“IT’LL be dark at 5pm before you know it” one parent dropping their child off at school cheerily said to themselves as the telltale sign that an Irish summer is over, Enoch Burke hovering at school gates, has arrived once again.
“Fuck sake,” confirmed much of the nation as the emergence of a wild Burke haring back to its unnatural habitat of outside a premises they haven’t worked at since 2022, signaled the summer is well and truly over.
Transfusion features art made by young trans people, including a pencil drawing by the late Jordan Howe. She was a 19 year-old transgender woman from Belfast who took her own life because of transphobic bullying in 2014.
Drop into the City Hall on Anglesea Street. You can’t miss it. The exhibition will be on until August 15th.
Most of the people on this green isle of ours aren’t “built for this sort of weather” as I’ve heard people say a few times over the last few days. There’s a heatwave here that I’m sure most people in southern Europe would scoff at. Temperatures are in the mid-twenties, and beaches are filled to overflowing, so the Guards requested people go to other locations.
There’s rain due next week. Back to a normal summer for us, and Ireland will slowly get back up to the North Atlantic.
PS. Don’t look too closely at the place names. The original image comes from a Facebook post where I’m sure they stole it from elsewhere, but they used a postage-size image I blew up in Topaz Photo AI for this post.
it’s fitting that I was listening to the segment at around minute 18:00 of this podcast about recycling when I was putting the rubbish bins out.
Most of the recycled material in Europe ends up in Malaysia, apparently. And it sure isn’t completely recycled.
An EPA report stated that, “Plastics present a serious challenge. Only 28 percent of plastic packaging waste was recycled in 2021, a long way off the 2025 EU target of 50 percent. The majority of Ireland’s plastic packaging waste is being incinerated.”
If a portion of that 28% of plastics is being sent abroad, then our recycling rate must be even worse.
Storm Éowyn is battering the country with winds gusting to 130km/h. Hope everyone stays safe tonight. It started raining here around an hour or so ago, and I can hear wind gusting outside from where I sit.
Status Red – Wind warning for Carlow, Kilkenny, Wexford, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Waterford
Met Éireann Weather Warning
Storm Éowyn: Gale to storm force southerly winds becoming westerly with extreme, damaging and destructive gusts in excess of 130km/h
Impacts:
• Danger to life • Extremely dangerous travelling conditions • Unsafe working conditions • Disruption and cancellations to transport • Many fallen trees • Significant and widespread power outages • Impacts to communications networks • Cancellation of event • Structural damage • Wave overtopping • Coastal flooding in low-lying and exposed areas
Valid: 02:00 Friday 24/01/2025 to 10:00 Friday 24/01/2025
I filled in the solar PV grant form on the SEAI website this afternoon. I tried doing it this morning, but there was a “permission denied” error on their dashboard, which stopped things working. There had been a warning that they were doing updates overnight, so I figured it was probably teething problems with the update.
Hours later, upon submitting the grant form, I saw a “Paused on debugger statement” popup. Clicking play on it continued the process, and it all appears to work fine now. One wonders what happened to just submitting a form and processing everything on the server and refreshing the page?
Anyone know someone on the SEAI dev team who can remove that debugger command? The joys of developing debugging on a live site.
Here in Ireland, we are holding a referendum on changing two sections of our constitution.
If I were to summarise the changes, I’d say:
The family one is to recognise that marriage isn’t the only type of long-term relationship a couple or two people have.
The carer one has been called an attempt to remove archaic and sexist language from the constitution when it says, “the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support”. That text will be removed and the replacement text recognise that family members care for one another.
On this, International Women’s Day, many of the woman I know are voting NO to both changes.
Women and men march in protest at the cervical check scandal. May 2018.
what if someone is married and has a durable relationship elsewhere?
“endeavour” vs “strive” to support. Which is stronger? Which word puts more pressure on the Gov to provide care?
I’m still not sure how I’ll vote. It will probably be no-no, but I may vote yet to the family one, as any ambiguity about the definition of “durable relationship” may be less trouble than the positives of having more relationships recognised. That’s up to the courts, however, which makes voting for this change so hard. Many of the people urging a no-no vote are not groups I would associate with, being conservative or right-wing. Meanwhile, all the Government parties and even Sinn Féin support a yes-yes vote. Sinn Féin say they’ll rerun the carer referendum if it’s rejected, and they’re elected into government:
Ms McDonald said that if the referendum was rejected, it would be her ambition to put the question to the people again “early in our term” if the party was elected to Government. …. She said the party would be returning to the recommendation from the Citizen’s Assembly which would include care not just at home, but in wider society.
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) has said it welcomes the referendum widening the definition of the family beyond just those based on marriage. But on the care referendum, it said the Government should have gone further.
“Based on our analysis, ICCL believes that the proposed text on ‘care’ will not provide meaningful legal protections to any person who gives or receives care.
Overall, we feel the Government should have gone further to implement the recommendation of the Citizen’s Assembly and the Oireachtas Committee. This would have represented a more legally impactful proposal.”
There is an appeal by the mother of a disabled man who provides 24 hour care to him due to be heard in the Supreme Court in April. She wants to receive the carer’s allowance she deserves, but unfortunately for her, her partner has a job outside the home.
The appellant mother, who effectively provides 24-hour care to her son and has no means of her own, is disputing the Department of Social Protection’s decision that she is not entitled to the full-rate of the carer’s allowance because the weekly income of her partner, the man’s father, is €850.
If the constitution is changed, will it make it easier for the Government to ignore pleas for carer’s allowance?
Also, the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, says it’s not the State’s responsibility to look after those that need care. The joke is he said the quiet bit out loud but read on …
As I was writing this post, I discovered that Simon McGarr reported a couple of hours ago that The Ditch has uncovered advice from the attorney general to the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth about the referendums. Simon has some interesting commentary in his Mastodon thread. Here’s the bit from that doc about the Heneghan case:
The need for such clarity is particularly important when one considers this year’s Supreme Court judgment in Heneghan v Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government. This is a notable example of the courts finding that they are entitled to consider the background and campaign leading up to a constitutional amendment when interpreting its purpose or scope. While that occurred in Heneghan in the context of apparent inconsistencies between different constitutional provisions, it is nevertheless a reason to exercise caution in communicating the purpose of the amendment in the course of the referendum campaign.
Irish Attorney General to Roderic O’Gorman TD
Leo saying that family should take care of family speaks volumes in that case. On the other hand, Simon admits that the future is uncertain.
Just in case you want more:
Free Legal Advice Centres are recommending a yes-no vote. An interesting piece explaining their stance that I found very convincing.
Mario Rosenstock interviews Larissa Nolan (she will be voting no-no)
And I can’t believe I’m linking to an interview with Peadar Tóibín, leader of Aontú where he argues for a no-no vote.
The yesyes.ie website urges a yes-yes vote but covers none of the grey areas of the changes.
As Anita says, most of the work done in the home will still be done by women, and that’s not going to change, no matter what happens today. My wife is meeting some friends this morning, but two have already had to cancel because they need to care for family members. Happy International Women’s Day.
I’m not a lawyer/solicitor. I just have a vote today. How will you vote? Did you vote already?
Edit: much later in the day:
Well done to all that voted, all 44.36% of you. Both changes were defeated by huge margins. Family: 32.31% Yes, 67.69% No. Care: 26.07% Yes, 73.93% No.
Now, let’s get back to not supporting the right-wing part of this country, ok?
Schools are back this morning, but temperatures are staying around 2ºC (feels like -3ºC) which would be manageable except it rained around 4am this morning. Local roads are lethal, with vehicles already skidding and crashing.
A double-decker bus skidded on black ice at one end of the village and blocked the road completely.
Twenty minutes later, two delivery trucks jackknifed after coming down the hill coming from the opposite side of the village.
I live on a hill, and watched cars come down it very, very slowly. Thankfully, no incidents there yet.
The final section of the new road bypassing Macroom and other towns in Co Cork will be opening next month, hopefully. The existing sections make that drive a pleasure now, as we can bypass the bottleneck of Macroom, and avoid the twisting roads just west of Ballyvourney.
We drove to Killarney on Saturday morning to photograph the deer in Killarney National Park, and that road was lovely to drive. It’s disconcerting there’s no hard shoulder, but there are lay-bys at least. We passed through Ballyvourney around 7am, and saw a local shop was already open, but I wonder what effect the new road will have on local business?
On the way back, we stopped in The Mills, on the edge of that town, for lunch. It was well over a decade since I’d eaten there. The place was packed with diners, and even a Hen Party! The food was delicious and staff were friendly. Will it be so easy to get there next month, or will drivers have to drive through the entire town to visit?
Petrol in Ballinspittle is only €1.819/lt today. That’s the cheapest I’ve seen in a long time.
After listening to this Planet Money podcast about the cost of gasoline I wonder if we will have expensive petrol and diesel forever? Reason being, it’s unlikely that new oil refineries will ever be built again as demand for oil products plummet in the next decade. A guest on the show predicted that a barrel of oil will be $20-$30 in ten years time.
Electric cars are becoming a lot more attractive, but I won’t be looking to buy a new car for quite some time.
For you, my American reader, there are 3.78541 litres in a US gallon. That means the price of gasoline/petrol here is $6.89/gallon.
Aside from all this, the reduction in oil production will have a detrimental effect on sulphur production. It’s a by-product of that system and used by the metal and fertilizer industries. It’s cheap as chips now, but if there’s a shortage, the price of food will skyrocket.
Yikes. Any good news about the future?
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