No quitten we're whelan on to chitchat 11

What do the guards see when they turn up. Someone has lost control of a car. Without a witness or dashcam saying it was someone else’s fault wouldn’t be much help.

In 1841 four years before the Great Famine in my parish in Wexford the population was 5344 people. It reduced every year after to 1966 to it's lowest level of 1155. In the last Census of 2022 it reached 1529. It took 56 years to increase the parish by 374 since 1966.

I get all arguments. Be they religion, skin colour change, culture, free reign on seemingly open borders, migrants disposing of documentation, welfare grabbers.

I had an English man out today with an Irish apprentice or co-worker. He was sent out to go at a hydraulic fitting on a loader. What he didn't know was it required splitting the boom on the loader. He never did it before and my job was his learning. The whole day and fills of oil. With no damage done to the loader but at the end of the day he hadn't the confidence to put it back together with the shims and afraid of any mess ups. It cost 680 euro for the two labour and pipework. And tomorrow another crew may go at putting it together again.

What we badly need is manual labourers and skilled people in this country. We need the courses and technical colleges to teach the trades and we need the people to stay in the country after for a certain length of time. Be it 5 or 10 years. We need the competition in trades.

I couldn't care less what skin colour any worker is. As long as they know what they are doing and don't charge an arm and a leg for a non completed job. For a society to work it needs workers. The Romans knew this even if they used slave labour from the conquered provinces. Today we outsource labour and goods to outside the eu to capitalise on their lower conditions. But if we want things fixed inside the EU and built then we need workers. We should not kid ourselves that welfare and dole is the or an answer. It's a safety net. But some see it and the conditions provided as a goal.

It's complicated and multi faceted but life and society is anyway.

Didn't get the full breakdown.

Paid by card in the card machine and the invoice is following in the following days by email.

He did list it out. But I can't exactly recall again at this moment. The final figure sticks though.

1 drum of oil. 4 lengths of hydraulic pipe and fittings and blockers maybe 12 ft long.

I'm not cribbing. Well maybe. Bit annoyed over people in general and machinery.

Farming in Ireland is not cheap.

The hydraulic pipe that burst would have been 3 - 4ft long. I had access to one end myself. But due to the design of the machine the other end was just beyond arms reach. If I could have taken it off myself. A hydraulic outfitters was 5 minutes away by car. 10 minutes say to get a new one made with the fittings crimped on. Probably would have been 40 euro?. And five minutes back and another five minutes to fit if it was accessible.

If a tool could be fashioned to reach inside from the open end to open the fitting and tighten it again it'd be five minutes.

It was cruelty today. From forklifts and tractors pulling on the boom to then now needing someone else to put it back. And discovering parts welded where they shouldn't have been welded and bolts not knowing where they came from. 🙄

Not easy.