Blinded by the Light

I don't know if this is a universal problem or whether it's peculiar to Ireland, but lately I've noticed a marked increase in the number of drivers who haven't got the faintest idea how to use their car headlights. I suppose I'm noticing it more now as the clocks recently went back and it therefore gets dark earlier.

The issue doesn't arise so much when I'm driving in town as most drivers keep their headlights dipped. However, I spend a fair amount of time travelling between Galway City and County Leitrim - two and a half hours of driving along unlit country roads - and the number of times that I get blinded is astonishing.

It's not so much the cars coming towards me that are the problem. Drivers who leave their beams on full are easily reminded to dip them with a quick blast of my own full beams. It's the drivers behind me that wind me up. They seem to think that the road will somehow magically disappear unless they keep their full beams on until they are only a couple of feet away from me. How can this be? They must get the same treatment from cars behind them so why don't they learn to dip as soon as they see the tail-lights of another car?

Whilst I'm on the subject of motoring habits, what is it about country folk that makes them need to drive up the middle of the road all the time? It's as though they're driving Scalextric cars and they have to keep to the white line in case they lose power. I've lost count of the times I've nearly been creamed by a 4x4 that's left it to the last second to pull over to its own lane.

I was actally left speechless the other day. The Brunette and I were happily driving through the countryside when a car came around a bend ahead of us on our side of the road. It wasn't just straddling the white line, it was completely, totally and utterly on our side. If we'd arrived at the bend ten seconds earlier it would have been a head-on. It turned out that the driver was a farmer who wanted to get into the field to the left of us. Why couldn't he have waited to see if anything was coming towards him before he came around the bend?

The Government spends inordinate amounts of time and money on initiatives aimed at criminalising drivers who've eaten one-too-many chocolate liqueurs. Perhaps they could direct some of their efforts at teaching people how to drive when they're sober. Just a thought.

Bottoms up,

oldblodger

The Sky is Falling

At the risk of being branded a conspiracy theorist, I have a question. How many people actually have swine flu?

The medical bods in the governments of both Ireland and the U.K. are currently releasing, via various media outlets, data regarding the number of citizens struck down - thousands of new cases every day apparently.

Much moolah is being spent on setting up vaccination centres and even more dosh is being lost through uncertificated absenteeism. Does anyone out there in the real world actually know anyone who has contracted the bug? I don't mean someone who has taken time off work because they're feeling a bit icky as I'm sure that there are many, many people who've done so. I mean someone who genuinely has the lurgy in question. I don't personally know anyone in this situation, not even a friend of a friend of a friend.

I don't doubt that people have died from swine flu, underlying illnesses notwithstanding, but in the great scheme of things the numbers are thankfully low, fewer than are carried off by regular flu annually by all accounts.

I could be wrong - it's not unprecedented, ask the Brunette - but I just don't believe that the epidemic, or pandemic or whatever it's supposed to be, is real. It's not as if we haven't heard this before - whatever happened to bird flu? Every few months the powers-that-be come up with a new way to scare the populace, one that eventually fades away just in time to be replaced by the next potentially catastrophic...er...catastrophe.

The late, great Michael Crichton (yes, the author of Jurassic Park - don't laugh) wrote a novel called 'State of Fear', published in 2004. It's a typically Crichton-esque romp in which the hero has to save the world whilst being chased around by men with murderous intent, pulp fiction of the kind that you either love or hate. I loved it in a 'couple of days by the pool' way, but the really thought-provoking sections of the book are the appendices at the back.

In them Crichton puts forward the idea that there are a number of sectors in the developed world - government, media, law - with a vested interest in ensuring that the Great Unwashed are constantly on their guard against any amount of 'bad things' that threaten to wipe out their cosy lifestyles or, indeed, their very lives. There hasn't been a major conflict in the west since 1945, most smaller scale wars taking place far away from home in such exotic locations as Korea, Vietnam, the Falklands, Iraq and Afghanistan. The Cold War, with it's ever-present threat of nuclear meltdown, is over so what is going to occupy the minds of the plebs and allow the powers-that-be to retain and increase their wealth and influence whilst no-one's looking?

Well, now we have a paedophile outside every school, a new virus attached to every handshake, a terrorist on every street corner, a clogged artery in each mouthful of food and we're all going to drown, fry or freeze sometime next week (don't get me started on global warming).

The truth, as Crichton pointed out, is that there has never been a time in human history when so many of us in the first world have the expectation of living long, healthy and productive lives as right now. Of course there are wars and diseases and droughts and earthquakes but you have to be in the wrong part of town to be affected by these, and the majority of us in the developed world simply aren't.

The thing that worries me is that one day something seriously nasty is going to appear on the horizon and we'll all be so threat-weary that we'll ignore it. Hopefully I'll be long gone before that happens.

I'll close on that happy thought - I've got to go because I can feel a sniffle coming on...

Toodle-pip,
oldblodger

Credit Cards - Who Needs 'em? (Everyone Apparently!)

Hi, and welcome to all of my loyal readers (of whom there will be a limited number, as this is my very first attempt at one of these blog thingies).

I'm intending to use this space for a number of purposes, as the fancy takes me - venting my spleen, sharing my thoughts, attracting your responses or merely arsing about. I may stick a few photos and videos up here from time to time too.

Anyway, enough prevarication, let's get into it. My inaugural comment on the state of the world involves credit cards and their usefulness, or otherwise, in a time of recession.

Once upon a time, not too long ago, the Brunette (a.k.a. She Who Must Be Adored) and I had our own business. The whereabouts, ins and outs and ups and downs aren’t relevant to this particular story (rest assured, they will crop up in future posts), suffice it to say that the business is now defunct.

During its all too brief existence we managed to max out three credit cards to the tune of tumpty-thousand euro. Since closing down our financial black hole we’ve succeeded in converting the credit into a fixed-term loan and hacking the cards into very, very small pieces. If you've never done this you'll find it hard to imagine the inordinately huge amount of satisfaction to be gleaned from "sticking it to The Man".

However, if you intend to lead a life that can be in any way described as normal, several months later you’ll realise that The Man is not that easily shaken off. For instance, try ordering or booking something - a DVD, a flight, a couple of pounds of Scottish salmon - on the Interweb without a credit card.

We are currently trying to pay for accommodation for a forthcoming overseas trip using a debit card. Not all that difficult you might think. Wrong. Error messages abound and it seems that the money that we haven't actually paid to anyone is not ours anymore, until it is 'repaid' back to our account several days later. No, we don't understand this either.

So, the moral of this tale is that someone, somewhere - the ubiquitous "they" - wants us to keep on using our credit cards in spite of the fact that the overuse of credit got us into this mess in the first place (it's not called the 'Credit Crunch' for nothing).

t.t.f.n.,
oldblodger