When you finish your tour of Guinness(now 250 years old) you go to the bar with grand views all over the city.
Guinness were very good to the people of Dublin
and the people of Dublin were very good to Guinness too.
Made his money and allowed the poor to read good books.
An oasis of piece St Josephs school for the deaf on the Navan Rd
Every year the Sunday Times Rich List comes in and I read it.
Who is the richest?
How much richer are they from last year?
Its a funny way to measure a persons worth isn't it?
Mother Theresa from Calcutta would never come up to the mark, that's for sure, Many poets, writers, composers and painters were never worth much when they were alive.
A few years ago I met a man who made loads of money, he was a secret billionaire and there was a program on TV about him, his name is Chuck Feeney.
He rode in from the airport with me on Friday the 24Th August 2007, he was going to the Berkley Court Hotel.
He introduced himself and his wife and I was John from then on.
"You have a great job, start when you can and put in a few hours meeting different people, you could get great ideas just by listening. If I was to start again I would drive a taxi"
(now this idea has been taken on board by 3/4 of the unemployed people of Dublin)
"Its not all sunshine I can assure you, people can be very aggressive and rude sometimes" said I.
"What do you mean?" says he
"Well I had a guy going to the airport the other day and he exploded because the traffic was heavy and he was late"
"Get this into perspective,he was putting the blame on to you for him being late, If he is abusive throw him out"
Great advice, I did it a few weeks later.
Sure I was down e15, but my ulcer was OK.
"If you can work without stress in your life and you have good health,you are getting there. If you have enough money to pay your way and you have no addictions, then it doesn't get any better than that.
Believe me if you have all the money in the world and you loose your health what good is it?"
If you have an addiction,or bad health you could loose your home in a very short time."
You would think that would have gone in one ear and out the other, well it partly did. Until I bought Saturdays Irish Times and there in the Weekend Review was a big spread all about him.
I was impressed that he had made Billions through DFS his company and that he lived a "secret life" and then gave away all his money for the good of other people.
I had some parts of his story wrong, he supplemented his college grant by making sandwiches not apple pies. But in the main I got it right and found out more about him.
He took a brave step by investing time and money in the peace process in Northern Ireland,after the Enniskillen bombings dragging all sides together.You must remember he did all this for no personal gain, he never stood in for any photos.
Now chuck has given away around 8 Billion Dollars and he wants all the money dispersed and his charity Atlantic Philanthropies will be wound up in the next few years, that's more than a million a day for the next 8 years must has to be used up.
Imagine how happy you would be if you built a hospital in Vietnam and saw the poor desperate people being treated there, and then.
How would you feel knowing it was your own money that did it?
Warren Buffet and Bill Gates also came under his influence.
You know Mr Feeney hasn't got a Rolex, and my watch cost 4 times more than his.
Just think how much you can appreciate MrFeeney when he is compared to
The owner of Top Shop.
Sir Philip Green
His company has sweat shops in Mauritius where indentured workers(Slaves) stitch together the garments for his new "High End" ready to wear fashion line(Sunday Times did a big expose) His wife is a resident of Monaco His company pays her dividends which are then tax free.
Well his fortune dropped by 500 million quid but he is still the sixth richest person in Britain with 4,300million Quid...
And any one of his employees pays more in income tax than he does.
I wonder does the fact that you are "Sir" give you a place closer to the fire when you arrive in hell,I hoe so.
Perhaps the collapse of the financial system will start people thinking of what is important again.
I could go through that list and pick out titbit's about many of them for a long time.
One has to remember how money was salted away only to find its way into "Ponzi " schemes where it vanished. One NY family lost $7.5 billion and 2 of his daughters had their own personal fortunes invested with Bernard Madoff.
Just think how much good that would have done for the street children in Brazil?
Here is more
On clearing out the clutter in my life I found this.
Back in 1990 to communicate with the office I rented a pager from Air Call the cost in Punts 38.75 per month.
Then I got a call from the Mater emergency team mobilizing me to do a transplant!. When I rang them to tell them of their error they said they never made mistakes like that, so I then rang the transplant team myself and asked them to make all the round up calls again.
The Mater were more sympathetic to my plight.
I hope the operation was a success.
Then in October 1990 I bought a second hand Metorola "Brick type" mobile phone and a phone of one type or another has been been on my person since then though It has shrank in price and size.
The cost of that first second hand phone? 553.50 Quid
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