Dammit, now I can't find the bloody Irish Blogs button thing... Sorry Irish Blogs... I'm in fact marginally less technically competent then my mother... who understands far better than me how wireless networks work...

Wasn't really intending to post.. Hmm... But, there's always something...

So, will it be the Budget? Should I add my voice to the 6,579,923 speial interest groups that comment on the budget?

Honestly, it seems to me there are more special interest groups, lobbyists, unions, management collectives, concerned organisations etc etc than there are people who live in the country...

Really, I read the Budget supplement this morning and there was hardly any room for the actual numbers, because there were so many groups rushing to condemn the fact that the price of figs hasn't gone up, or has gone up, or wasn't recognised or whatever...

Does anyone else ever feel like standing up on a chair and just shouting...

SHUT UP!!!!

Ok, you wanted more money / less money / them to get less money / them to get more money / a new hanky... delete as applicable...

But, Jaysus... you are all wrecking the head off me...

And that's before I start reading the Budget blogs, comment, etc... Which I'm now adding to... sorry!

Anyway, here's the version that makes it simple...

1) All Governments, no matter who they are made up of are basically Bastards
2) They don't really care about you
3) The Budget is a relatively minor economic event
4) Get over it

Hello again...

In no particular order... Sorry about that Irishblogs.ie I must have lost your tag thing when I changed my template - I'll sort it out...

Sorry about that Rick - for the drunken ramblings about the nature of superstition, about how religion is just ritualised superstition and the apparent many references to "scabrous mucksavages"... Oh and drinking everything in your house...

Hello to Kitty and I'm glad that the term "scabrous mucksavages" turned out to be useful...

When it's the opening two words in my global bestseller, I'll die happy...

Anyway, so, I've been getting the DART to work now for 3 weeks I think... And I'm thinking about, not so much the DART and how weird it is when the same people get on at the same stop at the same time and sit in the same seat... more about the Metro...

And of course because of our primitive transport system, I mean the free newspaper...

Or more properly two free newspapers... because every morning the always friendly and happy people (no, really, they are amazingly friendly and happy at 7am) hand me first a Metro and then a Herald AM...

And they also hand the same items to, it seems, everyone else on the DART

So much so, that there are now ads on the DART, from the DART, asking us not to leave our newspapers on the DART... which is all a bit too much, too soon...

Anyway, long story short, it seems to mean that everyone who takes the DART is now reading a newspaper... I wonder what effect this will have?

If most people don't really bother with news, but are now reading a paper everyday, will the ultimate effect be a gradual uplift in awareness of current affairs?

Because, Metro is actually quite well put together and has more than just the minimal news, today for example it had a full page article on Oxfam and fair trade which was quite informative...

Herald AM by the way is crap, it's a lightweight version, if you can imagine such a thing, of the Evening Herald...

Oh and the weirdest thing about the same DART, same time thing? Yesterday the same guy got on the DART at the same stop as me in the morning, then on the way home, got on the DART at the same stop, same time as me etc... It was odd...