The French

Well the French did it, they won and are on the way to the World Cup.

It was horrible, it wasn't particularly fair but I suppose that's why we love sports. It helps you forget about your real troubles for a few brief moments.

If Ireland get a penalty...

I think they should try this..

Would John Gormley do this?

In your time of trouble, would John Gormley do this?

I bet he would have recylced the iron bar!

Free stuff for €2.99

The Irish Independent, innovators that they are, have come up with an iPhone app to read the newspaper. I saw it online and thought that's a good idea.

I went to download the app and was horrified that it cost €2.99.

€2.99 to read the paper online, that you can read for free online! Are they serious?

I'm going to continue to read the Independent online, for free, I won't be wasting money on the iPhone app.

A new start I swear...

The last post was about being a lazy poster and then over a month later I'm pretty much going to say the same thing.

Marathon is finished, well for this year, a slow 4.46.20 but I really enjoyed this one.

Now expect a post every couple of days from now on.

Lazy Blogger

I have many excuses and some of which are pretty good, but the main reason I've not been blogging is I'm a bit lazy.

I've been training for a marathon and working and living my life so I've not been twiddling my thumbs.

I will try harder though!

Some Ideas for recovery.

German unemployment has risen to 8.3%. This doesn't sound too good but if you read on you will see that only 9000 more people have lost their jobs last month. That is a tiny fraction of the amount losing their jobs in Ireland.

Is it because the Irish economy is in a worse state than Germany's? Well yes, but the Germans have implemented a plan that subsidises jobs, and encourages shorter worker weeks, so that people will take a cut in wages but will not need to go on full unemployment benefit which is a lot of money. It also has the benefit of keeping manufacturing going and thus bringing in VAT and keeping exporters at work.

With a little bit more imagination and we could recover a lot sooner and there would be a lot less people heading towards skid row.

Sometimes simple solutions solve complex problems but trying to solve them invariably solves them quikcer than doing nothing.