A Different View
We’re all far too tolerant of the nanny state
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
There is a terrific business opportunity out there for someone who’d like to make easy money and allow smokers to enjoy their addiction without having to gaze at the throat tumour that now graces their box of twenty fags.
How about a wrap-around box that just says 20 Major or a replica John Player Blue box, so that the smoker – who needs no reminding that they are wiped five minutes off their life every time they light up – can slip the new state-sponsored horror box into more familiar and friendly surrounds?
It’s not that I have any love for smoking, but I hate the notion of a nanny state even more.
Banning smoking in pubs was a terrific idea because it allowed us non-smokers to enjoy a pint or a meal without the fog of nicotine – and perhaps it caused a few smokers to pack in the habit as well.
But mainly it brought out the best in smokers who abided by a rule that would have been impossible to enforce without their acquiescence – and they stood in the rain or sheltered under lean-tos and then came back in from the cold.
Eventually pubs erected more permanent structures and some even put in heaters and wide-screen TVs, which suddenly meant that the smokers were outside ‘smirting’ – smoking and flirting – while us non-smokers sat inside minding the pints.
The point is that smokers knew they didn’t have the right to inflict their habit on others, so they took it outside – but it wasn’t enough for us to be spared the secondary inhalation, we now want to drive them into submission altogether.
So we’ve put a gaping tumour on the front of cigarette boxes as though the mere sight of this horror would make them realise the error of their ways after thirty years on the fags.
It’s the same nonsense that suggests we’re all driven to drink because we watch the Heineken Cup or that Liverpool fans only drink Carlsberg and Celtic fans only drink John Smith’s.
The most recent epistle – this time from the EU – bans pictures of babies on baby food, because apparently this could idealise the use of such foods, to the detriment of breast-feeding.
Because obviously parents are so shallow that, if they saw a jar with a beautiful baby on it, they’d assume that pouring gallons of that formula down their little mite’s neck until they were a shoo-in for top prize at the Bonny Baby competition.
There’s always some do-gooder who isn’t just content being miserable themselves – they also want to tell everyone else how to live their lives so we can all be miserable together.
Of course the Government has a duty to look after our health, and some of that is through education and some of it seems to be through legislation – the classic carrot and stick approach – but much of this is just an optical illusion.
They might look after our health better if they increased accessibility to hospital beds, if they tackled the spiralling cost of health insurance that is forcing so many to take a chance on giving it up, or if they slashed the layers of bureaucracy that epitomises the HSE.
The long and the short of it is that we won’t start lashing back the Heineken just because we’re watching the Heineken Cup, no more than smokers will stop smoking because there’s a stomach-churning picture on the front of the fag box.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
The only time in your life that you should ever utter the words: “Do you know who I am?” are if you’ve just had a bang on the head or you are unfortunately suffering from dementia.
Because, otherwise, the phrase ‘do you know who I am’ only serves to make things a whole lot worse.
Normally, the phrase is unleashed towards late night door staff on a wave of alcohol – and never once in the history of time has it produced the result the utterer had intended.
The doorman may well know who you are which is often the very reason you’re not getting into the place in the first instance – or if he doesn’t know who you are, he won’t be unduly influenced when he does, unless you’re a famous movie star or his long-lost cousin.
‘Do you know where I am?’ might often be closer to the phrase you’re looking for, because that would serve you well when you’re looking for a taxi.
‘Do you know who I am?’ is a threatening phrase that in truth wouldn’t frighten the cat. But if you’re anxious to dig the hole a few shovels deeper, you should follow up with ‘I’d like to speak to your manager.’
Managers can be elusive at the best of times, but they’re normally rarer than hen’s teeth when it comes to the small hours of the morning – and even if they’re there, they are most likely watching proceedings on CCTV…just so they know who you are, in case you yourself can’t remember.
‘I’d like to speak to your manager’ suggests that you and he or she are from the one social sphere which is several strata north of the one occupied by door staff.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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A Different View with Dave O’Connell
As it turned out, we were much closer to a Eurovision win than we could ever have imagined – not Ireland, of course, because we’ve now mastered the art of just sending cannon fodder to be blown out in the semi-final.
No, this was just two of us – myself and our eldest – who were lucky enough to be at Anfield for the Reds’ recent win over Brentford, where positioned in the seat right in front of us were four happy lads from Finland.
One of them, we now know, was Käärijä, the singer of the catchiest song at Eurovision, Cha Cha Cha.
But just a week before 7,000 people sung his catchphrase at the Eurovision Arena, he and two his mates – accompanied by an older bloke who had to be either his dad or from the national broadcaster – sat anonymously in the same corner of the lower level of Anfield’s Main Stand.
He was utterly unknown to us as well of course, and the only thing that saw him stand out was his green nail varnish. Live and let live, of course, but it still ensures that you make an impression even if it looks like you were just very late for St Patrick’s Day.
Käärijä may well be Liverpool’s greatest Scandinavian fan, although the bar for that is set fairly high, given that they invade the city in greater numbers every two weeks than the Vikings did just once during the first millennium.
Equally, he may not be a football fan at all – although, as the rest of the week proved, he sure loves a crowd.
Positioned as we were in the corner of the Main Stand, the next section to us, around the corner in the Anfield Road Stand – currently adding a top layer – was occupied by the visiting Brentford supporters.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
Contactless payments reached a record €17.9 billion in Ireland last year – up by 31 per cent on 2021, as people came out from under their Covid shell and appear to have left their cash behind them.
Figures from the Banking & Payments Federation found that – despite the cost-of-living increases – the Irish public made three million contactless payments a day, worth an average of €53 million in the final quarter of 2022.
Given that there are 3.8 million people in Ireland over the age of 18, that means that almost every single one of us tapped the card every day last year.
And again, on the presumption that there are a few who still prefer peeling a fifty off a wad of notes, the true figure may be even higher, as we eschew actual money every time we go into a restaurant, bar or shop.
Then comes the monthly morning of reckoning when you open your statement – electronic of course because, like paper money, banks don’t deal in paper statements anymore either – and your guilty secrets unfurl like a rap sheet before your very eyes.
Five taps of a Friday night in the local, followed by a five-ounce burger meal on the way home.
And just why did you need a family-pack of crisps when a small bag would have done? Was all that beer and wine really for a party, or a night in just for one?
Cash provided plenty of dark corners to ignore your profligacy, but there are no hiding places in the contactless world.
Worse still, until that morning of reckoning arrives, you’ve no clue how much you’ve spent, and handing over the card doesn’t hurt half as much as parting with hard cash.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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