Just when you thought the government had run out of ridiculous ideas to waste our tax money, along comes education minister Mary Hanafin and the shit-for-brains plan to give books to all newborn babies.  Apparently, the idea is to encourage reading from an early age, thus combatting illiteracy and other reading problems in later life.

Does minister Hanafin realise that newborn children will not, no matter how fucking hard you try to teach them, be able to read until they are, at the very least, 2 years old? Perhaps she thinks these books will survive two years of being torn, scribbled on and chewed so that they may be read by the children at a later stage? Does she not realise that the illiteracy problem lies with the fact that many parents do not (or cannot) read to their children and no amount of free books is going to change this? What kind of retard comes up with these ideas in the first place?

So there we have it, another day, another blatant waste of already sparse resources. More of our money slips down the tubes whilst some well-connected publisher pockets a handy fucking contract. God I love this government.

Not.

Well I’ll be damned, it seems that the FAI have finally got their man. Fucking took them long enough though, the heel-dragging cunts that they are. A proper organisation would have wrapped up this whole saga ages ago. For that matter, a proper organisation would never have hired Stan in the first fucking place. That decision still beggars belief. Eamon Dunphy is quoted in the Star saying “We’ve traded an Escort for a Ferrari”. When I read it I thought to myself “Christ… Dunphy’s being unusually kind to Staunton”. I would have said “We’ve traded the broken wing mirror off a 1985 Toyota Starlet for a Ferrari”, and even that’s being fairly fucking generous in my opinion.

Thankfully now we can put all that shit behind us and look forward to some good times again under our new World-class manager, Giovanni Trapattoni. Of course, I’m assuming that the FAI don’t fuck the deal up… ah shit.

SO… another day, another braindead suggestion by an Irish politician. Senator Donie Cassidy thinks that it’s time we abandoned the whole driving on the left lark and start driving on the right for a change. On the face of it (ie. before the brain kicks in some 3 seconds later) this doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. After all, the only places in the world that still drive on the left (with the exception on Japan) are the old British colonies, and we don’t want to be associated with them anymore do we?

*thinking*

3…

2…

1…

At this point, anyone with even the slightest shred of intelligence will have copped on that Donie Cassidy’s “suggestion” will not only require an enormous re-education program for the existing drivers in Ireland who, incidentally, have enough fucking trouble driving properly as it is, but will also mean the replacement of close to 1 million right-hand-drive vehicles and the re-marking of every junction in the country. Not to mention the fact that some existing junctions would be unworkable if driving on the right and every street sign would have to be moved to the opposite side of the road. Then someone will have to figure out a new one-way system for Dublin City centre, assuming they can even figure out the bollocks of a system that’s currently in place.

Wouldn’t it be fun if someone told Donie that it was an “excellent idea, we’re changing over next monday” and watch in wonder as he drives headlong into a stream of traffic on his way to work, blowing the horn and cursing at the non-compliant road users before ploughing into a articulated lorry at 100km an hour?

Now that would be worth watching. Heh heh heh.

Whilst out on the first (of my many) smoke breaks this morning, I was perusing through this morning’s bulging edition of bullshit, the Indo. Shame on me. Anyway, I happened to come upon (not like that, you dirty-minded tramp) a rather mis-informative ‘article’ on safety at Christmas, brought to us by none other than the Vintner’s Federation of Ireland.

Aside from the usual crap we hear from this shower of cunts, like the ’social isolation’ of old alcoholics that can’t take their car to the pub anymore, one comment from Padraig Cribben (CEO designate of the VFI) damn near stuck me down with it’s stupidity:

“Today, a large percentage of alcohol is consumed in places other than the pub. The pub is the most controlled and safest place to drink.”

Safest place to drink? My hole. He’s obviously never visited the Jobstown Inn…

With 3 recent cocaine-related deaths still dominating the headlines and the heartbreak still fresh in everyone’s minds, I’m completely shocked to see that every media source in the country is being bombarded with calls and messages from people who say they would like to see drugs legalised. Can someone please tell me what the fuck these people are thinking? They wait until they get a nice-sized group of coke heads dropping dead in a short space of time AND THEN say they want drugs to be legalised?! Why did these idiots not voice their opinions two or three weeks ago? No sane government official is going to entertain the notion of an actual, proper debate after this mess, surely? It’s highly unlikely, at best.

So I suspect that we won’t be seeing changes to our drugs laws any time soon, despite the fact that every person in the country capable of cognitive thought knows that these laws don’t work, never have and never will. People are still going to overdose, crash cars, jump from ridiculous heights or kill themselves in some other equally ingenious manner, regardless of whether the drug was bought in backstreet transaction or over the counter in Boots. No amount of wanky laws are going to stop people from being stupid so perhaps the government should outlaw stupidity instead? It’s got an equal chance of success…

Personally, I’m all for the legalisation and regulation of the drugs trade. Whilst I don’t want to fund any criminal activity, I do, from time to time, want to get fucked off my face on substances that our government doesn’t allow. And to be fair, it’s none of their fucking business if I do.

H