Tag Archives: frilly on fridays

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Kilcullen Credit Union, Co Kildare

The author rallies for change to start where you live.

A local solution for local people.

Frilly Keane writes

Whatever you had to say or not say about last week’s Frill-Bits, This week… tis a “we’re on the one road” call to arms. So do yerself a favour and stop reading now Jonotti. Or whoever you are today.

I know I’ve spoken here and there over the years about Registered Charities, HSE Service Providers, Representative Bodies and the NGO/ Voluntary Sectors in Ireland, and because of the day job I’ve had to behave myself and ‘hould back (Transparency Note: I don’t agree with a CHY Tax designation. Be a Not For Profit operating entity, VAT can be Zero Rate too btw).

However, for the year that’s in it, I’m determined to rally ye into a change that might have a more visible effect in yere own backyard.

Tales of wages benchmarked to the CEOs of PLCs and Multi Nationals, gluttonous expenses and HQ overheads, before we even get to the Pensions bigger than Beckham, are no longer news. That’s sad, but while I blame Revenue, Big 4/Top Tier Firms, and Corporate Enforcement for allowing this behavior become the norm; here’s something I want ye to consider:

STOP GIVING TO THEM

I don’t blame you the lad that buys the daff or runs 10k in a pair of slippers. There is a feel good that you earn. But there are other sources of well being you could try. Buy the brekkies for the next week in your nearest School Breakfast Club. Have you knowledge or skills you can share?

How about helping out their Homework Club. Do you know any local Community Welfare Officers, Social Workers or Carers? Ask them, is there anyone that needs a dig out. A visit every now and again, even if it’s just to swap out a bottle of gas, a box of nappies, or a spin to the post office to collect a pension. Giving away perfectly good prams, bikes, furniture, to family and friends? Find a local family that have had a tough time of it instead.

That’s the behavior that sees immediate effect in your community, and its long lasting.

Annuder one.

Banks. W’da’F have they done for your local patch? Besides trying to own it or Ghost Estate it? The time has come to get back to yere Credit Unions. The very institutions that were there for our Parents and Grandparents, in times of Communions, Funerals, School Uniforms etc, are in serious danger of extinction.

If they are not being suffocated by new Central Bank rules on Investments, Post Office Banking and Online Lending, they are been forced to merge. The Common Bond, a very valuable ethos to our grassroot identity, be it urban or rural, is racing into being a thing of our past.

I appreciate we all have a Credit Union story of mad lending, Assistant Manager jobs for Grandkids who only managed a term of Barber College. Those days are gone. If you have no interest in applying to your local Credit Union for that Car Loan, or that Trip to the World Cup Loan, or the Home Improvement – Man Shed Loan or the College Fees Loan, or clear the Bank Overdraft Loan, or whatever you’re having yourself Loan, then fair enough.

Volunteer. If you have Executive Skills, Management Skills, Marketing Skills, anything that could land into a daycent contribution at Board Level. Stump it up folks. BTW, Compare the lending rates…. You might surprise yourself.

And annudder’ting.

Shop Local. Fair enough, many’s a time I’ve gone for the fifty cent bag’a spuds too. But where would’ya be for the Fruit n’Veg man when you’ve forgotten the fancy herbs for sum’ting special? Or needed a bale of briquettes delivered. Even if it’s just once a week for a bunch of bananas; give them some custom. Show them your face once in a while. Likewise the butcher, baker, dry cleaner etc.

Our local traders, if they’re not being rated out of it, they are being Insurance Premium’ptied into closing down. Anyone been to their nearest pub lately, or who here goes into town to one of the ‘Squares to engage a Solicitor or an Accountant. Again, pick the nearest one to your front door. They might surprise you. Its not much lads. A pint, a pound a sausages and a few heads a’cabbage every week won’t hurt ye.

These are just two extracts from an election flyer received yesterday from a local independent.

“Increasing social and sporting facilities for our local area, with particular emphasis on allotments, community gardens, outdoor gyms and playing pitches

Ensuring a safe and clean environment, by focusing on footpath repair, gulley cleaning and tackling illegal dumping”

That’s who I’m voting for.

The Big Banks, The Big Bhoys, The Big Charities, The Big Retailers, The Big Parties. HAVE ALL FAILED US.

If you want to actually see this recovery they’re all taking about. Start it yourself. Strictly, Local.

Frilly Keane’s column appears here every Friday. Follow Frilly on Twitter: @frillykeane

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Blindboy from the Rubber Bandits on last week’s Late Late Show

Further to Blindboy Boatclub’s appearance on the Late Late Show where he decried the historic challenges facing his generation.

Frilly Keane writes:

Oh yeah. Inter 1983? Leaving Cert 1985? Then you’re My Generation. And we’d no doss year either. Transition Year ffs. We did our leaving cert 5 years after our Confirmation. Unless you were posh, and got to repeat.

I will give Blindbhoy the CAO form tho’. Ours was much easier to fill out. And the points. None of us managed points for +. And we never heard of Magaloof. But we all knew about sh1tty holiday jobs. Like veg picking, hotel cleaning, factory labouring —– Christ, Murphy’s Evergreen still haunts me.

My Generation know a lot about Corporal Punishment. D’ya know the spikey part of a biro cap? Did ya ever see that stick out of a 10 year old’s lip? Right Through. A smack of the Rolla will do that ya know. Do ya? The sheer thuggery of an Irish National School? But if you had, at least there was a first aid box handy, or some a Health & Safety Regulation lying around requiring a first aider to sort it.

My Generation got on planes too. An Ork return to Heathrow in April 1987 was One Hundred, and Thirty Six POUNDS and twenty two pee. That was two weeks wages. Unless you worked in Cashes. Then it was 2 n’ half.

We got the boat too. It was much cheaper, and you could hitch your way down to the terminal. £9.15 could have got ya on The Innisfallen to Swansea, a manky ferry that when it didn’t stink of Truckers’ sweat and industrial diesel, it ran with sick. And girls swamped in Parkas, sweating, with red eyes, green faces, bulging army slash school bags; crouched in corners with their faces to rumbling walls or thick windows if they got a seat. Sitting in the corridors pretending to be asleep if they didn’t.

These were the girls that were even too afraid to tell a friend. Too afraid of the sneering and mockery. Too afraid of the shame. Too afraid of their families. Too afraid of the nuns the priests and all grey buildings of statutory authority and assumed order. Too afraid of their employers. And some but still too many, too afraid of their teachers and classmates.

Your generation gets to be disgusted, disgusted that her baby would be labelled Illegitimate, and that girl would be classified as an unmarried mother by both generation’s Taxation System. But at least these girls got out.

My generation would all know a school pal who was sent to a Mother and Baby Home. What was the unforgivable Sex Before Marriage to my generation, is now being videoed by yours, on a phone. Liked and hashtagged. FFS.

My Generation learnt of AIDS as a disease spread by Durty Gay Men. And to don’t ever touch them. It’s catching. Did any of your generation be denied health care, a decent send off, and burial into their own family plot because of a virus infection? Did any of your generation be given medical advice by a religious order? Mine did.

My Generation did grow up tho’

We bought houses. In 1993/4 A purchase price of 28k (one bed workers cottage in D8), required almost 10k. In a time of zero first time buyers grants for 2nd hand, Stamp Duty and double digit interest rates. A time when if your wages were over 12.k per annum you were considered high rate earner. 65%. That’s why we all had Saturday jobs. I used to collect glasses in Bad Bobs. I don’t see Paddies doing that anymore.

The drive to Cork could take 6 hours but at least we didn’t need NCTs. I give your generation that crib. Nor did we suffer the pain of penalty points. So yeah, a Terrible infliction on you all. And the toll. Damn your generation and your tolls.

OK. I’m getting silly now. What’s p1ssed me off is that all your whinging and cribbing and finger pointing anti-neo liberal ranting is in the main, Financial.

My generation had nowhere near the opportunities. Our athletes didn’t have National Training Centres of Excellence or Olympic sized pools. My generation a mature student was your mam learning Spanish. My generation never had the ambition your generation has.

If it wasn’t bate out of us in schools it was crushed out of us by a society that was led by religious zealots, ruled by snobbery, and crippled by taxes and interest rates that your generation will never see the like of, and an inherent understanding that we were never good enough.

Look at Hollywood today. Paddies Ruling the Red Carpet. My generation Hollywood Paddies were the drunken cop, the pregnant mother of 12, or the crooked judge in the casting calls. Look at you? What global reception would Horse Outside have gotten in 1988? Naw’ mind local ffs. Peas or Beans was our lot. If you’d have asked me what an espresso was back then, I probably would has said its something my Nanna uses to clean her windows.

There was a time too, when my generation couldn’t afford a house, or have children. Do you really think corruption, jobs for the boys, banks robbery and secrecy is unique to your generation? What is unique is that your generation now get to complain about it on the telly.

I don’t begrudge you. I celebrate what your generation has added to my life. But I am the better for mine and vice versa. I saw The Clash. I was at the very first Sweat dance. I went to the US with a false passport and worked as a lifeguard in the American Coast Guard. Cork done the double.

My generation know how to write a letter, get a week out of a chicken, and what to do in a power cut. Your generation will most likely, never witness ten Irish Men starve themselves to death, or a Stardust, or another Ann Lovett.

So grow the fuck up
Repeal the 8th
Wrap yer plastic wrapper around that.
And shur’up about everything else.

Frilly Keane’s column will appear here every Friday. Follow Frilly on Twitter: @frillykeane