21 Things To Do Now Troika Are Gone

17th Dec 2013

Now that Ireland’s Troika “shackles” have been thrown off it’s time to let the good times roll again.  Here are our Top 21 ways to cast off the cut backs and usher in Celtic Tiger 2. 




1. Get a brand new jeep with an 18.5% APR loan and drive the 300 yards between your gaf and work every morning. Make sure it has a Dublin-reg too to really get up your neighbours’ noses.

2. Demand a €20,000 pay increase from your Discount Store employer because your two-week probation period is over and because it is what you feel you are “entitled “ to.



3. Buy a duplex in Damascus, Syria off the plans for cash from a fella in a stripy suit in the lobby of a hotel in the Midlands – get in early cos the end of a civil war always gives property prices a lift. We’ve heard prices are bottoming out in the Central African Republic too.

4. Be seen by neighbours unloading a flat screen TV the size of your gable-end into your living room.



5. Get caterers round to make dinner every Friday and Saturday night - even if you’re not there.

6. Start referring to your utility room as ‘the conservatory’ because it’s got a new Velux roof light and you paid an interior designer two grand to tell you that a champagne rack over the tumble dryer would really transform the place.



7. Drive through Blackpool throwing fifty euro notes folded as paper-aeroplanes at children. When they get close enough rev up your new jeep so they get covered in a cloud of fumes. Their reaction in the rear view mirror is worth every penny.

8. Always park your jeep on double-yellow lines in town. To you, the fine is more or less the same as the cost of a parking-disc so why bother going to the trouble of getting one? Sure, the bank is paying anyway!


9. Buy a ride-on lawnmower that cuts the back garden of your three bed semi in 10 seconds.

10. Take your neighbour to court to sue them for “harassment” because they asked you to turn down the bass on your new telly because their kids can’t sleep. Demand a custodial sentence and claim that their children look suspiciously unlike their mother and father so that they are taken into care.



11. Set up a direct debit for your favourite ‘charitable’ organisation: Fianna Fáil. You couldn’t care less about their policies but the “pull” is handy when the bank are resisting increasing your credit card limit.

12. Go to a teeth whitening clinic. Once a week. 


13. Splash out on some cosmetic surgery: off with you to Budapest to get a few pesky lines and crow’s feet tidied up. You might also need that langer growing out of your forehead seen to.

14. Buy a trampoline in a farming cooperative for the front garden so everyone can see it.


15. Take out a loan at your favourite bank and invest the cash in the bank’s own shares. It’s a win-win.

16. Hire an Eastern European nanny even if you don’t have kids and insist on paying her in shares in a pyramid scheme that a friend in west Cork put you on to. Look up the Lithuanian for a ‘dead cert’?

17. Ask SHARE collectors if they accept laser whilst fanning out your credit cards a few centimetres from their face. Raise your eyes and walk away in a condescending huff when they decline. You only use cash when buying property.

18. Put your child’s name down for a private secondary school and rugby/hockey club even though he/she hasn’t even been conceived yet and you’re still trying to get your money back from RussianBridesLookingForPaddies.com.


19. Get an extra Sky Sports connection for your dog’s kennel. You’re fairly sure he’s a Leinster fan too (remember you switched allegiance from Munster because the corporate boxes in the Aviva are “classier”).

20. For your brother’s 21st birthday in the yacht club hire your bank manager as the after-dinner speaker and when he’s finished lift him shoulder high to the bar whilst chanting his name.


21. Keep an aggressive no-morals solicitor on a monthly retainer to send regular confrontational letters to tradesmen who keep asking you for the money you owe them.