Pass a shot

Don't people usually drink alcohol when they're depressed? I mean, do I have that wrong? I know that people drink to celebrate things so that means they drink when they're happy but really, I always associate heavy drinking with sadness. Maybe it's just me.

Apparently it's just me.

In Ireland --a place I associate with drinking alcohol-- the economy has gotten so bad and the unemployment rate so high that people have pretty much quit drinking alcohol. Ok, not everyone has quit drinking but alcohol consumption has dropped 21% since 2001.

Pubs are closing at an alarming rate of one every day and 15,000 people have lost their pub related jobs.  

"It was the worst year for our industry in living memory," Kieran Tobin, chairman of the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland (DIGI), told a news conference in a central Dublin pub.

It's estimated that Ireland has lost $135.1 million dollars in revenue from the recent decline in alcohol sales. That's a lot of Irish Whiskey not being enjoyed.

Embarrassing moment for Dublin police

Police in Dublin Ireland have been searching for a Polish man that committed up to 50 traffic violations and used different addresses for each one.

They knew his name: Prawo Jazdy and the 50 different addresses that were on the drivers licenses. Catching him was a different matter. He seemed impossible to find. Now they know why.

Prawo Jazdy means drivers license in Polish. The words written in the top right hand corners of the licenses was not the name of the person but rather just identifying the document as a driver's license.

In the story I read, the Irish police declined to comment on the report that their system had created a person with over 50 identities. Do you blame them? I don’t. That’s pretty embarrassing if you ask me.