Coronavirus

[Kurt Cocaine]

Jaysus astfygl lad.... I'm glad you've finally woken up to these shitshow shenanigans.
I've been banging this drum since Charles J. Haughey first decided to give his hair a side parting. 

[astfgyl]

I've always known it was bollix the whole lot of it but it has suddenly gone into overdrive in the last 12 months. like fuck sake like. Anyone can read that big thing I wrote and see it's all actually true as well if they can be bothered. Go on, someone go to the bother of looking at it.

(fact-checkers have fact-checked this claim and declare it to be somewhat false, as it is not 1000 times worse than 2008 as the author of the piece claims. Recent surveys by the acronym-of-our-choosing-for-today's-bullshit support the government's stance that it is, in fact, only between 999 times and 1001 times worse than 2008 and therefore not exactly 1000 times worse).

Verdict: Mostly False.

[son of the Morrigan]

Every word you wrote there has merit Astfgyl. Your obvious outrage at the whole situation is also merited.
One could write tomes on the blatant injustices being suffered by the Irish people and the corruption which is endemic among the political and business class in this so called republic.
Hows about we discuss possible solutions to these problems?, walking down Grafton street shouting about it is clearly pointless.
Whats to be done, short of all out insurrection?

[open face surgery]

A fantastic rant Astf..whatever it is. Unfortunately it's like screaming at a wall.

[Kurt Cocaine]

Absolutely agree with everything you said astfygl.
Time to put the sniper on the Dáil....
Varadkar and Meathole first.... 

[Pedrito]

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/health-service-in-crisis-almost-one-million-hospital-appointments-cancelled-by-pandemic-40147955.html

Great job done keeping everyone safe. good proportional response even after it became apparent that it wasn't exactly ebola.

Lots of money to keep people out of work. 40 Billion in last year's budget to cover covid cost. Health service decimated since 2008 while government and higher executive positions' salaries go through the roof, and frontline staff are underpaid, under-resourced, understaffed and undervalued even this minute when the student nurses can't be paid for what is said to be an extremely high risk situation and the TD's who didn't lose a cent or a day's work (work, fuck off seriously) are after getting a raise. Really think about it all and no matter what, nothing ever changes with the shower in this country. Think about roqu digital and the 14 million awarded by the hse and for nothing and that doesn't even scratch the surface of the carry on around all this. one of the nphet lads has a fucking pcr testing lab and nphet keep saying the rapid tests are no good. All the advisors are paid or funded or have received grants from pharma companies. Don't take my word for it, actually find out and then say it's bollix. We're all going around, meeting no one, fined for going over 5km even if there is nobody there, no work for hundreds of thousands, no fuck all really, no travel, impending recession, fully paid up to the united states of europe, at the mercy of an unelected group of advisors and everyone of them riddled fucking riddled with conflicts of interest.

remember the banking crisis in 2008 where we all did fuck all wrong and people lost houses, businesses, jobs, fucking jobbridge don't forget jobbridge, banks clawing back debt so they could sell it to international vulture funds. your fucking toll you pay on the roads today is fucking profit to private interests because the coffers were empty on the strength of bailing out the fucking banks instead of using it to improve fucking road and rail infrastructure in the country and actually sort a real problem for fucking once. well here we again only this time it's 1000 times worse. we will all vomit into our mouths when we actually find out the extent of the bollixing that's after going on here.

And by the way, don't forget to wear your mask and wash your fucking hands over and fucking over while we (judiciary, business execs, government contacts, yknow the usual golf fiends) go to an 80 man dinner and you can't piss crooked without being a covidiot on tomorrows paper. by the way, 4 year old child, don't touch your face because it might indirectly lead to your granny dying at some stage actually let me explain chaos theory to you and the oft-mentioned but not as often in actual scientific literature butterfly effect. So no matter what you do son, except for staying away from everyone forever or taking jabs to keep your health passport updated, you might kill your granny by living at all. Fuck off the whole lot of it. fuck the fucking fuckitty fuck right off.

Please tell us when we can go out, Leo Varadkar and Micheal Martin, the very two cunts we tried to get rid of at the last election? Oh let's not forget the fucking shitehawk out of the green party that you needed to pass the most unlikely government in the history of the state (until the shinners get into bed with the both of the bastards at the next time of asking). We really trust that you are doing everything you can to keep us all fucking safe. Never mind that we never once trusted you for even half a second (or 10 words, whichever is fastest). Fuck sake can it actually be that everyone doesn't see all this bollix?

Make sure next time we are washing our hands to splash the stone cold water on our faces as well. It might wake us up a bit.

Lads getting out protesting? Who'd fucking blame them?

Agree with all of that. Anyone who has worked for or has had a lot of dealings with the civil service and   'the system' should know how conservative it all can be, how slow it can be to change and evolve and make decisions. That's not a criticism. It's necessary to a degree but it's also the reason why we shouldn't let bureaucrats mandate everything in our lives. Throw politicians into that mix aswell. They are there to serve a function but they wield massive power and we need to be really careful with empowering them even more.

Things like the protests are a smokescreen and it's no accident that tge images are disseminated widely throughout the media. Social media stirs up the hype. It's a small pocket of people that have no power or influence other than firing fireworks at Garda. They'd do it no matter what. But they take attention away from all them points that Astfygl just made. The fact that this whole shitshow is still dragging on is absolute madness. The money that is being poured into keeping businesses afloat..imagine that was used to actually make real change in the country. Train lines, services, training for medical staff, housing instead of the fukin disaster commute culture, can't see a decent doctor when I need one culture we are subjected to in Ireland.

It would have been cheaper to pay anyone with an underlying issue to stay at home for a couple of years, provide meals to old people and pay theit bills so they don't go outside than shut whole industries down like they've done. Rudderless..don't ever let yourselves be fooled into thinking that they know what they're doing.

[pete]

I had tickets to Inferno festival which is now cancelled for this year. And Primavera cancelled yesterday in both Spain and Portugal. Looks like another quiet year ahead across Europe, festival wise anyway.

I wonder will we see some gigs at least before the year is out. Its been so long it's hard to see it ha!

If they could get Europe up to some level of vaccination bands could potentially have a large area to tour.

[Eoin McLove]

I'm burnt out on the whole thing too, and have been for the guts of the last year. I don't follow it as closely as you lot do. I just can't absorb all the endless information that keeps spewing forth like a busted dam. It feels like we are being bamboozled by so much information, too much to wrap your head around, endless variables that contradict each other so you can't keep up with an argument. All day on the radio it's Covid stories,  then you put on the news in the evening and it's more Covid. It feels like some sort of mass hypnosis is going on. I'm not a conspiracy theorist and I'm generally relatively ignorant to all of this stuff because it's not interesting to me, but having the country put on hold, digging us into an ever deepening financial hole, killing businesses,  keeping kids out of school so they don't spread infection when you only have to look out your window to see them all hanging out and playing on the streets, 1000,000 instances of people cancelling hospital visits, a rise in alcoholism and drug abuse,  a rise in domestic and child abuse, people being stuck at home to work and live while also having to home school their kids... I don't know anything about the vested interests of any of the people or which big company may have them by the balls, but just looking at the day to day of it and how frustrating it is, how every time we seem to be making progress, we then seem to be told that the light at the end of the tunnel is moving further away from us- it makes alarm bells ring. What can we do? We piss and moan but just get on with it and hope to fuck it will come to and end,  but what sort of disaster is waiting for us when we go back to normal... no wait, not normal but THE NEW NORMAL!

I shudder.

[Pedrito]

I'm burnt out on the whole thing too, and have been for the guts of the last year. I don't follow it as closely as you lot do. I just can't absorb all the endless information that keeps spewing forth like a busted dam. It feels like we are being bamboozled by so much information, too much to wrap your head around, endless variables that contradict each other so you can't keep up with an argument. All day on the radio it's Covid stories,  then you put on the news in the evening and it's more Covid. It feels like some sort of mass hypnosis is going on. I'm not a conspiracy theorist and I'm generally relatively ignorant to all of this stuff because it's not interesting to me, but having the country put on hold, digging us into an ever deepening financial hole, killing businesses,  keeping kids out of school so they don't spread infection when you only have to look out your window to see them all hanging out and playing on the streets, 1000,000 instances of people cancelling hospital visits, a rise in alcoholism and drug abuse,  a rise in domestic and child abuse, people being stuck at home to work and live while also having to home school their kids... I don't know anything about the vested interests of any of the people or which big company may have them by the balls, but just looking at the day to day of it and how frustrating it is, how every time we seem to be making progress, we then seem to be told that the light at the end of the tunnel is moving further away from us- it makes alarm bells ring. What can we do? We piss and moan but just get on with it and hope to fuck it will come to and end,  but what sort of disaster is waiting for us when we go back to normal... no wait, not normal but THE NEW NORMAL!

I shudder.

I'm the same tbh. Just turn off any time it comes on. I know plenty people who have had it now, I live in Madrid, many of them barely registered a cough. I teach hundreds of peole and yes people have lost parents who were old. My wife's uncle died of it and he was in his 50's. Awful, but there seemed to have been underlying issues. I know an older gentleman who was in intensive care for months. When it's all added up, the picture is no different than it ever was. If you're older and have underlying issues then you should be protected and given help. Otherwise, things should be opened up within countries. I spent all weekend in parks, bars and restaurants full to the brim with people here in Madrid. Wear the mask and get on with it seems to be the response. The lockdown in Ireland by comparison seems completely over the top, for such a  tiny population of people where the average distance between people in any environment is far less than in most other parts of Europe. It seems a total mess of a response from the outside tbh.

[Eoin McLove]

Not to mention the fact that Ireland is being used as a loophole by Brits who want to avoid quarantining when they return home from their holidays. The whole country is at level 5 lockdown while there is no enforcement of quarantine for those coming in. Insane.

[Pedrito]

Unbelievable..what a total mess.

[Emphyrio]

I think I'd a fairly high level of patience and interest in the whole thing for all of last year but since the new year I've avoided it in the news etc. as much as I can. From a selfish perspective, teaching from home is much more of a balls this time around.

The free time last year allowed me fill my days doing bits around the house. It was fine getting someone in to do jobs I'd be unable to do. This time, there's basically nothing around the house that needs doing that I could do. We were due to get our kitchen redone but all that kinda work is fucked cos of the lockdown so boredom and cabin fever features much more prominently now.

[Blackout]

Just heard of a company owner committing suicide yesterday who had been dealing with redundancies due to this wretched pandemic. He left 2 young kids. Imagine the pressure he felt to do that.

[Ollkiller]

Just heard of a company owner committing suicide yesterday who had been dealing with redundancies due to this wretched pandemic. He left 2 young kids. Imagine the pressure he felt to do that.

Old boss I worked for hung himself after the 2008 crash. Got heavy into property at the wrong time. And left kids behind. But he suffered from depression. And I'm going out on a limb here but we don't know the full story of the company owner. A few years ago I was in a lot of debt but I'd never contemplate suicide because of debts. Maybe some people do, why I can't fathom. I just can't see it just been because of redundancies, but I could be totally wrong.

[Emphyrio]

I'd say it's poor stress management. Could happen anyone really. Awful.