I know. I know. I suck at blogging. I’ve honestly just been SO busy though. This job is sucking the life right out of me. The driving isn’t helping. I will NOT be sad to see my next job site. It had better be something in Arklow. I deserve it after not moaning (too much) about having to come up here. Nobody else gets a short stick like that! On the bright side – I still have a job, so who am I to complain?
Let’s see… I haven’t written much about Ireland and Irish news items lately so I’ll give that a go. Gotta love the Irish government. On the same day that they announced super pay hikes for top ranking officials (Bertie Ahern, who is the country’s leader, is now one of the top paid leaders in the world with his 38,000 euro per year raise) they also announce that L-drivers (people with provisional licenses, like learner permits) are not allowed to drive by themselves anymore.
First of all, the law states that they aren’t allowed to drive by themselves anyhow. Unless, of course they are on their SECOND provisional license – then they can drive without an experienced driver in the car. If they get their third then they’re back to having somebody drive with them. Does that make sense to anybody out there??? So anyhow – the law states they’re meant to have somebody with a full license in the car with them at all times but it’s hardly ever enforced. They suddenly decide that they’re going to fine people 1,000 euro if they’re caught driving alone.
While I agree that people shouldn’t be driving alone in the first place, I also have to say that it’s well known that the police turn a blind eye to it and therefore people have built work, social, and sports lives around being able to drive alone. They were originally giving people 3 days to get that all sorted. It’s currently over a 6 month wait (at a good testing center) to get a driving test to have your license issued. I think something like 20,000 applications for tests flooded in the first day or two so you can imagine what that did to the wait time.
So anyhow – back to my original point. The government decided to announce all this the same day they announce the pay hikes. So as much as people would love to bitch and moan about the pay hikes, the license issue obviously affects them directly so the pay hike issue was left alone. Clever, wasn’t it? They eventually chilled out about the license issue (as was suspected they would since it was more of a distraction tactic than anything) and are saying it might start next year.
What takes the cake is that the same ministers who got the pay hikes are now telling everyone ELSE to not be too aggressive asking for pay raises and such, as the economy looks to be entering a slower period. Talk about some angry callers on the evening talk shows!! It’s kind of entertaining.
So those are the latest Irish news items anyhow. I’ll try to post again later with some personal updates if I get a chance. It doesn’t look TOO bad for work today, although it’s Friday and so I’m sure something will go wrong. That tends to be the case up here for some reason or another. Mondays and Fridays are cursed. We’ll see. If you don’t hear from me, have a great weekend! ;-)
