What's Need Got To Do With It?

So London is on fire and the reasons can be summarized in one simple question; where’s my share? This is what is pulsing through the head of Wayne and Darren as they and their comrades maraud rabidly down a High Street near you. I need my share, where’s my share? Because Wayne and Darren spend most of their day allowing themselves to be ridiculed by marketing executives in buildings on the other side of the world. You need a 4D, HD ready, surround sound 82” television Wayne; you are not complete without it. What sort of a man are you for fuck’s sake? I’m serious Wayne, you should make this your top priority; the first chance you get I want you to get out there and get your fucken hands on one, OK? Everyone has one. Your life will be transformed. Cheryl Cole has three of them in her walk in wardrobe alone. Frank Lampard has had one fitted to the dashboard of his Lamborghini.

Religion is gone. Bling and celebrity are the new opiate. Instant gratification and entitlement the basis of its practice. I want to be the next big thing, now. I want it all without the pesky work and waiting around. Society is gone. I am the new society. Listen to trade unionists on the radio seek to justify paying teachers extra to the tune of forty seven Euros an hour for yard supervision at eleven and one o’ clock breaks, during the course of their fucken work day. The same trade unionist who hits the airwaves for a day a year to go apeshit over some perfectly reasonable initiative, thereby providing the appropriate amount of conspicuous posturing and representation for his members, then disappears to leafy suburbia to gorge on his bloated salary and allowances. Listen to senators seek to justify claiming six figure annual expenses on multiple homes without being able to point to one worthwhile achievement in a lifetime on Kildare Street. Look at the bankers who orchestrated the biggest heist in history high on the hog up in Premium Level at the Celine Dion concert.

Looting eh? Our hooded friends across the water can point to some tasty role models of their own in this area. It’s not something you just pick up you know, there’s an apprenticeship to be served, observing the old pros. Not bad for a first attempt lads, however you made one fatal error. You got caught on camera. In this business the best work is done behind closed doors.

Did you hear what Wayne said to Darren one summer’s night in London in the early twenty first century? Society is gone. I am the new society.

Police Brutality

The Guard is, at best, an average movie. The fawning of the critics is explained by the presence in the film of that most sacred of sacred Irish cows, Brendan Gleeson. It is unacceptable to criticize Brendan Gleeson. The film received four stars from a few normally reliable journalists. If the producers had managed to shoehorn Miriam O’ Callaghan into the cast somewhere I’m sure that four would have been a five.

Power Cuts

We recently built an extension onto our house and paid the ESB to come and re route the wire coming into the building. Yesterday was the day. The extent of the work was to push a wire through a pre laid twenty five foot long duct and attach it to a pole, screw a new meter onto a prepared panel in a prepared meter box and unscrew the old meter. Those of us who are used to earning a living would rightly estimate that this amounts to a half hour’s work for one lad in a small white van. What arrived were three lads in two trucks that looked like they should be hauling redwoods across Alaska. Despite ours being their first, and probably only, assignment of the day the boys arrived at five to eleven and managed to elongate the task till ten past three. Replicate this carry on across every semi state, every government department, every instrument of the state for every task on every day of every week of every year and you quickly develop a keen understanding of where we're at. Enter the household charge.