Blog Archives
Leaked Document Shows County’s Efforts To Get On Irish TV
BY SHENGAS MCGLUMPHIE
Documents obtained by Tyrone Tribulations reveal the efforts being undertaken by Dungannon South & Tyrone Council
to get ensure the county gets plenty of coverage on the new television channel, Irish TV, which was launched last year.
The confidential paper outlines some programme ideas and their content which was brainstormed by senior councillors, many of which will apparently go into a final proposal to be submitted to Irish TV. Some of those ideas include the following: –
Mr Black’s Girls
A sitcom about a loud, nosy, foul-mouthed Irish patriarch and his family which is filmed in front of a live studio audience. Contains faintly humorous dialogue miraculously turned into hilarious comedy gold by the adding of ‘feck’, ‘fecking’ or ‘fecked’ to every other line.
Dancing on Ice
Tyrone’s version of the BBC’s Dancing on Ice, but filmed outdoors instead of inside. Celebrities from around the county skate on a permanent field of ice whilst battling sub-zero temperatures, howling winds and freezing rain, in the middle of summer. To be filmed at the Garvaghey Complex.
FayWatch
Lynette Fay, presenting Country Afternoon in a bright red bathing suit, whilst being chatted up by David Hasselhoff wearing badly-fitting swim shorts, standing on top of the Berlin Wall.
Dogging Live
Following the success of BBC2’s Lambing Live in March, Dogging Live follows poodles, Labradors and Alsatians as they go about their nightly duties. Filmed by middle-aged men in a poorly lit car park near Strabane after midnight.
Priests Say The Funniest Things
Some of the funniest lines by Tyrone’s parish priests caught on camera, including side-splitting communions, hilarious funerals, month’s mind bloopers, and secretly-recorded confessions by Tyrone’s faithful.
Wild About Tyrone
A wildlife programme, this half-hour special will feature the indigenous but rarely seen strange and exotic creatures of Tyrone, including grass snakes, pollen fish, and Coalisland traffic wardens.
PJ and Hugo Duncan
PJ and Hugo Duncan re-live their 90s classic hit, ‘Let’s Get Ready To Skiddly Dee’ which got to number 16 in the Strabane pop charts in 1986. Performed in front of a disapproving Simon Cowell.
Dances with Wolves
A movie about the perils of drinking far too much at Sense nightclub in the Glenavon Hotel, where a combination of pounding music, the smoke machine, alcohol, and desperation, leads to poor partner-selection on the dance floor. Followed by Gorillas in the Mist.
Traffic Warden Warned To Stop Punching The Air In Victory
BY SHENGAS MCGLUMPHIE
A traffic warden has been disciplined by Dungannon & South Tyrone Local Authority after complaints were made about inappropriate behaviour.
32-year old Fergus Devine from Clogher was given a formal warning after he was seen on YouTube giving out five parking tickets in quick succession and then insisting on passers-by doing a Mexican wave round Dungannon Square to celebrate. Complaints were also made to the Council after Devine incurred the wrath of several motorists for dispensing tickets and then singing ‘Simply The Best’ at the top of his voice whilst trying to high-five everyone, including the motorists to whom he had just given the tickets.
Devine defended his actions, saying,
“What’s wrong with taking a bit of pride in my work, eh? Those cars were parked illegally. Well, most of them were anyway, so they get a ticket. End of. No harm in a wee private moment of personal satisfaction. Maybe the fire crackers were a bit much, but still”.
Sources have revealed that Devine was cautioned last November for making loud cash register ‘kah-shing!’ noises every time he dispensed a ticket, and was warned again a month later for giving a parking ticket to Dungannon’s Christmas tree.
Irate motorist Dymphna Curran from Granville said,
“I was parked outside the library for two minutes last Wednesday and when I came back to the car that bollox was moonwalking next to it. I asked him what the craic was, and he just started doing a robot dance. Forty buckin’ quid it’s cost me. Eejit”.
The investigation also revealed that Devine has dispensed over 4,000 tickets in three years including several for seemingly trivial traffic violations, including ‘Driving with a face like a pishmire’, ‘Rubbish reverse parking’, ‘Listening to James Blunt’, and ‘Owning a crap car”. He also gave out more than twenty tickets for cars which had only stopped because the traffic lights were at red.
Standing in Thomas Street in Dungannon, a belligerent Devine said,
“Listen, if people don’t pa…”,
before breaking off mid-sentence to sprint after a Toyota Corolla which looked as if it was slowing down.
Rattle Of Thunder Leaves East Tyrone Panic Stricken
Woman panicking in Edendork
A 2-second blast of thunder left most of East Tyrone on high alert throughout the night with police reporting 1340 calls from worried homeowners. PSNI officials also admitted they spent a couple of hours driving about looking for the noise before the Met Office in Belfast informed them that the sound was actually thunder.
The blast, which occurred around 10pm last night, was described as something close to the sound of a nuclear bomb according to Dungannon pub-owner Jamesey Sloan:
“I’ve never heard anything like it. There were boys running all over the town screaming and shouting about the war being back on and about heading to the bunkers. Women were crying and wailing, saying rosaries in the middle of the street. It was like a film.”
Meanwhile in Ardboe, thousands of residents got into their boats and rowed for Antrim on the other side of the Lough. Patsy Coney remarked:
“Ghost oh boys it was tara. We thought maybe the Sperrins were falling down or something so we all sailed East. A couple of boys swam it. The clergy were handing out Last Rites all over the joint.”
PSNI spokesman Herr Steinburger admitted there were a few red faces in the force:
“Yes, we got caught up in the whole excitement. We had 400 officers out in jeeps looking for the noise. When you add in the 200 or so vigilantes also out searching for the noise there was chaos on the roads. We thought it came from a poitin barn in Stewartstown but he said he’d made all his Christmas batches months ago.”
BBC Weather confirmed it was just one short blast of thunder and warned locals not to go clean mad again tomorrow when hailstones are predicted.
Excuses For Sick Leave Becoming More Preposterous As Council Worker Absenteeism Increases
BY SHENGAS MCGLUMPHIE
Management at Dungannon & South Tyrone Borough Council fear an epidemic of sick workers following news last week that the council staff have an absenteeism rate amongst the highest in the 26 Councils in the North.
Head Councillor Liam O’Donoghue said,
“This has to stop. We’re far too lenient with staff with some of the daft excuses they’re coming up with. I fully intend to deal with the situation, firmly and decisively, just as soon as I get back to work after I bit my tongue last week. It’s really sore you know. I was off on Friday and I could scarcely concentrate on watching the entire Godfather trilogy. It was that bad. Ouch”.
Staff however have protested that the absences are legitimate, and that the Council should be more supportive.
Brian Guthrie, a red tape winder from Caledon said,
“I know I was off all day yesterday, but I tried to get out of bed and my duvet wouldn’t let me. It’s the truth. People think that they climb into bed and the duvet warms them up. Mine doesn’t. It’s the other buckin way around. It’s me that heats the duvet up, and the damn thing knows it full well. It would only let me go once the central heating came on. Narra escape boys, narra escape”.
Marty Murdock, from Galbally, was also off sick at the beginning of this week.
“I couldn’t face going to work on Monday. Jaysus, I had the tara sweats and my head was pounding. I won’t go into the detail but I was in trouble at both ends. I was in Tally’s for a few hours the night before and I think it might have been a bad salted peanut or something. That must have been it, because I didn’t eat anything else. Or I don’t think I did. To be honest I can’t remember a thing”.
Joe McSorley, a scribe from Edendork also had a sorry tale of woe.
“Killeeshil lost to Emyvale on Saturday night at the Junior Championship Final. Do you know how hard that can be to recover from? I couldn’t face it. No wonder I was off on Monday and Tuesday. It would be even worse if I was a fan or I actually liked football”.
Other reasons for staff not turning up at work include life-threatening paper cuts, sore hair, getting lost on the way to work, not being able to decide what to wear, and being kept captive inside their house by a swarm of midges.
Councillors ‘Deadly Embarrassed’ As Council Debt Spirals To £20 Million
BY SHENGAS MCGLUMPHIE
Total council debt in Tyrone has spiralled to £19.8m, it has been revealed, with Omagh’s local authority accounting for £10.3m, and Dungannon & South Tyrone Borough’s standing at £5.2m. Magherafelt is the only local authority which is currently debt-free.
Commenting on Omagh’s £10.3m debt with only the flimsiest grasp of the scale of the problem, Councillor Enda McMann said,
“Over £10 million? Jaysus. That’s unbelievable isn’t it? Although to be honest it was a mighty night out”, he said sheepishly. “We were all in Tally’s and the hard stuff was flowing. I didn’t think we spent that much, but I suppose thon flaming sambuca yolks don’t pay for themselves, do they? £10 million. Eff me pink. We shouldn’t have ordered all them sandwiches. That can’t have helped”.
McMann spent all day Wednesday ‘doing his bit for the people’ to re-coup some of Omagh’s portion of the loss, by looking for spare change down the back of all the chairs and seats in the Council building, and investigating whether refunds can still be obtained at newsagents on empty bottles of pop.
In the event that these measures fail to recover the loss, Omagh Council last night called an emergency general meeting and produced a number of hare-brained, half-baked, ill-considered, knee-jerk solutions to be put into place from 1st December, including: –
• Parking charges for all cattle. Standing in any one part of a field – first 20 minutes free, then 50 pence for every hour, or part thereof. Discounts on Sundays and Bank Holidays.
• Auctioning off every Dungannon Swifts player. Reserve price £200 each, or £250 with extended warranty.
• Renting the Garvaghey Complex to Manchester United as a spare training ground.
• Controversial ‘Tayto Tax’. Charge of £100 on any member of the public eating crisps during daylight hours in an open space. £125 for grab bags.
• Privatising Hugo Duncan. Again.
• Sightseeing tours of the new Newell’s store in Coalisland.
In the meantime Omagh Council has ordered an investigation into how the debt could have spiralled out of control. It will be undertaken by an independent analyst, and is likely to cost £300,000.
‘Yes’ To Be Phased Out In Tyrone. No-One Uses It.
BY SHENGAS MCGLUMPHIE
A proposal released by Dungannon & South Tyrone Council has confirmed that the word ‘yes’ has fallen out of popular usage in the county, and will be replaced by number of alternatives. ‘Yes’ will now be phased out of the spoken language from January 2015, with an anticipated but completely unexplainable £18m of savings to the tax payer.
Instead of the word ‘yes’, a number of phrases already in common usage will replace it, including: ‘That’ll do’, ‘Sound’, ‘It is surely’, ‘Surely to God’, ‘You can bet your bollocks it is’, ‘A hundred per cent’, ‘Grand’, ‘Crack on’, ‘Aye’ and ‘Sure, why not’.
The fantasist behind the idea, local Councillor Declan Brady, said,
“After some significant and exhaustive research outside Argos in Dungannon one Tuesday morning, we found that people didn’t even recognise the word ‘yes’ any more. It’s one of those old-fashioned words that people no longer use, like ‘chum’, ‘aerodrome’ or ‘phone’. It’s got to go. It’s time for the county to say ‘no’ to ‘yes’”.
Firmly against the proposed change however is headmaster of St Mark’s School in Newtownstewart, Colm McQuillan, who rejects the idea. Asked if he intended to fight against the proposal, he said,
“I will surely. We use thon word all the time. Will we fight this all the way? Oh aye. We’d be lost without it. People need to stand up to the man. Should we keep this wee word as part of our everyday language? My answer is clear. Definitely”.
Defending his position, Brady explained,
“’Yes’ just isn’t popular any more. Tyrone people will frequently use the auxiliary verb from the question when making the answer, hence making the word ‘yes’ redundant”.
However, McQuillan retorted,
“Auxiliary what? Who does this boyo think he is with his big long words? Stephen Fry? He should catch himself on. I’ll tell him what he can do with his verbs. He can go and feck. Now there’s a good verb. No way we’re getting rid of one of our finest words. Just the other week one of my pupils asked if they could borrow some glue and aerosols for some after-school activity. ‘Go on ahead’, I says. Now, how on earth could I have answered that without one of our best words? I’ve spoken to all the teachers and parents about this. Do they all think it’s madness? Dead on. Auxiliary verbs my bangle”.
Council To Issue New Wheelie Bin Specifically For ‘Brolly-Related Materials’
BY SHENGAS MCGLUMPHIE
Dungannon & South Tyrone Council confirmed last night that they intend to issue a new wheelie bin to all rate payers, specifically to collect materials relating to Joe Brolly.
The bright red wheelie bin, already coined ‘the Brolly Trolley’, is being hurriedly distributed over the next few days in anticipation of another verbal tirade from the Under-12 manager and some-time RTE commentator at next weekend’s televised minor final against Mayo, Brolly’s last chance for another lambasting of Tyrone in 2013.
Refuse Department spokesman Sean McKenna said,
“There’s been a tara amount of stuff just dumped over the past month. On Monday, a 90-foot tall wicker man was found in Aughabrack with a wee plate of biscuits at the bottom and a sign saying ‘For Joe Brolly’, to entice him inside. These things have to be disposed of. Someone even dumped a 48-inch plasma in Parkanaur because Joe Brolly had appeared on it. People need to wise up. In the meantime, they’ll get a Brolly Trolley to put everything in”.
An increasing number of wax dolls have also been found dumped by the sides of roads throughout the county, with Omagh Arts College confirming that they have received record applications for their ‘Voodoo For Beginners’ classes.
“People were getting jabbed with all the needles falling out of the wax dolls and suchlike”, said McKenna. “Their wee wax faces were all sort of pinched and rodent-y lookin’, so we can only assume they’re of Joe Brolly. They’re a health hazard. They need to be safely disposed of”.
Council refuge workers also said they had seen a rise in the number of umbrellas being discarded because Tyrone supporters dislike the ‘brolly’ association, and there are reports of people nervously throwing away broccoli because of the possible connotations with the RTE commentator. However, there have been some positive developments with weekend fighting in places like Brackaville and the Washingbay having all but stopped. A spokesperson for the PSNI said,
“We’re always accusing these sorts of people of too much brawling, and we think they’ve got it confused with ‘Brolly-ing’. They’ve stopped in case people accuse them of siding with yer wild-eyed shouter off the TV”.
Unconfirmed rumours from Dublin confirmed that in case of another furious outburst from Brolly next Sunday, RTE pundits Pat Spillane and Colm O’Rourke have both requested Brolly Trolleys that they can use to hide in.
*TT would like to reveal that this will be the last Brolly-related post this year. We are over it.
Tyrone’s Controversial Wind Turbines To Have Number Of Blades Doubled
Pomeroy, earlier
BY SHENGAS MCGLUMPHIE
Controversial plans to double the number of blades on the county’s numerous wind turbines have been met with dismay by many concerned residents.
Leaked documents from the Ordnance Survey Department and Dungannon & South Tyrone Council confirmed that the customary three blades will be doubled to six, under a scheme to convert all of them by June 2014.
“That’s right”, said Councillor Enda McMann. “If we double the blades, we double the speed. That much is obvious. Those massive yolks will just be a blur. Like the propellers on an airyplane. Mighty”.
However, opponents of the programme have produced what they say is incontrovertible evidence that the entire county is already slowly being pushed westwards by the collective power of the ever-increasing number of wind turbines.
Killyclogher businessman and self-appointed community spokesman Terence McNabb, demanded answers.
“You wouldn’t believe it. Tyrone has nearly a thousand of these feckin’ things. On a windy day you can feel the whole county shaking. It’s definitely on the move. You can get sea sick if you’re not careful. Strabane definitely isn’t where it used to be.”
Kevin McGinty, a pig therapist from Coagh, concurred with the findings.
“We drove to Bundoran for the weekend there and it took us two hours to get there on Friday afternoon. When we left just two days later at midnight on Sunday it only took us 90 minutes. Explain that. Tyrone’s definitely getting closer to the coast. At this rate we’ll be in effin Americay. We’ll all be speaking with funny accents and eating burgers and saying ‘talk to the hands’ and suchlike. Something needs to be done”.
Ever-keen to jump on the populist bandwagon, and showing barely the flimsiest grasps of the most basic facts, McNabb said,
“Them wind turbines is already a nuisance without making it worse. It must take a whole lock of electrical power to get thon massive blades turning and for what? To make the place look cuter? They cost a fortune so they do. They’re not cost-effective. If we made them solar-powered they might be a bit cheaper to run. They shouldn’t have gone up in the first place”.
Meanwhile, Dungannon & South Tyrone issued a pamphlet to all households throughout the county asking everyone to play their part in trying to improve the recent poor weather by ‘doing whatever you can to prevent a warm front from meeting a cold front’.
Tyrone Counting The Cost Of A Warm Weekend
Kildress man this morning
BY SHENGAS MCGLUMPHIE
People in the county this morning woke up to yet another hot day, with many yearning for the typical Tyrone summers of drizzle, cloud and the occasional sleet shower.
“Last night in bed was just awful”, said a 62 year old man from Sandholes who asked not to be named. “Jaysus, I was sweating like a galloping stallion. I had to strip off the flannelette long johns at one point it was so hot, and then did the missus not start getting ideas in her head. I had to turn on the light to wise her up”.
Men are facing the prospect of now having to change their shirt at least once a week before children and elderly relatives start passing out from the overpowering smell, whilst many others have spent the weekend searching through car manuals to find how to switch the air conditioning on.
“This weather’s appalling”, said Jack Dolan, a door handle polisher from Kildress. “All we’re after is a wee bit of nice summer weather and what have we got? Scorching hot sun. Disaster. I’m sure it’s not my imagination, but years ago the summers seemed to be much better. Do you remember that summer of 87? Poured with rain every day for a month. Mighty. The Tones play deadly in the wet”.
A spokesperson for Dungannon & South Tyrone Council agreed.
“What we yearn for is the summers of yesteryear when a Tyrone summer was a proper summer. Lashing rain. At least we knew where we stood. We’re not set up for sunny days. We made the mistake of announcing on Saturday that it was 23 degrees in the shade. So a whole bunch of people from Stewartstown decided it would be better to stay the sun. We didn’t think it through”.
Dungannon Hospital confirmed that it has had an unprecedented number of people turning up with sunburn. “What are they playing at?” said Sheila Quinn from Edendork, one of the doctors on duty over the weekend. “Half of the people in this county would get third degree burns going out under a crescent moon, never mind a boiling hot sun. It’s tara. We admitted one man yesterday with the worst case of sunburn on his legs I’ve ever seen. We had to prescribe Viagra just to help keep the sheets off it”.
The Met Office confirmed that torrential rain is forecast for the rest of the summer.
Council Plan To Spend Entire Aborted A5 Road Budget On ‘Deadly Session’ For Tyrone
Bono for Tyrone?
By Shengas McGlumphie
Leaked plans from a source within Dungannon & South Tyrone Council have revealed that the Council is planning to spend the £400m budget, originally earmarked for the A5 road extension, on a huge party for the 150,000 lucky residents in Tyrone. An anonymous source told us:
“We were going to get the money taken away anyway so we might as well use it on something. We’ve not done the sums yet on how much it works out at per resident because our calculators don’t go to enough decimal places, but it should be the price of a whole clatter of pints for every man, woman and child”.
The original expectation was that the funds would be withdrawn and used elsewhere in Ireland or the EC for other projects. However, the source said that officials discovered that they can re-classify the £400m expense from ‘A5 Road multi-million pound upgrade’ into a category called ‘Miscellaneous Expenses’ without anyone noticing.
Plans are already underway to have a one-day celebration of all that is good about Tyrone, including Irish dancing, bull-fighting, tyre-kicking, dwarf wrestling, diffing, laundering, slagging, passing down clothes and St Bridgid’s Cross weaving. The leaked 10-point document outlines the plans for the event which will be organised by the Council, expected to take place mid-August:
- ‘Mad Musical Spectacular’, better than Band Aid. Featuring band made up of Bono, Philomena Begley, Paul McCartney and Dennis Taylor. Follow up with charity recording The Mountains of Pomeroy, featuring Sting on the spoons. Get Lady Gaga if Philomena not available.
- Derrylaughan to be re-classified as 2013 City of Culture. Persuade people in Derry that them getting it was an admin error.
- Get Derrylaughan re-classified as a City
- Free Moy Park chicken for every Tyrone resident. Utility bill as proof of address required. Cookstown Sausages instead for any vegetarians.
- ‘All Star Football’ featuring 1986 Tyrone versus the 1966 England World Cup Team
- Fly Pope and entourage over for the day as special guest of honour. Use Easyjet to keep cost down but agree to pay for Easyjet Meal Deal for Pope only, to include sandwich, Pringles and bar of chocolate of His Holiness’s choice.
- A lock of pints for every resident. Get Costcutters to do a deal.
- Free sick bag for every family.
- Bulldoze Asda in Cookstown. Build 3,000-foot statue of Peter Canavan.
- Bribe BBC producers for Tyrone to feature on ‘Lesser Spotted Ulster’ every week for next 5 years
The day will be hosted by Ant or Dec, whichever is cheaper.
Tyrone Tribulations 