Paul Malpas

I awoke this morning to a pleasant surprise a chap called Jesse who often posts insightful comments on to my blog, came up with a good point. See my blog comments on yesterday’s Admitting Defeat. I immediately dashed off a letter to Pierse & Fitzgibbon, which I give below:-

Dear Sirs,

I acknowledge your rather shrewish letter of 17 February 2010 and note by your tone that you realised mankind had left this planet several years ago and that you now only write and speak to the inanimate.

Perhaps a little advice would do no harm here and it might help in your dealings with the lumps of stone that are scattered around.  Erratics we call them in Archaeology.

A friend of mine with experience in this field that we are mired in, wonders why this car reg. could not have been matched up sooner with my payment.

He goes on to say “Furthermore, to the best of my knowledge, we do not have more than five numerics in our reg. nos. They imply you imputted six.  Who did the systems analysis work here?  My point is, the fact that your payment was accepted on the net would seem to indicate that your reg. no. was validated.  It would be intetresting to see, if, in fact, you did key in the right data.”

Perhaps you might put it to eFlow that their system is flawed and needs replacing and also this piece of advice must be worth money, so how about paying my costs.

Yours Faithfully,

Paul Malpas.

We will see if anything will happen but I am definately going to send the file to the Ombudsman.  When I hear something, so will you.

To change tack, I have, for the last few days, been researching the life of a British soldier who served in the Army in the middle of the 19th century in India.  He was born in Ballygar in Galway in 1828 and made it through the Famine.  In 1847 aged 19 he enlisted in Warrington and joined the 29th Foot (Worcester regiment) and spent 12 years with them serving through the 2nd Sikh War in the Punjab and the Indian Mutiny in 1857-8.  Volunteered to join the 80th Foot when his first regiment went home and served eight years with them, serving all over central India and in the North East in Assam and Bhutan in the Himalayas and when they went home joined the 88th Foot (Connaught Rangers). where he spent his last two years in service, taking part in the Grand Durbar of 1866 at Agra before walking 500 miles to Rawalpindi to build a road. It was at Rawalpindi, which is at the other end of the Khyber Pass from Kabul that he developed presbyopia, which stops the eyes from focussing at near sight and he was discharged unfit for duty.  He was probably the fittest 40 year old around after all his endeavours.  He came home, married a girl from Williamstown, had five children and died at 51 years old and he his buried in Glenamaddy graveyard.  He packed a lot in and saw a lot more of the world than most in those pre-Ryanair days.  In all his 21 years in the Army he never rose beyond a private and never received a pension but he would have been a great man to sit and have a pint of Guiness with.

Another thought that struck me was that the British Army have not moved far in 143 years.  They are only 200 miles away now in Helmand Province in Afghanistan.

So here’s to you Bernard Lohan, may you forever rest in peace and may your god go with you

Following my blog and letter of 5 February entitled Barrier Free to Pierse & Fitzgibbon, Solicitors, Market Street, Listowel, Co. Kerry and agents for the National Roads Authority, I received a reply bang on the 19 February, as requested.  They said the error which made them think that I had not paid my €3 was entirely my fault.  I was supposed to have given my car registration number as 012874RN instead of the correct number 01RN2874.  It took them four months and lots of soul-searching to work that out, along with many a threat of fine and conviction aimed at me and it was only when I wrote to them looking forward to my day in court did they come up with this paltry excuse.

All this bother was for their mistake of thinking that I had not paid my €3.  When I then asked them for an apology, their letter said, because it was due to “an error on your part” (their bold italics) “neither this office nor our client will apologise for your mistake and furthermore, we will not be paying your costs”.  Obviously written by a person with little intelligence, no wit, and certainly no nose for business.  Somehow or other government agencies have to realise that they are dealing with people and not machines.  Not to long ago these drudges in agency offices were people and would not have liked this bullying system they have adopted but I suppose all institutions that nowadays deal with people have engendered this malaise towards their flock, the Catholic Church being one good example.

So I am admitting defeat, I cannot be arsed carrying on, the bullys have won the day, but perhaps I can suggest a little wheeze.  If my little supposed transgression can cause such mayhem to the system why does not everybody who pay  tolls do so with a little deliberate mistake in the transmission of their funds.  It would have a cataclysmic effect on that abysmal system and hopefully change it to the good.

For the last few days I have been necessarily entertaining some of my children and grandchildren over from Manchester and Dublin on the occasion of birthdays and half terms and I have noticed that my mind and hand do not work in conjunction after the third bottle of wine or the fifth pint of plain.  So my blog was an unfortunate casualty, but I am happy to be back on the abstemious track and really happy that mind and hand are back on the same orbit.  Just one last thought on the outpourings of this horrible man from Galway, Drennan is his name.  His words do not seem to come from a man of God but from some wretch of a politician or government official desperately trying to hang on in there.  Perhaps his boss, and now his only arbiter, the Archbishop of Tuam, Michael Neary, can say or do something. He has at least grasped the nettle on the value of women.  See John Cooney’s article in the Independent of 23 February 2010.

Whereas the Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, William Lee has the answer to all our woes and is recommending that we all take up the Stations of the Cross.  When will they get their heads round the problem and face up to the agony and anger of the abused and why should the abused show forgiveness as Father Eamon Conway of Limerick is suggesting when they are faced with this stoney-faced obfuscation of their position.

Victory at last, if victory is what it is.  After three and a half months jousting with bullies and sweating under their threats of imprisonment and large fines, I today received a letter from Pierse & Fitzgibbon,  Solicitors, Market St. Listowel.  Verbatim it reads:-

National Roads Authority v PAUL MALPAS

M50 Barrier-free Tolling System

Re:    Our Client                                   National Roads Authority

Ref No:                                                      U11-0836-5756

Dear Sir,

We refer to the above and previous correspondence herein, in particular your letter to these offices.  We referred the matter to our client for investigation who confirmed that the difficulty arose due to an incorrect car registration number being identified i.e. the licence plate number the payment was made against was 012874RN instead of 01RN2874.

Therefore we confirm the above referenced matter has now been closed.

Yours faithfully.

Pierse & Fitzgibbon.

Regular readers will be aware from previous blogs that this appears to be the end of this saga, see Money For Old Rope posted on 1 February 2010, Old Monkey Face posted on 17 January 2010, Back On Track posted on 15 January 2010, No Posts Today posted on 13 January 2010, and Hoping And Praying posted on 13 December 2009.

After these three and a half months anyone with a lesser mental constitution would have been battered into submission.  Letter after letter, from first of all eFlow, then from Pierse & Fitzgibbon threatening imprisonment or a massive fine and a mention in Stubb’s Gazette would surely have tested the resolve of most and I really feel sorry for any more sensitive soul who as had to bear the brunt of this Government inspired brutality.

After hours of letter writing and blogging to receive the above letter with its dismissive and disrespectful tone is just plain ignorant and something you do not want from Government Agencies in a democratic country, especially when I paid my dues within days of incurring same, while the drinking chums of that same Government walk away with millions of euros on a daily basis.  It reminds me somewhat of the First World War.  We are just cannon fodder.

The letter should have been apologetic and I hope to get one and that is why the matter is not closed as far as I am concerned.  I am writing to Pierse and old monkey face today demanding an apology and/or the payment of my €350 costs for fighting my corner.  Bullies do not like to be faced up, so I am expecting them to go into a funk  and lie down.  I will keep you posted.

Below is my letter to them:_

Messrs Pierse & Fitzgibbon,                                                                                                                                           5 February 2010            Market St.                                                                                                                                                                                                            Listowel,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Co. Kerry.

National Roads Authority v PAULMALPAS                                                                                                                                                        M50 Barrier-free Tolling System

Re:    Your Client                                       National Roads Authority

Ref No:                                                  U11-0836-5756

Dear Sirs,

I refer to your letter of 2 February 2010 referring to the above and that the above referenced matter is now closed.  I unfortunately disagree, after many telephone calls, e-mails and letters setting out my defence on this matter, I am not happy to be parked up.  I want an apology from yourselves or your client or the payment of the €350 costs that I have been put to in this defence and as asked for in my recent letter to yourselves.

If I have heard nothing from you by 19 February 2010 I will send all the relevant papers to the Ombudsman who will advise me of my rights when faced with the bullying tactics of yourselves and eFlow in the future.

Yours Faithfully

Paul Malpas

Does not your heart warm to see old friends return.  Take for example the report in the Independent newspaper about the National Roads Authority (NRA) who amongst other things collect the tolls from the barrier free tolling system on the M50 Motorway from their agents eFlow and Pierse and Fitzgibbon, Solicitors, Main St. Listowel, Co. Kerry.  The same NRA who you will recall are about to take me to court for having paid my toll on time.  Read my previous blogs, Hoping and Praying of13 December 2009, No Posts Today of 13 January 2010, Back On Track of 15 January 2010 and Old Monkey Face of 17 January 2010.

The NRA are having to pay approximately €50 million per annum to the private company National Toll Roads (NTR) as part of the agreement they came to with this astute company when the government took over this revenue link in 2008.  NTR was founded in 1978 by the Roche family and headed by Thomas Celestine Roche, himself of Roadstone fame, who died in 1999 with debts of £15 million and the reputation of being Ireland’s greatest entrpreneur.  It was NTR who according to the tribunals gave a £50,000 donation to Fianna Fail which was intercepted by the back pocket of Mr. Padraig Flynn’s trousers. which was also given another £8,000 in 1992. It was NTR who gave Mr. Liam Lawlor £74,000 for consultancy work on the East/West link of the M50 and also gave £10,000 to Mr George Redmond in 1986, to”hurry things along” on the same contract.  The same Mr. George Redmond, once Assistant Dublin City Manager, who was arrested at Dublin Airport with£300,000 in cash in his briefcase, having retired eight years previously from the above position which paid less than £20,000 per annum on his retirement.  It must have been a good retirement for him.

According to the NRA, NTR will earn between 1990 and 2010 a total of €1.5 billion, not a bad return when you think that for the last 12 years of this period NTR will do nothing but collect.  NRA Chief Executive Fred Barry nonchalantly says that he was not provided with any evidence of corruption in the awarding of the original contract but agrees that it has led to a “windfall situation”, while the Department of Transport says it is like “winning the lotto”.  Mr. Tommy Brougham, Labour ’s transport spokesman, says it is a “grotesquely incompetant or corrupt agreement”

Prithee, I hear you ask, who signed the original contract to allow NTR this grossly fat cow of profit.  Why none other than Padraig Flynn, as Environmental Minister and Mr. George Redmond, Dublin’s Assistant City and County Manager,  The names are familiar, are they not?

The above tale shows to all the world that if your entreprenurial spirit is good enough to succeed at doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that, then get thee to Ireland where there is money for old rope to be had and why presumably the NRA are chasing me with such determination for the €3 I have already paid them.