The Lunchbox Brigade

I am a closet member of the Irish Lunchbox brigade. Every morning I run from the house to my car with a big lunchbox stashed under my coat. I am not ready to admit to my neighbours that I can no longer afford to live the life of a galloping gourmand.

Napoleon said that an army marches on it's stomach and I took that to heart. We used to have a morning meeting during which we would allocate around 5 minutes to work matters and 25 minutes to where we would go for lunch that day. We would refer to weekend restaurant reviews to assist with the decision making process. Now I spend 30 minutes alone every evening considering what the contents of tomorrows lunchbox will be.

While you might not want the neighbours watching you head off to work with your Bob the Builder Lunchbox, there is nothing to be embarassed about when you arrive at the office. In fact the morning meeting now allows for a few minutes of information exchange. Useful tips on tasy sandwich fillers, how to stop your bread going soggy, how to make soup! I recently recommended planning Sunday lunch with the following weeks lunches in mind. Next Sunday we are going to have a large (very large) smoked ham. That could keep me going for months.

Bringing a lunchbox is also good for your diet - I think. Fruit fits nicely into the standard size box, as does yogurt, cheese and maye some tasty vegetables. The nutritional advice recomending fuit and vegetables may or may not be a load of hot air but these types of foods certainly produce quite an amount of air themselves. Is this good for the environment?

It is almost lunchtime now and I can't wait. I like to listen to the (BAD BAD BAD) News on the internet while force feeding myself another apple and another orange and another banana and maybe a carrot. I need my daily dose of misery to help me stay away from those overpriced restaurants with their mouthwateringly tasty starters, their big juicy steaks served with fresh local vegetables all cooked to perfection. I sit here dreaming of things like napkins, tablecloths and knives and forks!!! I remember things like a waitress clearing the table while you read the paper. Now it's simply a case of wiping your desk down wth your Lidl Kitchen roll and back to work. We had a short spell when we lived to eat, now it's back to eating to live. Damn I forgot my soup!

A SOLUTION

The biggest problem in finding a solution to the Irish Economic problem is working out how big the problem is in the first place. I spent a week trying to work it out but I couldn't. There simply are not enough spaces on my calculator. When I try to add up what we as a country owe, the screen displays "50.E!!!!" - in red.

I think we need to get our hands on 50,000,000,000 but it could be 50,000,000,000,000. I think that is called 50 thousand gazillion. The Irish Civil Service must be issued with calulators that can only compute around 9 digits. i think they are just guessing the rest. There is such a thing as an atomic microscope. It is the most pwerful type of microscope in the world. We need an atomic calulator. In fact we need both. We need the atmoic microscope to find the brains of the politicians/civil servants who sleep walked into this mess and we need the atomic calculator to work out the bill!

Once we get past this point we need to get our thinking caps on. The only way I see us getting out of this mess is a combination of begging and blackmail. We all know the Germans and the Frenchies are loaded. They have the money and we have the Lisbon referendum. For a small fee (the above mentioned 50 gazillion or it could be 50 thousand gazillion)we will vote yes to the treaty.

We would have to allow the Euro heads to attach conditions to this loan. We might have to finally learn a foreign language. We might have to improve our English speaking skills to a level on a par with a 5 year old Scandinavian.

We might have to start taking the Eurovision seriously again. No more entering turkeys.

We might have to turn Ireland into a big craft shop to entertain our continental cousins. We might have to wear leprechaun outfits.

Meanwhile as our economy slides down the toilet we still pay the highest levels social welfare, we have the worlds best paid policitians and we have the worlds highest paid central banker (around €400,000 per annum).

While the nations work force heads off to work with their lunchboxes under their arms the 166 TD's discuss whether they should have to provide evidence of the expenses (up to €100k)they claim. As I sit at my desk trying to find a website where I can sell my childrens kidneys I am trying to figure out why the Irish Prime Minister gets paid more than the American President.

Why does America, with a population of 300 million have 100 senators and litle old Ireland, with a population of 4 million have 166 TD's. Either America should have 750 senators or we should have 1.5 TD's. I think I would prefer the 1.5 option and we could round that down to 1.

It's only Monday

An inspired idea.

I am now convinced that I do not live in a real country. I think ireland is a reality TV show devised by Europeans with a wierd sense of humour. I now believe that every Friday night a guy called Gunther who lives in Hamburg sits down to watch his favourite programme iRELAND.( it doesn't get a capital I because it doesn't deserve one)

I think in the early nineties our overall dress sense and sense of style was an embarassment to the rest of Europe so they gave us some money. Part of the deal was that we would stop appearing on the beaches of the Mediteranean wearing black brogues and G.A.A. football shorts that went see through when wet.

We smartened ourselves up a bit and started wearing interenationally recognised brands such as Pennys. They Euro heads came over to visit. They didn't like the infrastructure here because there wasn't any. They liked the green grass. That was all we had, green grass and fish. ( Oh I think we gave the fish away) So they provided us with what was called Structural and Cohesive funding . I think that their plan was that we would be like their holiday home but they were going to carry out some renovations before spending any time here. And maybe, by keeping us working on these refurbishments we would be less likely to travel to other European countries and cause embarassment.

So they gave us a lot of money. Well it was a lot of money to us. As we are a shower of incompetent drunken fools we put the money on a horse. And the horse won.

Billy.G

Thank God it's Friday

Nothing to declare today - too depressed