No VAT, no insurance, no masks: the Fine Thick Men who pick and choose which laws they’ll follow

NO LAWS. No income tax. No planning permissions. No VAT. No insurance. No licences. No fire authority. No masks. No distancing. No rates. No no-smoking. No PRSI. No PPS. No coin needed for the pool table. No health and safety. No closing time. No nothing.

Hup, you may say, this is for me. The problem about opening a shebeen, which is an unlicensed bar, is that the pub is likely to be full of FTMs, or Fine Thick Men.

‘Fine’ here doesn’t mean fine in the ordinary sense of the word such as in a fine day, or a fine fellow, or fine clothes. The fine in FTM means very or pure. FTM pure isn’t pure as in wholesome or holy, but is a kind of a thick, more thick even than fine thick. ‘Pure thick’, it’s called.

The FTMs see themselves as a breed of men who don’t fit in. They are opinionated and wear T-shirts on cold days. They are a la carte citizens of this country, who pick and choose the laws that suit them. Independent republics of me, they are.

They have been gestating for years. Us kids were playing a football game and it was pouring out of the heavens. One of the small boys asked the trainer if we could wait a while longer in the dressing rooms.

It was the custom in those times not to allow what was known as softness. Softness is for ice creams, they used to say. Dads didn’t kiss their sons, and if you got a belt during the game, the Dad wouldn’t run on to the field of play to check if the son was OK, for fear it would be seen as a sign of softness. The boy would be mortified if the father ran on or, worse again, the mother.

The boy is concussed. Then he walks in to the metal goalposts and gets doubly concussed. The rain wet us in seconds. One boy who hated the physical side of football said, bravely, “I don’t want to play. It’s too wet.”

“Ah,” said the trainer, “get out on that pitch and why don’t you dodge between the drops?”

FTMs are made partly by a generational lack of nurture.

I honestly believe the FTMs think they can dodge between the drops of Covid . “I’m not letting Covid in. And no more about it.”

They only believe in Covid when they get it. The FTM’s last words are, “it’s all a conspiracy to keep us out of the pubs”, or, “I still think it’s only a bad flu”. There’s a daub – I wouldn’t elevate it to graffiti – in Cork city centre that reads, “Covid hoax RTE fake news”.

The FTMs are the kings of Covid denial.

The FTMs hate being told what to do, which is why they opened their own pubs. They decide the rules. The rule is there are no rules. So the couple who scrape up all their money and buy a pub for 300,000 are put out of business by a man whose only investment was to stand the chippy a few gallons. Their customers get sick and people die.

There have been posts on Facebook Live of big parties. Some of the guests came from England with the new virus. Which is the worst virus of all. More spreadable than the butter substitute that never hardens in the fridge.

Surely there can be no one in this country who doesn’t understand that you can spread the disease and possibly kill someone?

The FTMs love games of pool. Darts too. Card games as well. Although they prefer pool best, as they can show their hairy arses while bending over to pot the black. These games involve counting the score.

I am convinced the FTMs keep a tally of how many people they infect. “Great day today, lads: 53 confirmed cases. Three deaths. How many points is it for a death again, lads? Hup outa dat. Go on you good thing. Bate the shite out dat pub up the road, so we did. They only had the 39 cases and ’ere a death. 53-14 to us.”

The approach up to now has been, easy does it.

Bring the people with you. Keep them onside. But circumstances have changed. Any hearts and minds that needed to be won over are well won by now.

There was proper social distancing.

She was in France and I was in Kerry.

“If you drive the car,” she said, “in a manner that constitutes a danger to the public, there will be serious consequences. You may end up in jail. I propose the FTM should be charged with manslaughter when people die as a result of their deliberate recklessness.”

Back months ago, here in this column, I was of the view there should be a ‘bring the people with us’ approach.

Zero tolerance has never worked in Ireland, but now there is no choice. The FTMs are not for changing. Pity the poor gardaí who have to put their own safety at risk when they have to stop illegal protests.

The drink problem is compounded by the fact there are licensed pubs run by FTMs.

I thought they would appreciate being allowed to open and do their best. The only distancing in the licensed FTM pubs was the separation of the 50s, 20s and 10s in their greedy tills.

Greed is not good. Greed in the time of Covid is treason. I have heard anecdotally, which means the person wouldn’t allow his name to be used as a source, that a big city gastro pub was full and there was no need to purchase food.

The customers were not forced in to the shebeens and the pubs at gun point by the FTMs.

The shebeen customers save about 50pc on the price of drink over and above the ordinary decent pubs, of which there are many but not as many as I used to think there were. The fines levied should hit their savings hard.

We are not talking here about a few friends getting together for a barbecue in times when parties are legal.

In some cases we have no idea where the money ends up.

Criminals are running some of the shebeens or are supplying the shebeens with stolen and smuggled drink. The profits are reinvested in drugs. Their vaccine is heroin.

There is a growing movement towards not-so-civil disobedience. Most of us have met someone in a shop who refuses to wear a mask. There will come a time when the Dáil will be invaded by the FTM.

I honestly believe they think they can dodge between the drops of Covid. They only believe in Covid when they get it