THE SNOBS

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THE SNOBS

A couple of little items about my home city of Cork caught my eye this morning.

As a boy, my daily journey to school took me into the city centre and even then when I knew little of alcohol, there seemed to pubs everywhere. Today I learn that indeed, Cork had the most bars per capita in the country but has also seen the biggest drop in the number of them with 25% fewer pubs now than in 2005. To put that in perspective, the number of bars in Dublin has remained the same during the period.

Well, I can explain this. On the quayside running from the main bus station to Patrick’s Bridge, there used to be six bars in total. That whole block was flattened years ago for a shopping centre and all six bars disappeared in a single year. Each of these pubs were tiny, as in they could possibly accommodate ten drinkers before becoming full. Three of them at the time were side by side and two of them were early opening bars, (7.30am). Cork pubs have always been small cosy places whereas Dublin pubs by comparison always looked like huge empty converted factories. They were barn sized with massive numbers in attendance daily.

Back in the seventies and eighties, thousands of people around the country moonlighted as barmen, (bar people), and the money was paid under the table. Many students were able to afford to live in Dublin bedsits, working three to four nights a week for cash while attending full time lectures during the day. The pubs were a cash business, (as were the bedsits), making all of this possible and official Ireland turned a blind eye because it could never have stepped into the breech to come up with the necessary money instead. Today though, such under the counter money is impossible and with the ban on bedsits, the crazy rental rates and high taxation, it is a wonder anyone of our youths can afford a third level education.

Another headline this morning announces, “Cork City centre quayside branded ‘TentsVille’ as more homeless pitch tents.” Now I need to explain that Cork is a very class conscious city and our version of the upper class speak with a very plummy, (and amusing) accent not heard anywhere else in the country. The wealthy in Cork have great pride in the city they consider their own, (as in it belongs to them), and several years back in recognition of the number of bridges spanning both channels of the River Lee, they christened Cork the, “Vienna of the North.” Nothing could be further from the truth of course but it gives you a flavour of how far up their own arses these people are. So no surprise then that in response to Tentsville, Fine Gael councillor and former Lord Mayor Des Cahill said the makeshift encampment presents a “poor image of the city”. He called for the tents to be classed as litter and torn down.

Tentsville, such as it is, is purely a reaction by the homeless themselves attempting to put some class of a roof over their heads. The same city council ceased building social housing in 2008 and with the growing population since then and the influx of Poles Nigerians and assorted immigrants, something had to give. It isn’t good enough to sit on your pompous ass in the sponsored warmth of City Hall and call the shelters these people are forced to erect as just litter and the homeless themselves an eyesore. Here’s a little about the snooty councillor. The lad looks well-heeled and lives in the prosperous suburb of Ballintemple. One doubts that any of his clan will know homelessness.

So if the lad Des gets his way then the tents will be torn down, the homeless will disperse and in a couple of days time some other outraged middle class group will call on the authorities to move them from their neighbourhood where they will recently have resettled. It is akin to being hunted and persecuted for the crime of poverty.

I often wonder would these well off people like to see starvation on the streets? Would they disdainfully step over the dead bodies on their way to their secure jobs and elevated place in society? Perhaps they’d want those dead bodies classified as ‘litter’ and demand they be swept up. They are the same voices who destroyed the pub trade and got rid of those black economy jobs that so helped the poor but ambitious to climb the ladder.

This country is changing drastically and not for the better either.

A POST-TRUTH PREDICTION

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Today, Tuesday the 4th of September 2018, I will make a prediction. Within the coming days there will be yet another chemical attack in Syria and the Government of Assad will instantly be blamed for it by the so-called ‘International Community.’

I predict this because the Syrian army with the aid of Iranian land forces and the Russian Air Force in support, are readying to drive the last of ISIS and Al Qaeda out of the country. Both the US and some European Governments have been warning Assad all last week that any use of chemical weapons by him will be met with force by them. But the simple truth of the matter is that Assad has no need to use chemical weapons to win this last battle. In fact, under UN supervision, all of Syria’s chemical weapons were destroyed several years ago and officially they don’t even have any.

The previous two incidents where chemical weapons had been alleged to have been used in Syria were never proven to have been utilised by Assad’s army. In both cases they were accusations without the necessary hard evidence. But the western media repeated the accusations often enough until ordinary people believed they must be true. In both cases in the past, it would have been no benefit for the Syrians to use chemical weapons, (that they didn’t have at the time). The opposite is the case. They knew that if they could use such weapons they would invite unwanted interference from the US with everything that entails. On top of that, their use of conventional weapons was, and is, having the required effect anyway.

So the reality today is, that if the US proxies in Syria, (both ISIS & Al Qaeda), are not ordered to set off some chemical ordinance in Syria before the end of the week, then their last bastion of terror in that country will be overrun by forces of the elected Government and the US plans to oust Assad will come to come to an ignominious end. The public in America will view it as a defeat and that is what is electrifying President Tramp today.

According to the Journal this morning, “The US President has warned Syria against launching an attack on the country’s last rebel/islamist terrorist stronghold.” Laughingly he said that, “The offensive could trigger a “human tragedy”. Ah! How do I put this? If you want to see real human tragedy, look no further than Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Lebanon and the plight of the Palestinians, where each of these human tragedies were instigated by the United States in recent years wither directly or by proxy. Indeed there is mounting evidence that the CIA started the whole Syrian war as a proxy war using Saudi money and Israeli intelligence and if so, the tears they are shedding about the coming battle are crocodile tears.

Shortly after 911, General Wesley Clark was shown a top secret document in the Pentagon. In it he learned that the US planned to ‘take out’ seven countries in five years, Syria included. So as early as 2001, the military strategists of the US were making plans to destroy Syria by covert means and that is why we are where we are today. What the yanks did not plan for was the Russian and Iranian support for Assad. Without them, Assad would be hanging by the neck in Damascus long before now.

So mark my words lads. Either Tramp will leave it alone and pull out his troops as he said he’d do, or some poor unfortunate Syrians will be murdered by chemical weapons this week in that war torn land. If so, it will be the opening gambit of the next Global war.

ONE OR ZERO, ON OR OFF!

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In any computing program/application you use on your PC, Mac, Pad or smart phone, what you are looking at on screen is called the front end. Behind that lies the engine made up of ones and zeros. As a typical HR system is a set of interlinked records and histories, they are mostly built on an existing database module and then customized for individual use and differentiation from competitors.

So you might describe the average HR system, for example, as follows. “Workforce Ready by Kronos is a human resources (HR) platform that combines workforce management with human capital management (HCM) capabilities and is suitable for businesses of all sizes. Kronos Workforce Ready is a single cloud-based solution that incorporates recruiting, onboarding, performance management, compensation planning, time and attendance, scheduling, absence management, payroll and more.

Workforce Ready features a single employee record shared across all its applications. All employee data is maintained in a single database, with a single user interface to pull reports and launch workflows across the organization. Data is updated in real time, so managers can make decisions based on the latest, most accurate information. A mobile application is also available.”

There is nothing too complicated in any of that. The supplier of the program/s sets it up for the customer as a blank set of records and it is up to the HR department of that customer to learn to use the software and then go live with it by entering the information daily. There may be hiccups in the first couple of weeks but then it should run smoothly and without hitches, (saving the electricity goes off). Most such HR packages come with a maintenance contract that includes a number to call if there is a problem.

In purely software terms then, it’s a no-brainer. There isn’t any complex multi-media stuff like video, animation, graphics, sound or music to consider, all huge files by nature. Instead, there is a boring text based database to update and query. How then can the, “The National College of Art and Design (NCAD),” have to abandon a HR software system on which it spent €138,000 over three years? Apparently, it was because management failed to properly implement it. “NCAD management did not manage the project competently and consequently management never fully implemented the project,” a statement on internal financial controls states.

In private enterprise, that management would be fired, full stop. They’d be out of a job with little in the line of a decent reference and looking for the dole. There is no way in hell that such incompetence could have any other result. But the NCAD is not private enterprise. The inner-city Dublin college in question, which has around 1,000 full-time and 600 evening students, received €6.6m of its €18m income in 2016 from State grants, as well as around €5m in tuition fees paid from public funds. So €11.6m out of a total €18m comes from the taxpayer and presumably the rest comes from the students.

And that really is the end of the story folks. Nobody from management will lose their job, nobody will be busted down a couple of grades, nobody will get a final warning and in fact, it is more likely that normal promotions will continue as if €138k of public money has not needlessly been pissed down the toilet because lazy fuckers couldn’t be bothered doing their permanent and pensionable jobs.

There are thousands of such examples each year in this country where waste and stupidity run in parallel to homelessness and poverty and n’ere the twain shall meet. The poor will be punished and the lazy incompetents promoted.

TITBITS

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There’s a fascinating site online that I kind of tripped and fell into without meaning to. I’m glad I did though because they have some fantastic European map comparisons on display and like it or not, I’m going to share with you some of the more surprising facts I found there. Of course, with this writer being at home in Ireland, these observations are from the perspective of this wet and windy outpost.

So to kick off then, there are the highest temperatures ever recorded by country. Well, in Ireland, the highest temperature ever recorded was 33.3℃ whereas the UK record is 38.5℃. The Scandinavians are even hotter than us Irish with Norway, (35.6℃), Sweden, (38℃), Finland, (37.2℃) and little Denmark, (36.4℃). In fact, aside from Iceland, (30.5℃), we Irish have the lowest highest recorded temperature in all of Europe. Best at something at last!

As my medium of communication is the internet, I wondered how we Paddies did in the connection-speeds stakes. Measured in average speed of internet connection, (megabits per second), the UK is pretty high at 11.6. The Scandies of course roar along at 14.1 (Norway), 15.8 (Sweden) and 13.7 (Finland). Germany is 10.2, France 7.5, Spain 8.9, Italy 6.1 and wealthy Switzerland 14.9. But it’s the ‘Thick Micks’ who again come out best with 17.4 megabits per second. Who’d have thought we, of all people, would have the fastest connection to the net in the whole of Europe, maybe even the World?

Feeling on a bit of a role, I turned next to the booze naturally. I reckoned in terms of beer consumption in litres per year per capita we had a certain gold medal in the bag. I reckoned without the Austrians at 108, the Germans at 106, the Estonians at 102 and the Poles at 99, the pissheads! But we did come in a credible fifth though at 98 litres per year per capita. Mind you, the Brits were a miserable 69 and I’m not referring to anything of a sexual nature here. Of course, the French can’t hold their beer, we all know that. Only 30 litres per year per capita in Froggie-land but there’s a good reason for that in their case.

That reason is of course, the ‘vino-collapso’. The sexy French like their little tipple of wine, 53 litres of it per capita per year to be precise. Only the Portuguese pop the cork more often at 55 litres. Paddy likes a respectable 24 litres of it but the superior sophistication of the Brits means an even more soused 30 litres across the pond. Strangely, the Spanish are at a quite abstemious 17 litres, the Italians a mere 34 litres and the Germans even less than the British at 25 litres and they all produce the stuff. Incidentally, the average wine bottle holds 750ml so our Irish 24 litres per year per capita translates into 32 bottles per person per annum. Let’s see now, there’s four of us at home and I’m the only one who likes wine. So if I have mine and theirs, that’s 128 bottles a year for me, or a bottle every two or three days. Yup! That’s about right then!

There’s hardly a week goes by right now that we don’t hear of the immigrant problem in Europe. Sweden is certainly having that problem with 16.9% of the population there currently having been born elsewhere. Oddly enough, the Med countries of Spain, (12.4%), Italy (9.5%), and Greece, (11.2%) are quite low given, we are told, they are where the recent immigrant population is landing first. It’s clear the Poles want nothing to do with immigrants regardless of where they come from because their influx stands at a mere 1.6%. Even Russia is higher at 8.2%. The UK has traditionally been in the crosshairs of Johnny-foreigner looking for a place to hang his hat so they have a foreigner percentage of 13.4%, higher than France at 12%. But I was stunned to see little Ireland with the immigrant proportion of our population standing at 15.8%. Where are they all and what possessed them to come here FFS? Odd to report as well that we don’t seem to have any problems with the immigrants who do come here. Maybe they’re just enjoying the craic?

But maybe it is something more sinister than that. Ireland has long been plagued by emigration so when you look at the map of the number of people born in a given country but currently living abroad, measured as a percentage of the overall population, we Irish are the third highest at 18.8% in Europe, (behind Portugal at 22.3% & Lithuania at 18.9%). To put our 18.8% in perspective, our closest neighbour and friend, the UK, stands at 7.6%. Remember the PIGS countries from not too long ago? We were broke and the EU was thinking of introducing a lesser euro currency for us. Those countries in terms of emigration as a result were Portugal (22.3%) Ireland as mentioned (18.8%) Greece (8%) and Spain (2.7%). Must be things weren’t so bad in some non-Irish PIGS countries because they don’t seem to have been forced to seek work elsewhere. Incidentally, the French are the most reluctant to emigrate, at 3.3%.

Speaking of work, I was interested to see the average hours worked per worker including part-time workers. It seems the Greeks work the longest at 49 hours a week, (on average) followed by the Poles and Latvians at 37 hours. Again Paddy was up there with the Estonians and Lithuanians at 36 hours a week. The lazy Frogs can only manage a 28-hour week while the industrious Krauts are only industrious for 26 hours a week. Even the Italians and Spanish are at work for 33 hours in a given week. The Brits kick in at an acceptable 32 hour-week, the same as the Finns and Slovenians actually.

I have noted in these pages in the past that Ireland has become obsessively Dublin-centric. As if to dismiss this observation of mine, a friend from Dublin told me it was the same with London and the UK, meaning I suppose that if it is good enough for the Brits then it’s good enough for us. But then I look at the map of the percentage of the total population, (by Country), living in the metropolitan area of its Capital and London has 21% while Dublin holds a staggering 40% of the Irish population. I’ll rattle off a few others too for comparison, Paris 19%, Madrid 14%, Berlin 5%, Rome 7%, Warsaw 8%, Brussels 19%, Amsterdam 14% Stockholm 16%, Copenhagen 36% and Athens 35%, to name but a few. It would seem that we Paddies have seriously fucked it up in the smooth population distribution stakes at home.

So what did we learn from our maps about Ireland comparatively speaking? Well, most of us live in Dublin, we work damned hard and when we can’t find work, we fuck off somewhere else to get it. While we’re away, foreign laddies take our place here and don’t stick out too much. We drink a shed-load of beer and plenty of wine with it, we’re flyers on the interweb and it never gets too hot here.

Sounds like us alright! But do have a sconce at the ‘Jacub Marian” site yourself, you’ll like it.