Sadly the same cannot be said about the political class: phone pouches for everyone! Get yours today - get your kid to stop fiddling with their phone all day and try to pay attention to their classes!
Reminds one of the days of the EEC butter and cheese mountains. Cheese giveaways. Cheese vouchers for the unemployed. Shops taking in cheese vouchers and handing out tobacco and alcohol products. Fuel vouchers for the unemployed, traded for drink. Welfare day parties and happy hours. Children's allowance day drinking sessions. Drink-links: open an account with Louis FitzGerald's 'BeneFitz' off licenses: you can run a tab if you sign up to pay X amount on the first day of the month, and if you run short of cash they'll still deliver your drinks to your door and you can pay on the long finger after spending X amount over a period of X months. Refuse to pay and you're barred from all of his joints, your details logged - you're an easy write-off for the Fitz chain, they own more pubs, lounges, restaurants, hotels, off licenses than anyone in Ireland.
I should know, I worked contracts with him for over twenty years. I was on the floor of every place he owns, I got to know his methods, his customers, how he treats them, how he sets up these guaranteed-profit ideas that push the boundaries of the law, and so long as the money's coming in, so keep it up until the add a legal clause preventing it.
He's the very man who got his lawyers together with his architects twenty-odd years back to stretch the definition of the law in regard to smoking bans. No smoking allowed? Hmmm. No smoking rooms allowed? Fine. So what constitutes a 'room' as such? Four walls, a floor, a ceiling, and an exit/entrance, right? Well, is it still a 'room' if the ceiling and walls don't meet? How about the floors? Is concrete a floor? How about concrete with a washable/removable rubber-based carpet temporarily placed over it? Is there a law about putting tables and chairs out in your delivery bay? How about a wall-mounted and insulated TV or suspending one from a ceiling which doesn't actually meet the walls? And what's a wall anyway? Is there such a thing as a glass wall? Yes? Grand. How about those standing heat lamps? Can you stick a few of those up in your bay without any planning permission? Yes? They're mobile, they can be easily moved around. How about punters hanging around the delivery bay area during business hours? That's okay? Grand.
So how about we mix up all these ingredients and create something that's perfectly legal as well as semi comfortable?
And so you had the birth of the now standard smoking rooms of pretty much every bar across Europe. But it was Louis who did it first. He has a lot invested in the law regarding keeping his chain in the black. Spending loads of his dosh on exactly this type of thing is what put him where he is today. He started out as a barman in Limerick. He had nothing. But he took his chances and worked his fingers to the bone to accumulate the vast wealth he and his family enjoy today.
Once he had the legalities sorted out, he had the same people do his planning, get it all drafted and then ply the local councils and the state with it.
They couldn't stop him, he had the whole thing boxed up and untouchable by the law before he took one step towards slotting them into his many outlets.
Smart man, very smart.
