Had this crazy notion on the way home on Friday. There was a bit of twitter chatter about Santa hats and what not. So I thought how about an Irish Bloggers Christkindl? I wondered how it would work in practice, and then by chance a tweet by enormous pointed me to Elfster which automates the whole process.

Don’t know if it has been done before, but there’s always a first time for everything right?

Sign up date is the 1st December - that’s when the Elfster system will do the draw, so that’s the date you need to sign up by. When you are signing up, you can use your blog name as first name.

Spending limit is €15 (or £12.50) – and the gift guideline is “Anything, be creative”.

After the draw date, you can contact the person you are buying for through the Elfster website.

The sign up page is here —-> Ho ho ho.

Looks like you might be a new visitor to le craic. If you like what you see here and fancy some daily diversions delivered to your favourite feed reader, why not click to join Club le craic. Go raibh maith agat! Thanks a thousand!

Trying out Google Insight this evening and did a search on Lidl and Aldi. As already ready reported widely, both retailers have seen an increase in custom as people seek out better deals. Just interesting to see it reflected in Google searches as well. Look how far they have come since 2004 and how the graph has risen sharply since October.

Pump in the term saving and you will find see a section called rising searches which shows the following all on the up.

Here’s how Christmas Parties look. Big decline this year. The search volume last year was 59 in September, 68 in October and 80 in November. This year it’s 49, 55 and 61 (so far for November).

And finally. Here’s the regional interest for Life Insurance searches.

Roll your own insights here.

Jo Winters who visited lecraic.com last week after doing a search for a review of Dave Gorman’s book “America Unchained”. Jo says she is the world’s biggest fan of Top Gear and can’t wait to head to Dublin for a big day out on Sunday 30th.

The What Would God Say project is still running and ready to accept answers. If you have a blog and could see your way to giving it a plug I would be really grateful.

Thanks to John Williams and Katharina Pommerien for giving it the nod already. If you did already link to the site and I missed it, do let me know.

Righto. Ireland is now officially cranksville. Everyone seems to be pissed off about something. Bertie’s gormless (but strangely reassuring) grin and his “How’s the hard workin’ men” quips are gone. He’s been been replaced by a thick lipped bogtrotter with about as much charisma as a lump of lard. That shows in the polls. In themselves they tell us more about the mental state of the nation than they do about our pet lump of lard, but that’s a whole other story.

So, I’m going declare myself a fully fledged citizen of cranksville with my own little broadside at the national bus transport company, Bus Eireann. I’ve been using their service for over a year now. At the beginning I was delighted. Such a change from driving myself. I could sit back and relax and let someone else do the work. “Why didn’t I do this before?”, I thought to myself. Over time the novelty wore off and I began to see cracks appear in the rose tinted spectacles.

Buses running late, infrequent service times after 6 pm in the evening, heating/air conditioning not working, bad overhead lights. Little things really, mere blips. I just accepted them as part of the status quo. Even 3 breakdowns in the period of 6 or 7 months didn’t change my view. The non-appearance of a morning service back in August was the last straw though.

I fired off an email to Bus Eireann asking what happened on the day. Seperately, I sent an email questioning the safety of the buses and cited the breakdowns over the previous months. Email after email went unanswered although they were opened and read. It was impossible to get through to anyone on the phone. I basically gave up and contacted Andrew Doyle, my local TD. My contact with him was more to do with the frequency of service on the Wicklow route and the fact that Bus Eireann had promised, but had not delivered on, more frequent services and new coaches.

Almost immediately after my contact with him, three separate individuals from Bus Eireann got in contact about the issues I raised. That in itself could be a pointer that Bus Eireann has too many admin staff, but they all seemed to sing from the same hymn sheet. “Bus Eireann maintain buses to the highest possible standards” blah, blah, blah.  It’s like they have a canned email response for enquiries about the state of the coaches.

The latest breakdown happened on Friday night. The engine just died completely. It was in Bray, in a built up area going at a slow pace. If the engine and power died at speed on the motorway, it might have been another story completely. Breakdowns happen – I totally accept that. This number of breakdowns shouldn’t happen though.

If a bus breaks down so frequently, it should be put out of service. If people have to keep hats on or pull their hoods up because the heating is broken, the bus should be taken out of service. If a bus has no overhead lights and people resort to using their mobile phone light to read, it should be put out of service. If a bus has broken seats, it should be put out of service. This is not asking for anything more than what Bus Eireann have in their customer charter.

Every evening I watch the Edenderry bus pull up next to the Wicklow stop. It’s a brand new 08 model. A big contrast to the sorry lumps of metal that serve Wicklow. Another contast is the fact they have a 6pm 6.30pm, 7.30pm, 8.30pm service in the early evening. Miss the 6pm to Wicklow and there is none until 8.10pm. Edenderry has a population of under 6,000. Wicklow town has over 10,000. Something doesn’t compute other than the fact that Edenderry is in Co. Offaly, home to a thick lipped bogtrotting lump of lard.

Coincidental? I think not.

From the Irish Mirror yesterday comes the news that 31 year old Roberta O’Brien is the first woman to command an Irish naval ship. She took charge of the LE Aisling after a ceremony in Galway. There is no truth in the rumours that Naval officers were seen eyeing up pink paint in Woodies for a spot of redecoration and that the ship is to be renamed Betsy. I was going to throw in that extra tyres might be needed for the docks where the ship anchors, but then I might be accused of real shit stirring. And I wouldn’t want that at all

She’s a dead ringer for Woody Harrelson though…

I’ve been passing by the construction of the Christmas decoration on O’Connell Street over the last week. I twittered that I wasn’t convinced about it. The above photograph shows it pretty much completed and I’m even less convinced now.

It was designed by a French company that created the lighting for the Eiffel Tower. 100,000 energy efficient bulbs will no doubt look good at night, but it just doesn’t spell Christmas like a traditional tree does.

Who are the people that actually make decisions like this? Do they have something against trees in general? Ever since the council bulldozed the historic trees that once grew along the street (in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep) to make way for the  “new, improved” thoroughfare, greenery has been sadly lacking.

The skinny latte, designer trees parachuted in to replace the old ones are poor excuses for trees. They need to be taken to tree bootcamp to beef up their bark and trunks a bit. They remind me of Victoria Beckham. Even dogs avoid pissing up against them, so confused are they by their distinct lack of tree-ness.

How and ever, the Christmas lights were switched on today, far earlier than normal. Dublin’s Lord Mayor stated that the lights on O’Connell Street will be a call of “civic patriotism” to shoppers to spend their money in Dublin.

So why didn’t they exhibit the same patriotism and stick an Irish tree in the middle of the street, instead of going all the way to France for this tawdry, characterless, ungreen, unchrismassy heap of shite.

A big fat FAIL in my opinion.

Photo by Infomatique and used under the terms of a CC License.

For the day that’s in it.

[Via Patrick Moberg]

Hi res version here

If the pollsters are correct, Senator Barack Obama will become President Elect by tomorrow.

I set up Barackulations.com website along the lines of the Sorryeverybody. Instead of America apologising to the world, the world can (fingers crossed), congratulate America.

I would love to get some submissions – so head on over there and find out how it all works.