Time to be insolvent.

What a weekend!
I met loads of passengers who had come from Canada, Cyprus,America,England and Australia who had come over for the all Ireland hurling final..A great match and it was a draw, so there will be a replay.

A few years ago I picked up an Italian man with his son.His local client treated him to 2 seats at the all Ireland Hurling final...He was ecstatic nearly peeing in his pants with excitement,
"Such speed, What skill"
His son was jumping up and down like a Jack in the box..
I am sure he will do business with that Irishman for many years to come.

It has been 2 years since Priory Hall has been evacuated.
A housing development up in Donaghmede which has many many faults.
So the people were moved out. 24 hour security was put in place and the owners have had to live in rented accommodation.
As I say they are 2 years living in limbo.
The stress on the people is immense. After all you cannot get a loan unless you can produce a list of certificates, remember if anything is wrong your insurance should cover problems like this.
A lady lost her husband to suicide a few weeks ago and the banks started putting pressure on his widow.
Thank God she went to the media and the bank now states that the debt will be written off.

2/3 of the loans taken out between 2005 to 2012 are in negative equity.
That means that the house is worth less than the price paid for the house./
In Dublin 70% of the house loans taken out in that period are in negative equity.

Once more listen to this man
.


And remember the people who caused all this are living all over the world on massive pensions.

Apart from this you many have thought that being a taxi driver might be for you.

This can happen, believe me.


Don't watch it if you are of a nervous  type.

Taxi (2013) Director Kevin Sharkey Producer Colm Sexton from Kevin Sharkey on Vimeo.

2013 All Ireland Hurling final...ClaireVCork

This weekend in Dublin we host the "Clash of the Ash" As the All Ireland Hurling finals take place.

Here is a one sided video  But where is Cork?





If you can take a look at the game.
Hundreds of Irish people have come home for the finals,

Come fly with me..

Ryanair, look it up on YouTube, Mr O'Leary  has made a right bags of the airline.
At some point people are beginning to think this is all a load of crap


.



 How to reduce your baggage charges






Where are the passengers balls!
Why did they not stand up and refuse to sit down again until she was allowed to bring her poster on the flight?
Spanish people have no bravery inside.


Sorry I couldn't delete the duplicate



Just in case you were thinking of becoming a robber.

Look at this first.





Have a great weekend

Colombo once said "There's just one more thing"

So I will share this with you.

HailO everywhere

 A group of kittens.called a Kindle or a litter !

    Cruise ships discharging their cargo of passengers

When I was in London I did a HailO.
3 minutes it said and I saw my taxi approach on the App.
So I hopped in when a HailO taxi pulled in...Right on time as it happened.
We were 5 or 6 minutes into our journey when my phone rang.
"Were is Ya"
"Sorry mate I must have jumped into the wrong cab"
While the driver was talking I could hear his passenger telling the driver where she wanted to get out.
So anyhow I cancelled the other taxi.
Then I got another e mail from HailO that I had been charged £5 for cancelling the taxi.
I had to wait for around an hour where I was going so I penned a reply to HailO
First that I was sorry that I had taken the wrong taxi which had not arrived on time, that the taxi that was supposed to pick me up was only looking for me 9 minutes after the call was placed. Plus even at that the had a passenger on board when he called me up to find out where I was..

HailO can trace the paths of taxis as they go around on the system, next thing you know
I had £5 credited back into my account.
My HailO driver whose taxi I had jumped into was very good, the address I had was wrong, but he figured out my destination and told me what to ask for the next time...
He also told me that scores of drivers are knocked off the HailO system every week, one thing about this HailO company is that they listen to their customers.


When I finally nailed down my problem in London I headed for home,flying last minute is not an option it is too expensive.   So I found my way to Euston station and bought a train and boat ticket £43 I think.
I was late for the high speed ferry so it would be the overnight boat from Holyhead.
So there I was sitting down to wait for a few hours when the Tannoy announced "The train on platform 6 is going to Holyhead and Manchester" A guy a few seats away said to his wife "Lets go" He said that the ticket would be good on this train too.
And so It came to pass.
This train went like a bat out of well well over 100 MPH, the curves were banked as she thrashed along.
The tracks are continuous now none of that "Clicketty clack" from the old days
The train we were supposed to be on was to arrive around 23.30 and here were resting in Holyhead at 21.30 with a few restaurants and the pubs open.
So we had time to eat and rest.
If you are in Holyhead with time to kill just cross over that very fancy bridge into the town, turn left and 3 doors down on the left there is an Indian restaurant which had just opened a few days earlier.
Good food, at a good price too.

So I slept through the night on the ship and a few hours in my bed then off to work again.

If you have a Prius car, here is a tip for you. Get a trickle charger(old type) a long lead and a timer.
Put the charger to charge the battery for 3 hours every day while you are away.The battery is so small that it goes flat after a while...Look for the "Jump" spot in the fuse box to get her going again it it does go flat.

I worked for 1/2 the day and got 5 HailO jobs, plus 3 on the street.
Things are back to normal.

Its just a pity that I am out of step at the moment.

A really happy group in the taxi last week, one guy in Green glasses told me that he will be using taxis a lot more for a while. He was caught speeding.

150 on the M1 motorway.

Still thats not too bad, the limit is 120.

But that's Kph, I was doing Mph

All I could say was

Ah yes big fella I see your point.

150 MPH converts to 241 Kph  which is quit a bit over.

It reminds me of Pablo Montoya who was caught speeding on the freeway outside Frejus in the South Of France.

You were driving at over 250 Kph to which he replied I am capable of driving at over 400 Kph.

His wife got out of the car and stood between him and the policeman and said.

"Its like living with a big child, If you will allow me to drive him home you can deal with him later"

He was later well fined and the only place he can drive now is on the race track.

A life in a bottle

 Heading for Tower Bridge, they didn't lock me up

 Where did you want to go? Just follow the line.

       Last resting place of ?

 This one I knew.

   Votes for women !

A sign on a Virgin express toilet seat..Good one


One minute you are having your dinner and the phone rings.
3 hours later you are in London.
That's where I was for the last 3 days.
Taking care of business.
Whatever else you might say about the British they really know how to shift people around, a great place. to travel to whatever your reasons are for going there.

I knew a guy who died last week, not best mates by any means.
He had a great job and he just started drinking heavily.
Turning up drunk for work he found himself suspended from his job.
His wife and daughter walked out.
He still kept drinking.
Divorce followed and the family  home was sold, still he did not stop.
In the middle of all this his ex wife needed some papers signed and she tracked him down to a bar.
She got the shock of her life when she found out that he didn't even know who she was.
At that point she turned on his drinking pals and she asked them why they would do nothing to help him rather than just encourage him to drink himself to death.

So last week he joins a long list of talented Irishmen who died from drink.

No it wasn't him who was buried in London

The schools are back and the leaves are turning, soon we will have to turn on the central heating again.

The clock moves on...one click means nothing to one ..Yet to others it is the end of everything.

The butterfly farm

    Leaf insect

T

       The sign on the window said Closed

     This is Mabel Fox 103 1/2 years young.

Well after I got my car fixed up I rang Mabel to say that it is time for our yearly visit to the Butterfly farm in Straffin Co.Kildare, we have been going there every year for the last 4 years. Iris who runs the show takes out the snakes and spiders for us to all see.
It has just closed for the winter now.
But come next June make a B line for it.

You know Mabel has lived through 2 World wars plus the civil war, she well remembers 1916 and the rising.
She is a sharp as a tack, she reads the paper every day and has opinions and questions on all the topics of the day.

She is the youngest 103 1/2 year old I know.

A little bit of history

    A red London bus drives around Dublin...Destination Paddington.


 1916 The leaders of the Easter rising sit in Croke Park at a time when the British army were looking for them

This smiling lady became an Irish citizen today

50 years ago on this veryday Martin Luther King made the famous speech.

"I have had a dream"

Black people got the vote since then and today the USA has a black leader.
We have all come a long way in 50 years.
It is very hard to believe what the state of human rights were back then.

100 years ago this week big Jim Larkin organized and unionized the workers and the Lockout began.
This was the spark which propelled Ireland to 1916 and the Easter rising.

Though it propelled thousands of Irish men into the British army where they died on Flanders fields.
The only alternative was starvation.


The lovely Nigerian lady was late for her big ceremony in the Conference center, so she jumped out of her husbands car into my taxi and we shot off along the bus lane.
..He would arrive there around 40 minutes later. The traffic was manic.
A really big day for her, her 3 children and her husband have all got Irish passports, today she also got one .
I really wish her well she is very well educated and has taken up nursing.
She is becoming really Irish by being a little bit late.

I read in the paper that a young Irish solicitor Maeve O'Rourke   now aged 26 is to be awarded Pro Bono Lawyer of the year 2013 the highest prize  for her outstanding work in fighting for the survivors of the "Magdalene laundry's" She single handed took the Irish officials through the highest courts in the World in Geneva all alone and shamed the Irish government into admitting that what they did was illegal, inhuman and what was happening was slavery... Good girl,,,,we need more people like her to be willing to fight for our rights.

On the taxi front I had a squeak from my front wheels, the bearings were giving trouble on both sides.When the wheels were off one of the shock absorbers was found to be leaking and the front brake pads needed replacing.. A cool €730 !
Still it is better than to be broken down in the middle of nowhere.
You could see on one of the hubs where it had heated up quite a bit.
It must have been whining like a taxi driver as I was going along.

The business on the street is up as the students are back.
Many say that the school teachers who drive taxis when they are not teaching improve business when they go back to their real jobs.

A pilot teacher was in the taxi the other day, that man has seen the world for sure.
He spoke about when he was younger flying between Peru and Argentina 4 times a week.
He should get a job with the tourist board as he described the places and people of the world.

He has to tell a young guy who has spent around €90,000 on flying lessons and training that he will never make the grade. He started off in that flying in that flying school which went bust and the pupils were left stranded in Floriday for months.
After spending all that cash he just doesn't have the ability to be a pilot and the flying school will not take any more money from him as it is throwing good money after bad..
That is a bit worse than failing your school exams for sure.