When the budget arrives tomorrow and the price of booze goes up what choice will us dedicated drinkers have? We have three choices.

1 – Continue drinking the booze you can buy in pubs and off-licences/supermarkets here. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see some kind of ‘0ff-licence levy’ applied so it’s more expensive for them, leaving the publicans alone in an attempt to ‘level the playing field’ a bit. It’s still beyond any kind of good reason to go into town and spend €5+ on a drink that costs you €1 or less at home. Socialability? Fuck that shit. If I go into town from now on I’m gonna be Johnny Hipflask, holstered up with rum and whiskey. And I’ll ask for splash cola too.

2 – Smuggle booze from elsewhere. So trips to the north will become a more regular occurence, especially when it comes to spirits. Last time I flew from London to Dublin you could get 2 x Gordon’s gin for £14.99. I have recently spent time in a place where a bottle of Smirnoff costs €8  in a supermarket. A bottle of Jameson €12. And here we have to pay through the nose for spirits. As dedicated drinkers our first loyalty is to our cabinet, not the government one, the one which holds all our hooch. Smuggling is going to become a very attractive option for many people.

3 – Make your own. Despite the outrageous pub prices this is probably the least attractive option as making your own booze is generally for twats who think home wine kits produce a palatable liquid and not something that tastes like the top of a battery mixed with the spunk of a moose with a smeg infection. However, I predict a rise in the availability of poitín as people are no longer prepared to swell government coffers by buying the real deal. Home made whiskeys and gins and vodkas will flood the market and kill many due to lethal combinations of chemicals and such. But all it will take is for somebody to make the Sodastream equivalent of home made grog and it’s well and truly on.

Sodastream made soft drinks which tasted similar to regular brand name soft drinks (but only after the brand name ones had gone out of date, been opened and left in the sun for a week). They were popular though so a cunning entrepeneur could have quite the thriving business if he comes up with an easy way to add some concentrate to a bottle to make ones own creme de menthe and so forth. Don’t say I don’t give you good ideas.

So tomorrow we’ll see what Lenihan does. At a time when the country needs to drink more to cope with how fucked things are he’ll put up the price of booze so we’ll have to drink more to cope with the price increase. Now that I think about it, it’s genius.

Lenihan has realised what we’re good at and how to make things better. We’ll guzzle the grape, the extra duty on all the extra stuff sold will go straight into the govt till and soon we’ll be back on track. We’re going to drink ourselves out of the recession.

Bottoms up!

I was listening to Brian Lenihan on the radio this morning talking about politician’s expenses.

“This country”, he says, “is in a serious financial crisis and doing away with Oireachtas expenses won’t change that. We have to see the bigger picture”. Something similar to that anyway.

I was driving at the time and I could feel myself get tense. I mean, nobody suggested for one second that changing how politicians cream in free money all day long claim their expenses would fix the economy. That’s just stupid. And Lenihan saying it is stupid when he knows fine well that it would just make TDs and Senators accountable for what they claim.

Of course, the FFers are in a snot over the way John O’Donoghue has been treated and want to cloud the issue by being wilfully obtuse.

However, the point is it got me cross and I felt like destroying something because everyone knows that when cross a release is needed to calm oneself down. I thought about ramming another motorist but that would have been of little benefit to me or my Honda 50.

If I could have driven somewhere and punched somebody in the face it would have made me feel better. As it was Lenihan who upset then ideally I should be able to punch him in the face. If not him then one of his staff. And if Lenihan wants to be a good boss to his staff he’ll stop saying things which make people want to punch him in the face.

Maybe I should set up a Drive Thru Punchbag Emporium. A series of them across the country. You arrive, pay your money, get a pair of boxing gloves and you can pummel a punchbag until you feel better.

THWACK! ZWONK! POW! BLAM!

And so on until you don’t feel quite so cross. I think it would help everyone’s mood. Especially if the punchbags had pictures of the worst cunts on them.

‘We call this one The Harney because it is gigantic and flabby’.

‘This one is The Cowen because it is gigantic and flabby and smells like oxen’.

‘Good choice, you’ve gone for The Lenihan. Punch it right and its liver comes out. You can keep it too’.

‘The Haughey, yes. Perfect. Just keep your eye on it because if you look away for a second it’ll fuck you’.

‘This one is always a favourite, The Bertie. Yes, it’s only small but it’s shifty as fuck. We don’t recommend women use this one though’.

I wish I had more gumption. I think this one’s a runner.

Have been watching this all afternoon.

Lenihan’s proposals and performance laughable. Using quotes from Obama pathetic and people were actually laughing at him in the house. He was heckled like a shit stand-up.

Richard Bruton and Joan Burton have essentially ripped the whole plan apart.

It’s clear that neither the government or NAMA have the slightest bit of credibility.

Check this out.

Controversial former Fas boss Rody Molloy had his pension boosted by an estimated €1.4m after the intervention of two senior government ministers, who are this weekend blaming each other over the affair.

Molloy, who presided over an incredible culture of waste at the €1bn-a-year state agency, has now, as a result of the intervention, a total pension worth more than €4m.

via @RealBLenihan.

Can we just start shooting these cunts, please? What choice do we have?

Is it really too much to expect that the Minister for Finance fully read a 120 page document?

Is it really too much to expect that he be made aware of a situation where billions of euros are being transferred between banks in order to cook the figures?

Is it really believable that people in his department knew, referred it to the Financial Regulator, but didn’t tell him?

That in a time of crisis he couldn’t manage to read 120 extremely important pages is just appalling. He’s just announced the recapitalisation plans for AIB and Bank of Ireland. Can we be sure he hasn’t missed something because he couldn’t be arsed reading a different 120 page document?

Do we really know there’s nothing dodgy on those books? Can we trust him if he says there isn’t?

He has all the credibility of Lorena Bobbit at a bris. Time to go.