are concerned about where they will get shelter on Christmas Day, where they will get something to eat and who they will have, if anyone, to talk with.
The Christmas message is all but lost.
Children, I would bet, wouldn’t mention the birth of Jesus in their top five Christmassy things.
And that is profoundly sad.
Because while celebrations, gifts, giving and receiving and traditional fare all have their part to play at this time of year, so too do decency, charity, prayer and reflection.
Last year, I had what was, I suppose, a slightly selfish ambition for Christmas.
It was to be able to stand on the altar in Mount Argus with all the other mums and dads and children, during the children’s Christmas Day Mass, with my daughter Charlotte, as they sang the Our Father. It is a tremendously moving moment every Sunday, but especially on Christmas Day.
I achieved that ambition.
And this year, it is exactly the same.

Read More......

Profiles in Greed

CAN you remember the last time a politician in this country did something courageous?
As a rule, our politicians are opportunistic, selfish and small-minded.
They are guided entirely by political expediency, not by any moral imperative.
They build schools and hospitals and roads in places that will provide the greatest return electorally. Those with any kind of power pour money into their own constituencies to the detriment of other areas.
Our leaders - an inappropriate word if ever there was one - make deals, expedient and opportunistic deals, with people, regardless of who they are or what they have done or what they stand for. The likes of Beverley Flynn and Michael Lowry may be rehabilitated in Bertie Ahern’s mind. But that just goes to show what a nasty place that is.

When was the last time an Irish minister resigned, voluntarily, for doing or saying something wrong, for causing offence, for wasting money or just because he or she felt morally obliged to make a principled stand? (On that score, if Bertie had been in just about any other democracy in the world, he would have quit over his over signing blank cheques for Charlie Haughey when the dogs in the street were barking about his corruption. He would have walked once his dodgy dig-outs became public, he would have submitted his resignation over his mysterious ‘money in the mattress’ during his separation. But he wouldn’t have been there at all if he had had the manners to quit after suggesting that those who moaned about the economy should go off and commit suicide.)
Every move an Irish politician makes is inspired only by self-interest.
Since going into government (in the mistaken belief that the 500 or so in the Mansion House, who endorsed the decision to go into government represented the 86,000 voters who voted Green) John Gormley has been busy telling us what he cannot do rather than having the courage to actually do something.
He recently managed to outfudge his Fianna Fail colleagues when it came to explaining how he was spending tax payers’ money on his office and constituency workers. Power corrupts etc.
Our politicians have built roads and railways where they believe such schemes will win them votes. For years, little bits of dual carriageway littered the country, each one built to satisfy local political needs. One utterly bizarre stretch in Mayo, was even nicknamed the “Pee Flynn bypass.”
Wood Quay was destroyed because politicians feared the wrath of unions representing local authority workers, just as the M3 is now being built on a route recommended only by those who will benefit financially from its construction. Not one of the area’s elected representatives had or has the courage to put heritage ahead of self interest.
Some years ago, representatives of Irish politicians were given the “Profile in Courage Award,’ an accolade named after the book written by John F Kennedy, for their work on the peace process.
It has, before and since, been given to politicians who have made enormous sacrifices, who have lost their jobs - who have lost just about everything - because they put right before self-interest.
I cannot imagine it, ever again, being awarded to an Irish politician.
Sure, I can think of exceptions. I can think of Joe Higgins, I can think of Richard Boyd Barrett and a few others who, even if I don’t agree with everything they say and do, stick to their principles despite knowing that by doing so their are lessening their chances of getting elected. The Labour Party too, refused to prostitute itself after the general election which was the honourable, if not profitable, course.
I used to think to he Greens in the same way, but no more.
We now live in a country where Dail seats are passed on to brothers and sisters, widows and children as if they were a favourite old armchair or a wad of cash left in a will.
We live in a country where politicians are becoming less and less accountable, where the Freedom of Information Act has been watered down simply because it allowed people the freedom to get information.
We live in a country where politicians, presumably to compensate themselves for no longer being able to accept bribes and handouts, give themselves pay rise after pay rise.
We live in a country where new laws are brought in in jig-time to allow for the abolition of the very tribunals which are exposing Bertie Ahern’s duplicity and dishonesty.
It is a country where the prime minister believes a pay rise of more than the average industrial wage is not only justified, but merely a ‘token amount.’
So, just think about these words:
“In whatever arena of life one may meet the challenge of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follows his conscience – the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men – each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of past courage can define that ingredient – they can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul.”
John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage
Those words mean nothing to politicians in this country.
Instead, our politicians are greedy, grubby people.
And, yes, that is a moan.
And no, Taoiseach, I won’t go off and kill myself.

Read More......

I Wonder

DID you ever wonder about the way we treat our politicians?
Did you ever wonder why we pay them so much?
Did you ever wonder why we allow our taxes to be used to pay for big cars and chauffeurs to drive them?
Did you ever wonder why politicians are, generally speaking, applauded when they walk into a room?
Did you ever wonder why we pay for their pr consultants, their style consultants and the consultants they consult to decide what consultants they need to consult next?
I wonder. I wonder all the time.
And I wonder why there are so many charitable organisations in rich countries.
Look at Ireland for example.
It is a wealthy country.
That’s what they tell us.

We’re the richest country in the world, some say.
Others put us third or fifth or eighth.
Few suggest we are outside the top ten.
I wonder why, then, that our telephone book contains pages and pages and pages of number for charitable organisations.
I wonder why it's something that doesn't seem to bother politicians.
I wonder why they think it's important they're seen at the opening of new buildings and roads and equally important that they're not seen near the homeless or the addicted or those in dire need of official help.
I wonder why so many people, so many of the disadvantaged, have to rely on charity to get by.
I wonder why politicians, who in Ireland gave themselves 22 pay rises in ten years, do nothing to help those who need help most.
I wonder why the St Vincent de Paul society has to run breakfast clubs for kids so that they get a decent breakfast every day.
I wonder why it has to provide resource centres in so many
Neighbourhoods.
I wonder why it has to provide education grants to those who cannot afford education, even at primary level.
I wonder why it has to provide holidays for poor children.
I wonder why it has to provide shelter for the homeless.
I wonder why those who look after children with Down Syndrome and Autism, have to beg the public for money to provide a service the government should provide.
I wonder why Americans allow George Bush to stay in the White House he having spent $800 billion killing Iraqis and the young men of America based on a lie.
I wonder why people buy products knowing they have been made by slave labour, sometimes even child labour.
I wonder why some people who are worth hundreds of millions want to be worth hundreds of millions more.
I wonder why African leaders applauded the despot Robert Mugabe a couple of weeks ago.
I wonder why, in the heel of the hunt, nobody is actually doing anything about Darfur.
I wonder why Muslim clerics don’t simply say that murder is wrong, that suicide bombing is wrong and that those who do such things offend Allah.
I wonder why doctors who swear to protect life, thing that killing fetuses, viable fetuses, is a good thing.
I wonder how the parents of whatever little boy it was who killed Rhys Jones in Liverpool, think they’re doing the right thing by not going to the police.
I wonder how governments, just about everywhere, can lecture about drug abuse, can pour millions into the frontline fight against heroin and cocaine and ecstasy and fail, utterly, to provide medical support for those addicts who want to stop.
I wonder why people hurt children.
I wonder why I never seen policemen on the streets anymore.
I wonder what politicians think when, as they sit in the back of their chauffeur driven cars, they see homeless people slipping under their cardboard sheets for the night.
I wonder why some wealthy people are generous and some are plain greedy.
I wonder why people throw litter on the street.
I wonder why gazillions of euro/pounds/dollars aren’t diverted from making things that kill people into discovering ways of keeping them alive.
I wonder.
I wonder.
I wonder.
But most of all, I wonder why, when you think of all the solvable problems there are in the world and in our countries, we treat our politicians the way we do, why we pay them so much, pay for their cars and applaud them when they walk into rooms.

Read More......

Well, Charlotte, it was like this...

Someday, maybe in the not too distant future, my daughter Charlotte may ask me what life was like when I was a child.
At least, I hope she asks me.
Now, I know how boring the past is for some. I have personally witnessed eyes glazing over at the mere mention of the Sixties.
But for little Charlotte (she's not 18 months old and really isn't into my music yet) it will be important to know what life was like for her daddy. If she isn't permanetly on her phone and her computer, that is.
I made a little list for her. Ok. A big list.
Here, I will tell her, is what we DIDN'T have.
1 More than one television channel.
2 Colour television.
3 Live soccer on television.
4 Reality television.
5 Satellite television.

6 Personal computers.
7 Email
8 The Internet.
9 Mobile phones.
10 Playstation or Nintendo.
11 Health food.
12 Late night drinking (legally, at least).
13 Cheap air travel.
14 CDs
15 DVDs
16 Even the now obsolete videos.
17 iPods or any form or MP3 player.
18 Identity theft.
19 Digital cameras.
20 Digital anything.
21 Shredders.
22 ATM machines.
23 Chip and Pin.
24 Motorways.
25 Commuter rail services like LUAS or DART.
26 Greed.
27 Barbecues.
28 Sushi.
29 Chinese/Indian/Thai/Japanese/anything other than Irish or Italian, restaurants.
30 Wine (other than Blue Nun, Black Tower and Green Lable).
31 Chick Lit.
32 Bonsai trees in offices.
33 Sandwich bars on every corner.
34 Kebabs.
35 Karaoke.
36 Hair gel.
37 Botox.
38 B list celebrities, C list celebrities all the way down to Z list celebrities.
39 Multiplex cinemas.
40 Shopping malls or even shopping centres.
41 Enough taxis.
42 The money to get taxis.
43 Gap or transition years.
44 Work experience.
45 Points to get into college.
46 Two, three, four – or even one car per house in many cases.
47 Dishwashers.
48 Detergent tablets.
49 Quite as many corrupt and useless self-serving politicians.
50 Black pepper and sea salt.
51 Speed cameras.
52 Alternative medicine.
53 Dairy spreads.
54 GM foods.
55 Heelys.
56 Replica football shirts.
57 A Rugby World Cup.
58 A card-carrying imbecile in the White House.
59 Widespread availability of drugs. Other than a bit of blow. Maybe a tab of acid here and there. And a little speed.
60 Rap 'music'.
61 Footballers paid, per week, what most people earn per year.
62 WAGS.
63 Any concert venues.
64 Bad manners.
65 Booking fees for tickets.
66 Toll roads.
67 The Green Party.
68 Fridge-freezers.
69 Islands in the kitchen.
70 Stereo.
71 Remote controls for the television.
72 Property speculation.
73 Crap summers.
74 Foreigners and immigration.
75 Christmas ads in September.
76 Pat Kenny
77 Millions of radio stations.
78 People making millions out of Irish dancing.
79 Boy bands.
80 BMX bikes.
81 Latte, cappuccino or  mocha.
82 Croissants, bagles, Danish pastries.
83 Croke Park – as it is.
84 The Spire.
85 Smoke alarms.
86 Iraq and Darfur and tensions with Iran. (But we did  have Vietnam and Biafra and tensions with Cuba)
87 The Brit awards. The Soap awards. The Irma awards. The Meteor Awards. The Mercury Prize. The IFTA Awards. And so on.
88 Alternative comedians.
89 Wheely bins.
90 Wormers.
91 Anybody going to Leinster rugby matches.
92 Disc parking.
93 Smoke-free pubs.
94 Natural gas.
95 Church scandals.
96 Dirty hospitals.
97 Chuggers.
98 Garda helicopters.
99 Political correctness.
100 The cheek to tell our fathers they were boring when they told us about their childhoods.

Read More......