Weather refund

I occasionally write product reviews.

If this Spring were a product I wouldn’t just want my money back, I’d want a class-action lawsuit to bankrupt the manufacturer.

Coldest March in decades. Coldest April in decades. Then we get the start of May with strong winds, showers and cold.

This photo ought to be a picture from a January storm in Dun Laoghaire harbor.

Instead it’s a Saturday in May. 49 knot winds, hailstones and cold. In case you don’t know, 49 knots of wind is a Force 10.

The official description for Force 10 says this;

“Trees are broken off or uprooted, saplings bent and deformed. Poorly attached asphalt shingles and shingles in poor condition peel off roofs.”

May.  I’m reminded of that old TV program in Britain – “The Darling Buds of May”. They’d get their buds blown off this year.

We are living through a Golden Age of enlightened governance with the Troika managing our affairs

Reblogged from NAMA Wine Lake:

A theme examined on here before – here and here for example – is the unprecedented benefit to the well-being of this State from oversight by the bailout troika. It mightn’t feel like it to us now, with austerity budget after austerity budget, a collapse in living standards, high unemployment, emigration and scary debts, but really this misses the bigger picture as regards governance – the mistakes were made in the 2000s and the present period is about dealing with the mess from that legacy.

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This is amazing. Once again, when asked a simple question, an Irish Government Minister shames the idea of democracy with an evasive non-answer. It's a disgrace. Worse, the Minister is giving increased credibility to the party that is asking these simple questions......the party that can probably do more damage to Ireland than the rest of them put together. And that's saying a lot.

Ireland’s shameful past

The official reports on the abuse that was happening in Ireland’s industrial schools and orphanages is old news by now, but I was just re-watching the “States of Fear” program that brought it all to light.

Scary to think that I spend the ’70s and ’80s walking up and down outside St.Josephs and never even wondered what was going on inside. There was even a boy in my class who lived there.

And still, today, we can see that there’s more horror still hidden.

Read this.

The wonderful GAA

One of the Irish institutions that deserves as much praise as it can get is the GAA.  A nationwide structure that gets everyone from kids to old folks involved. Across the country. Across the social spectrum. 

No matter whether it’s the All-Ireland final or – like today – an under 11 schools match, there’s slick organization, great facilities, and a competitive but friendly vibe unlike most other sports. 

Something for Ireland to be proud of. 

A great clearance

Abuse is abuse. Ability to escape is what’s important.

A few weeks ago Fintan O’Toole of the Irish Times wrote an article about old people being neglected and abused in a for-profit nursing home.  I wrote about it at the time.

Basically he asserted that privately owned for-profit homes were evil but that we were all under the spell of profit just as we’d been under the spell of the Catholic Church in the past.

It’s a nice narrative, but it’s hard to agree, particularly when we see what was going on in the UK with Jimmy Saville and a range of state run institutions.

Open Data – Planes in flight…and the noise thereof

Here in Ireland we often talk about open data and the way that the government doesn’t often provide it.

Now this example isn’t exactly the kind of open data that we generally talk about, but it is cool.

You can see, in real-time, all the planes flying over the Netherlands and the levels of noise on the ground. I love it!

Here’s the link.  (oh…it’s in Dutch, but Google translate does a half decent job)

I’m not 100% sure where the data comes from, I just think it’s cool.

Evidence that Government is cutting 2012 capital programme to meet budget targets

Reblogged from NAMA Wine Lake:

“The second area is what we can do at the euro area level to create jobs, basically by increasing investment and enhancing infrastructures. There are many proposals, such as increasing the European Investment Bank (EIB) action and redirecting the EU funds towards the low income areas. When we talk about infrastructure and fiscal consolidation, it is certainly much better to consolidate through the reduction of expenditure, especially current expenditure and not capital or investment expenditure, rather than through increases in taxes” …

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This data indicates again that this current Irish government does not actually care AT ALL about getting the Irish economy into recovery. They may care about other things, like their pensions, securing sectoral votes in the next election, pleasing the PS unions, and so on, but Irish economic recovery is NOT a goal they're actually pursuing.