A couple's first ESB bill for their new home, has come as a total SHOCK. They are being charged 7,559 euro - and they haven't even moved in yet. Padraig and Ann Heneghan are, naturally, to strongly dispute the bill with the ESB. "There is no way we could owe that amount", Mr. Heneghan fumed. The Heneghans, who have built a dormer bungalow at Windsor, Castlebar, were supplied with power in June on a temporary fuseboard. The 7,559 euro invoice relates to the period June 19th -July 29th when, the ESB claims, they consumed a massive 62,000 units. However, the Heneghans own meter shows that a mere 33 units were used. "One thing is certain, we won't be paying what the Board is demanding", Mr. Heneghan stated.

Well if you believe this one you’d believe anything. Another couple refusing to pay an ESB bill? I’d blame it on them windmills that have gone up around Castlebar costing us a fortune they will? I’m glad I didn’t sign up for the electric after they were erected, if that’s what electricity is going to cost from now on?

But of course what’s really happening is that the Heneghans were merely planning world domination from Windsor. They just got caught before they could finish their fiendish plan and zap that laser beam up to the satellite poised half way between Rural Mayo and Dublin 4 in its geostationary orbit. Its power usage was incredible even in the test phase. So the dastardly plan to zap FF HQ in Mount Street was foiled. The irony of it! World Domination foiled because they didn’t pay their ESB bill!

Stone raiders endanger Achill’s ‘Deserted Village’
SLIEVEMORE’S ‘Deserted Village’, one of the largest visitor attractions on Achill Island, is under threat from trophy and treasure hunters. According to Mrs. Erica Hanning, one of the archaeological supervisors on the site where 74 roofless buildings, out of a total of 137 in the 1830's, remain, tourists poking about in the walls looking for nice stones as souvenirs are causing problems. "They pull out stones here and there and eventually a whole wall tumbles", Ms Hanning stated. "These people seem to forget they also have a duty to conserve the past", American born Ms Hanning, who is involved for a second year with the Achill Archaeological Field School, where Ms Teresa McDonald is the main tutor, has also highlighted the damage done by treasure hunters with metal detectors on the site.

I'd blame that Bowsie what wrote that book about looking for his ancestors in the deserted village of Achill – thousands of Americans are now descending on the place as a result - coming over with no other purpose than to steal some old ancestral stones. And that Achill.Net website too! An advertisement on it says:

"Come and take hold of your heritage here in the deserted village where your ancestors came from. "

"Look at the stones.

Feel your heritage.

Place your hands on your past.

It’s valuable.

So come to Achill

and

make the past your own. "

I swear it does!

THE LACK of debate here in Mayo over the introduction of electronic voting in next year’s local and European elections is surprising, to say the very least. Most surprising is the fact that the closure of up to 70 rural polling stations has failed to register movement on the political Richter scale. If I was an outgoing county councillors based in the Ballina and Belmullet electoral areas, where the biggest number of closures are earmarked, I would be making a song and dance about it long before now. Because, in real terms, it represents another body blow to the very fabric of rural Ireland which is already reeling from the closure of post offices, banks, ESB offices and corner shops, not to mention the problems caused by strict new planning regulations prohibiting the construction of one-off housing developments. There is clearly a type of social exclusion being imposed in this country on people who have chosen, for one reason or another, to live outside towns of major population, and it is not a health trend.

It may not be a 'health trend' but what a loada crap Jerry. Where I live I am nearer to Castlebar than anywhere – I work in Castlebar. And where do I have to vote? Somewhere out in the country that is supposed to be a village. It has a pub. That I suppose makes it a village. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the publicans or auctioneers on Mayo County council arranged it so that I had to visit this ‘village’ miles outside of Castlebar so that I might go in for a pint after the chore of voting was completed. Or maybe see one of their signs on a ramshackle fixer-upper on the way. People nowadays live in rows of houses that lead to the nearest town – pick Castlebar pick Westport pick Claremorris and they are all connected by a line of continuous wall to wall houses with regularly spaced slurry spreading fields between them. And behind them are smelly cows looking over the back fence. Community? You gotta be Joking Jerry – you can’t even have a barbeque without being smelled out of it. There’s more community in an about-to-be-demolished Fatima Mansion than in modern rural ribbon development! We don’t need post offices and shops – We work in urban centres to avoid the smell of pig and cattle shite that pervades the idyllic rural atmosphere all day long until the cows go home. Thank God for double-glazed hermetically-sealed windows.