ARE THERE three more beautiful words in the English language than, “You’ve been upgraded”? Of course not, what a stupid question. Business and first class may be separated from the cheap seats by a thin curtain but they’re worlds apart in terms of comfort, entertainment . . . and smugness.
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Do you think GPs offer value for money? While they are at the frontline of medical care and play an essential role in keeping us all, well, alive, it is hard to escape the notion that some of them sometimes get away with charging ridiculous amounts for doing very little.
I have young children and while they are – thankfully – pretty healthy, they do need to go to the doctor occasionally. It really galls me when one of the apparently ever changing rota of GPs on duty in the “family practice” we go to takes a look down their throats, peers into their ears and solemnly declares it to be “a virus” (a diagnosis, which is, I reckon up there with ‘oh she’s just not herself’). I’m then charged €60. If I try to piggy-back on the visit and ask them to check my throat or have a cursory look in my own ears or listen to my chest, they apologetically explain that they can certainly do it but will have to charge me a further €25 for performing this onerous task which takes maybe 90 seconds. It’s not just me who has problems with charges.
Yesterday a reader from the Dublin 4 area contacted me to say that she had been charged €75 for a check-up and if blood or urine samples were taken a further €30 was added on to the bill. Ridiculous. Am looking for other stories of doctors fees so if you have any, feel free to share. . . Ta.
So, Pricewatch has become a double page spread in The Irish Times starting today. To kick things off, I have a look at the sterling/euro price differentials north and south of the border, Caroline Madden writes about mortgages, Leo Varadkar talks about his personal finances and I review pizzas. There ya have it.
It’s amazing how a company that is as old school and uncool as Old Spice can re-invent itself with a funny ad. I’d almost buy the shower gel on the back of this ad. Almost
IT DOESN’T matter where in the world you find yourself or how many stars the hotel you’re staying in has, you can be pretty sure that the coffee served as part of your buffet breakfast or laid out neatly on the plastic tray in your room will be vile.
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IF YOU WERE asked to name something white in order to win €300, how long would it take before you guessed ricotta cheese? Ten minutes? Two hours? A lifetime?
When the question was posed recently on PlayTV – the controversial late-night TV3 game show – it took nearly three hours and a number of increasingly bizarre hints from an endlessly wittering host before someone got the answer right and won themselves the cash.
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It’s a cold morning and I’m in a n shockingly decorated hotel room on a leafy road in Dublin, trying to sell my wedding ring to a lonely man with a thick Geordie accent.
He’s been in this place for more than five hours waiting for a gold rush which has yet to materialise. Despite the fact that fliers offering to buy unwanted gold for cold hard cash have been posted through every letterbox in the neighbourhood, I’m his first customer of the day – very bad news for a man who works exclusively on commission.
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Cycling is, in many ways, the perfect form of commuting. It’s fast, cheap, wholesome, invigorating and very, very handy as long as you live within 10kms of your place of work – any further and you need steely determination and steelier thighs.
After years of inexplicable unpopularity, cycling is very much back in vogue in Ireland thanks to a fairly generous tax incentive which has encouraged more people back onto the saddle and the Dublin Bikes scheme which has captured the public imagination in a way that has exceeded most people’s wildest expectations.
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