The death penalty is contentious. I know two wrongs don’t make a right but there are iredeemable people in this world who deserve greater punishment than to live out their lives at the expense of normal society.

I find it hard to think of a good reason why people who rape children, for example, shouldn’t be summarily dispatched. Some people are so evil it’s not right that the rest of us should carry any kind of financial burden for their incarceration.

It’s moot point here anyway, we don’t have the death penalty, we likely never will, but it continues to be an issue in other countries, the US in particular. Yesterday, a man in Utah was executed by firing squad.

I realise there’s probably no right way to kill a man but surely firing squad is a bit backwards at this stage. He chose that punishment himself, under the law, but should he have had that choice? At the very least isn’t there a requirement do carry out the death penalty in the most humane way possible?

Firing squad. What next? Iron Maiden?

Spotted today at a Dublin airport bookshop. Click for big.

Two people have been arrested in connection with the death of model Katy French in 2007. Leaving aside the fact that Ireland’s media fell over themselves in a competition to see who could be most mawkish (John Waters wins, by the way, with his risible “I’m crying as I write this” twaddle), the death of any young person in those circumstances is tragic.

However, I’m dubious that the same level of investigation is applied to all drug related deaths. Does every overdose require the Gardai to go back down the supply chain to find out who might have been responsible for the drugs taken?

Katy French chose to take drugs, like many other people do, have done, and will do, and ultimately she’s the one responsible. That said, I have no problem if this is standard procedure and the same care and attention is paid to every drug related death.

I remember, around the same time as Katy French died, two young men from Waterford died after taking cocaine at a party. The Taoiseach’s Aide de Camp did not attend their funeral, nor, to the best of my knowledge (and that of Google) have any arrests been made with regard to their deaths. I’m unsure that if rough and ready Deco Mebollix from some sprawling estate died from taking too much coke that there’d be much of a will on the part of our police force to find out where he might have bought his wraps.

Maybe the Gardai have used it as an opportunity to take down some bigwig, more likely it’s some low-level dealer who was everyone’s friend in the nightclubs and at the parties. You just can’t help thinking there’s a touch of double standards here.

Time and time again I tried. Each time it failed. The last time was dangerous. A bit came shooting out and nearly hit me in the eye.

I have done what any sensible man would do and kicked it down the garden in a rage. The day’s work is incomplete but if I were to continue chances are machinery would be broken. I’m not too proud to say mechanical things are not my forte. I once spent 45 minutes trying to put a light on the back of my bike before hurling the thing all the way across the SCR and into the car park of Griffith College. So I know when I am bested, frustrating as it might be.

Strimmer spool one, Twenty nil.

At least the football was quite good this afternoon.

Three minutes to go. We’ve just equalised. They’re pissed off. Striker comes in, looking to win a header in the box. He’s not going to win it. I am. Or, if I don’t, he’s not going to be on his feet to take advantage.

Collision.

“Ref! Penalty, ref!”, he says tumbling back into the box. Ref waves play on and follows the ball upfield. “REEEEEEEEFFFFFFFF!!”

“Get up, you dick”.

“Fuck off, that’s a penalty”, he says, still on his arse. “You barged right into me”.

“If I had barged in to you, you’d have fallen forwards, not backwards, you stupid cunt”.

“Yeah … well … … … … … fuck off”.

We get it in midfield. Our tall, skinny striker has it. Three of them converge on him, he shifts the ball to his left, looks to release our wide man. A tubby opponnent hacks the legs out from under him. Nasty.

“Sorry bud”, he says offering his hand as if he didn’t do it deliberately.

“Fuck you”, says tall, skinny striker.

“Yeah? Well fuck you, you fat cunt”, Tubs says as the ref gives him a yellow card. Tall, skinny, not double chinned like yellow card boy, striker trots off up towards their penalty area. As the ball is launched into the box the full time whistle blows.

Truly it is on the field of play that one encounters the great minds and wits of our generation. And the football was better than the World Cup too.

I was watching the Simpsons last night when on came an ad for a new reality show starring a vague celebrity. The spiel went something like:

“Kimberly Thingy from Girls Aloud has it all. Fame, money, 5 inch thick make-up, but there’s one thing she doesn’t have. Join Kimberly Thingy from Girls Aloud as she travels all the way to the USA to …”

… and at this point I’m thinking ‘find her real parents’, ‘meet someone who can make her sing in tune’, ’star in a pornographic film with Ron Jeremy’ or ‘find someone who will donate the bone marrow she needs to combat the recent onset of leukemia which will kill her in 3 months’.

As this is reality TV none of those guesses would be in any way outrageous. The depths to which these vague celebs will sink to get on TV should be of no surprise to anyone at this stage. However, the actual program is:

Join Kimberly Thingy from Girls Aloud as she travels all the way to the USA to … find the perfect pair of jeans.

Seriously. A pair of fucking jeans. She is filmed going into shops which sell jeans and then she tries on the jeans and all the jeans will just like pairs of jeans on a scrawny, 20% of a girl band, no-mark.

Where’s the danger? The humiliation? The utter lack of any kind of shame? Going around trying on pairs of jeans. This is where we are with reality TV now. I mean, I know it’s all a load of complete nonsense but surely they can do better than that?

At this point we should be heading towards Running Man territory, not some geebag and pair of Levis that won’t fit her because she’s anorexic and bulimic and is cursed with the hips of an infirm gnu.

Less jeans, more hunting and killing.

On Saturday night I got out of a taxi on George’s St, went to the ATM outside Dunne’s Stores, then made my way as far as Suffolk Street. In that short space of time I was approached by two people begging, hands out looking for change. There was a chap sitting under the ATM asking for change. There was a tramp on Exchequer St playing a harmonica looking for change to be throw into his battered takeaway coffee cup.

Later on, scurrying around the way they do, were the Roma women, some with babies strapped to their hairy chests. Any place that has people congregating outside is visited every few minutes by somebody looking for change. So much so that one can stand outside the Stag’s Head and get accosted by the same chap who then gets narky when you tell him that no, you don’t have any change and that you’ve told him this already twice.

They sit outside shops, underneath ATMs, outside shopping centres, even just on busy streets in the suburbs, they work the crowds, target the tourists, hands out all the time looking for coins. They’re not occasional, they’re ubiquitous now. Perhaps a sign of the recession, perhaps a sign that there’s no will to do anything about them. In recessions past the junkie in the doorway was the symbol of the times, now it’s the panhandler.

Legally it appears to be something of a minefield but it does the image of the city no good. Everywhere you go there’s somebody looking for your change. Any change. Spare change.

I don’t feel guilty though. I work hard for my money, so hard for the money, I’m a private dancer and any old music will do.

It’s been a trying week so I won’t mention the rage I got listening to Brian Cowen on the Last Word last night. I also won’t call him a fat, incompetent fuck.

Nor will I mention the fact that Senator Eoghan Harris, Bertie stooge extraordinaire, made me want to tear my own face off with his ‘analysis’ afterwards. I shan’t mention a thing about how easy it is to make excuses and condemn others for their concerns when you’re raking it in off the taxpayer’s dime.

Instead I shall accentuate the postive and the World Cup preparations in Ron’s are all complete. The flat-screen TV we got for the last one has been donated to a worthy cause (my Playstation, so I can watch TV and play video games at the same time late at night), and we rocked up to Harvey Norman, did a bit of bargaining and walked out with a 50″ job for less that €700.

A Sky official wandered into Ron’s one day and told him off for not having a special pub subscription, required to show football in his bar. Ron had a word and last week a free HD box was installed along with a 14 year free trial period.

He says he’s not that bothered by what happens but is looking forward to see Maradona cocked off his tits on the sidelines trying to ensure Lionel Messi is nobbled so he doesn’t take his place as a football icon.

The rest of us will watch the games and call this player shit and that player shit and then when he scores we’ll say we always knew he had something about him. There are those who will bemoan the fact that Ireland aren’t playing but frankly I think the world can live without the silky skills of McShane and Andrews and Zindine Kilbane.

It’s not as if we won’t have a vested interested though. England are in it.

I’m up for whoever they’re playing.

Taoiseach responsible for ‘catastrophic failures‘ – says Richard Bruton.

Patrick Honohan says the major responsibility lies with the directors and executives of the banks. The financial regulator showed ‘undue deference‘ to the banks and the people who ran them.

And the foundation of all this was a government whose financial policy allowed this culture to flourish. A very small amount of short-term gain for so much long term pain. They won a lot on black, span again, won again, and threw the whole lot on red and it came up black. Ooops.

The writing should have been on the wall when Bertie quit. We know what rats do when ships sink. He was always a clever little rat and knew when to get out. Teflon Bertie is keeping a low profile and while a lot of blame will rightly go on Brian Cowen for his spell as Minister for Finance, let’s not forget who was the man at the top who approved everything. When he runs for President, hoping he’s got away without being stained by this whole thing, remind yourself who, ultimately, was in charge. The fuse was lit when Bertie was Taoiseach. He is more responsible than Cowen or Lenihan or any of the bankers or developers, no matter what he’d have you believe.

But what do these reports tell us that we don’t already know? Fianna Fail have bankrupted Ireland. Literally. And how nice to see government stooge Eamon Ryan propping up his pals to cling to the last bit of power he knows he’s ever going to have. A more self-serving careerist you’ll never see the likes of again.

We’re too passive, whatever kind of fight we had was bought out of us with SSIAs and credit cards and long-term loans and sunshine holidays and new cars and all the rest. Fianna Fail have financially destroyed us, our children and fuck knows how many generations. The Green Party have supported them for no good reason other than to have a good time being part of government and all the trappings that come with it. They didn’t cause it but they’ve allowed it to continue and remember how culpable they are when we look back at the money we threw down the sinkhole that is Anglo Irish Bank and the rest.

The bankers that caused this crisis with their greed are still working at the top banks, the government that drove things forward are still in power. How is this sane? How have we allowed the people who ruined us the chance to ‘fix it’. They’re never going to fix it. All they’ve done is lash a bit of scrim tape over the top and hope for the best.

If there was any serious will to put things right people would be going to jail now for the fraud they’ve perpetrated on us all. They gambled, they lost, and we pick up the bill.

We’ll get more reports which tell us what we already know but it won’t matter. Our breaking point appears to have gone. This is the kind of thing that should spark violent protest from the people of Ireland.

Instead we Tweet and we blog and text for 30c. Sad.

It’s a tough old life being a sentator. You have to attend the Seanad and sit around talking about things which have no bearing on anything whatsoever. Then you have to pick up your salary, which is heavy, claim those expenses you’re entitled to, and then, when you think your work is done, you have to go on a four-day all-expenses paid trip to a sunny land staying in a five-star hotel to play golf.

Quite how Donie Cassidy, leader of the Seanad, was able to cope I will never know. The sacrifice he made was up there with our greatest patriots, those who fought for our independence, those who did so much – not for themselves – but for the nation they love. And those of us who might point fingers and accuse Donie and his politician chums of living the high life and ignoring the problems of home, don’t really know what we’re talking about. The man himself put us back in our boxes with his impassioned cry from the heart:

I gave up my whole bloody weekend in the name of Ireland.

His whole bloody weekend in the name of Ireland. How could we have been so pass-remarkable? He gave up his weekend in the name of Ireland by going to Turkey to play golf and live it up in a 5-star hotel. We’re not talking about intangibles here. He didn’t give up something irrelevant like his career, something inconsequential like his reputation or a trifle such as his life. No, he gave up that thing most precious to any Irish man – his bloody weekend. They only come once a week you know. To waste one in such circumstances must be so galling knowing you have to wait a full five days for another one (and having to ‘work’ three of those days too – we expect so much from our unelected representatives).

Donie Cassidy, how can you ever forgive us? How can we right this dreadful wrong and ensure such a tragedy never occurs again? Tell us, Donie, we’ll do whatever it takes.

You colossal prick.