trawling

 I finally got all the Is dotted and the Ts crossed and went on my merry way.

For all the work that is on the streets I need not have bothered. Just 3 jobs in 2 days.

If things were normal that would be only one hours work !

On the old Telly the other day there was a murder case, very interesting,they had a suspect but no body.

After killing his x wife he went back to Lithuania and when they finally caught him he was selling his van.

Now they had no body, but there was DNA evidence in the van,they found a satnav in the glove compartment and they asked around if anyone could access its memory. \the detective asked 3 experts with no result.

Then he asked a 4th who accessed the memory and uncoveres 6 months of activity. With dates and times.

So they searched everywhere the van stopped on its trip back to Lithuania, nothing. Then they went over it again and the body of his ex wife turned up in  a shallow grave. The trial was long but they got a conviction.

Now back to me.

I was waiting for my son in a quiet back lane off Bachelors walk in Dublin around 11.30 and its dark.

I reclined the seat a bit and after a while a big BMW pulled up and a gangster got out. (Romanian or Russian)

He goes into the apartment building and comes out about 20 minutes later.

As he walkes around the car a girl comes out screaming blue murder and starts to punch and scratch him

One of the men from the back gets out and before she saw him he hit her a punch from behind, though at an angle. I felt that he had broken her neck, but anyhow she fell lifeless.

They opened the boot and threw her in. I turned on my phone and called the police, as I spoke to them I started to follow with my lights out. "Write down this number"The conversation was all on my side.

"Unless we get a missing persons report there is nothing we can do" 

I blew a fuse, girls smuggled into Ireland are forced in prostitution and have no rights whatsoever.

I hate the Irish Garda, they only want to issue speeding tickets and want no trouble.

I think I will stay at home and do my tax return instead

Heading back (Well maybe not)

Sadly there was another murder in Clontarf. 

A 60 year old son strangled his 80 year old mother.

It is beyond sad for everyone involved

There has been a lot of problems with no work or pubs and total isolation. 

The shrinks will all be on overtime for sure.

WOW

Every so often you come across something that leaves you gobsmacked.

The party is over so theNTA say and I have to go back to work.

I got a notification that I had to re activate my taxi licence or loose it, so I started the wheels in motion. Getting through on the phone is something else, sending emails was not much better.

Even when I got through I got advice from different people who did not know anything about their job. The website gave email addresses for different departments "info@" which is not an email address at all. 

So next on the agenda was to get an NCT (car testing)

I needed 3 new tyres, so I sent a text to my local garage and was told to attend in the morning.

9.30 I arrive in. I waited for around 20 mins until John the owners son came over. "Could you come back at 3.30?"

So I came back and after another 1/2 hour waiting a mechanic came over and knocked off 3 wheels. Just before he broke down the tyres he asked 

"Where are the tyres for this car?"

The garage owners son said

"Theres no tyres of that size here, we sold 9 of those tyres this morning"

So there I was with my car test in the morning and no new tyres.

So I went into Advance pitstop where I was seen to straight away, wheels balanced and out of there within 45 minutes.

So there is new garage, I will not be going back to the old one again for sure.

Look after your customers and your customers will look after you.

Words from Arnold Clark a car dealer I once met (Look him up on Wikipedia )

You look after a customer and you have a friend for life. 

Treat him badly and he will tell 100 people.

The green stickers on the front and back windows I was told to remove them when I took my taxi off the road, now I have to make an appointment to have them put back on.

How mad is this? 

A few years ago I sold my old taxi and I did not know to take off the stickers. They needed them back! I had to pay to have them re-issued so that they could destroy them €40 Ouch!

Then they were going to fine me for having my licence lapsed.

The car was not in use I said ! After 15 minutes away they said that there would be no penalty, but the renewal would be from the period the old licence lapsed, even though the car was off the road.

So its a new car for next year and I decided to look at a new Nissan Leaf, So I went to a garage in Raheny.

I parked at the showroom, I went and looked at a Leaf, I saw a manager, I saw a salesman

I walked around the car and the salesman walked into the managers office.

I waited 2 more minutes and walked out.

To look at me and the way I dress I dress in the style of Warren Buffet and Chuck Feeney.

They had loads of money.

Paul Daniels once introduced me once as a very very wealthy man

"You don't see him wasting money buying good clothes".

He was such a great magician.

I had a friend from New Zealand who told me about 2 scruffy guys at a machinery exhibition, the older salesmen ignored them. A young lad who had recently joined the company engaged them in conversation and won a £2 million contract for plant. They were the biggest road construction company in the southern hemisphere and hey bought trucks capable of shifting 200 tonnes at a time.  

They were starting a big project.  

As well as his bonus the boss gave him a new car as a present.

You just never know.

 

VJ 75

 Yes folks 75 years today is the day the war ended in Japan.

The Japanese were very cruel to the prisoners for sure and the war only ended when the atomic bomb was dropped on 2 cities killing thousands of people.

A tribe of American Navajo Indians has a very unusual language. 

The Japanese were intercepting the radio signals and someone decided to employ them to pass messages along the line.

One Indian would be given the message and he would transmit it to another Navajo who would translate it into English. Each Indian had a "Bodyguard"The purpose of that soldier was to shoot the Indian in case they were overrun. After the war they got no medals or pensions, Mr.Obama did make some overtures to them.. If you are living near Las Vegas load up the truck with food and medical supplies, I hear that the tribe is suffering badly with the Covid.

I read a book once called Knights of Bushido by Lord Russell of Liverpool (Its on Amazon)

It talks about the absolute horrors of the Japanese prisoner of was camps

So I wrote a book "The steering wheel university" by Paul Malone.

Full of stories about people I met.

Here is a story with a strange and wonderful twist from the book.

I tried to get the chapter, but it is encoded.

Sorry about this, I am afraid you will have to buy it as my manuscript has been encrypted and I can't copy it.

I will tell you a bit of the story.

I was securing a garage door for this tall Londoner and I asked him what he did for a living.

He asked me to guess, after a while he told me this wonderful tale about how he had been held in a prisoner of war in a camp by the Japanese, the suffering and savagery. He was around 6 ft tall when I met him and he told me that he was only 4 or 5 st weight when he was rescued.

One man who was a medical doctor told him that he had to forgive the Japanese soldiers, if he could do that his body could recover.

Oh go on get the book, its a great story!

He was a really lucky guy.

John Hume RIP

A true giant of a man was buried yesterday.

John Hume politician and peace maker was laid to rest.

John was the kingpin of the Good Friday agreement which silenced the bombs and guns in Northern Ireland.

He was awarded the Nobel peace prize for his efforts.

Over the last few years he suffered from altzheimers disease which is an awful thief of peoples personality.

The world is a much better place for him having been here.

God bless you John

John can be seen in some footage screaming at the soldiers to stop shooting

they are unarmed.

There was a whitewash enquirey but no one was punished from the army

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CquBS2hnLNI" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0izN111lXUg" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Dublin winner! Euromillions €49.5 million

Wow what a prize.
But money causes misery... Its true.
Too little and too much.
A friend of mine won around £4.7 million in Punts and his brother rang me up to come to the party.
I really wished him well but I had commitments in the morning.

A few weeks later I met him and his wife on Talbot St, he looked as if he had been beaten up.
I asked him what happened nd he told me that few of his friends had turned up to the party apart from cousins and then around 20 gangsters turned up and drank the pub dry. Then they smashed up the place.

Every day he got 2 sack fulls of begging letters and people calling to the door.

One day a man approached him and said that the was from the IRA and if he did not get €1 million he would kidnap his nephew..(Peter had no kids)
So he went to the Garda who said that they would look after everything, "Who do you think they are?" he asked. They didn't know but how the hell could they protect anyone then.

He went to live in America and kept his head down after around 8 years he came home and lives quietly in Dublin.

The jackpot was €30 one day and I checked the ticket on the app.
"Its a winner"
I checked it twice more and it said it again winner.
I would always say that it should have read, congratulations you have won €5 etc.
But the jackpot was won and I had a winning ticket.

I checked the ticket in the morning again.
No change

This is the winning ticket 
So I got my passport, driving license and and bank details and headed into the Lotto headquarters.

She took my golden ticket and said  "Yes you have won a €3 ticket in the millionaires raffle" 

I was shocked and she told me that it takes until 11 am the next day for the system to calculate your winnings..   I stood there doing my impression of a goldfish.

When I got home she that must be obeyed gave me hell.
"What was your plan? What was going on in your head? "
It took a week to settle down.

Then I met a wonderful man who worked it all out.

Chuck Feeney the man who invented duty free shopping had it all worked out.
I brought him into a press conference and the next day I read about him.

He became a Billionaire and gave it all away (Look for the book the billionaire who wasn't)

Most rich people do not flash the cash, why would you do that?

Anyhoo  God must have a plan, that's why he keeps me poor 
 

Starting to return

So back in February/March I took my taxi off the road.
Then the word came out that you have to remove the green stickers from the front and back windows.
Then I wrote a letter to the insurance company to suspend my insurance.
Later on the word came back that your car would need to have a suitability test before going back to work €40 I believe,strange how they believe that the car would have morphed into something it was not 3 months before.
The world is a weird place for sure.
I was caught talking on my mobile phone and took the slap on the hand, I sent back my crediit card details only to get the form back because I had not put my address on the back of the form.

But they knew it !

So a few years ago the Banking system went bang.
The response of the government was to use credit to shore up the banks.
They even took a few grand from my pension, my own money.

They took it.
"In the national interest" was the mantra.

Billions of Euro was borrowed !

My grandchildren will be paying it back.

Here is a clip which has been doing the rounds of the taxi driver forums.

Have a look.

Am I missing something?

Magic is my hobby but I don't think that even David Copperfield could pull off this stunt.



 

4 th July

Happy 4th of July to all you over in the USA

COVIT 19

Most of us have sailed through this crisis unaffected.
I said most, not all.
There are lots of newspapers available on the internet, I got one called the Epoch Times, it is based in America and it is against the communist party in China, a Chinese friend of mine who says it is very good also pointed out that it goes a bit too far in reporting the TRUTH.
Here is a clip from the business section.
SSP group to lay off 5,000 jobs. Coffee and sandwich shops.
Macys posts $3 billion loss
NPC who have franchises for 1,200 Pizza Huts and 400 Wendys files for bankruptcy
JC Penny went bang
H&M to close 170 stores by end of 2020
Airbus to shed 15,000 jobs

But there is good news for someone
Gileads flu vaxcene which RELIEVES the symptoms will set you back $2,340 a shot.
It won't even cure you, only relieve symptoms.

Face masks on sale for €1 each, cost of manufacture 10c

Near Las Vegas there is an Indian reservation of the Navajoes Indians.
They have been hit very badly by this pandemic.

But for that tribe the war in the Pacific would have turned out very differently
Click here and to add insult to injury after the war they got no medals or pensions,
Mr Obama did go some way to make things right for them.
I read that an Irishman who was working in Las Vegas has been helping them out.
Good man 

History is tough for sure.
I came across an article written by a black woman. It was about her heritage and slavery.
We are talking about masters raping their servants and when they fall pregnant the offspring are ignored.
I know that that happened in all the big houses of the aristocracy all over Europe.
Anyhow here is a link to her here but it does not mention her heritage I found it here. Interesting to say the least. People are not one dimensional, they have many facets and like a diamond ring if you look closer you might see a completely different picture.
On slavery. It is little known that thousands of Irish were enslaved and forced to work in the sugar plantations of the West Indies.

I have been very lucky in my life to have met wonderful people and quite a number assholes in my life.

Have a look for my book The steering wheel university on Amazon

Here is an example of both.
A business man going to the airport and he asked me for a receipt.
Then he snatches it from my hand and runs off even though I am shouting after him.
A policeman was standing by the door and I asked him if I could run after him.
"No! But I will solve the problem for you" and he got on the radio
15 minutes later a red faced protesting entitled businessman was taken back all the way from the check in desk.
"I paid, I paid and I have  a receipt to prove it"
Well that proves nothing I saw you run away and the driver calling after you.
There is a camera in the taxi, would you like to go down to the office and we will put the chip into the computer?
"I have missed my flight now and its all your fault" he shouted at me.
"No sir its your own fault, pay him now and give him a £5 tip for not prosecuting you for theft".

As the businessman went off the garda turned to me,
I said a big thank you and he said you are very very welcome.


Hold the good things in your mind until we meet again.