Messages

[Bankers and the Government...]

Cash may not be King for you and that's your personal thoughts and there are more like you than not but for a lot of people "Cash is King". So many people rely on cash for tips to make their wages up, Supermarkets are going more and more self service which a lot of people hate espicially if you have a large trolly of groceries. I'd say there's more fraud with digital payments than cash, the amount of people swindled out of their life savings by on-line scammers is shocking. When the internet goes down or there is a major breach of fraud you'll be glad of cash. The only people who really benefit from a cashless society is Bankers and the Government...
BTW i totally see the benifit of the tap and go too, when i'm out on the bike I don't need to carry cash and use the phone to pay for my coffee etc but I'd say I'd be 80% cash and 20% card. Plenty of pro's and cons for both sides I suppose.

Firstly, not all fraud around cash payments and scams are reported. A relative off mine had 30k in cash stolen by an employee but fcuk all he could do. As soon as you report the crime you will draw lots of attention (and rightly so) on where that cash came from and was it declared. As I told them, that was the risk of doing business the way they have always done and you accepted the risk plus associated loses if the risk was realised. Tough shit or put it all through the books.

Secondly, most on-line scams are not that sophisticated or like something you seen in the movies. Generally they pray on the naivety and distraction of the victim, and typically a similar pattern happened for (to distinguish) off-line scams. At least there is a trail and something to investigate with digital payment scams and in a lot of cases protections in place. With cash, generally you are fcuked unless there is some other evidence. 

Remember you can't legislate for people's stupidity regardless of whether they are scammed online or offline.

A wee bit over the top there, there are plenty of vulnerable people out there espicially the elderly who get scammed on a daily basis so to call them stupid is a bit OTT, not everyone is a brainbox like your fine self.

Where the did I single out the vulnerable or elderly and call them stupid? In fact in my second paragraph I clearly state that scammers prey on naivety of victims. Try reading the post again you thick fcuk instead of throwing out insults.

You can't legislate for someone getting conned out of their life savings because they genuinely believed Brad Pitt contacted them on Facebook messenger, then believed they were in an online relationship with Brad Pitt and he needed 60k for an operation. As I say, some people just can't be helped or in this case protected from their own stupidity regardless.

[Bankers and the Government...]

Cash may not be King for you and that's your personal thoughts and there are more like you than not but for a lot of people "Cash is King". So many people rely on cash for tips to make their wages up, Supermarkets are going more and more self service which a lot of people hate espicially if you have a large trolly of groceries. I'd say there's more fraud with digital payments than cash, the amount of people swindled out of their life savings by on-line scammers is shocking. When the internet goes down or there is a major breach of fraud you'll be glad of cash. The only people who really benefit from a cashless society is Bankers and the Government...
BTW i totally see the benifit of the tap and go too, when i'm out on the bike I don't need to carry cash and use the phone to pay for my coffee etc but I'd say I'd be 80% cash and 20% card. Plenty of pro's and cons for both sides I suppose.

Firstly, not all fraud around cash payments and scams are reported. A relative off mine had 30k in cash stolen by an employee but fcuk all he could do. As soon as you report the crime you will draw lots of attention (and rightly so) on where that cash came from and was it declared. As I told them, that was the risk of doing business the way they have always done and you accepted the risk plus associated loses if the risk was realised. Tough shit or put it all through the books.

Secondly, most on-line scams are not that sophisticated or like something you seen in the movies. Generally they pray on the naivety and distraction of the victim, and typically a similar pattern happened for (to distinguish) off-line scams. At least there is a trail and something to investigate with digital payment scams and in a lot of cases protections in place. With cash, generally you are fcuked unless there is some other evidence. 

Remember you can't legislate for people's stupidity regardless of whether they are scammed online or offline.

[my kids haven't a hope of getting on the ladder.]

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2025/1119/1544755-property-prices-up-7-6-in-12-months-to-september/

No sign of the bubble bursting yet.

House prices now 23% higher than they were the time of the last crash.

I wonder how house prices in the north compare.
Every now and again I take a look on propertypal and houses seem really expensive. a 4 bed detached is a 350k plus and plenty of them well into the 400k mark.

my kids haven't a hope of getting on the ladder.

Not if the criteria for their first property is a 4 bed detached house.

We've got to the stage where a man cannot fly a flag of his native country.

Or we'll offend somebody!

We've come to the stage that people that never, flew the flag of their country and now flying it more often...

What changed? You should come up the estate close to me, in fairness you'll probably fit right in

15 or so years ago I was at my Sister in laws for a Christening. I had a conversation with her Husband's Father who is English and living in England. I quipped to him '' You'll be putting up the Flag for the World Cup?''.
''No, I cant be doing that'' he said. ''Why?'' said I. ''It's not the thing to do.''

He proceeded to talk about how marginalised he was under the following headings and how he almost had to apologise for being each of those things.

White
Male
Heterosexual
Old
English

Yep, that never happened.

Anyone that thinks they cannot be tracked now and these IDs will make a difference is f**king delusional.

Just to be clear, your data is being collected, governments can track/profile you or predict your behaviour; and are some are very good at it. The reason why certain governments are not crawling all over cyber security is because they exploit the same vulnerabilities the "bad actors" use.

The horse bolted a long time ago.

[tired of hearing about Seve]

Not a lot of chat about the Ryder cup so far lads

Europe looking very relaxed and America looking very serious so far. I think this could be one sided but I can't figure out the side on top!

American's clearly tired of hearing about Seve - and they probably have a point. They brought Larry Nelson along as an honorary captain and Keegan reminded him that he had "kicked Seve's ass a number of times".

Trumpian element creeping into the sport and I think we could have a flashpoint this year that makes Rory and Joe LaCava look like a nice chit chat at a coffee shop

We all are

[Oh and today I had a little call from HR to warn me that someone is watching me on Twitter.]

Seems like MAGA is going on full denial mode that the shooter was one of them. Jimmy Kimmel has been canceled for saying he was one of them. Here's what he said:

"The MAGA Gang (is) desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it," Kimmel said. "In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving."

Nothing inaccurate there, but his show has been pulled just for speaking the truth. They've threatened to pull ABC's license over it.

Oh and today I had a little call from HR to warn me that someone is watching me on Twitter. They reviewed my comments on Twitter and found that I'm not in violation of any policies and didn't say anything inappropriate, so I'm not in trouble.

But here we are. This is Orwellian stuff.

Today on "Things that Never Happened"

It's amazing the cognitive bias when it comes to other people's cars. No doubt there are the odd few people over extending themselves but the vast majority of cars own roads in South Dublin are Kia, Hyundai, Toyota, Peugeot etc... and quite a lot of model 3's. 

People have a real chip on their shoulder on what other people drive rather than minding their own f**king business. Car ownership has changed in the last 10-20 years, whereby most people just see it as a monthly outgoing like a utility. Hence, why PCP and leasing are popular and owning it outright is no longer seen as dick measuring contest it once was. Also, lots of companies give car allowances in their employee packages as well, which is why people finance stuff.

Full disclosure, all our daily drivers are/have been leased in the last 10-15 years. I'd never buy another car which I use day to day.

Correct, Portmarnock with one laneway leading to it makes it unworkable for 100,000 attendees, players, equipment, emergency vehicles etc to all converge on it, or have to exit in an emergency.

I've heard one workaround proposal is to construct a temporary pontoon bridge from Baldoyle the coast across to the peninsula, where people can cross on foot. Maybe vehicles too.
If the R&A are on board, money and willpower will be no issue. The government would lash the cash to get it over the line. The Portmarnock club are also willing to alter their course layout (even diminish it) to make it big tournament friendly.

I'm happy to be corrected here as I've never yet darkened Portmarnock's doors. But wouldn't a single lane entry at the end of a rural road not be the case in question for most championship links courses? Would the last mile really be more important than the 30-50 miles that bring and filter the footfall?


Turnberry, Portrush I'm familiar with and they're not even remotely able to handle a surge of traffic to their area like Portmarnock would be.

I know it's a smaller scale, but Baltray and Ballyliffin have managed to host Irish opens in surely much more inaccessible places.

Don't let on you hear these lads. They seem to have an issue with the golf club itself rather than The Open being played there. Kinda feels like the Casement Park/Euros all over again

Ultimately talks wouldn't have progressed this far if they couldn't make it work.

There

[parents are responsible for monitoring and controlling their child's access]

My fear is for the younger generations as time goes on. This has been discussed before but kids in P4 and P5 with phones. Crazy.

I've never understood why governments did not get together and mandate a restricted class of phone for children. One that could have games, music etc on the phone, but not the dark stuff.

Would the parents  buy that one , or would they just buy  them the phones that have everything? I think we all know the  answer

Was  watching  TV other morning, one woman text in to ask  for tips to limit her 4 year olds excessive tablet use. Uh, don't buy a fuckin' tablet, you moron!

People looking for  governments to do this and that,  when they should  really  take a look at themselves

Parental controls already exist on devices and through ISPs. The emphasis being the parents are responsible for monitoring and controlling their child's access.

The dark stuff as you put it is either illegal, or legal and not suitable for children. Illegal stuff ultimately lies with the authorities to enforce control but the legal stuff is not so easy. We all could get access to restricted material for our ages growing up, this is just the same thing on but obviously on a bigger scale. Once something is on the Internet, it's easy to get copied and shared over and over. All you can do is implement the controls and educate the kids better but again the burden of that needs to lie with parents.

Burden indeed does lie with the parents when it comes to these things, and some of he decision making by parents baffles me to no end. 

I know a woman who has setup a snapchat account for her five year old on his tablet.  My five year old is sitting playing with his action figures pretending he is Batman ffs. 

And this is the problem. The technology and availability of unsuitable content has moved on but it's no different to when I grew up and a parent renting an 18 video for their child.

You can't legislate for a bad decision or stupidity of parents.

My fear is for the younger generations as time goes on. This has been discussed before but kids in P4 and P5 with phones. Crazy.

I've never understood why governments did not get together and mandate a restricted class of phone for children. One that could have games, music etc on the phone, but not the dark stuff.

Would the parents  buy that one , or would they just buy  them the phones that have everything? I think we all know the  answer

Was  watching  TV other morning, one woman text in to ask  for tips to limit her 4 year olds excessive tablet use. Uh, don't buy a fuckin' tablet, you moron!

People looking for  governments to do this and that,  when they should  really  take a look at themselves

Parental controls already exist on devices and through ISPs. The emphasis being the parents are responsible for monitoring and controlling their child's access.

The dark stuff as you put it is either illegal, or legal and not suitable for children. Illegal stuff ultimately lies with the authorities to enforce control but the legal stuff is not so easy. We all could get access to restricted material for our ages growing up, this is just the same thing on but obviously on a bigger scale. Once something is on the Internet, it's easy to get copied and shared over and over. All you can do is implement the controls and educate the kids better but again the burden of that needs to lie with parents.

Seve is no where near top 10

Get in Harry Dianond

Another unreal performance by Harry Diamond on the bag

Unreal performance from Harry Diamond