Wooden sheep in Smithfield
Pheonix park is 350 years in business
Garry Rhodes restaurant is closed. A hard town to do business in.
Everywhere in this modern world workers are being made redundant and "sub contractors" on a lower wage get their jobs.
A man comes home from work and when he steps from his car he smells gas.
He asked his wife and she says it came an hour ago and she thought it would go away.
So they ring the gas company.
45 minutes later the man from the gas company arrives.
"This is far too big for me, I'll have to call up reenforcements"
So 2 hours later trucks and vans with diggers pull up ito the street.
They had cut off the electricity to the houses as a perecaution, now it was getting late.
The people in the houses had been using candles to get around their houses in the dark.
The lady in the house next door went upstairs to go to bed, with her burning candle in her hand she opened the bedroom door.
The gas had been coming in through ducts and travelled up inside the walls of the house into the room and with the flame from the candle the gas exploded the cavity wall full of gas also exploded blowing the entire front wall out of the house.
She is critical in hospital with 97% of her body burned.
So a safety inspector called to the site of the explosion!
He looks around and calls up the first guy on the scene.
Would this be what is called a first class emergency?
Defenately said the man from the gas company.
The very first thing you must do for a first class emergency is evacuate the entire area.
WHY WAS THIS NOT DONE ?
It is incerdable, but you see no one was in charge.
So you might have a cruise ship worth millions, with thousands of people on board.
The captain decides that he will sail a bit closer to the shore to wave farewell to his pal,7 other people are on the bridge .
Well he has done this before and the local coastguard didn't make much of a fuss at that time.
But now his luck was not in today and he runs on to rocks.
The staff run around like headless chickens and it is said the that the "Abandon ship" was not sounded. Staff even told passingers that "all was OK" and that they could go back to their cabins.
Crew scramlbled past passingers to get into the lifeboats.
The captain "fell" ito a lifeboat by accident while hundreds remained on board.
It was a little hard to believe his story of a fall as he had his 3 laptops and 2 mobile phones with him at the time.
One hell of a lawsuit is on the horizon now.€297million from the Americans who were on board for a start.
One other example I had from a crane driver I had a few years ago at the height of the building boom.
You need to have a driving licence to drive a crane,you have to know your loads and tolerances to lift different weights. For example you can lift 20 tonnes and move it around close to the base of a tower crane. But as you move the same load out along the boom the leverage can pull the whole crane over, wind is another factor.
So he is there minding his own business one day when a foreign lad arrives in the cab of the crane. "The boss sent me up here to learn how to drive the crane"
So my man gos to the back of the crane and removes the fuses, knocks the boom out of gear and climbs down.
He went over to the gaffer and told him he was ringing health and safety to have the site closed down.
Un qualified personell on the crane.
The site was closed until an audit of safety was done, toe boards on scaffolding, safety helmets and boots had to be put on and a promise to behave themselves in future, then they could start work again.
Could you imagine that taxis could be rented from someone from the newspaper, then the person who rents the taxi allows 3 or 4 other people to drive this taxi except no one else is insured to drive except the one who rented the taxi.
The others have no PSV licence, some of them have no licence at all.
This practice is widespread here in Dublin.
People who have no insurance to drive a car,never mind drive a taxi.
People whose past has never been checked out, drivers who have not one clue of where the villages of Dublin are.
One girl told me last night that she was going to Palmerstown and fell asleep, she was coming to Glendalough Co.Wicklow when she woke up. Lucky for her it was her boyfriend was a detective on the phone and he rang her to see if she was OK.
Lucky for her they were able to get a police car out to her home and bring in the driver to test his geography..She didn't know what happned to him.
When the enforcers pull on to the rank at Heuston to inspect the taxis 3 or 4 cars pull off the rank.
My question to the "Enforcers" is this.
Why are the rogue taxis not pulled over?
What is the point of being legal if the illegal drivers are being allowed to ply for trade with complete immunity ?
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Imagine if this was true
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
€1.4 Billion house.
No the house prices have not gone mad, its an art instillation.
A house made from shredded bank notes.
I was down there yesterday and couldn't find it, even though I asked a workman who was only yards from it and he knew nothing.
Today I found it.
It is in a shop at Crane Lane which is at the Liffey end of Smithfield, beside the coffey shop
Oh boy but spring is coming on quickly now, look at the lovely daffodils, they have been open since before Christmas.
On that poor guy who took a court injunction to prevent 6 newspapers from naming him wrongly in a newspaper article.
The legal costs I have heard will buy a house in any part of the country.
I would have thought that if he rang the editiors office and privided proof that then he could sue if he was libelled in the paper.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Happy new year
To all my wonderful Chinese friends.
龍年5月帶給你的祝福
Now don't make those silly mistakes tomorrow !
When you are writing a check don't write in Rabbit Its Dragon now.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Student protetests his innocence
There are video cameras everywhere,
So if someone who looks just like you does a runner in Japan you might get the blame.
Now you might be in Japan at the time yourself and get blamed "perhaps"in the wrong.
You might have to go to the high court to get an injunction ! Just to protect your good name.
From the Examiner newspaper.
Student back in High Court in bid to prevent being named in video case
Saturday, January 21, 2012 - 10:52 AM
A 22-year-old is back in the High Court today in a bid to stop six national newspapers from naming him over a video he claims defames him.
Eoin McKeogh, a student of business and Japanese at DCU, denies he is in the online video which allegedly shows a young man evading a taxi fare.
His lawyers told the High Court he was in Japan at the time.
Last week he secured an injunction against internet giants such as Facebook and Google, stopping them from rebroadcasting or publishing the material.
Following reports on the court proceedings, the 22-year-old student is now seeking an order stopping the Evening Herald, the Sunday Times, the Irish Examiner, the Independent, the Star and the Irish Times from publishing his identity.
His counsel has argued that by identifying Mr McKeogh, the newspapers have circumvented the terms and spirit of the order.
One way or another it was an expensive taxi ride for him.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Le weekend encore
This video was made by me 2 years ago.
Tonight it will be shown at a council meeting in Italy.
It will illustrate one negative aspect of de regulation.
All the cars on the left are taxis trying to get a fare at Heuston station.
I do concede that there are big gaps in the queue, some drivers must have fallen asleep.
But there are far too many taxis in Dublin.
Sometimes I feel like the small boy who is playing with Charlie.
Have a good weekend.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Bad choice that
A big white envelope arrived a few weeks ago.
Whenever there is a change in the rates new fare cards come.
Then we are ready to display them when the change comes.
So I popped them into the taxi.
I felt that there was something wrong with the cards.
There was no change in the rates, so why the new cards?
I didn't know what was up.
The other day I was alerted to the problem.
THE CARDS ARE TOTALLY IN ENGLISH.
Every official notice has to be in English and Irish.
The whole lot will have to be thrown out and re printed.
It is said that it was printed by a brother in law of a high up official from the taxi regulators office.
I think even a 12 year old child would look at a previous lay out before doing such a reprint.
But theese whiz kids who lay down the law are not lyable to pay for their mistakes from their own pockets.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Make that 4
Make that 4 people who rode for free!
I picked her up on Beaver Rd. She had a roloarator and she took forever to get in.
I popped her contraption in the boot and we were off.
She had some sort of motor neuron disease and her right hand had stopped working.
That bossy fecker who dropped her glove last week ?
It just found a new owner.
The bank on Baggott St. was our destination.
She had run out of money and her late husbands account was in that bank.
I told her that she should get a bank link card and she could draw down the money in the supermarket.
If you are ill or suffer any illness which effects your mind or body. This society is a hard place to live in.
We passed a beautiful girl waving for a taxi in Donnybrook on the way, Oh Boy !
When we arrived at the bank it was closed. 10.30 the bank opens on Thursday
So I told her not to worry and go into Burger King and wait there until the bank opened.She could have the trip on the house.
Then back to Donnybrook, where the beautiful lady had vanished.
That poor lady who was ill needs a little bit of care,it would take very little effort for the bank teller to suggest to the lady that she should have a bank link card and arrange it there and then..
Still no one has the time or the humanity to act any more.
The mad part is that we have to take these drunk people home.
I sometimes meet Neil Tobin in our local supermarket.
In reality he is a hell of a guy.
The questions kids ask !
