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Ryanair does hate you!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Ryanair does hate you!

It must be hate for its customers, there is no other way I could explain the constant messing around with the rules for baggage. I can’t even keep up with it anymore and to keep it that way, I have to admit that I am going out of my way to avoid flying with Ryanair. Oddly, I like Ryanair – or at least what it had wanted to and did achieve. Without Ryanair we would still pay super high ticket prices for highly inefficient airlines. Ryanair got others to tighten their ship (or plane) to get more efficient and to reduce the profit margins. Thank you, Ryanair!

But now they are changing the baggage rules again and it is ALWAYS getting worse for their customers. We never wanted to bring a huge suitcase on board, we would all prefer to check in our luggage, but Ryanair forced us to re-think. They thought that it would reduce cost for them because baggage handling at the airport is expensive. But people continually increased their bags (despite the bag size checker at the gate) to bring on board and that delayed planes.

Then the told us that Priority customers can still bring their 10kg bag on board, but the rest had to hand it over at the boarding gate (initially they wanted you to check it hand luggage at check in – the contradiction! – , but that was changed) and only a Laptop-sized bag was allowed on board. But the handed over hand-luggage that was to be carried in the hold of the plane was not charged extra.

Now the new change is that UNLESS you pay for priority boarding you will now have to pay for your hand luggage as well. Ryanair claims that they are making this change because planes are getting delayed because people bring too much hand luggage. This is TOTAL nonsense. Since there was a definite 10kg limit for ONE bag only, they can’t bring more than 10kg in one bag. So NO the planes are not delayed because of too much hand luggage. And the ONLY reason why we bring lots of hand luggage anyway is because Ryanair pushed us in the direction of the check-in-luggage-free flight.

You really could get the impression that Ryanair hates their employees (especially pilots and flight attendants) and even more so, they seem to hate us so much that they even lie to us. :-O

www.rte.ie/news/2018/0823/987129-ryanair-hand-luggage/

Irish, Tourism, , ,

Machine Pistols everywhere – But different consequences!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Machine Pistols everywhere – But different consequences!

There were two machine pistol-related articles in TheJournal.ie last week and there are two completely different consequences coming from the discovery of these guns.

The first article on Wednesday explained that a “member of the public” FOUND a fully-loaded submachine gun belonging to no other than the Garda Siochana. The gun was in a bag in the boot of an armed Garda unit car and it fell out of the car for currently still unknown reasons. The gun was luckily brought to Store Street Garda station and was handed in.

As a consequence of the incident, “A senior Garda officer has been appointed to examine all the circumstances relating to an incident involving an armed unit in Dublin city centre today.”

The second article on Friday described that also on Wednesday a car was stopped in Drogheda and the driver of the car had a large amount of prescription tablets. She was arrested and during a follow-on search a machine pistol and a ammunition were found in a parked car in Drogheda.

The consequence in this case is that the woman will be in court tomorrow and will be charged in connection with the discovery of the machine pistol.

The two stories have nothing to do with each other. In one case it was seemingly a criminal and/or dissident republican that had the gun and ammunition in the car to be used for illegal activities. In the other case it was the law enforcement authorities that had the pistol, but lost it.

Interestingly, though, both sides have very similar weapons and I would always prefer that the law enforcers have better and a lot more weapons than the criminals. The other interesting aspect is that a large part of the Gardai (is it still the majority?) are not armed at all, while the criminals have machine pistols in their cars. Is that a good situation? Me thinks: NO!

And the final aspect: Imagine that Garda machine pistol had been picked up by the “wrong” person. I’d say the Gardai didn’t even realise that it fell out of their car until MUCH later … with no idea where exactly it fell out. :-O Clearly machine pistols are popular in Ireland and finding one on the streets of Dublin is like winning the lottery for the right criminal.

About the consequences: Clearly the Gardai were authorised to have the gun, but the loss of it will hopefully have some consequences for the careless Gardai. And the woman in Drogheda? I wouldn’t be surprised if she will be released again “and a file will be prepared for the Director of Public Prosecution”. If that happens you really have to wonder what a stupid legal system we have in Ireland.

Irish, Justice, , ,

Thank you Michael D. Higgins, but it is enough!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Thank you Michael D. Higgins, but it is enough!

You might completely disagree with me, because for some reason Miggeldy Higens, as Irish President Michael D. Higgins is also known, found a large amount of fans in the last few years, but I think he should stick to his promise from 7 years ago, when he told the voters that he will only be available for ONE 7 year period.

I was never a big fan of Higgins and it all come from one chance encounter a good few years ago when he was in a queue to go to an event I also went to. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say that he didn’t impress IN THE SLIGHTEST. Since then I encountered him at various events and he never managed to change my opinion.

7 years ago he promised that he wouldn’t be glued to the role and would leave after 7 years and while he hasn’t really done anything wrong in these 7 years, I would think that at 77 it is time for him to retire.

But when I thought about it more, I was reminded that the Queen is 92 or something like that and she has as much relevance in the day to day business of a country as Michael D Higgins. And the Pope is 81 and he is also still running his show. So maybe we should leave Higgins in Phoenix Park another 7 years? Also because we don’t really have someone other obvious candidate? You know what, the more I think about it, I don’t really care if it is him or not. But PLEASE no more of his own poems, they are awful! ;-)

One thing that still puzzles me though is how he justifies in his head what he is doing: When he was younger, he was a staunch Socialist/Marxist, now at 77 he is making EUR 250,000 per year plus about 80,000 in money to run the show. Shouldn’t this cause the biggest ideological conflict ever? Seemingly not enough to give the other 7 x EUR 250,000 a miss that he could pocket. :-O

Irish, President, ,

“Hosepipe Ban” – Are they for real??

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
“Hosepipe Ban” – Are they for real??

When I read this, I thought it was a Waterford Whispers News story. (Waterford Whispers News is an Irish satirical news website that usually hits the nail on the head with their brilliant headlines.) The announcement that made me think it is a joke was the announcement by Irish Water on Friday that from Monday 02 July a “hosepipe ban” would be in effect in the Greater Dublin area.

At first I thought it is Irish Water nonsense, but checking into it a bit more I realised that a piece of Irish Law really mentions that the “use of water drawn through a hosepipe” can be prohibited for the use of “watering a garden, watering recreational parks or sports grounds […], irrigating or spraying crops […], or washing a mechanically propelled vehicle or a trailer”.

Water conservation makes sense if there is a shortage and due to the idiotic way public water supplies in Ireland are ONLY served from surface water in lakes and reservoirs (instead of using water from underground sources) we are currently entering a period of water shortage. BUT a “hosepipe ban” just sounds like a ridiculous piece of law.

The ban will be in place for the whole month of July and if someone is found in breach of the ban, they could be fined EUR 125.

But here comes the interesting stuff:

While the wording above is taken from the “Water Services Act 2007”, Irish Water is NOT banning all wasteful water use. Instead they reduce the ban to “watering a garden, cleaning a private motor-vehicle using a domestic hosepipe. […], filling or maintaining a domestic swimming or paddling pool (except when using hand held containers filled directly from a tap), […]” so that means if you use a domestic hosepipe you are not allowed to clean the car, but if it is a commercial hosepipe, you can go ahead without any issues. It also means that your swimming pool must not be filled via hosepipe, but if there is a tap above the swimming pool OR if you get LOTS of big containers and fill it by hand, you are all above the law.

Dublin, Environment, Irish, Odd, , ,

Don’t get sick in Ireland!! – Disastrous Irish Health System

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Don’t get sick in Ireland!! – Disastrous Irish Health System

What a shocker! RTE News told us Thursday that the number of people in Ireland who are on waiting lists to be treated or seen by a doctor has grown to a shocking number of over 707,000. This is an unbelievably huge number. 15% of the population of Ireland is waiting!! FIFTEEN percent!!

According to the Euro Health Consumer Index from 2017, the number of Irish patients waiting for surgery or an outpatient appointment is “abysmal”. They have concluded that Ireland has the WORST hospital waiting list in Europe.

It is not totally clear how RTE arrived at this number, but there is an Outpatient waiting list of 511,000 and an Inpatient waiting list of 78,000. There is planned procedure waiting list of 12,000 as well and adding all these up comes to around 600,000. so there are still 100,000 missing. But even if the waiting list was ONLY 600,000, that is still more than 12.5% of the population in Ireland.

If you are affected by this, check out the Cross Border Health Care Directive, this article in the Journal.ie outlines what it does.

Health System, Irish, , ,
 
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