Month: June 2022

The business community have had it tough over the last few years due to the pandemic. They’re not out of the woods yet either as the high cost of living and the predicted rise in interest rates, continue to make life difficult for them. They need their customers now more than ever, but life is difficult for them too.

Everyone is watching their spending these days, so value for money is paramount. I’m all for supporting the local guy where possible, but they don’t always make it easy. Hotels and car rental companies have lost the run of themselves which is encouraging visitors to consider alternative holiday destinations and many of our shops and stores are failing too. Especially when it comes to customer service.

Some people don’t like their job and you can spot them a mile away. They have no interest in engaging with customers. The pandemic was a blessing for them, with masks and Perspex screens providing additional hiding places.

It’s not uncommon these days, to walk into a premises only to find yourself standing there while the staff continue to use the phone or computer without acknowledging your existence, making you feel like an inconvenience.

I was looking for something recently, and I searched the Internet to see if it was available in my area. It was advertised for sale in a store in Midleton, so I jumped into the car and off I went. When I got there, the guy told me they weren’t in stock yet. When I pointed out that it was advertised on their website, he just shook his head and I left empty handed.

I checked my phone again and found they were advertised in a store in Little Island, so off I went. When I arrived, I was told they weren’t in stock there either, but they should be getting them in soon. When I suggested that having them advertised on the website was misleading, I got a shoulder shrug but returned home empty handed.

A few weeks later, I had a similar experience when I wanted a specific present for my grandson. After checking the opening times for a store in Mahon Point on their website, I hit the road. It was due to open at 9.30am but when I got there, a notice on the door advised me that the opening time was 10am.

I sat in the car for half an hour and returned at 10am. They didn’t have what I was looking for but when I told the lady that it was advertised on their website, she said they didn’t stock it locally. She could order it for me from their main depot, but it would take some time. When I suggested I could have done that myself and saved an unnecessary journey, I got another shoulder shrug.

It seems that stores advertise items they don’t have in stock just to get you through the door. They hope that when you can’t find what you came for, you’ll buy a ladder or a toilet brush instead.

When I got home, two wasted hours later, I sat down with a coffee and my laptop and within five minutes I was sorted. I found the exact item on the Internet, ordered it, paid for it, and had it delivered to my front door. There was no fuss, and I didn’t have to find fuel or parking for my recliner.

Last week I needed a part for a toilet cistern which I couldn’t get locally so I rang three stores in Cork. In the first one, a lady answered, and I got the impression she hadn’t a clue what I was looking for, but she told me to bring up the broken part and she would find something to match it. Not convinced, I tried another.

This time, the lady wasn’t quite sure what I wanted but she was certain they didn’t have it. On my third attempt, I spoke to a lady who told me she had one left and would leave it at the customer service counter for me, and I could collect it there. Success at last, so off I went.

It took a while because I was stuck at the Jack Lynch Tunnel for almost an hour. When I got to the store, I asked a young lad where the customer service desk was and he didn’t say a word, just pointed. I followed the finger and asked the lady at the desk for my part, but she couldn’t locate it. Somebody had moved it, so she went off to find it.

After ten minutes, I noticed she had given up her search and was back at her station dealing with other customers. I showed a guy in the plumbing department the broken piece I had with me and asked where I could find a replacement and he told me they didn’t stock them.

I explained about the lady keeping it for me in the customer service area and he said whatever she was keeping wasn’t what I was looking for because they didn’t have them. Time to go.

As I was getting into my car, I spotted another plumbing supplier. In I went and there was a guy sitting behind a Perspex screen who was busy looking at his phone. When he eventually decided to speak to me, he directed me to the bathroom section. The bathroom section was deserted, and I got fed up waiting and left.

Apart from wasting three hours on my search, it would have been easier, cheaper, and far less stressful if I had just ordered the part online in the first place. Price gouging, bad customer service and poor value for money will drive customers elsewhere and the business community would do well to remember that.

Things pop into my head from time to time that leave me bewildered. Like, how does a huge cruise liner with a thousand passengers on board stay afloat by the quayside in Cobh. But when my small phone falls out of my pocket into the toilet, it immediately sinks to the bottom before I have a chance to retrieve it? 

Or how is it that when the salesman introduces you to your new car, he’ll convince you you’re getting the best buy on the market and guaranteed to hold its value. But when you go to trade in the same car, it’s a different story. He’ll wrinkle his nose at the prospect of having such an eyesore clogging up his forecourt because he says he’ll never sell it. It’s the wrong model.

These things can be explained but there is another question that the best minds still can’t answer; why it is that some dog owners think it’s OK to let their dogs foul public spaces?

It can’t be lack of awareness because it is a popular topic of conversation and regularly highlighted in the media. There are notices everywhere too about dog fouling so they can’t say they don’t know it’s a problem therefore, it must be something else. Ignorance, stupidity, lack of respect, take your pick but meanwhile, it continues to be an embarrassing eyesore.

The cruise liners are berthing in Cobh again after an enforced absence and they’re a welcome sight. It’s great to see the passengers strolling around and enjoying the music on the streets or sitting outside in the fresh air enjoying a pint or some food. Not only do they give a well-deserved boost to the local economy, they also create a buzz about the place.

In fairness to the local businesses, they have played their part too. The shops, pubs and restaurants look well, and the town is clean thanks in no small part to the Tidy Towns gang. They do trojan work, along with the council workers, and it shows.

Unfortunately, a lot of that work is being undone by a few irresponsible dog owners who have no regard for all that effort. The usual suspects continue to allow their dogs to dirty the streets, footpaths and green areas while giving two fingers to the rest of us. I’ve highlighted this issue many times but instead of getting better, it’s getting worse.

I walked into Cobh recently while a liner was tied up at the quayside and the town was busy. The footpath by the Promenade, which is the main thoroughfare for pedestrians coming from the liner into the town, was littered with dog poo. That was the sight that welcomed the visitors.

There was a pile of it in one area that looked as if it had been deposited by a large dog. It was right in the middle of the footpath and was so big and obvious, it couldn’t possibly have been missed by the person accompanying the dog. I thought it was disgusting but some dog owners see nothing wrong with it.

The same people think it’s ok to allow their dogs out in the morning to relieve themselves wherever they like. On the footpaths, in someone else’s garden or on the green areas. They don’t care where they do it as long as it’s not outside their own front door. Then they let them wander around for the rest of the day, unsupervised, to do what they like. It’s happening everywhere and that behaviour will continue until the owners are forced to take responsibility but that won’t happen until such time as we have enforcement.

Dogs are not allowed by law to be out in public unless they are on a leash or under the immediate control of a responsible person, but that law is blatantly disregarded and goes unpunished. Some public parks have allocated certain times when dogs can be left off their leash but not everybody sticks to those times, and nothing is done about that either.

Mary McCarthy writing in the Independent said Palmerstown Park in Dublin can feel like a doggie park in reverse, with the kids penned up in the playground while the hounds and mutts get the run of the place. That’s not right either, but how do we fix it?

It might be worthwhile keeping an eye on our Kerry neighbours to see how they get on. It was announced last year that the movement of dogs and horses will have to be restricted on beaches down there if they are to meet the Blue Flag standard.

The Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) is responsible for handing out Blue Flag certification for beaches. It is the world’s largest environmental education organisation and prioritises climate action to address the urgent threats of climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental pollution.

According to their website the iconic Blue Flag is one of the world’s most recognised voluntary awards for beaches and in order to qualify for the Blue Flag, a series of stringent environmental, educational, safety, and accessibility criteria must be met and maintained.

To help meet these standards, Kerry County Councillors voted to adopt bye laws to restrict dogs and horses from accessing parts of Kerry’s Blue Flag beaches at specific time periods during the summer. Under these bye laws, animals can’t access the Blue Flag areas of these beaches between 11am and 7pm from June 1st until September 15th.

It will be very interesting to see how this is enforced though. Dog fouling has been ignored for years by local authorities across the country. They claim they don’t have the resources or the ability to identify offenders, so how then will they cope with wayward dogs and horses galloping by the seaside? We’ll have to wait and see.

Questions were asked in the aftermath of the recent chaos in Dublin Airport and rightly so. It was a complete mess with over a thousand passengers missing their flights. The excuses were fairly predictable though.

They are the standard responses we get when anything goes wrong; procedures have been put in place to prevent this happening again and the public will see an improvement in the coming weeks and months.

That covers a multitude but when all is said and done, there seems to be very little accountability. The management are hopeful those scenes won’t be repeated, but they can’t give any guarantees. That’s not good enough.

Somebody made a decision to get rid of a large number of essential ground workers in the airport during Covid 19. Fair enough, we were in the middle of a pandemic, nobody was travelling, and the cash reserves of the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) were dwindling. They had to make cuts, but did they have to be so deep?

This hiatus was not going to last forever. Most people I know wanted an end to Covid so they could meet friends and relatives overseas. It was obvious they were going to take to the skies in vast numbers at the first available opportunity, but apparently the DAA didn’t see it coming. They said the surge wasn’t in any of the predictions and they weren’t expecting a full return to air travel for at least two years.

That’s water under the bridge now and those responsible will continue to earn very large salaries and probably collect a bonus at the end of the year for a job well done. That’s kind of how it works in this country.

A lady from the passport office was interviewed by Pat Kenny and he wanted to know why there was such a big delay in getting a passport. He also wanted to know why some people had to wait for hours to talk to someone on the phone and why passports were being returned to applicants for further attention months after receiving them. He couldn’t understand why they weren’t returned as soon as issues with the applications were identified.

The lady acknowledged they had been experiencing some difficulties, but they had been resolved now and the public should see an improvement in the service. She told Pat they were employing additional staff and they would be operational in the coming weeks.

They had a plan to speed up delays in issuing passports, including more than doubling passport office staff numbers from 60 to 140 while a new system of Garda certification had also been introduced. This was planned to commence in the following two weeks.

That’s the middle of summer in lay-man’s language which might seem a bit late to the ordinary punter but better late than never I suppose. The thing is though, we always seem to be reacting to foul ups instead of preparing for them. OK, so nobody died waiting for a passport or missing a flight but there are other circumstances where our lack of preparedness could have more serious consequences. Like the defence of our country for instance.

Back in January we learned the Russian Navy intended to conduct military exercises off the coast of Cork. These drills were due to start in early February. The Irish Government protested but the Russian ambassador to Ireland, Yuri Filatov, said that plans by Russia to hold navy military exercises off the coast of Ireland were a “non-story” and downplayed the significance of the navy exercises.

Vice Admiral Mark Mellett, the former chief of staff of the Irish Defence Forces, had a different opinion. He said that naval exercise was the “opening salvo” in the Ukrainian war. He said it was provocative in nature and claimed the defence forces were not in a position to protect Irish controlled waters. He also suggested that we are probably the most vulnerable state of the 27 members in the EU which is worrying. So, what was the plan?

Well, there didn’t seem to be one and it was left to a group of fishermen to stand up to the might of the Russian Navy. They were prepared to go to sea in their trawlers to protect their fishing grounds and marine life. They said nothing was being done to help them, so they would look after themselves.

They felt their livelihoods were at stake and the fishing grounds should not be used for Russian war games. They made a stand, and in the end, it worked out OK. Only for them, those fishing grounds could have been contaminated for years to come if the Russians had gone ahead as planned. It was our version of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Back in the sixties Soviet ships bound for Cuba with nuclear missiles were confronted by a line of U.S. vessels enforcing a blockade. A tense standoff followed because a breach of the blockade could have sparked a nuclear exchange. The Soviet ships stopped short of the blockade and the crisis was averted.

In our case, we’re ill equipped to defend ourselves. A report from the Commission on the Defence Forces found we can’t protect ourselves from external threats by sea or air. It has recommended a major overhaul of our defence capability which the Government will consider in the coming weeks and months. The standard response.

We’re very tolerant which is just as well because we’re always getting caught on the hop. We expect mediocrity from the decision makers so it’s no surprise when we get it. We’re used to it. It would be nice though, if we could be ahead of the game for once, but I can’t see that happening in the immediate future. Certainly not in the coming weeks and months.

I have been reading up on the subject of near-death experiences. Looking at the things people reported seeing at the point of death. I’m talking about the experiences recorded by those who have survived obviously, because talking to dead people is still a step too far for most of us.

Having said that, there are some who claim to have that ability and they make a decent living from it too. Anyway, back to near-death experiences.

People have given various accounts of things that happened to them during their close encounters with the Grim Reaper. Some talk about having outer body sensations and floating above their body where they could watch what was going on in the room beneath them. Others talk about seeing a tunnel with a bright light at the end of it and wanting to follow it or being greeted by long lost relatives who encouraged them to cross over and join them on the other side.

Most said they were unafraid and felt comfortable in their new surroundings which is reassuring for the rest of us. While I have no desire to check it out for myself just yet, it would be nice to think that there could be a happy ending to my demise. I won’t bank on that just yet though because there are other explanations for these sensations too.

One theory about the near-death phenomenon suggests that these images might actually be memories from our birth being revisited. A baby being born leaves the womb to travels down a tunnel towards a light, and what waits for it in the light is usually a great deal of love and warmth. According to the theory, what happens at near-death is only a stored memory of what happened when life began.

That sounds a bit far-fetched to me. I have no recollection of my birth and I can’t imagine any aspect of that experience popping into my mind under any circumstances. I struggle to remember what I did yesterday so trying to recall events from over sixty years ago would be a complete non-starter.

I have witnessed a few births in my time too and nothing I saw ever gave me an indication that the journey from the womb to the delivery room was a fun time for anyone. I don’t suppose being propelled down a narrow tube is a pleasurable experience for a baby and unless I’m mistaken, it doesn’t seem to be a bundle of laughs for the mother either.

Another explanation requires a leap of faith. Many people have said they experienced visions of angels appearing to help them make the transition to heaven. Doctors, nurses, and loved ones, have also reported witnessing signs of deathbed visions, such as seeing dying people talking to and interacting with invisible presences in the air, heavenly lights or even visible angels.

Some explain the angel deathbed phenomenon away as just hallucinations from medication, but others are adamant the visions still occur when patients are not medicated.

Those of a religious mindset say it’s common for angels to visit people who are preparing to die, to ease their fear of death and to help them find peace. Christian leader Billy Graham believed that God always sends angels to welcome people to heaven when they die.

Others have a more practical view on what happens during a near death experience, and they are inclined to believe it is simply a hallucination induced by the slow death of neurons in our brain. That makes perfect sense to me, but the reality is, nobody knows for sure.

According to Theconversation.com, Neuroscientists Olaf Blanke and Sebastian Dieguez there are two possible explanations for near-death experiences. One, is associated with the brain’s left hemisphere, which features an altered sense of time and impressions of flying. The second, involving the right hemisphere, is characterised by seeing or communicating with spirits, and hearing voices, sounds and music and the different interactions between brain regions produce these distinct experiences.

Some researchers claim that endorphins released during stress can reduce pain and increase pleasant sensations and anaesthetics such as ketamine can simulate near-death experience characteristics, such as out-of-body experiences. A lack of oxygen to the brain might cause tunnel vision and could also trigger hallucinations.

So, while there are many suggestions for possible causes, the most widespread explanation for near-death experiences is that they are hallucinations caused by activity in the brain as cells begin to die. As these occur during times of crisis, it would explain the stories that survivors recount.

What happens when we draw our last breath remains a mystery. It might be angels doing their thing or it could be the brain playing tricks as it prepares to shut down. Those who believe in a life after death probably get comfort from the angel’s theory but not all survivors paint a pretty picture of the afterlife.

Some say they got a glimpse of Hell, and it wasn’t very welcoming. They gave descriptions which included being drawn through walls and doorways against their will and despite their best efforts, they couldn’t fight it. There was an overwhelming force pulling them away, and no matter how badly they wanted to stay alive, the choice was no longer theirs. They were being dragged to hell, whether they liked it or not.

Others described feeling their skin burning from the extreme heat as doors swung open inviting them inside and having to walk a path littered with the remains of dead people. Some told of feeling an intense anger taking hold of them unlike they had ever felt before. Rage consumed them.

Not exactly what I had in mind. I was thinking more in terms of sandy beaches, sun loungers, and an endless supply of gin and tonic.