Windy day

This is the new Garda speed detector van.
Working at night.Phone photo

A neighbor of mine with his beautiful E type Jaguar.



This is the new Garda station in Irishtown.

Saturday night and the wind is blowing a gale outside. Just getting myself ready (In my head) to go outside and work all night.
Last week G.W.Bush slept soundly in his bed knowing he at last did not have the worry on his shoulders of leading the free world.
The free world breathed a sigh of relief and slept soundly too.

I am a bit like an actor. "resting" they call it.
Crying shame I seem to be almost unemployed. But I still have ing things to do, clean ing shopp ing paint ing and I hope loads of taxi drivers will join me on the 2nd of Feb at 8.30 am to do a bit of protest ing and march ing to the regulators office.

If you don't you will only have yourselves to blame when things get worse.
Dublin has a population of 2 million and we have more taxis than New York.
There will be traffic jams of taxis out there when I go out.

There are hundreds of guys driving taxis who have never done the taxi test, they hire cars and drive with no licence or a fake ID, never checked or stopped.
City Cabs (a taxi co.)have loads of stories of taxis hired out and coming back 2 months later with 50,000 miles extra on the clock. Others have stories of taxi drivers running away when stopped by the Garda....The owner then rings up "I had me car stolen"
what can they do? Give it back until it happens again.

Well Its 6.20 and I am home again, the ferry is at least an hour late coming in. There was winds of 125 KPH last night and 12 or so people killed in France and Spain.
So putting a positive spin on it it was good for taxis.

One old guy,(rich enough)stopped me at Jurys hotel. How much to get me to e8/10 says I but the price will be on the meter, I looked him in his drunken eye and said.How many drinks did you negotiate the price for? He looked at me and said I don't want to be robbed.
Look says I, just wait here for another taxi to arrive if you won't pay whats on the meter. So he got in and when we arrived at his house there was e11.20 on the clock.
Now,he said I would only pay e10. There he sat with a fist full of money flicking a e10 note to see if it was 2 stuck together.
Its no wonder you have it, pass it over.
He got really aggressive and said don't be cheeky.

So I did what all good taxi drivers do.

I took my e10 and said thank you.
Or as Alf Townsend in his taxi book "Just wipe your mouth"

He annoyed me because he could have bought me out without having to borrow a penny.

Well maybe not.

Sean Quinn Ireland's richest man it is reckoned has lost a billion euro from his investments in Anglo Irish bank.

That's one thousand million. A lot of green.

On the radio today they said that 3,000 Polish people are leaving Ireland every month.
I see a lot of Polish transit vans loading up.
The building industry is picking up in Poland and signs are appearing on building sites.

Work available "No Irish need apply"

You see they were not being paid the proper wage and pension payments which were taken from wage packets were never passed on to the government.

I guess the party is over.

On the other side we have a mother who got 7 years for neglect cruelty and incest with her children.It has caused great concern because the first time the health board tried to have the children taken into care a right wing group of the Catholic church funded a legal challenge. The HSE had not the funds to fight the case and the abuse continued for a further 4 years.

Now everyone concerned are getting their cards marked.
Perhaps changes will come around in the legal system.

Lets hope that this kind of thing is a thing of the past soon.

Look its getting bright and I must go to bed like a good vampire.
What I should is write a bit through the week and then polish it off in the end.