Literally hundreds of people are expected to have to stay on the M50 and exit at the N7 and divert from Newland’s Cross. Drivers who endure this horror are invited to a BYOB barbecue at the Mullingar home of Ryanair boss, Michael O’Leary. Beer and wine will be levied at 2,000-3,000% of cost price.

O’Leary made the invitation following a meeting with Department of Transport officials which he described as, ‘calm, measured and very useful’.

“We quickly solved the issues and got onto talking about where our kids are in school and what the impact would be of the Connacht match last night on Leinster’s Heineken Cup ambitions.”

O'Leary has revolutionised customer relationship management

O’Leary came under fire this week for wearing a shirt and tie for his appearance on Sky News last Monday. Media commentators were outraged that the kingpin of ‘fuck you’ flying had dolled himself up for the Brits, when his MO for the Irish media has been a big red jacket, polo shirt and stubble

There is also surprise at the level of public support for O’Leary’s decision to ignore the law and screw travellers for compensation over the furore surrounding the other volcano. Apparently there are a great number of people out there who WOULD piss on O’Leary if he was burning.

Life is tough for those forced to leave the Emerald Isle

At Collinstown Airport, a similar tale tugs on the heartstrings. Jack Kennedy-Cruikshank is slumped in the Departure Lounge, waiting for the next flight to Heathrow. He’s been in construction all his working life – six months as an architect’s assistant with Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy and Kennedy-Cruikshank, followed by almost a year as chief architect on the Dunnes Stores anchor store at the new CityWest Retail Park – yet now he must turn to the building sites of London, like billions of lonely Paddies in centuries gone by.

“There’s just no work in Ireland, like,” he says. “People are saying it’s like the coffin ships all over again and to honest I don’t think there’s too much difference between then and now. It’s whole communities broken up. Sure I can see young Aubrey Johnson over there in O’Neills Sandwiches, he was in Clongowes with me. I’d go over to him only I nobbed his bird after the Leaving and we haven’t really got on since. And my best mate, Ryan, he’d be here too, both of us together on the emigration road. He’s in New York though, his old man’s the ambassador to Singapore so it was no bother getting the visa, d’ya know what I’m saying? I know a guy who was in St Mark’s the same time as me and he got his MBA two years ago – he’s only had six weeks work since then. He was going round the pubs in South William Street giving out shots of Aftershock. Sure it’s a job, but it’s not a life.”

We leave this shattered city, with the bedraggled Celtic Tiger cowering behind the furniture, to Swinging London. In Waxy O’Connors in Soho, a couple of young Micks off the boats stare into their Carling shandies. Too embarrassed to ask for a pint of the black stuff, too ashamed to call themselves Young Irishmen. One of these sad creatures reflects on the hard times ahead.

“I literally have come over here with six grand in me pocket. And that’s it. That’s all I have in the world. I was out in Krystle before I left and I lost me banklink card, so the old man had to give to me in cash,” says Shaun Kilduff, another of Ireland’s spurned generation. “Me? I have a trade, I have two pairs of hands, I’m here to do an honest day’s work. If you’re a corporate accountant in Dublin these days, you haven’t got a pot to piss in. It’s just like the Famine all over again.”

They head off to try their luck with a couple of Essex bints in the corner, leaving the Irish Sentinel to ruminate on these desperate times. Oh, Charles Stewart Parnell, Theobald Wolfe Tone, Hans Christian Andersen … if you could see these young men now, forced from the crossroads and byroads of County Wicklow, of Old Foxrock, of Blackrock College and the UCD bar.

The Wild Geese have flown, and a nation weeps to see them go.

“Who the fuck is she kidding with her stupid face and her crap mullet? She has about as much to do with republicanism as the new Lexus ISS220d.,” said one taxi driver.

With ‘Toodle-Lou’ out of the picture, the role of irksome, gobby Dublin-based fem-bot politician falls to the comically named Lucinda Creighton. Opponents of the FG dung beetle have repeatedly drawn attention her online namesake, a star of many DIY-themed pornography features. One such film, ‘Loose-inda and the incinerator’, sees our girl fight valiantly against a realistic plan for waste management only to be triple-penetrated by three black men, before almost choking to death in a torrent of jism.

Indeed, it’s a tough period for women politicians of every hue and it now seems certain that Minister for saying ‘fuck’ too much, Mary Coughlan, will be moved away from the rather important role of finding jobs for the country and right into the Department of Justice. When questioned on how appropriate it might be to have a Minister from Donegal in Justice in light of the Morris Tribunal, Coughlan said:

“Lick the f*****g c** out of my juicy f*****g f***hole you dirty f*****g a**eater!”

Nevertheless, media remained focused on the Tánaiste’s low profile as Fine Gael made huge grounds in the local elections. But experts say it remains to be seen whether a generation of new political hopefuls have shot their load too early by plumping for the blue-shirts during Fianna Fáil’s darkest hour. One political analyst explains:

“The essential difference between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is principles – Fine Gael have them and Fianna Fáil don’t. What voters conveniently forget is that a democracy gives you the politicians you deserve and previous elections clearly show us that principles are a burden at the ballot. This is why Fine Gael never get elected – they refuse to swallow their fairly crap principles and they can’t compete with Fianna Fáil, the party most likely to respond to the question ‘what is you name’ with the answer ‘what do you want it to be?”

“We had Bertie and the PDs and then Bertie the Socialist, all delivered without a hint of irony. This is possible because the national electorate is largely made up of queue-skipping, back-handed, scratch-my-back, selfish, cheating Irish people who see the application of rules as a direct affront to their ‘unconquerable’ charm. And then we all wonder where the support for Fianna Fáil comes from.”

“When the current downturn passes, a lot of rookie political blood will be spilt as the nation adopts its more comfortable position of ‘fuck the greater good, what can you do for ME?’ and we can expect Fianna Fáil to claw back a lot of ground in that environment.”

The Dublin Groomer’s Association, operating from Dermot Happle’s basement, has been in existance since 1997, the same time at which Yahoo first launched their Java powered chat rooms. Since then it has been a haven for men looking to lure underage boys and girls for sex.

Spaniels not popular with groomers due to lack of internet access and painful overbite

However, the most recent edition of the Golden Pages inadvertently placed the groups ad in the ‘Pet care’ section, leading to a glut of enquiries.

“It’s awful”, said Happle, locking his basement to blanket the plaintive wails that echo through the house like a chorus of angels being violated by a buffalo. “We hardly have time for the touching of special areas the phone is going so often. And the calls having nothing to do with what we do.

I don’t know how many times we’ve told them ‘No, I have no idea which kind of brush to use on a Labradoodle, or how to unmatt the hair of a West Highland White that’s been rolling around in mud and chewing gum’.

And the ones who are suffering are the teenagers. We spend weeks, months even, convincing them we’re friendly teens of a similar age, building a relationship, texting them, sending pictures of our elephantine scrotums, and then when we get them here we can’t pay them the attention they deserve.

Something has to be done and I have instructed my solictors to see whether or not we can take legal action”.

A spokesperson for Golden Pages told the Irish Sentinel that an error had occurred and blamed the amibguous nature of the word ‘groom’ for the mistake.

“In the past this was open and shut. The only thing that got groomed was a dog. Now, with the internet and the www and the advent of kiddie-fiddlers and all that, there’s a different kind of grooming and we’ll certainly be mindful of that in the future”.

Other mistakes in this year’s Golden Pages saw well known curios shop ‘Knobs and Knockers’ in the ’sex aids’ section while Fianna Fail was listed under ‘political parties’ instead of ‘useless fucking clowns’.

Such were the words of one senior Irish Life & Permanent executive after it emerged that Anglo Irish Bank and IL&P had been playing a game of ‘give me the lend of four to six billion euro, will you?’

Jessica Alba - hands down bikini shot fooled Financial Regulator

Anglo Irish Bank came in for further… well really what the fuck can you say about these guys? Apparently nothing they do leads to any consequences. Nevertheless, the shower of complete cunts who constitute our banking system decided to juggle some billions to make Anglo’s balance sheet ‘look good’ at the crucial moment last September. Know what else would make their balance sheet look good? A picture of Jessica Alba with her hand inside her bikini bottoms. Front or back, I’m easy.

The Minister for Finance defended the move, because apparently that’s what the Minister for Finance in Ireland does. He makes excuses for banks that have run themselves into the ground, and then he gives them a seven-billion-euro bailout, and asks them to take a pay cut and they say, ‘go fuck yourself’. If this doesn’t copper-fasten our credibility with international markets nothing will. Except, perhaps, ownership of a picture of Jessica Alba with her hand inside her bikini bottoms. Indeed experts agree that Jessica Alba’s fine ass may just be the solution to the unprecedented financial crisis we now find ourselves in.

Meanwhile, the Taoiseach was upbeat about the education cuts:

“The easiest thing for a government to do is attack a constituency that has no voice and that is potentially too uneducated to vote. From our point of view, it’s a no-brainer,” said Cowen, without irony. “Some of the 900 special needs kids literally cannot speak and their parents are usually too emotionally and financially drained to effectively organise themselves into a lobby to be reckoned with. So we’ll take the odd bit of abuse on Liveline and that will be that.”

Ending on a positive note, Brian Cowen said: “There’s a part to play for every member of Irish society, and as long as you’re not taught how to add, or pick up the phone, that part is called Financial Regulation.”

Former Financial Regulator, Pat ‘I’m not looking into it’ Neary, could not be reached for comment because the useless prick is unable to find a ringing telephone on the desk in front of him. Financial Regulation in Ireland is currently being supervised by several hungry chimpanzees until the special needs children have been sufficiently down-skilled for the role.

When informed of this  fact by The Sentinel  the pseudonym shriekingly responded: ‘Fuck, I am being fucking silenced! Yeah, I know they could read me in a fucking reader, or fuck forbid, at home, but people have fucking rights! The fucking right not to work! The fucking right to be outraged by the injustices of this sick world. Outrages such as the shooting down of an innocent raving lunatic, the murder of a rugby player but not of a plumber, and the terrible wonderfulness of a Jennifer Warnes gig. They also have  the fucking right to feel they have addressed these injustices merely by leaving a thoughtfully sycophantic comment on my blog .’

An artist's impression of our brave blogger bending to his task

When pressed on who he thought might be responsible for this outrageous censorship, the figuratively masked maverick refused to be drawn, although he was heard to mutter something about a popular cigarette brand.

A source close to this century’s most courageous scribe was more forthcoming: ‘All signs point to a conspiracy of  Zionists, Muslims and PC World cunts.’ he said, before covering his mouth with his hand and giggling guiltily. ‘We believe there are also devilish Dublin media elements at work. The hand of golfers is also to be seen. And a worldwide cabal of those who think that perhaps Limerick may not be the greatest place on Earth.  And yeah, before you say it, we know that some companies block all Wordpress and Blogger sites, but that’s like, irrelevant, man. The Second Coming is being prevented from coming. This cannot be allowed to happen. We, His devoted followers, are taking steps. Soon His Message will be ejaculated all over the internet and only those that  cannot be arsed doing their jobs to the full extent of their contracts will be saved.’

What form this final sticky Message will take was being kept under close wraps by both our source and Our Messiah, but rumours are rife that it will involve a stinging, obscenity strewn diatribe on the poor customer service that He recently experienced in His local Spar.

Each share provides €1,256 worth of the bad debt of Anglo’s loan book which holders will be required to pay back to the exchequer by the end of October 2010.

****

A new musical to raise awareness of child abuse begins tonight at the Tivoli Theatre. “Stop touching my special area” will star Twink, Mick Lally and Saoirse Ronan and tells the story of a little girl who is being abused by her grandfather and when she tells her grandmother discovers that the old lady is a predatory, incestuous lesbian.

The music for the show has been specially written by Andrea Corr and the lead singer of The Four of Us.

****
Muslims are subjected to more racist abuse than any other group in Ireland, according to a survey by the National Anti-Racism Board.

“We think it’s because they have stupid beards and wear smocks”, said a spokesperson.

****

Gardai fear Ireland’s first serial killer is on the loose after a spate of murders in Limerick. Forty-three people have been killed since last Tuesday and it is feared a disgruntled Dell employee is to blame.

“We’d just like to send a message to whoever’s doing this killings”, said Detective Sergeant Malachy Selby, “and the message is: it’s much easier to kill people in Poland and far more cost effective”.

****

An Eircom official told colleagues they should think of music piracy as ‘sharing’ and “helping the health and good living of rich cocaine sniffing rock stars by leaving them with less free money to spend on sex and drugs, the High Court heard today.

“We need to reach a decision on how we are going to handle this,” the email said. “PS ‘piracy’ is a loaded term. Could we say ‘sharing‘- ‘piracy’ implies there’s something wrong with it.”

Erm…

On rumours of a dispute between himself and Minister Lenihan he said “There’s nothing to it. It’s pure skullduggery. We’re communicating as well as we ever did.

Cowen - Turning Japanese

Sure just last week we were out for lunch in L’Ecrivain and I said to Mary Coughlan, ‘Mary, ask Brian to pass me the salt would you?’ and she did and Brian said ‘Tell him to give me up the butter there’ and in the end didn’t I get the salt and didn’t he get the butter. Everything’s fine”.

After meetings with some of Japanese industry’s most important CEOs, including the heads of Sony, Nintendo, Toyota and Kendo Nagasaki, the Taoiseach said there were lessons for Ireland to learn. “You look at how efficient these businesses are and compare them to way the operate in Ireland and it’s chalk and cheese.

Here they’re cramming people onto trains with sticks so they can get to work. Half the time we’re calling in sick. Here if an employee performs badly he’ll commit Hara-kiri such is his shame at letting company down. At home they just don’t care. I think we need to take stock of ourselves and if, at first, it means we have to commit Hara-kiri on people to give them the example then I think that’s what we’ve got to do”.

However, the National Suicide Prevention Association has called Cowen’s remarks ‘tasteless’ and ‘objectionable in the extreme’. Lorcan McDougall, head of the NSPA, said “It’s an insult to all those people who have killed themselves and those who are thinking about killing themselves.

Suicide is a disease, we’ve got to realise that before we can do more to prevent it. We’re still waiting on a response from the government about our proposal to dump thousands of tons of salt into the Liffey to make it like the red sea. It’s hard to drown yourself when you float like a dinghy”.

The Taoiseach’s visit will continue over the course of the week and will culminate with a banquet at the Irish Embassy before he flies back in the government jet, Enola Gay.

Without wishing to scaremonger at this difficult time the Irish Sentinel can only come to one conclusion: Ireland is set for another famine.

Delicious but deadly, Irish pig pictured yesterday

Already thousands of people have decided to emigrate and a new website, www.coffinships.com, has been rendered unavailable due to the incredible demand for Atlantic crossings. Experts are warning that unless emergency measures are taken then widespread starvation and disease are inevitable.

“Forget the recession or thinking of ways to adequately commemorate the death of Katy French, this is a real crisis. Just as potatoes were the staple diet in the 1800s so pork is today. Rashers, sausages, white pudding, black pudding, pork chops, deep fried snouts. Beyond that there’s little else in the average shopping trolley and people are going to die. Make no mistake, this could potentially see 90% of the population wiped out”.

The government has made an emergency appeal to England to send vital supplies but Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said that despite the drop in VAT for UK residents there will be no repeal of the Pork Laws, tariffs on pigs which keep the price of imported bacon artificially high.

And businesses are set to go to the wall with many ‘all day breakfast’ diners complaining that they have simply no way of providing customers with what they want. “What am I supposed to do?”, said Mick of Mick the Rashers in Harolds Cross. “Mick’s famous breakfast was 90% pork. A fried egg, some beans and a few mushrooms isn’t going to satisfy anyone. If this keeps up we may have to resort to the unthinkable. Yes, Linda McCartney’s meat free, quorn based sausages. And to be honest, I think people would rather starve than eat those things”.

And a spokesperson for O’Ryans Sandwich bars told us “We’re screwed. Do you know how many hang sangwiches we sell at lunchtimes?”

Officials from the Food Safety Authority of Ireland are assuring customers that the chances of side-effects from contaminated products are slim and that only mild mutations and semi-gigantic tumours are expected.

The reality of the situation is unlikely to hit home straight away but as the corpses pile up on the streets of our towns the only winners in all this are the undertakers.

Lord help us all.

Anne Doyle gives vintners the thumbs-up

The gloomy economic outlook, rising unemployment, and more people opting to drink at home has put pressure on the industry to get revellers back in to bars. The Licenced Vintners Federation (LVF) and the Vintners Federation of Ireland (VFI) claim that over 5,000 bars in Ireland will honour the deal.

Speaking to the Irish Sentinel, Gordon Lightbody, Chairman of the LVF said “It’s about time somebody stood up to those nasty brewers and the Vintners are the ones to do it. We need to move with the times and we need to show our loyal customers that we can provide them value for money.

So now when you go to a bar and ask for a pint of tap water with Blackcurrant cordial it’ll cost you the same €2.50 in a year’s time as it does now. A bottle of Stella that you can get for less than a euro in the off-licence will be €5.50 next December and it’s €5.50 now. A tiny measure of gin and a splash of tonic that costs the publican less than €1.50 but is sold for upwards of €7 depending on which bar won’t change in price one little bit. And when you’re in a late bar and the price of the pint goes up after 11pm then up again after midnight you can rest assured the prices will only go up by the same amount for the next 12 months.

I think people will recognise that we’re doing our bit for them and they need to do their bit for us by coming into town earlier and not drinking at home, the ungrateful bastards”.

But Arthur Smith of the rival Irish Vintners Alliance has called the measure a ‘PR exercise that only the biggest fools will fall for’. He said “Pubs have been ripping off people for years. Why would they change their ways now? I can tell you members of the IVA will not be taking part in this sham and we urge people to drink in our pubs because at least we’re not trying to insult anyone’s intelligence. A full list of them can be found on our website www.irishvintnersalliance.ie/pubs/prices/emptywallet/suckers”.

It’s good news for barmen though as their frequent complaints about being confused by constant price changes can now be properly ignored.