Liveline thread 28/09/16 to date

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

Geldof the clown went out in that millionaires river boat on the Thames shouting from a loudspeaker at the fishermen campaigning in their trawlers to leave the EU, it was sick to see.

There's a long, but good article in The Guardian today about one of the brains behind Brexit: Daniel Hannan. Worth a read, especially this bit of anti-EU ranting from none other than Sir Bob. (Business for Sterling was anearly campaign group set up to push for a referendum).

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/29/daniel-hannan-the-man-who-brought-you-brexit

Business for Sterling recruited Bob Geldof, Vic Reeves and thousands of students to its cause. It helped keep opinion polls set against joining the Euro and deterred the new Labour government, and its pro-European allies in the City, at their moment of peak of popular influence.

misslemon wrote: »

Why doesn't Joe read out the death notices? He'd love that!

He was genuinely surprised that people pay for them, it just shows how out of touch he is with rural Ireland and how Dublin-centric he really is. Apart from the Funny Friday and the Ploughing gigs, he doesn't really leave the leafy roads of Clontarf and Montrose.

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

The undetakers business needs a Ryanair type business model to shake it up. Have a crew cab pickup truck with coffin in the back and family in the cab, a jcb to dig the grave, priority boarding burial date available for those wanting to pick the day they wish to be buried and a €100 plywood coffin option at the lower end of the market.

Undertaking is another rip off cartel. Prices are ridiculous, but you usually have little or no choice but to pay out.

I told this story before, but as it's the LL forum I'll take the liberty of retelling it . The father of a fella I do some contract work with is a retired carpenter. His mother died a couple of years ago and he was shocked at paying €1800 for a coffin. He'd grafted all his life, since he was 14 and was buggered he was going to give his savings out for that, so he made two coffins, one for himself and one for the missus. She made the interior lining. The two coffins are in the rafters of his garage in the house in Dublin.

I also know of two lads whose uncle died of cancer in London. The oul fella was there at the hospital in London when his brother passed away. So he rang the two sons, they drove a van over to London, put the body in the back and drove back to Holyhead. At the time it was about £3000 just for the transport home, so he saved himself €2500 or so. The uncle who died had all the paperwork arranged, the local undertaker tried to block them leaving the hospital, so the police were called, they checked the paperwork and he was allowed to leave. No law against it. Just goes to show how much they make off it. I know three local undertakers, they're all well off.

ButtersSuki wrote: »

My Garda story?

Rang Finglas Garda station one night (after midnight) to tell them there was a car driving THE WRONG WAY on the M50 heading towards the airport.

The response?
"Ah shure he'll be off it by the time we can send a car out"


True story.

I'll throw my one in, also told previously on a Liveline thread I'm sure.

Running past a site that someone was building a house on and I noticed a bunch of lads trying to break into the container on the site. Got up the road, rang the local garda station and told them what was up and where. About 5 hours later I got a call back from a different garda. She asked me what was taken.

Eh, I rang when the break in was in progress, I don't own the site, so I've no idea. Ok, thanks for ringing. The lads could have taken the whole house, brick by brick, in that time.

I do think it's an issue with resourcing as I've know them to turn up pretty quickly to other incidents, including what I thought was another burglary which turned out to be a bunch of builders in a van that were given the key to the house, but not the alarm code, so they were looking pretty shifty hanging around the side gate with the alarm blaring.