David McWilliams - In Search of the Pope's Children

I built my little pad for around £10,000 including site £2,000 in the mid 70.'s. built an entension - maybe around the 1,000 sq ft mark- in 1989 for approx £30,000 complete. currently changing the bathroom ( cost around €9,000 complete) and kitchen. cost complete for both is running somewhere around the €36,000 mark. I dont know what the cost of building now is but the kitting out bit sure is expensive. ( I am including new appliances, curtains, flooring, lighting, worktop and all labour in the above. as far as I can see everybody who crosses the door , plumbers, electricans etc just think up a number. if the building industry every comes to a stop this country is definitely in real trouble, but to be fair it doesn't look like coming to a stop. the bit I find the hardest to get into my head is that you go to a shop for say cookers or fridges etc and you do you best to get the best price ie if they quote xxxx for the cooker you try and knock off €100 etc . then the tradesmen come and go and all the haggling you did in the shop disappears down the tube.

in short the kitchen/bathroom is now costing what a reasonably sized entension was 16 year ago.

Auto320- I'd imagine things have changed drastically in relation to broadband availability in the last few years- it's now unusual to find a place where you cannot avail of broadband.

Vanilla said:

Auto320- I'd imagine things have changed drastically in relation to broadband availability in the last few years- it's now unusual to find a place where you cannot avail of broadband.

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Yes - things have changed drastically - we've slipped way down on the European league tables where Ireland used to be in the top 5 on regular basis a few years ago. See [broken link removed] for more details.

I see McWilliams now truly believes that he is God, given that he opts to be chauffered round Dublin in the back seat of a car, wearing no seat belt. Obviously, he's too important for little things like seat belts. Just like Diana & Dodi were too important .....

RainyDay said:

I see McWilliams now truly believes that he is God, given that he opts to be chauffered round Dublin in the back seat of a car, wearing no seat belt.

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Is that the height of deific aspirations these days? Whatever happened to parting seas and turning water into gargle and stuff like that?

RainyDay said:

....I see McWilliams now truly believes that he is God, given that he opts to be chauffered round Dublin in the back seat of a car, wearing no seat belt. Obviously, he's too important for little things like seat belts. .....

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...well the seat belt was gonna get in the way.. you see he needed to be able to swing around to cup a feel of your one's 34d boob job after all!

ClubMan said:

Is that the height of deific aspirations these days? Whatever happened to parting seas and turning water into gargle and stuff like that?

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Afraid so. All the mystery has gone since they decided the parting of the sea was probably the first recorded tsunami. As to turning water into gargle, well, some think his blood is worth bottlin if that's any use?

ninsaga said:

...well the seat belt was gonna get in the way.. you see he needed to be able to swing around to cup a feel of your one's 34d boob job after all!

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Actually, I was referring to the earlier car journey, where is was in the back of the car driven by the 'dacent skin' from Glasthule reminiscing about the good oul days. But the same issue applies to the limo drive as well.

I guess the show is gone out of vogue....no one has any comments on last night's performance.

liteweight said:

I guess the show is gone out of vogue....no one has any comments on last night's performance.

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I thought the last episode was a bit crap to be honest. Too much rehashing of the previous 2 shows with the all the bling etc etc . McWilliams has some good thought provoking ideas but the "all over the place" presentation really lets him down - last nights show was a perfect example - it petered out without any real message - the whole "venetian thing" was extremely badly explained - he could have dropped the whole over the top conspicious consumption bits (Like its a surprise to anybody who has been in a conscious state here for the last 7 years!) and spent more time fleshing out the German pensioners money and the venetian thingy in more detail.

I dunno - I suppose it resembles the book - that had no great conclusions either. Somebody needs to sit the chap down and explain to him how to write an proper essay - you need an introduction , the big middle bit where you make your points ,and a conclusion where you summarise and reach a conclusion on what you have written in the feckin first place. Reminds me of my first year in Uni doing History where I would go tearing into an essay , write like a mad thing for the first 3/4 of it and then totally lose the plot as the point I was trying to make in the first place - Luckily I had a great lecturer (an visting American professor If I remember rightly) who took me aside and grounded me in the basics - draft and redraft - edit and dont be afraid to wield the knife - even if the writing is nice and it sounded pretty cool - if didn't help your argument - get rid of it.

I definitely think McWillams could have benefited from that kind of advice on last nights showing - It just seemed that he had really overlaboured the first part and then suddenly realised he had just 10 minutes left to come up a with conclusion and where we go from here.

Pity, He has some good stuff and his writing in the SBP and the Indo is first class - maybe he should stick to the short stuff or learn his lessons over this series and come back again a bit wiser and with his critical editors hat on.

My two cents

Edo

saw only 1 of the 3 shows - interesting in a fairly lightweight way and would watch the other 2 when the inevitable repeats come out, but the pure beauty of it was his capacity to appear totally self-congratulatory for pointing out what any eejit could tell you - well I suppose he did put a cute label on every "phonomenon" he could discern ..... groan

David Brent ... watch your back

Vanilla said:

Auto320- I'd imagine things have changed drastically in relation to broadband availability in the last few years- it's now unusual to find a place where you cannot avail of broadband.

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On the contrary, while you can get satelite (useless for uploading) at huge cost, once you move more than 2 miles from a broadband enabled exchange you haven't a hope of geting broadband. The story in rural Ireland, especially west, is grim and not looking to improve.

I had a serious look this year at relocating to North Roscommon/Sligo/Leitrim, looking for a nice country home in a parkland setting. Gave it up when I realised that I would be left behind in the information age stakes. Chances of ever running any kind of enterprise from this area would be nil.

What did everyone think of McWilliams strong hints that we should be looking at leaving the EU in the next 10 years and going it alone? I cannot see how it would be possible for us to stand alone like that.

Gordanus said:

What did everyone think of McWilliams strong hints that we should be looking at leaving the EU in the next 10 years and going it alone? I cannot see how it would be possible for us to stand alone like that.

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At no point in the 3 episodes I saw did Macca say that. Are you referring to the final episode where he was making the point that we should position ourselves as a bridge for Chinese trade and enterprise? This was meant, and only makes sense, were we to remain as part of the EU.

I picked up what Gordanus picked up too. he cited venice as an independent city state that traded with all the big boys and could only do so as it was independent. he didnt actually say we should pull out of the eu.

He did speculate about the emergence of a politican advocating withdrawal from the EU. I don't recall him advocating it.

cuchulainn said:

I picked up what Gordanus picked up too. he cited venice as an independent city state that traded with all the big boys and could only do so as it was independent. he didnt actually say we should pull out of the eu.

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Yess, that's what I understood. We can't be the equivalent of a city-state if we are in the EU.

I think he ellaborates in the business post today. www.sbpost.ie

I think he means that (and if you read his article from SBP yesterday) while we're int he EU, it's also wise to remember that we have always benefitted from being a trading post (any archies will attest to this, we took in objects and styles, stuck a Made in Ireland tag on them, and shipped them off as objets d'artes).

I read the book, missed the show due to not being in Ireland, and found it interesting once you got into it. It is interesting the takes on excess Ireland, which is almost a watered down version of what exists.

I caught 2 of EH 30 things and couldn't believed it wasn't under the RTE comedy tag, Mike Murphy would have been proud of some of it. But EH lost a lot of kudos by trying to be too cute making money using his celebrity (flogging apartments in Cape Verde).

David mcWilliams is an idiot going on about the so called Popes children he was in nappies when the Pope was in Ireland. Where did he get his facts?

Johnny1 said:

David mcWilliams is an idiot going on about the so called Popes children he was in nappies when the Pope was in Ireland. Where did he get his facts?

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God love him if he was still in nappies when the Pope visited Ireland - he was 11 at the time.

Are you doubting his facts because you think he was in nappies at the time? I once had to write an essay on Moses leading the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt, but I didn't actually witness it, in or out of nappies.