Tariffirmation

I woke up today to find that the word “tariff” has replaced terms such as “bill” or “price” or “cost” or “charges”.

These words were crass and vulgar and conjured disagreeable associations with hardship and anxiety in peoples’ minds. Tariff is more gentile, polite and carries no such baggage. Some people I’m sure don’t even know what it means yet.

But they will soon, maybe when they drop into a mobile phone shop to change their monthly plan and are informed that they no longer pay a monthly charge but a monthly tariff. Or when they find themselves at the pay station of a hospital car park after visiting a sick relative and find that they are not required to pay parking charges but a parking tariff.

It won’t seem like any imposition at all to pay a tariff. In fact it will be your pleasure. Until you get used to it, at which point the guys down in marketing will oversee the evolution of a new and uncompromised word for such unavoidable unpleasantness.

Impost maybe, or outlay or how about appraisal? Appraisal is good, sounds vaguely positive. Bad news dressed up as good news. Bingo.

The Difference Is, We're Demented

What has infiltrated the hierarchies of our major supermarket chains? Supervalu' presumably paid good money to an advertising agency to come up with “Real Food, Real People”. Real people as opposed to what? Those foreigners they have in the other shops. It’s a bit of stretch to claim that because someone had to get on board an aeroplane to come here that their claim to being a capable, authentic human being is thereby invalidated. Real food? So let’s be clear on this, it is Supervalu’s contention that its competitors are using fake people to stock shelves with fake food which they are then attempting to sell to an oblivious public.

A serious allegation indeed and one which the folks at Dunnes Stores clearly were not prepared to take lying down. Thus the swift counter attack “The difference is, we’re Irish”. To claim supremacy in such a fashion, a fashion which seeks to end all discussion, to announce dominion over all else can only mean one thing; Aryanism.

And where is the National Consumer Agency, An Bord Bia, the Ombudsman or the Equality Authority while all this subterfuge and deranged diplomacy is taking place? Asleep at the wheel that’s where. Typical.

Pretend food. Cyborgs on checkouts. The Aryan Irish. WTF. We need an Oireachtas Sub Committee at the very minimum.

Goodbye England (Covered In Snow)

Laura Marling on Later with Jools Holland last week.

I'll Take you Home Again Gunther

My eldest brought home the school photos recently and inside the package was a form outlining the procedure for selecting the type and quantity of prints, the cost involved and instructions for collection. The form was signed off “Thank You, The Photographer”. Where does he think he is, in a Krzysztof Kieslowski movie? His wife is The Bookkeeper and his best friend is a performance artist called The Pheasant. He lies awake every night wistfully recalling the day he was smuggled to the American side with a dozen other dissidents strapped to the chassis of an armored personnel carrier. Life in the rural midlands has been nothing but a constant source of disappointment to him since. These parents, the same dull, predictable pose they want to order every year. Nobody ever wants their kids dressed in a Stasi uniform holding replica AK47s against the backdrop of a crumbling East Berlin. Fucking Irish, cultural derelicts. Top spuds mind.

It Says Here. 7 Chinese Brothers. New Slang.

Billy Bragg live 1985. When you wake up to the fact that your paper is Tory just remember there are two sides to every story.

REM 1984. Nothing to do with a general election across the Irish Sea.

The Shins. Life is dangerously fast. Thank God I'm listening to the right music.

So Not The Point

It has been pointed out by an acquaintance of mine that my previous post contains factual errors, errors which have led him to believe that I am guilty of conducting inadequate research. The error in question is the current title of Mary Hanafin. Apparently the description of her job should read Minister for Culture and Sport and not Minister for Arts, Culture and Tourism.

What we have here is a classic case of the internationally recognized phenomenon known as I say potAto and you say potaahto. For the wording of her job title is insignificant. She knows as little about sport as she does about the arts, or culture as it concerns people outside Leinster House. She knows nothing of the body of work of Gram Parsons or Andy Irvine in the same way that she knows nothing of who trained Dawn Run or who scored the goal that got us to the 1994 World Cup Finals or what club Henry Sheflin represents.

She might as well be called Minister for High Pressure Hydraulic Piston Pumps, a department which I gather was a hair's breadth away from being created in the recent reshuffle until someone reminded Cowen that you should never act the bollix with hydraulics.

Ah well. Luckily we're still going forward.