Education, schmeducation

Now that the fuss about the auld ones' medical cards has been shoved back under the stone from which it slithered, I'm glad to see that Education minister Batt (what kind of a name is that?) O'Keefe's attempt to weasel through a barrage of education cuts has finally crept onto the radar of the great Irish public .

The proposed cuts affect the primary and post-primary sectors increasing class size and removing payments for covering teacher absences. They also limit important supports for disadvantaged groups such as ethnic minorities, travellers and special needs pupils.


Bogman Batt, himself a former UCC man and college lecturer, defended the cutbacks on the grounds that unless they were implemented 'we will have no economy in two years time'.

Clearly in his UCC days he was off playing bogball instead of attending his economics classes. Like nature, economies tend to abhor a vacuum: fuck one up and another just magically appears in its place. Unless you count the time back in the day that Charley H and his mates tried to re-locate the Irish economy to the Cayman Islands, economies don't just slip off one night on the boat to England.

This of course is more than can be said for the young people who will be worst affected by the Batty-man's penny-pinching, I expect. Lacking the basic educational support to obtain employment in a high skills, high tech economy, they'll be off to Holyhead in their droves in a few years time.

And what saddens me most is the thought that that is precisely what the Government wants.

A picture worth at least 1000 words

Chelsea 0 Liverpool 1
26th October 2008

Be sure your shins will find you out

The news that Bertie Ahern has broken his leg comes as no surprise to this writer. It was almost inevitable that slipping the net the way he did would have consequences of one sort or another.

We've all seen The Sopranos. If you accept unsolicited dig-outs from businessmen who go informally by names like Fat Tony, Big Patrick and Earless Joe or put yourself in hock to the nuns and then renege on the vigorish just because you've been forced into early retirement and can't make the payments on your pension, you have to expect some kind of sanctions, now don't you? After all they can't repossess a house he never owned in the first place or drag the wee bollix through the small claims court for failing to live up to expectations.

Alternatively, I wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of Brian 'biffo' Cowan either. There's a man with a motive after the mess he was left to sort out. A wee camán-assisted tib and fib re-alignment would be small beer to that lad I'm after thinking.

As for the 'fell down the stairs' story that FF sources are pushing, sure haven't we all heard that one before? It rings about as true as the old 'walked into a door' explanation for a black eye.
If we hear sometime soon of a former Taoiseach turning up at low tide on the Liffey wearing a pair of concrete wellies with a couple of house bricks in his pockets, then it probably won't be Albert Reynolds is all I'm prepared to say.


I nicked today's picture from green ink Liam-Bob says check him/her out

Homecoming

Ouch! Fuck me! What bollix put that there? Me bleeding shins. Jesus, would someone put the light on before I banjax meself altogether!

Click.

Oh for chrissakes would you ever turn it off again. The state of this fucking place. You could choke a camel on the dust in here and would someone ever open a window. The smell of this kip is enough to gag a tramp.

Where did all those empty bottles come from? I don't drink Thunderbird and that mattress wasn't there last time I looked. Please God those stains aren't what I think they are...

I don't know, you turn your back for a moment and dereliction sets in. I'm lucky this blog hasn't been squatted by a posse of new age travellers with their fecking digeridoos, dogs on a string, German army surplus dreadlocks and the entire Levellers back catalogue. Maybe it has. Which would explain the pong of patchouli oil coming from that tattered sleeping bag in the corner.

Still and all, a quick spin around with the Dyson, a dash of Pledge and a bucket of carbolic should see things right....

Anyway, I know I've promised before, but this time I mean it. This blog is going to be kept up to date, on the ball, and up to snuff if it kills me. Just watch this space (but don't hold your breath unless you particularly see puce as your colour).

So just to be going on with, I found this old hobo asleep in the far corner of the blog. His name is Seasick Steve and he's not a bad old stick for a man who plays a guitar with 3 strings. We split a quart of T-bird over a graveyard stew and he told me he's playing the National Stadium in Dublin on the 29th if he can't jump the blind on a dice train out town before then.



As me new mate Seasick would say' Y'all have a nice time and come back this way soon, now'


The photograph above was nicked and adapted from Matt's photostream on Flickr The man knows how to point a camera. Check him out.