Mowl
Member
Yet Val Martin is the living embodiment of the cute hoor. Between the benefits he collects for being a farmer, the fines he omits to pay for dumping slurry into fresh water streams and rivers, the smell of the cheap fucker, the rotten and missing teeth in his face, the manky clothing and filthy hovel he calls his campaign headquarters, the shirt and tie combo he wore to the wedding in Italy:
In my own case, I'm frequently asked if mine is a typical primary to third level Irish standard of education, my answer is always the same: I went to industrial quality schools where I was battered violently by both lay and secular teachers into learning all sorts of bullshit that would never enhance my potential, rather I was educated enough to know I'd be better off educating myself - which is precisely what I did. I took an à la carte approach to what the schools offered me and from I filled in the blanks myself by reading vociferously and constantly as well as hanging out with people at least twice my age.
My experience of many third level students I knew at the time in Dublin was that they were mostly just lazy and spoiled brats who didn't give a fuck about learning and preferred to party their third level years away. Not me: I started earning money before I was ten years old, selling crisps, selling Action Man parts and outfits, honest stuff too: lounge-boy, making art pieces to order, newspaper rounds, grass cutting, delivering coal and logs off the back of a horse and cart with Peter Caffrey (a hard man, but a loyal one too) house painting, etc. I knew the value of money and I was pretty good at handling it so that I had professional level equiptment under me before I turned fifteen. Nobody helped me with that, not school, not the state, and not welfare either. Hard graft and smart and innovative thinking, with grace under pressure.
I left home at age eighteen and moved into my first bedsit. I claimed the dole and set it up that as soon as they paid me, I put that money directly into my bank account (to the penny) to cover the rent and energy bills and used the cash money I earned to spend on whatever I liked. Travel, InterRail tickets, drums, music gear in general, nights out, nice mountain bikes (because I swore I'd never learn to drive) clothes, shoes, ladies, drink, partying, my weed, and feeding and generally entertaining myself. Then I registered as self employed to reduce my tax bills and continued to do the same thing with any cheques or direct transfers of cash money: keep the legal stuff on the books and pocket the rest. Fuck the taxman. Fuck Ireland. Fuck the whole fucking rat's den. As soon as I could afford to move easily between Dublin and Paris/Amsterdam, I was out and off the books before I turned twenty-two.
Haven't looked back since, but that doesn't mean I can't still smell the bang off Val Martin and co.
