“Ratoath Fianna Fail councillor Nick Killian is mad as hell, and he’s not gonna take it any more… Here, he enjoys a discourse with some local youths:“

Charming.

The child who posted the video also has a blog. On 19 Feb, he posted this blog:

Ha ha last week was gr8 i had no skool and i went out and got drunk on friday and got caught ha ha it was fun. Here a video we had gr8 fun lighting a tire on fire. Heres a video:

Thankfully, the nitendo is white, the psp is black and the computer doesn’t have an internet connection so my 9 year old niece dumbed things down for me! In a stream of conscious type of excitement, she told me, ‘I’d like game x for the white one and game y for the black one’.

The long and short of it is that she’d like Age of Empires for the computer and MySims for the white one (sorry, the nintendo DS). But I was a bit freaked out when she told me about one of the games she already has. It’s called Imagine: Babies for the Nintendo. I didn’t believe her that it was an actual game. But it is! It’s so incredibly sexist and demeaning that I can’t believe it’s allowed to be sold. As you’ll see from the description below, it’s targeted specifically at girls.

Basically she has to pretend to be a babysitter and earn money.

Here’s a description from game.co.uk

Embody a young student who visits her grandmother’s house for the summer. Your grandmother leaves to go on holiday and leaves you in charge of her house. During her absence you will have to maintain the house and even decorate it to your taste. In order to do this you will need to earn money by taking care of all your neighbour’s babies, where you will find your vocation–babysitting!

Imagine: Babies Features:

* Embody a young babysitter and take of your neighbour’s babies all with their own personalities!
* Take care of 6 babies (one after the other), each with a distinctive character.
* Prepare their bottle and baby food in the kitchen, check on the amount of food in stock and buy the right food according to their needs.
* Rock the babies in a cradle, put on the soothing radio or move the mobile to help them sleep or to calm them down.
* Change their nappies to keep them clean, keep an eye on their health and dress them up with different clothes
* Entertain the babies: Play with them and their toys, play music to make them dance and take them into the garden to play on swings and other garden toys
* Exchange information, photos and clothing with other players through Wi-Fi
* Keep the house clean: Use fun mini-games to create a welcoming home for the babies: wash up, clean and vacuum, paint the walls, mow the grass, trim hedges and drive away spiders!
* Make the house to your own taste: Use the money you earn and the vouchers you receive in succeeding in your missions, buy items at the shops to decorate the house

/Rant

Some kids tried to break into my house by smashing a double-glazed window at the rear of my property. Thankfully, the muppets made so much noise that the neighbours were alerted and scared them off. The neighbours also called the police, who did actually turn up to examine look at the crime scene.

Now, in fairness, I don’t expect any CSI-type examination, nor do I expect the police to catch the idiots. How could they?

I visited the police station today to report it and get a ‘log number’ for my insurance claim. The crime happened in a small town where car break-ins so rare that they are reported in the local newspaper. When I entered the station (or barracks, as my relatives call it), there were two Guards having a bit of banter in the lobby. One of them politely asked what I wanted. When I replied that I wanted to report a crime, he got all excited and the two of them vanished, not to be seen again. The Guard who was actually manning the desk eventually turned up. As I said, it’s a small town so I just had to mention the address and she knew about it.

I didn’t have to tell her about the crime but, after getting the log number, she started to ask me for my name, address and date of birth. Not many people know that the Guards have a policy of recording everyone that comes into contact with them. It’s to do with their super-duper PULSE computer system (Police Using Leading Systems Effectively). Technically, I’m a victim of crime and now the police who fight crime now more about me than the crime itself. I now have a file on the police database and the criminals do not. And I’m not 100% comfortable with that.

There’s a phrase, ‘What have I got to hide?‘. Another way of looking at it is, ‘What have I got to lose?‘

I wanted to find out more about PULSE and Garda policy towards it. I’m sure they’ve nothing to hide but the search function of the Guards homepage doesn’t work! The only information about PULSE I can find on the official Garda website is this tidbit on their IT page:

PULSE (Police Using Leading Systems Effectively)

PULSE is the largest IT system within An Garda Síochána. The system is available to all members of An Garda Síochána nationwide and ensures that accurate up-to-date information is available to all members in responding to the demands of a modern police force.

Development and enhancements to the system are on-going. The most recent major development is the introduction of Fixed Charge Processing to process fixed charge offences or fines on-the-spot and enable the effective recording of penalty points resulting in the “penalty points” being integrated into PULSE.

If you search Googe.ie for ‘Garda, Pulse’, 50% of the entries on the first page are negative. Indeed, this one for the Data Protection Commissioner is interesting. The title is:

Gardai- Inappropriate data on “Pulse system” -data deleted when access request received- not fair to person- could frustrate the provisions of the Act

The Data Protection Commissioner keeps mentioning ‘the prevention, detection or investigation of crime’ when discussing PULSE so I guess these are central aims of the system. Now obviously, some will question why I’m so exercised about giving the police my date of birth. I guess it’s because I believe I live in a free country and I believe I’m allowed to go unhindered in the course of my business (there’s probably even something in the constitution about it??).

PULSE is considered a great success among (sic) law enforcement agencies throughout the world and the Guards would have us believe that several of them have visited Ireland to study it’s implementation. To my mind, it’s a nascent tracking system for a country’s citizens and not to be encouraged.

Before you make up your mind, think about those two phrases again: What have I got to hide? and What have I got to lose?.

A few years ago, he (+ 1 wife, +1 child) got a ‘great’ (cancellation) deal on a 4 bed detached family house with 1 parking space and no front garden. There’s no visitor parking apparently. Both him and his missus have cars so he’d normally just park on the grass verge opposite his house.

All seemed to be going well until his management company painted double yellow lines on the street outside his home. Well, you can guess what happened next. He got clamped outside his own house one night! So that was it, they were moving. He wasn’t going to put up with this shite no more. Anyway, all their friends had houses on 1/2 an acre in the ‘countryside’ (Rathoath) anyway.

Yesterday it was announced that the new Metro line to the Airport and Swords would effectively run past the front of his estate. Now his house is going to be worth megabucks. The metro line doesn’t mean anything to him personally since he’s got a 4×4. Turns out he won’t be moving afterall.

However, he’s just had a second baby. Once the ‘shock’ of that wears off, I suspect they’ll move upwardly mobile to rural Rathoath and rent out the original house. He works in a cash business (not drugs!) so it’ll all work out in the end.

It’s a funny old world, innit.

And yes, that is a floral bouquet bouncing off your nasal passage.

For those who are non-religious/non-Catholics, it meant that he’d been shagging anything that moved and had fathered several children by several different women in a very short timespan.

Sometimes I’m ashamed to be Irish. Well, actually, sometimes I’m ashamed of the Irish…

Kinda puts things in perspective…

Comments, if any, will be very moderated to prevent libel.

China has been forced to mull the possibility of allowing double-barrelled surnames – a break with the ancient tradition that citizens adopt one of a hundred single character surnames…

…In fact, other less common surnames bring the official total of permitted surnames to 161, but this doesn’t do much to offset the fact that there are now 93 million Wangs in China – closely followed by 92 million Lis – something which is causing the authorities a bit of a problem.

Best comment was by Simon Holt who wrote: “Looking through the Beijing phone-book must give thousands of Wong numbers“. Well, it was a new one to me!

In late 2005, Dublin City Council met to decide how to spend their budget for 2006. Item no. 56 concerned alarming reports that children were playing football in the park in my estate. Obviously, this was a bad thing so they allocated €100 (plus €1,500 labour) to errect a sign prohibiting ball games in the park. And so it came to pass. The 10-year olds immediately understood this new prohibition and stopped playing ball games.

Unfortunately, after a week, they got bored and reversed the sign so it wasn’t readible from the road. After another week, they got bored again and removed the sign. So the poor, sad, lonely pole has stood naked, but proud, for the past year. No ball games remember!!

Thankfully, Dublin City Council met again in late 2006. They reviewed how the allocated money for 2006 was spent. When item no. 56 came up, there were mutters, there were frowns, there were even some creased brows. We’ll never know thanks to the (ahem) FOI laws but maybe it was Cyprian Brady, T.D. (he of 939 1st preference votes or 2.7%*) who muttered, ‘Those cheeky 10-yr olds are now 11 and they’ll probably have their first pets. Let’s spend this year’s €100 (plus €1,500 labour) on different signs.’ Maybe it was Tony Gregory, TD, who agreed with him and countered, ‘as a school teacher on sabbatical since 1979**, I think we should issue the signs in Irish. You know, for cultural reasons, loike.’ They all thought it was a wonderful idea and voted it through as item no. 55.

And so it came to pass. Dublin City Council worker’s descended on my estate. In the same way that a dog pisses on a lamp post, the council workers put up posters on every lamp post in my estate (ed: I thought the election was over?) basically saying, ‘the dog has done it’s duty, now do yours.’ But in the Irish language!

Thing is, it’s probably a good thing. There’s no money left to actually cut the grass in the park and it’s literally knee-high. There were a couple of kids lying in the park as I walked home and you could barely see them. So, it’s probably a good thing that there’s no dogshit in the park otherwise the kids could get some nasty diseases.

Oh, and I now know the Irish word for dog pooh!

*Cyrian Brady got 939 first preference votes (2.7%) and he got elected on the eight count. Frankly, that’s shameful. Our dear leader, Bertie, got 12,734 first preference votes (36.8%) and was elected on the first count.

** Tony Gregory is a teacher and a civil servant. He was elected to the Dail (Parliament) 28 years ago (?) so his ‘old’ job is kept open for him. A temp has covered his job for the past 28 years. He could give up the €100k politician’s gig and return to his €50k teacher’s job. On the upside, a school teacher gets 3 months summer holidays so that’s some compensation for the drop in wages!! Oh, no, wait….

I live in the Dublin Central constituency, btw.

As I mentioned in my last entry, I came down here to Dungarvan last Friday to collect a painting I’d bought recently. I travelled here on my own as I only intended to stay a day or two. But, a week later, I’m still here and, oddly enough, I’m having the time of my life.

Previously, Dungarvan would have failed my ‘Wet Wednesday in November’ test. By that, I mean I would have despaired at the unavailability of the newspapers before 9am, or the lack of cultural activities, and the shortage of good food (The Tannery being a notable exception). The local ‘O’Briens Sandwich Bar’ doesn’t open until ‘shortly’ after the official 10am opening. The urban-dweller in me couldn’t understand how the locals managed without their morning take-out coffee!

But this time it’s different. It’s still the same town, with the same expensive prices and shoddy customer service (Lady Belle excepted), but there’s an energy about the place that’s infectious. The local shops are getting touched up in anticipation of the tourist season. The €10 ‘meat and two veg’ restaurants are abuzz with activity as their new furniture is delivered. Even one of the local bookshops is shut temporarily as, I dunno. they dust their shelves? As far as I know, school is still ongoing. But there can’t be too long to go to summer holidays and the teenagers are itching to be set free. They’re itching to get going in other ways as well. The local public parks are virtual no-go area’s in the early evenings as the teenagers have a roll around ‘in the hay’ before their school buses take them home to their (presumably) unsuspecting parents.

Spring is definitely in the air and I’ve a spring in my step as the long weekend approaches. Think I’ll grab another pint.