When-in-Ireland – Page 8

The oldest lap dancing club

Grandad makes the case for Newgrange being the oldest lap dancing club in the world. At over 5,000 years old it’s an ancient structure and quite important today, it being the Winter Solstice, but I’m not quite convinced that it was a lap dancing club.

I mean, if the girls had to swing around a wooden pole wouldn’t they have got slivers of wood in their hands. Polished steel works much better, or so I’m told. I suppose after a while the ol’ pole would have been worn smooth and I’m sure things would have gone swimmingly well then.

I don’t know where he comes up with the idea of orgies there either. I mean, this is Ireland, like.

In light of the day that’s in it, I have a nice picture of An Fear Marbh off the Kerry coast at sunset on my photoblog. Feel free to wonder why a man is lying on his back in the Atlantic and how that relates to the above..

Crazy driving in the fog

The last 36 hours have been a fog filled void in most of Ireland and even in the UK too. Radio broadcasters have urged caution on the roads as visibility dropped down to a few yards in places.

It was into this mess that I drove this morning. Thick fog, the sun just peeping over the hills and visibility down to less than 10 yards. My drive from Blarney this morning was along a very straight country road that follows the contours of the surrounding hills up and down, blocking the view of oncoming traffic until the hill rises at the end of the straight stretch. It’s also a 60km/h road.

In deep fog I’m driving carefully and I spot headlights getting bigger and bigger in my mirror until the car behind is tailgating me at no more than a few feet. I could sense the frustration of the driver behind but hey, it’s foggy, I’m driving at the speed limit. There’s no way I’ll be bullied into driving faster in those conditions. Eventually he overtook me of course but we caught up with him at the junction sitting on the top of the hill, so here you go. To the driver of 98-D-455, “You’re a crazy driver! Was it worth risking all our lives to be ahead of me at the junction?”

Update! Driving along the same road back to Blarney this afternoon a Garda (Irish police force) car appeared and drove at speed until it was right behind me. It overtook me later in the 50km/h part of the road and sped off. Meanwhile a few seconds later another Garda car passed the other way speeding too. Why the hell do I stick to the speed limit if the police force don’t?

Langerland do the Nativity

Langerland bring their latest creation, a Christmas story, The Nativity to the big screen with all your favourite characters. Even if you don’t recognise the names there’s something in this story for everyone!

It goes without saying that if you have strong feelings about Christianity you probably don’t want to watch this! (via)

And just in case you missed it, their music through the ages will have you cringing, but at least they let Mary have the last err, word.

Bupa to leave Irish market

I can just imagine the cheers and celebration going on at VHI HQ this afternoon as it was announced that Bupa, the second largest health insurer (with 22% of the market) is going to pull out of the Irish market because of risk-equalisation.

Two things really annoy me about this decision:

When they set up shop in the first place they knew that risk equalisation was inevitable. It’s a side effect of how the Irish health insurance market works. Everyone pays the same premium, the incumbant VHI has older and more costly members and risk equalisation meant compensating VHI. They should have planned realistically for it although how one can plan to compensate another company a sum of money larger than one’s own entire profits is beyond me.
Why couldn’t they have come up with a more imaginative solution. If VHI had simply given Bupa a percentage of their elderly members to even out the age spread of their memberships then VHI wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on and risk equalisation wouldn’t be an issue.

I’m a Bupa member as is my wife. A friend of mine works for Bupa in Fermoy. We’re all sorely disappointed at the decision today. There’s still Vivas Health but I wonder what their plan is to cope with the huge payouts VHI will want off them in a couple of years.

The company is blaming the move on a scheme known as risk equalisation – which it says compels it to pay €1 million every week to compensate other insurance providers for covering older consumers.

The company claimed the move would force it to hand over €161m to its rival over three years, even though its profits for the period would be just €64m.

Michele linked to a newsletter written by Martin O’Rourke, the boss of Bupa Ireland. As I expect the Bupa website will disappear sooner rather than later and this message with it, I’ll copy/paste it here after the jump as a record of what evils a monopoly does to an industry.

Continue reading “Bupa to leave Irish market”

Britney and Donncha's underwear scandal

Over the past week Britney Spear’s escapades while out on the town have made headlines all over the Internet but here in Ireland, sports fans have been witness to another underwear malfunction in the form of Donncha O’Callaghan’s superman attire at a recent rugby match! Ladies in the crowd were suitably impressed although the referee did tell Donncha to put his pants on before play could continue. Much to the relief of male supporters and the chagrin of the ladies I’m sure!

Yes, tv cameras were there and the coverage below (via) is just too shocking to show so click “more” to view the clip!

Continue reading “Britney and Donncha's underwear scandal”

Worried about the NCT?

Two years have passed really quickly and it’s time for my car to be tested again as part of the National Car Test (NCT). Registration was simple through their website and hopefully the test will be as uneventful.

My car has been serviced recently but there’s still that nagging doubt in the back of my head. Conventional wisdom says that it’s easier to have the car fail the test, get the car fixed and then retake the test but I’ve heard stories about people whose cars failed the test for different reasons on the second go! Oh the stress!

Things to watch out for are listed on the NCT inspection checklist and include brakes, exhaust and tyres. They’re fairly thorough.

Do you have any NCT horror stories? I don’t want to hear them until after 3pm today!

Bad news! The front left tire is too worn to pass, but as Mel said in a comment below, the visual retest is free. Must ring the local garage and bring the car down to them tomorrow.

How to blog in Cork using free wifi

It’s hard to believe, but despite the really bad uptake of broadband services, or perhaps because of it, Ireland leads the way in WiFi hotspots!

Last week I had the pleasure of using the free WiFi services in Douglas shopping center to make a post on the Mallow Camera Club site. I had half an hour to kill so I popped into O’Brien’s, bought a coffee and a biscuit and settled down. I wasn’t the only one taking advantage of this generous gift. I spotted three others seated at various points around the library tapping away on their laptops. It’s something I never imagined I’d see! Yes, yes, yes. If you’ve enjoyed the use of free WiFi in your city this won’t be anything new, but this is in the “Celtic Tiger” economy where nothing is free and everything is over-priced.

So, next time your significant other is popping down to the shops, tag along. They might have free WiFi and it’ll do you the world of good to get out from behind that desk! I’m waiting for retailers and restaurant owners in Blarney to realise that free access to the Internet would draw all the self-employed Internet geeks out of their homes and into their establishments. I wonder how hard would it be to drop that hint …

After Budget 2007 I'm stinking rich

I was glued to the radio this afternoon like many people in the country listening to the Minister for Finance, Brian Cowen, announce the new budget. Also like many people I’ll be better off next year as a result of some of the changes he made.

The budget was great for pensioners and first time buyers, of which I’m one of the latter. The news isn’t so good if you’re addicted to nicotine. Still, the price of a pint hasn’t gone up. You might also be able to pay for those cigarettes with the 1% that was knocked off the top rate of tax. That extra €10/month in the children’s allowance could come in handy too.

Anyway, the country is glowing with smiles all-around, except for the opposition of course who complain that not enough was done or done in the right place. I wonder if anyone asked if Paul Stokes was going to get some?

If you want to compare how you’ll do in 2007 versus this year, then compare this 2007 budget calculator and the 2006 one. I’m not PAYE any more but if I was I’d be up a few hundred Euro apparently! Not stinking rich, but enough nonetheless.

The biggest clown in TV

Paul Stokes is at it again! Not content with barging in on a chat show last week he drove a car through a security barrier at RTE in Dublin, headed for the main doors, crashed into those before finally coming to rest a few feet away when his car bounced off the doors with the impact! He was detained by security and is to appear at Dublin District Court this morning.

If his GPS car system is so revolutionary why doesn’t he go through normal channels and develop it and create a business around it, and market the product just a little bit more sensibly? I can just imagine his conversation with a bank manager now if he does try to finance a startup.

Bosco.. where are you? All is forgiven!

(via Damien)

The IT@Cork 2006 Conference

I attended the 2006 it@cork National Technology & Business Conference yesterday and took many photos of the speakers. As to be expected with a line-up that included Eddie Hobbs it was very business orientated but Tony Kenny spoke at length about the challenges that faced him when he introduced Linux into Beaumont Hospital and Marc Canter proved to be a very passionate speaker about APIs and openness. Knock down those walled gardens! I could go on and on about the speakers but I wouldn’t do them justice. Watch out for the podcasts on the IT@Cork website.

I enjoyed the day very much, and thank you to Tom Raftery and everyone at IT@Cork for organising a well run and professional event.

Update – Michele loved Tony’s approach to using open source – mix it with proprietary software if you have to. Tom Raftery thought, “yesterday’s event was a tremendous success” and I agree, while Tom Corcoran has a short but thorough review of the day. He did forget to mention the delicious dessert after lunch. Oh wow! Yum!

Haydn was at the conference too and blogged about Marc Canter and Jeff Nolan. Read his post because he has something interesting to say about the cost of blogging. I remember him scribbling furiously throughout while I grappled with iPhoto and uploaded images to my blog! (Nice to meet you finally Haydn!)

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