I has a question to pose to yous

Sky King wrote: »

There was just a different buzz about the place. I wouldn't say people were happy, but they certainly didn;t moan about money. No one seemed to care. You wouldn't think twice about paying a fiver for a piece of rubbery shit cheese sandwich from O'Brien's Irish Sandwich Bar..... Almost every waiter, deli attendant and shop assistant was foreign and lots of them had just arrived so their english was ****e.

Guys would head out thursday, friday, saturday, sunday nights and wax 150 / 200 bucks on a night out no problem. Coke was all over the place. People drank Vodka Red Bull by the bucketload paying 8/9 quid for a glass of it.

You could never get a taxi afterwards either - had to wait hours for them.

Deli counters sprung up out of nowhere (there were very few shops doing freshly made sandwiches before 1995ish - every shop has them now) and every shop had a deli with a row of guys in hi viz vests standing at the food counter. The 'breakfast roll' became a staple foodstuff.

Before the mid 90's most shops (esp. down the country) closed on Sundays and bank holidays and at lunchtime and 6 in the evening. During the tiger they couldn't take our money fast enough during normal business hours though, and they started opening every day, every evening, and in some cases 24 hours. This is a legacy which remains today, to a certain point.

Every cityscape was dotted with cranes and it was normal to have mates in the building industry that were far FAR better off than you were. Mine were quite smug about it too - sneering me for povving my way through college while my carpender buddy was getting 1500 a week and my blocky buddy a punt per block laid.

Lots of semi-D middle class people started driving 3 series beemers and c class mercs, and building decks in their tiny back gardens and barbequing on them. A daily commute from Portlaoise or Carlow to Dublin became a normal thing whereas previously it would have been unheard of. Traffic was chaotic, particularly around dublin, where the crappy infrastructrue groaned to keep up with the huge deluge of extra traffic. They re-did the m50 to cope and as soon as they were finished, they went back to the start and re-did it again. People went on foreign holidays a couple of times a year and regular workaday folk starting drinking wine and eating stuff like hummus, pesto and pasta dishes as opposed to the cabbage bacon milk and spuds they were reared on.

Politicians and high flying gangsters still ripped us all off but back then nobody seemed to care. Tribunals cost the state hundreds of millions and we all shrugged our shoulders and went back to watching Who wants to be a Millionaire and Big Brother.

Middle class people and those lucky enough to have bought land and property on the cheap became de facto millionaires. Idiots with no qualifications became 'property developers' peddling land, building and property back and forth and making astronomical profits becuase prices were increasing so fast. They bough race horses and helicopters and mansions. They invested poorly.

Banks were eager to cash in on this but they had no capital on deposit to outlay so they borrowed heavily to fund it.

This is the money you and me are now paying back.

People in hospitals still lay wasting away on trolleys in hospital corridors throughout the whole celtic tiger thing, mind you.

I guess some things never change.