We have a second car that we bought whilst living in France and since we returned to the UK the car has been sitting in the garage off-road as we hit the proverbial brick wall when we came to the paperwork involved in transferring the details from a european vehicle to UK requirements. It has been a real headache. So far the car, which is only three years old, has been sitting unused – and we could really do with using it as it suits our family needs better – while we work through the red tape.

The insurance has been a problem, it’s not like getting a simple rv insurance quote, and as it is a French car (well, a suzuki but bought in France) the insurance is expensive. Anything to do with France has heaps of complications we have found through experience.

When the huge Euro-Million roll-over of £161million was won this past week by a middle-aged couple from the Scottish village of Largs, they spent two days deciding whether or not to tell the world about their good fortune. Despite the warnings they would have been given by Lottery authorities about revealing their identities following such an enormous win they decided to go ahead and do so – to the extent that the winners Colin and Christine Weir, and their adult children, and their addresses, and places of work, can now be traced and identified easily on sites such as 192.com in a matter of seconds.

As expected, the begging letters are now pouring in to their letter box and are piling up by the thousand at the local village post office. The Post Master is now considering whether or not to deliver them such is the growing heap of mail addressed simply to ‘The Weirs’. It had to happen of course – it happens to everyone who strikes it rich on the lottery and is silly enough to reveal their identity, and it is  happening to Mr and Mrs Weir. The couple have now reportedly ‘fled to Spain’ to escape the consequences of their stupid actions. But what did they expect…what do WE expect from a couple like the Weirs…?

The Weirs are ‘early retired due to ill health’. He is 64, she is 55. Both are morbidly obese, both use walking sticks to get around and their lifestyle revolves around watching television and eating out at the local chippie several times a week. Two people who have eaten themselves into ill health and inability to work at relatively young ages, and who have now come into as much money in one day as David and Victoria Beckham have managed to accumulate in almost twelve years. The thing is the Beckhams know how to manage their wealth – the Weirs have spent the past 48 hours telling the world about their humble lifestyle and where they and their children work and live. No wonder they have had to flee their home with their two twenty-something children Jamie and Carly. Everyone with a bill to pay, and with no pride to lose, has had the front to ask them to post them a cheque from a chunk of their winnings. And why not…as their new fortune is made up of millions of other people’s entry bids,why shouldn’t they sit down and start writing out some cheques to the very people who made their massive win possible?

But we have to ask; is it really correct to have such massive rollover wins as £161million…? such an amount of money being won in the blink of an eye is an incredible thing to contemplate. It has not been earned, it has come about simply through chance. Sheer good luck. But what about the Weirs…? why on earth did they decide to tell the world who they were and how much they had won…? why did they not take lottery officials advice (it would have been given…) and simply conceal their identities…? it is all about greed. Greed for publicity. Greed for attention. It has been written how ‘normal and down to earth’ this couple are – but look at them. Greed has shaped them into a couple too overweight to work – now that same greed has teamed up with stupidity and vanity so that they have had to escape the consequences from their own home. Time will tell pretty soon if Mr and Mrs Weir can cope with excess beyond their wildest dreams. Their old life has now gone and it is safe to say they will have a task on their hands creating a new life based upon the simple and uncomplicated happiness they enjoyed just a week ago. And their friends – who will they be from now on…?

But one thing is sure – I feel the local chippie will be wanting them to return and stay on…

Last night Comic Relief announced it has raised, courtesy of the generous British public, over £74million to provide aid to poverty stricken Africa. That is an amazing amount, especially considering the tough time many people are having right now paying their own bills. Consider this though; the nation coughed up the same amount collectively that a whole team of Premiership League footballers earn between themselves in a year for kicking a ball around a pitch…or is that a month? ask Wayne and Coleen Rooney because he will pocket £52milion over the next five years for doing god-knows-what – and most of that behind his wife’s back.

Call me cynical but how much money has been sent to Africa since Live Aid back in 1985? you do the sums because I doubt I could count that high. It would easily be billions and yet people there are still hanging onto life by a thin thread, children are still dying of starvation and disease and women still die during pregnancy and childbirth. Among other things. What really turned my head was watching the Comic Relief series where stars including Lenny Henry and Angela Rippon went to spend a couple of weeks in the Nairobi slum of Kibera where millions of people live in a squalor that would offend our own vermin here in the UK. Why, having raised so much money over the decades, is there still just one small pipe dribbling fresh water out of a hole in a wall there where people have to walk miles to fill a bottle and PAY for the privilege…? millions – and yet one tap for drinking water.

It broke my heart to see the conditions in that hospital where doctors had to decide which child to administer oxygen to because they had only one piece of equipment. Is it being cynical again to wonder why the hell do obscenely wealthy people like Paul McCartney not buy a machine here, several machines would not even make a dent in his wallet, and personally deliver it to that hospital…? fat chance any of that money has of getting within coo-ee of that small hospital, or those children. Money helps but it clearly has not done enough despite the untold millions that have supposedly been sent to places like Kibera over the years, change must come in different ways – social changes such as effective birth control and family planning would go a long way to addressing the despair that I saw in that TV show. In such huge numbers, people – as well as the cash donated – become disposable far too easily.

The Northern Ireland Children’s Hospice, like all such concerns, provides the kind of care that no parent ever wishes to need; the hospice provides palliative care to terminally ill children and teenagers. Like I said, no parent ever wants to need their services, but sadly there are currently 750 life-limited children and teenagers living in Northern Ireland who who do. I don’t think there are enough superlatives for the doctors, nurses and auxiliary staff who take care of the needs of these special children and their parents and families on a day to day basis, they do not care for only the ill child, they provide family-wide care as well as the bereavement support so desperately needed when a child does die.

One would assume that our Government would ensure they had the appropriate funding to see them through the wonderful work they do, but sadly this is not the case. The Hospice desperately needs £200,000 so it can continue to care for these children and their families, just recently the Hospice had to reduce the number of beds from eight down to six – this in my opinion is a terrible indictment on our politicians who send billions in overseas aid to countries where no amount of money will ever really do any good, but leave organisations here needing to go begging to banks for an amount that could easily be met several times over.

£200million was found for the Bloody Sunday Inquiry…why is £200,000 for sick and dying children such a bloody problem then…?

I don’t normally plug charities but in this case I am making an exception; if you want to make a difference this Xmas to children already dealing with issues none of us would ever want to deal with, then how about a donation to the Northern Ireland Children’s Hospice this year…? they are there to help when families need them – so how about giving them some help when they need it now more than ever…?

The Irish Daily Star couldn’t have said it better…

And you’d go far to find a person who would disagree – what a sad, sad state of affairs the Republic of Ireland is in and it will be a very long time before the Irish people will have an economy that is not tied up in debt. Blame it on Govt mismanagement, blame it on the greedy banks, blame it on the Celtic Tiger myth which roared only with EU grant money and blame it on the unstable Euro…

Ireland must reclaim it’s economy; withdraw from the EU, kick out all those eastern Europeans who have swarmed into the country and now beg on it’s streets – and at least maintain it’s own currency again. I think it is vital for Ireland’s future survival.