All I want for Christmas

is me two front teeth,
or so the song goes.
So I started my dental work in Budapest...
When the job is finished I will give it the thumbs up or down and fill in the details.
So far it worked very very well.

                        A good man to hit a football.

Everything went according to plan except one night a taxi driver did an old switcharoo with a 10,000 note for a 500.
I am kicking myself as I knew what I should have done.
Lay down your notes before you go out and take a photo with your mobile showing the serial numbers.
Then when he says No No Sir you only gave me a 500 you say, I am calling the police and they will verify that you have taken the note with the serial number that is on my phone..
Then Sir you will be arrested for theft!!!
But I wascaught on the wrong foot this time.

Also give yourself a chance, get out of the taxi  before paying, open the passenger door and pay him there and not over the back of the seat as I did.

Worst taxi driver in the world.

Travel the world, drive a taxi

There was a couple in the taxi from Georgia on the Black sea the other day.
They asked me what I knew about their country.
Well you are perhaps the only one to have a white flag,,with a big red cross and 4 red crosses in each quadrant.They were had unusual features, slightly oriental, but they are squeezed between Turkey and Azerbaijan..Professors of peace negotiation and conflict resolution.
Perhaps they could sort out rulers and get them to work.

Russian, Indian, Iranian, Saudi Arabian, Polish Slovakian, Phillippino, Canadian and a few Irish were all in my taxi this week. All this insight into the ways of the world and you are home for your tea.

Once upon a time Phil Lynott the rock star and Paul McGrath were the only exotic Irish stars we had.


I have to go away on business now and I am getting ready.

I will tell all when I get back,

I hope that you can download this, you might have to go on your PC to get it.
A lot of taxi drivers are in a very dark place at present and this may help you the Hub also needs  any contrabution you can make, even a box of tea bags.

Click here   

The man from Limerick said it all




Then some people asks a direct question, see how they side step the issues

East Wall Rd.

                            When Aldi opens Lidl opens across the road.
                                 East Wall Rd. expands

                                   Oscar Wilde relaxes on a rock at the corner of Merrion Square

                                                Some of the wise thoughts from the great man

 A wonderful days rain had Joe public giving us the royal salute all over the place.
Just like Christmas eve it was.
But normal service has returned today.

I had a guy with a broken foot in the car, I picked him up at the Abbey theater.
A tough break for an actor I said..Even worse for a director was his reply.
I don't get to many plays I said but I went to the Arthur Miller play View from the bridge, it was really great I said. I directed that in the Gate he said.
Then all the way to his destination I told him about what I loved about his production.
At journeys end he told me I had missed my vocation.
Thanks Joe Dowling.

Today there was a fatal shooting outside Noctors pub off Sheriff St.
If you walked down there at any hour of the night or day you would see guys selling drugs..
Never a Garda in sight..
Now there is 100 Garda down there.
Where do they think the shooter might be ?
Hiding around the corner !!!

Law and no order is a joke here.

A moment from the back seat came from a wonderful Czech girl who had had a baby recently.
My baby is 8 months old, he is wonderful.
I could never have have imagined in all my life that I could love someone so much as him, its really amazing...
Well you can't top that.







When you see something so complicated as this done so well.

Now the next clip shows how something very simple can be done so badly.


Another taxi journey........This time in Paris where the driver is having a very bad day.
He is being teased and you can see how tempers might escalate out of control..
The driver might even bite off the guys thumb. (Ouch)  

Electric future ?

                                                             Our Italian Quarter.

I had a guy in the car who was showing cars in the RDS green energy show.
He told me he had a Tata car on display and I could put my name down for a test drive.
Its a 100% electric car..Eager to drive one I went in to the RDS in Ballsbridge (Merrion leasing))and the lady at the desk told me that they were not giving test drives in that car, but I could drive a Nissan Leaf.
The guy had also told me that the future was in leasing your car, no big outlay and you just hand it back when you are finished with it.
Ts and Cs apply and I bet my mileage would be too high and all the stickers on the door would be against their wishes.
But my next Norwegian passenger told me that the Tata had increased the battery size to give 200Kms range and now the car is extra heavy. You can learn a lot in a Taxi.

If I was telling this story in a pub everyone would say it was a joke.
Sometimes fact beats fiction..

In Philadelphia an Uber taxi was engaged to drive someone to New York
(Google tells me that it is 96.5 miles or 2 hours 11 Mins.)
So off they went  and after a while the driver needed a rest and asked the passenger to drive for a while. The driver woke up to police sirens blaring and the passenger driving like a maniac.
"Why are you going so fast?" said the driver "I don't want the police to catch me as I have been disqualified from driving" said the passenger.
Then he crashed the car...............

Stranger than fiction.

April fool

                                                             Howth

                                                      Blackpitts

     This truck has been spewing readymix concrete over the last 50 yards.

The first of April often brings out inventive pranks/ Liffey Valley shopping center had a "Massive event" 
"All the shops are giving away old stock today only and its on a first come first served"
April fool, and the center is packed...
 
Did you notice the number of crashes on Saturday and Sunday.
Oil on the  road, it rains and the car spins around. 
Be careful out there.

A taxi rear ends a bus and all the passengers get out, standing smoking on the roadside waiting for another bus. Along comes a gurrier and explains to them that they are all hurt and they get back on the bus and start screaming in "Pain", 3 ambulances and a fire brigade help the wounded to hospital. 
I would love to be in court when the bus company's barrister points out that the scumbag was not on the bus when it was hit.



 Well all the banging of drums and marching bands have departed and it is back to plain food and the same old crap...We had an election and we finished up with no one in charge.
Could you imagine having another election and coming up with the same result again.

If you have ever read this blog before you know how I bang on about people not doing their job, it goes on all the time from the taxi regulator to the courts. The guilty walk free and the victims stand there amazed.
Sometimes there is a small piece of justice. Like prison for staff who abused elderly and ill patients in an old folks home.
A man who sexually abused a downs syndrome girl who was also blind (for 10 years)
The person in charge of the girls welfare will it seems get prison as well.
In the UK a sex ring (LINK) of Pakistani men were grooming young girls over a long number of years, some of the girls were as young as 12 and the police, social workers and others sat on their hands until a few very brave mothers blew the affair wide open.
Now the shit has hit the fan, one brave mother was told by a social worker that she herself had done everything in her power to stop it. To which the mother said that she did nothing at all, she refused to help her and she had all the emails to prove it.
Heads are rolling but whether resignations are goo enough, sacking and loss of pensions might waken up some of these gobshites.

So drivers when you see something odd take a note, write down numbers, take a photo and report it,
But don't expect the Garda to take note or put it on file.
Perhaps things will get better.



London is having a positive spin where all taxis will be electric soon and they will be keeping the iconic black cab.