Primal Sneeze

MacKozer has been doing a fair amount of bitching about Irish banks lately. In his last post he surmises that AIB stands for Absolutely Incompetent Bank-staff.

Well it’s my turn now. Step away from the keyboard, Mac.

Let’s face it. The AIB runs the Financial Regulator. Just as eircom runs ComReg. AIB are the big boys. They can do what they want and get away with it. They pwn the regulator! Extrapolate that and you realise they pwn the government too.

When other banks offer better rates and deals to attract customers, the AIB just might, if they feel they can spare 0.00001% of their billion euro profits, do the same, months later.

Because AIB are the biggest player they can offer the biggest range of services. With the exception of BoI the other banks are just credit unions with alloys, spots and go-faster stripes. AIB has it all and that’s why I’ve stuck with them this long.

When AIB announced they would be offering free banking I looked into it immediately. All I would have to do would be to pay one bill online or by phone once a quarter. No problem. I do that anyway. And I would have to make one purchase per quarter using my Laser card. Oops! A snag here. I didn’t have one. I had an old fashioned Banklink card. But the nice people in AIB knew this and wrote to me telling me how to replace my Banklink with a Laser. So I phoned the nice people and asked them to go ahead. No problem, sir. You will have your new card in two weeks.

That was so long ago I can’t remember what year it was. God was still sporting short trousers then. And I know we’ve all passed a lot of water under the bridge since.

I do remember calling six weeks later for an update. We are unable to process you request over the phone, sir. You will have to visit your branch. My account was opened at a branch in another town 24 years ago. With internet and phone banking there was no point transferring it to a local one. I couldn’t be bottomed visiting my branch so I left it at that.

This gave me time to think. I pay a government stamp duty of €10 on my Banklink card. I would have to pay €20 on a Laser card. Well, not exactly. I could pay €10 if I used the Laser only in ATMs or if I used it only for purchases, but if I used it for both I would pay €20. But to qualify for free banking I would have to use it for purchases and it would be no use to me if I didn’t use it at ATMs. So free banking was going to cost me €10 extra. The difference between the extra duty and the savings I’d make wasn’t great enough for me to bother switching.

The nice people in AIB wrote to me again this week. I am being automatically switched to a Laser card. I have no choice. The letter was dressed up to look like AIB were doing me a favour. I would have greater protection against fraud with chip and PIN technology.

I can’t help wondering if AIB are pandering to the revenue commissioners on this one. Here lads, how’s about we get you €10 extra from all our customers and you can owe us a favour?  We have a few things in mind.

The thing that’s really bugging me is the government stamp duty was brought in by Charlie McCreevy as a tax on banks. Not on customers. Or at least that’s what he told us at the time. But neither he, nor his successor, batted an eyelid when AIB et alia passed these taxes onto the consumer. But then, AIB pwns the government.

The HSE are running ads encouraging hospital visitors to wash their hands as part of a drive to reduce the spread of infection, mainly by MRSA.

Now, forgive the pun, but there are a few things bugging me about this campaign:

There is a line slipped in at the end of the radio ad reminding hospital staff to wash their hands too. Is this not a given? Are they not the professionals? Did all those years of study and training teach them nothing about basic hygiene?

Perhaps it is aimed at staff other than doctors and nurses. I hope it is. Last year, when our father was in God’s waiting room there was an MRSA outbreak.  We, doctors and nurses included, wore gloves, masks and aprons, and washed our hands thoroughly going in and out of the ward. On one occasion we were there at lunch time. The caterer came in, distributed the trays and left for the next ward. No gloves. No mask. No apron. No hand washing. We freaked and complained to the ward sister that all our precautions were for nothing if this woman could be allowed to ramble throughout the hospital spreading infection. We were told she was an external contractor and they had no authority over her. (He died of MRSA. They put pneumonia on the death cert but that’s for another post on another day).

There are infection threats other than just MRSA in our hospitals: Clostridium difficile is a major one. You can read more about it here, or here if you have more time, but the basics are as follows. It is called C. difficile because it is extremely difficult to treat. The antibiotics which do work are among the most expensive. It is most prevalent where a patient is being treated with antibiotics for other infections. Catch 22. It can kill those who are weakened by age or serious ailments.

Why don’t we hear about it? Because the HSE are legally obliged to collect and publish statistics on MRSA but not C. difficile. For all we know it could be more common than MRSA.

This is yet another example of the lack of joined up thinking we have come to expect in our state services.

From the Irish Independent (and fek their copyright - this is too important ).

Other Bloggers, please link to this, or to any other Irish blogger’s post on this subject. e.g. The Swearing Lady; Twenty Major.

If you are Irish, berate your local T.D.s and Senators to change the law now! If your are not Irish, berate your own government to, in turn, berate the Irish government to change our law now! This may be the first time Bloggers actually change something. If you can’t phone, or meet them in person, eMail addresses are usually formatted as firstname.surname@oireachtas.ie or go to the Oireachtas website for the correct one.
A WOMAN who was raped in her home has waived her right to anonymity in seeking an appeal against a suspended sentence for her attacker.

Mary Shannon (33) said she felt the entire justice system had let her down after the man convicted of raping her escaped being sent to jail.

Ms Shannon’s call both for the sentence to be appealed and for the introduction of assessed sentences for rape was backed by anti-rape campaigners and by Fine Gael’s Olwyn Enright.

Ms Shannon described how, when travelling to Dublin for last Monday’s sentence hearing, her attacker had been on the same train and how, after he was set free by the court, she again had to walk past him on the train on the return journey to Ennis.

She spoke of the “devastation” she felt when, at the Central Criminal Court on Monday, Mr Justice Paul Carney imposed a three-year suspended sentence in place of a jail term. “I was a victim yet I was made to feel like a criminal. Justice was not done.”

Ms Shannon said she could not understand how the judge could justify his decision, particularly as earlier in the same court on Monday he had imposed a 15-year sentence on a man convicted of raping a 74-year-old woman.

Ellen O’Malley-Dunlop of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre said last night that the suspended sentence sent out a “a really bad message” to both the perpetrators of such crimes and their victims.

“This sends out a very dangerous message to rape victims - that even if the rapist is found guilty there is no guarantee they will be locked up,” said Olwyn Enright.

Mr Justice Carney said on Monday that his decision to impose a suspended sentence was based on a previous ruling by the Court of Criminal Appeal in relation to a sentence imposed by him in a previous similar case by the Director of Public Prosecutions. Mr Carney said that appeal had been lost and the sentencing set aside.

It was in May 2005 that Adam Keane, now 20, of Barnageeha, Daragh, Co Clare, broke into Ms Shannon’s house and raped her while her children slept in the next room. Keane claimed he did not remember anything and had been high on drink and drugs.

“I really thought justice was going to be done and it was only a matter of how many years in jail he was going to get,” Ms Shannon said yesterday. “Who would want to report this type of crime now?” she told RTE television news.

Earlier, on Radio One’s ‘Liveline’ programme, she told presenter Joe Duffy that she was unable to return to her home and was back living with her children in her parents’ house.

Fiona Neary, director of the Rape Crisis Centre network, said she was concerned about the message that a suspended sentence sent out to other sexual predators.

Eugene Moloney

I have to stop quoting the Irish Independent’s Breaking News Service. Just allow me this one last time:

The Government today announced details of its multi-million euro plan to reduce traffic congestion on the M50. Commuters are being promised barrier-free tolling by August of next year, when a new system of charging will be put in place. There will be one single point on the West Link area of the motorway, where cameras and antennae will detect car registrations. Those without a prepaid electronic tag will be sent a bill by post.

We will need software and hardware systems to validate paid-up drivers and to catch the offenders. Good thing minister Martin Cullen is in charge. Remember the great job he did on electronic voting. To quote the Amstel ads: This is going to be great.