by Grainne

Going from an ancient temple to a modern day one was the rather surreal experience shared by Aine and myself on a recent day out.

The day was fine and we were free to enjoy an outing.  I suggested the Battle of the Boyne site in Co. Meath because I’d never been and was curious.  Neither of us had ever been to Ikea either, so it was agreed we’d stop by on the way home to browse in the country’s biggest repository of home furnishings.

                                      What we hadn’t realized (ok our geography was never great!) was that Newgrange is as near to the Boyne battlesite as it is.  So we felt duty bound, when in such close proximity, to pay it a visit, our school tours of bygone years never having taken us there and our parents or relatives obviously never having felt the need to.

That’s how it came to be that on a sunny June day we made like the American tourists and visited Newgrange.   Aine and I have, together and separately, visited a large number of attractions, places of historical and cultural importance across the world, but we’d never been to this special place.  For once, the American’s use of the word ‘awesome’ wasn’t hyperbole, it was fitting.  It is so impressive.

I’d known a bit about it before visiting, gleaned mainly from television news reports of people I’d considered nutters getting up out of their beds at ungodly hours to trek to the site by dawn in the depths of winter.  Most didn’t even get to be inside the chamber when the sun rose to illuminate it.  Oftentimes those that were lucky enough to be inside (picked in a lottery) were unlucky with the weather as the sun was obscured by cloud.

Nothing compared me though for the feeling of being inside the chamber, witnessing firsthand the interior design of something that is believed to have been constructed over 5,000 years ago.  Something built with such precision, such ingenuity and such dedication to purpose.  And seeing for myself the megalithic art inscribed on the ancient stones in situ.   If ever there’s a place to make a person feel conscious of their insignificance in their part  in the cosmos, it is here.

We made it only to Newgrange that day but have resolved to return and visit the other mounds on the site, Knowth and Dowth.

Awestruck as we were, our inner philistine won out when we were leaving and we decided to press on and fit a visit to the iconic and ultra modern home furnishings emporium on the way home.  We could have done with a guided tour here too, and maybe even a tour bus to get us from one vast display area to another.  The array of merchandise is an assault on the senses, there’s so much to see and take in.  We oohed and aaaahed our way around the various set piece displays, marveling at the designs and the prices.

“Come see this” Aine repeatedly called to me, much like she’d done inside the chamber at Newgrange.  Except that, instead of wanting me not to miss a fascinating example of ancient art, she now wanted me to marvel over another yet another ingenious example of contemporary Swedish design.

We bought little really, somehow it seemed sacrilegious to overly indulge in this citadel of consumerism after being privy to the sacredness of Newgrange earlier.  Anyway it was nearing the store’s closing time.   As with Newgrange, we vowed to return.  Just not on the same day again.

by Aine

I was interested to read in last Sunday’s Independent a report by John Drennan on remarks made by new Fine Gael TD Michelle Mulherin about ‘deadbeat dads’.            

Ms. Mulherin stressed that she was speaking in a personal capacity.  She wants to see military service introduced for all young men.

She also warned against “a culture of entitlement” which meant that people who were unemployed expected to have the same lifestyle as those who have work.

It’s not often I’m in agreement with a member of the Government but she’s a breath of fresh air. A rare thing, a politician who’s not afraid to step on a few toes, not afraid of being politically incorrect, not afraid of telling it as she sees it.

We need more people like her in the Dail. The report went on to state that she’s not the only FG backbencher openly challenging social welfare policy and seeking reform.

I really warmed to Ms Mulherin when I read that she attacked the social welfare system that supports ‘deadbeat Dads’ who father children and then expect the welfare system to support them. Hear hear I say. The time has finally come, with the country on its knees financially and the threat of increased taxes, water charges, etc. burdening the already hard pressed tax-paying, ordinary citizen.

It’s time to turn the spotlight on to the social welfare system.

Apparently a number of TDs expressed concern about the rise of ‘serial dads’ who father large numbers of children and then, as one backbencher put it “abandon them to a social welfare system that is far too quick to jump in and allow individuals to abdicate their responsibilities.” At last some sense being spoken. It is not morally responsible to father numerous children with numerous partners and then walk away and expect the State to pick up the tab.  Responsibility-shy fathers need a wake up call and these FG backbenchers could be instrumental in finally bringing change to this outdated system.

At a recent FG meeting a proposed solution to the issue of errant fathers was to limit payments to single mothers to two children, a proposal that was apparently warmly received. The newspaper report also stated that this new, tough approach to social welfare entitlements is gaining ground within Fine Gael.  Not before time I say.

Ms.  Mulherin went on to say that people who find themselves newly unemployed were feeling “lost and abused” when they enter the social welfare system for the first time.

I personally know several people who have lost their jobs in the past 12 months (including Grainne) and are finding trying to engage with Social Welfare to be a nightmare of misinformation, unnecessary red tape, delays and rudeness causing them needless stress and anxiety. No surprise to read recently there was a substantial increase in complaints to the Ombudsman about it.  These are people who’ve been gainfully employed but now find themselves, through no fault of their own, entering the welfare system for the first time and all at sea.  Unlike those who know the welfare system inside out, their every entitlement sought and granted. It’s a way of life for some people – a career choice if you like – and they have it down to a fine art.

So the welfare system is long overdue for a major overhaul and maybe, just maybe, Ms Mulherin will lead the way.

I’ll wait and watch and hope.

by Grainne

A brilliant idea occurred to me one day this week as I was trying to see through windshield wipers that were frantically clearing hailstones from my line of vision as I drove on the M50.  Not an original idea, I’ll grant you, but no need to reinvent the wheel, eh?

My idea, which has huge job creation potential (always excites a bit of interest to mention that these days before we lapse back into an impotent stupor), has another major advantage.  It’d be good for tourism.  And tourism is the buzzword of the moment.  Anything remotely tourist-friendly makes us all very excitable.  My idea would also seriously enhance the health, wellbeing and general good humour of the rest of the population.  Not that anyone gives a fig about us natives.    

Now I don’t just throw my idea out there willy nilly, without thought or consideration.  I’ve researched it.  Well that’s to say I Googled a couple of statistics.  And it’s doable.  So, my grand idea is: build a roof over this beleaguered country!   Protect us from the schizophrenic elements that in the past few weeks have pummeled us with gale force winds, lashing rain, hail, sleet, frost in some places at night and, just to confuse us and completely bamboozle the tourists, some balmy days too.

Not just any roof either, but a retractable one like they have on some football stadiums only on a bigger scale.  The scale being 486 kilometres long by 280 kilometres wide according to the aforementioned, less than exhaustive research.

Think of all the jobs!  It’d take thousands to build it!  Not just short term jobs either.  Imagine just how long a project of that size could run overdue its completion date.  (We won’t mention how much it’d likely run over budget.  Way too scary.)  Then, when it’s built, we’d get oodles of publicity and that species so beloved and revered here, the Overseas Tourist, would come in their hundreds of thousands.   There’d be dancing in the streets.  Drinking even.  Drinking especially as people wouldn’t have to get wet as they imbibe.  On fine, sunny days we’d roll the roof back and everyone, tourist and native alike, could bask in the warmth.    Dark clouds looming?  No problem, hit that auld computer button there and whirr whirr, back over it’d go.  Dry and wind free again.

Yes, there’s the small matter of water collection with the natural process being interfered with by the presence of this giant roof.  But seeing as how big Phil Hogan wants to tax us all for water usage anyway, wouldn’t we be better off with less?  Or, if it becomes a real problem, maybe we could just devise a means of collecting the condensation that gathers on our giant roof and disbursing that for use throughout the land instead.  More jobs could be created handling that end of things.  This just gets better and better.

There’s only one drawback as I see it.  Protected from the ravages of the weather we’d lose a vital topic of conversation, not to mention our main whinge.  Worth it though.

By Aine

I’ve been doing a lot of driving recently and have noticed more and more that men who drive with trailers attached to their vehicles are inordinately proud of themselves.

Having a hitch attached to their car/jeep/van/ seems to be a badge of honour. They can be pulling a trailer full of sheep, cattle, firewood, turf, furniture, cement mixers, ladders, it doesn’t matter really, once they’re pulling something, anything, they’re happy.

If you don’t believe me watch the man’s expression next time you meet him on the road, see the little smile that’s says “I’m a REAL man – I’m pulling a trailer.”  So proud of himself.

They like to hog the white line with their trailers, lest you should be so impertinent as to try to pass them, they’re very important people after all, they’re pulling a trailer!

They seldom check their rear view mirror to see the volume of traffic built up behind them because they don’t care, they own the road now.  They have a trailer, remember?       

Have you ever seen a man reversing with a trailer attached? Tongue out; red-faced, they manoeuvre their precious cargo into the farmyard or yard with the skill of a pilot easing in a Boeing 757 to a stand at Dublin airportSometimes these thrillseekers dispense with registration plates, or the trailer with have a completely different registration to the vehicle that’s towing it. They like to keep us guessing. Sometimes they throw caution to the wind and bump along the roads at dusk with nary a light or even reflector on their beloved trailers.

I reckon some men are so inordinately proud of their trailers they view them as an extension of their penises.

The bigger the trailer the wider the grin and the prouder the head behind the wheel.

The bank holiday weekend is gearing up so look out for trailer man on the roads of Ireland.

Tractors pulling trailers laden with turf, Nissan Land Cruisers pulling building materials, Landrover Discoverys pulling horse-boxes, Northern Ireland registered vans pulling trailers with racing cars heading to Mondello.

Roads full of men smiling contentedly to themselves as they bounce past in a hurry to transport their important cargo from Ato B  Give ‘em space.

Respect trailer man!

By Grainne

Oooh the Presidential race is hotting up.  Not to mention getting down and dirty.  Senator David Norris, who goes about his business normally impervious to the slings and arrows of daily fortune thanks to his fairly exalted social status, has been finding out that machiavellian machinations abound when one sets one’s cap at high office.

More aspiring candidates are coming forward as the weeks roll by.  What I want to suggest though is a change in how we actually choose a president.  What about, instead of having to go to polling stations to make our scratch on ballot papers, we use that increasingly popular format of having a television show and then phoning a number to cast our votes a la the X Factor or even the All Ireland Talent Show?   Indeed what is it but a talent competition of sorts?    

RTE could build a whole show, nay series of shows around it, introducing us to the various candidates, taping segments with them in their homes, around their locality, at their place of work before bringing them live onto the stage to make their case for the big gig in, say, a minute.  Maybe they could be inveigled to do a turn for added viewer entertainment, a rince beag perhaps or a short sceal or a bar or two of a song.  They’d be featured in various different modes of dress, ‘meet the important visitors’ outfits, formal evening wear, inspecting the troops/All Ireland hurling and football team rigouts and their sartorial savvy factored into their overall appeal.  There’d be snazzy lighting effects and loud music to add razzmatazz.  A panel of judges to indulge in a little hubris before doling out their marks and giving us a chance to show them.

Any such televised spectacle would, of course, have to feature Grainne Seoige, Miriam O’ Callaghan and Mary Kennedy.  Only because little gets broadcast in this country without them.  Grainne would declare with a flourish “and now viewers it’s over to you, the viewing public, to decide.  Don’t forget to ask the bill payers permission to call.”   And our fingers would be hovering over our phones ready to dial or text in our thousands.  At a cost of around a euro a go.  Multiple entries encouraged.  Big spikes in the numbers of calls received from the candidates native counties. The money generated could go towards the entertainment budget for the new President.

In these cash-strapped times, we’d save a fortune on polling station and count centre staff (usually double jobbing county council workers) and sure it’d be far more entertaining than having to trot down to the local national school to do the business.  We need some light relief heaven knows.

by Grainne

As someone who’s worked in one capacity or another since I was 14, being rendered unemployed is a whole new and unwelcome phenomenon for me.    Being without a job means living with gnawing anxiety about finances and uncertainty about the future.  It’s esteem ravaging, confidence shattering and soul destroying.  

With fulltime work comes order and routine, without it days are unstructured and can be aimless, with endless time to fret.

Last week it was reported that the OECD has called for cuts to unemployment benefit and assistance here to act as an incentive to get back to work.  Brid O’ Brien, Policy Officer with the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed, hit back at the threat of such sanctions saying people were desperate to find work.  She questioned the viability of job activation measures when there are no jobs to go to.

Amen to that.  Leaving aside the fundamental issues of self esteem and self worth, I, for one, cannot fathom how €188 a week Jobseekers payment can be considered  a disincentive to trying to secure another position that would pay me at least €30k per annum.

Maybe a greater incentive would be to pay a token sum to unemployed people for every job they apply for to cover the cost of the often futile process.  Cover the cost of sending endless CVs, making follow-up phone calls, travelling to interviews for jobs there’s little prospect of actually landing given that there’s hundreds in for anything advertised.

Rather it seems there is an insidious campaign afoot to malign jobless people as workshy, draining the public purse.  Such an ‘attack as a means of defence’ reaction is nothing new of course.  While there may be some among the long term unemployed who have a case to answer, people who didn’t work at the height of the boom while we were opening the floodgates to thousands of foreign workers to fill jobs, anyone who lost their job in the past two years is an unfortunate victim of circumstances; mismanagement of our economy, woeful decisions made and lack of political leadership.

If you don’t believe me ask anyone who’s lost their job in the past 24 months and has done the rounds of institutions they owe money to be it, mortgages, personal loans, credit card loans, even utility bills.

My nephew, a qualified tradesman, has a record of having worked consistently since he finished his apprenticeship.  He’s been out of work but actively seeking a new job for the past year.  A letter from the Department of Social  Protection landed in his house this week telling him that, in accordance with the National Employment Action Plan, he was to attend for interview at his local FAS office on a prescribed day  to “discuss the range of options available”  to him.   Failure to attend, he was warned, would result in his Jobseekers payment being “reviewed” and that may result in his payment being stopped.  To continue to receive Jobseekers, he was advised, he must be available for fulltime work and making “real efforts to find suitable work.”   He was outraged, insulted, frustrated.   He’d been to that same FAS office a number of times in the past year and been told there weren’t any courses available.  Nor did they offer any other kind of support.  Now the Department was saying, he’d be offered support “to include guidance on how to find work” as well as advice on the preparation of CVs and access to free telephones and newspapers “where available.” He has a perfectly good CV, done up professionally and circulated to more than 40 prospective employers at this stage.  He believes that his work experience and ability counts for more than being coached to give a suitably glib answer to the inane question “where do you see yourself in five years time?”   He is also more than willing to work outside his trade, take any job, any hours.

What he’s unwilling to do is spend a day on a wasted exercise to satisfy a State agency’s requirement to fill a box to demonstrate that they are indeed actively engaged in assisting unemployed people.

It’s not the first time I’ve heard of unemployed people being asked to do stupid things.  I know of two that were obliged to satisfy social welfare requirements by proving they had applied for jobs by getting written confirmation from the places they’d unsuccessfully  applied to.  Both had difficulty doing so as they included small shops who weren’t inclined to go to the trouble of doing out letters for Social Welfare.  Isn’t it unduly onerous of the Department to expect small employers to furnish such letters?  They must have dozens of applicants each week.

My son, before fleeing the country to take up a job in England after being unemployed for a number of months here, was directed by Social Welfare to register with FAS so he took himself off one afternoon to our nearest town to do so.  When he arrived at the office the woman there waved in the general direction of a computer in the corner of the room and told him he could go online to the FAS website and search it for jobs.  He was gobsmacked.  That was it?  That was the extent of the support being offered?  He advised her that, in common with most Irish families, we have a PC at home and that he was well acquainted with the FAS website.  He scanned it every day and knew as soon as anything new was posted in which case he promptly sent off his CV and followed it up with phone calls.

The only contact another acquaintance of mine, who’s been unemployed for the past six months, had with FAS was to be offered a place on a Safe Pass course.  He duly attended on the day with the other five attendees and, in the passage of time, was issued with his brand new Safe Pass card.  As there are no jobs in the construction sector whatsoever he can at least cut his grass, clean his windows or fix his roof this summer safe in the knowledge that he has such accreditation.  And that another tick was put on a sheet on a clipboard somewhere, abetting the notion that something is being done to train the unemployed to get them back to work.

I’ve helped many people over the years to compile CVs.  I’ve conducted interviews myself as part of my work.  I’ve made valiant efforts to secure another job since losing the one I had. So I’m hoping, for everyone’s sake, that I’m not instructed some day soon to present myself an interview with FAS with the threat of being cut off my Jobseekers if I don’t.  I don’t take kindly to being maligned.  Or threatened.