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.

In an idle moment yesterday, I thought I would dig a little deeper into the ways of Pierse & Fitzgibbon, Solicitors, Main Street, Listowel, Co. Kerry, because if there is any dirt flying around, I am sure the Road Transport Authority would like to know who they are employing.  (See my blog of 15 January 2010).  I tried the web site www.rate-your-solicitor. com and went into their Hall of Shame page and lo and behold, there is Pierse and monkey face as the second worst rated solicitors in the country with a massive rating of 734 complaints and the warning AVOID against them.  Shame on you RTA for showering work on them, but if you read the complaints, they are well connected and that is all that matters in this country.

I also note that Patrick G. Enwright of Lees Solicitors is top of the list, he is another Listowel solicitor.  Have we uncovered a hotbed of corrupt legality in this town.  No wonder John B. had so much to write about, it was all there on his doorstep.