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What you want to say – 9th June 2021 June 9, 2021

Posted by guestposter in Uncategorized.
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As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.

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1. alanmyler - June 9, 2021

The Leaving Certificate starts today. Our youngest is doing it this year. She’s being remarkably chilled about it, with the predicted grades already in her pocket, not that she knows what predicted grade she’s been given but she knows her continuous assessment grades which presumably feed into the overall predicted grade. One would have to think that it’ll be very difficult, if not just downright counter productive at so many levels, for the Dept of Education to ever go back to “the traditional LC” even after the pandemic is effectively behind us all.

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WorldbyStorm - June 9, 2021

Good luck to her. I hope it goes really well. I think that the option for a blended LC of some format must be clear after this. That said… we know the Dept of Ed.

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alanmyler - June 9, 2021

We do indeed. I’m definitely not impressed by Minister Foley to date either. Anyhow the young one got off to a good start thankfully, English paper one this morning. She was thinking of not sitting English but I think we convinced her that it would be a good exercise in stress management to make herself sit it even if she wasn’t all that well prepared for paper two, as it ultimately doesn’t matter anyway due to the predicted grades fallback. I think we’re finding the process as stressful as she is, as parents I mean, even though she’s our third to go through it. Our eldest found it incredibly stressful, the whole of 6th year and the LC itself including receiving the grades afterwards. You’d really hope that the opportunity to ramp down all of those negativities associated with young people enduring such a prolonged stressful process won’t be squandered.

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2. Tomboktu - June 9, 2021

Erm… 9 May?

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3. Tomboktu - June 9, 2021

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WorldbyStorm - June 10, 2021

Ooops

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4. Tomboktu - June 9, 2021

I do admit that it is a genuine surprise to me that Varadkar is bringing in a right to paid sick leave for all employees.

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5. alanmyler - June 10, 2021

Very good letter from Gareth Southgate about patriotism and football, in advance of the Euros starting.

https://www.theplayerstribune.com/posts/dear-england-gareth-southgate-euros-soccer

Billy Bragg had a song about the same subject many years ago, the Few:

At night the Baby Brotherhood and the Inter City Crew
Fill their pockets up with calling cards
And paint their faces red white and blue
Then they go out seeking different coloured faces
And anyone else that they can scare
And they salute the foes their fathers fought
By raising their right hands in the air
Oh look how my country’s patriots are hunting down below
What do they know of England who only England know?

From the stands of the Empire Stadium
Come the heralds of the New Dark Age
With the simplicities of bigotry
And to whom all the world’s a stage
These little John Bullshits know that the press
Will glorify their feats
So that the general public fear them
And the authorities say give ’em all seats
And the wasted seed of the bulldog breed
Is shouting “Here we go!”
What do they know of England who only England know?

Our neighbours shake their heads
And take their valuables inside
While my countrymen piss in their fountains
To express our national pride
And to prove to the world that England
Is just as rotten as she looks
They repeat the lies that caught their eyes
At school in history books
But the wars they think they’re fighting
Were all over long ago
What do they know of England who only England know?

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crocodileshoes - June 14, 2021

Anyone turned on GB News yet? Sky channel 515. Breakfast show – actually called The Great British Breakfast – making big ‘fine people on both sides’ efforts to excuse England football fans’ booing of taking the knee. Fairly amateurish presentation styles, I’d say – a feast of ‘obviously’s and ‘yeah’s and glottal stops so far. Like watching footballers discussing current affairs. Which I suppose is fitted to the audience they’re going for.

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WorldbyStorm - June 14, 2021

That’s depressing. Isn’t GB News the new right wing channel?

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6. Starkadder - June 10, 2021

I mentioned a few weeks ago that Angela Nagle had written a review of Desmond Fennell’s “The Second American Revolution And The Sense Famine In The West” on her Substack.

Well, she has now made the review available for non subscribers to view She expresses admiration for Fennell’s views, especial his dislike of Seamus Heaney’s work.

https://angelanagle.substack.com/p/when-we-stopped-making-sense

She notes Fennell’s claim that FDR’s New Deal ” brought about an end to official Christian morality as a “determinant of behavioral rules””.

Hmm, I suspect R. J. Rushdoony would have agreed with this aspect of Fennell’s views, while Father John A. Ryan wouldn’t.

Nagle seems quite intrigued with Fennell’s views, without endorsing all their ideas.

Personally I’ve always thought of Fennell as a verbose cross between D. P. Moran and Oswald Spengler, and I fail to see why Nagle finds his work so fascinating.

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WorldbyStorm - June 10, 2021

Not sure I’d be much of a fan of Fennell’s either. It all seems to tilt to somewhat reactionary places. And a lot of hyperbole.

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gregtimo - June 15, 2021

Not familiar with Desmond, but skimming his wiki and Nagle’s piece and if it is true he is associated with the ex-BICO elite mob (I’ll never forget their support of the Red-Nazi Khmer Rouge) , the tag Red-Brown comes to mind, with the emphasis on the latter . And Nagle strikes me as impressionable . How did she become so influential again ?

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gregtimo - June 16, 2021

The thought comes to mind that there is confusion there as to the Post-Modernist excess and hubris of certain intellectuals which provided the Far Right and Neo-liberalism with lots of ammunition against ‘Progessive-ism’ in general and the Left as a whole . It needs to be affirmed that some lost the plot back in the day , pain in the head and all that that is .Thanks for nothing Foucault and co , super-cringe

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7. Paul Culloty - June 11, 2021

With the Euros having kicked off tonight, interesting how natural it is for Aaron Ramsey to chat to the press in Welsh – even in the GAA, very few players are able to talk to TG4 as Gaeilge, which made Con O’Callaghan all the more noteworthy:

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8. Tomboktu - June 14, 2021

So far on RTÉ’s coverage of the effect oft Stobart Air’s closure on Kerry, the main focus has been on a replacement air service. Fair enough, within that framework.

Odd, though, that when RTÉ mentioned an alternative, it was driving (Phillip King is driving to Dublin). So far there has been no mention of rail travel as an environmentally better way of travelling to Dublin than either driving or flying.

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WorldbyStorm - June 14, 2021

+1 Interesting framing by them. Of course were they to ask why for example there is no rail link to Donegal let alone high speed rail across this very small island that’d raise interesting and inconvenient questions.

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Jim Monaghan - June 14, 2021

The Sligo rail line needs new signalling and a new bridge over the Shannon. Combine that with rural bus links. Likewise use Derry Rail to Belfast.These are viable expenditures.
But air has glamour. So waste and help destroy the environment with airports such as Donegal, Waterford (unused) Kerry etc. This is a small country not the USA.
One more example of waste.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Real_International_Airport

There is a Cargo Cult thing about airports. Build them and the jobs will come.
Oh use an enhanced helicopter service for urgent medical treatment

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banjoagbeanjoe - June 15, 2021
Michael Carley - June 15, 2021
gregtimo - June 15, 2021

One thing at a time. The priority is to restore the subsidies to Bus Eireann to make that journey again more bearable and affordable not service the upper middle class of remote parts of the country . 2nd improve Irish Rail. Prestigious localist projects shoud come after those

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9. oliverbohs - June 14, 2021

Learned from the John Kampfner book about the white elephant that is the Brandenburg airport at Berlin, meant to open nearly a decade ago, a checklist found hundreds of things wrong, still don’t think it’s open

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Liberius - June 14, 2021

It’s open as of last October, but it’s still causing problems.

Berlin – The passenger terminal at the city’s new airport may be just under three months old but trade union Verdi already wants it closed for improvements – security contractor Securitas says its employees are routinely receiving electric shocks while moving passengers through security gates.

Eleven such incidents – four of which required assistance from emergency personnel – occurred on Monday, 6 January, alone. More than 60 have been recorded since the airport opened – and federal police confirmed that there were problems with electrostatic charges.

The number of unreported cases is even higher, Verdi’s Benjamin Roscher told the Berliner Zeitung.

“Some employees are electrocuted several times during a shift. One colleague was hit four times, and she went home for the day,” Röscher, a regional district manager, said.

https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/en/whats-shocking-employees-at-ber-li.131833

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yourcousin - June 15, 2021

What sort of checklist? And what sort of things? Shit like this drives me crazy. Deviations from the International Building Codes? Life safety violations due to things like fire alarm or egress? Or is it an architectural punch list because some one didn’t like a seam in a piece of flooring or how a ceiling tile sat in the grid? Those are all things that are wrong, but it’s a very different picture. And to try to paint it otherwise is far too simplistic. And to act as if “list of things wrong” in the hundreds for an entire airport is unique is way off base. I’ve had an architect give me ten punch items in a room because they “have to” find something. Hence the seating of ceiling tiles etc comes into play.

Not trying to say there aren’t serious issues to resolve, but it’s never as simple as portrayed in the media who tend to have poor understanding of how construction works.

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banjoagbeanjoe - June 15, 2021

Closer to home. Mica in building blocks. Houses and other buildings crumbling mainly in Donegal and Mayo.
Yes to 100% compo for people who have to rebuild.
But … who let it happen? What happened? Who made the bricks? Who sold them? What standards were allowed slip by state authorities?

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WorldbyStorm - June 15, 2021

I was reading today’s RTÉ coverage and it was amazing how that aspect wasn’t in the reports about today’s protest.

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Jim Monaghan - June 15, 2021

Yes, to all your say. And why are the builders and developers off the hook? Who promoted light touch regulation, TDs from some of these counties.Light touch regulation was heavily backed by rural TDs in FF, Fg and so-called independents. I would add that many apartment owners in Dublin are having to stump up serious funds to repair a load of similar problems.

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crocodileshoes - June 15, 2021

I’m one of them, Jim. Thousands to fit fire stopping that wasn’t done in the nineties, flat unsalable, unrentable, uninsurable until it was done. Self-certification was a disaster. One reason I don’t think much of Covid self-isolation: it’s easy to make allowances for ourselves.

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terrymdunne - June 15, 2021

Jim I know nothing about the mica protests but the fact that RTE were not reporting protesters raising these issues hardly means that the protesters were not raising them (and if they were not we might hope they might be in the future). I am sure there was a cosy cartel of builders & politicians in Donegal for many years as you suggest – the fact that the county elects 2 S.F. TDs & one Thomas Pringle suggests that at least some Donegal people are aware of the fact also.

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terrymdunne - June 16, 2021

This is what is being claimed on Twitter –
“Second Misconception- this is up to the block manufacturer to sort out. Yes this should actually be true. However, in reality, it has been impossible to sanction the manufacturer thus far and nobody has successfully gained recourse from them using legal routes”
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1403754263709425670.html

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10. Michael Carley - June 14, 2021

Peter Taylor on his fifty years reporting on Ireland. Worth a watch if you can.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000x2py

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Bagatelle's Unjuggled Topper - June 15, 2021

Tis on the youtube

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11. gregtimo - June 15, 2021

On the German Left party(Die Linke) problem (needs it’s own thread with the Federal election coming in September), put things in perspective for me (before I gave up on the complications and nuances), but the fact there are 10 main ‘currents’ (see wikis, the German one is more up to date) and then you have the SWP friends in a sub-current of the ‘Socialist Platform’ is a double edged sword where some must be spending way too much time on internal politics . Jacobins Berlin person talks of the new reality of the essential middle class nature of Die Linke , (which would apply to nearly all Left parties in Europe and here these day afaik, where you have upper middle self-defining as working class and so on). The danger of disappearing into echo chambers and all that
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/03/germany-die-linke-workers-socialist-party-leadership
And from a member of the newer ‘Movements’ current
https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article7125
Die Linke has been in a transformation to a more complicated beast, but can it adapt quickly or ???

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12. Tomboktu - June 15, 2021

I don’t think those protestors realise that not giving then 100% redress is important because if they did get 100%, then sure other people would go and get houses built with mica bricks so they could get a full refund too.

Fine Gael understands economic incentives, you know. <taps nose>

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13. Paul Culloty - June 15, 2021

Apparently FG will set up a branch in NI, and set out a “middle ground” approach to unity, but won’t contest elections – all sounds like they want to attract people involved with Alliance:

https://twitter.com/aoifegracemoore/status/1404879126104788996

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WorldbyStorm - June 15, 2021

Brave new dawn! That we should be here to see this!

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Bagetlle's Unhidden Thrips - June 15, 2021

+1 LOL

Sure he’ll be downing pints at the Kneebreakers shortly!

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