Duncan of Blairs Inn was giving out free samples of their delicious beef stew along with samples from other local restaurants at the festival in Blarney today.
Delicious stuff, and Blairs Inn is a great place to go for a meal too. Only been there once but we had a great meal there. Recommended.
We were originally going to be walking in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Blarney but our son fell asleep a few minutes ago, and it wouldn’t be fair on him to drag him out unfortunately. We did visit the “farmers market” this morning however and I took a few photos. They’re really only snapshots but I hope you enjoy them, especially if you have visited Blarney.
This is probably the few times in the year that you’ll see this many locals near Blarney Castle! 😉
Continue reading “Patrick's Day in Blarney”
Well, this is a surprise. One of my .ie email addresses got a very targeted phishing email. It was so specific that it was actually written in Irish! It wasn’t directed at me, but at a list owner address at linux.ie.
I wonder if the spammers know how many Irish people could actually read their email easily? It’d certainly be easier for most people to read in English.
Aire
Tá mé an tUasal Patrick KW Chan an Stiúrthóir Feidhmiúcháin agus PrÃomh-Oifigeach airgeadais Hang Seng Bank Ltd, Hong Cong.
Tá mé togra gnó brabúsaà leasa choitinn a roinnt le leat;
Baineann sé leis an aistriú suim mhór airgid.
Fuair mé do tagairt i mo cuardach a dhéanamh ar dhuine a oireann mo chaidreamh gnó molta.
Má tá suim agat i obair liom teagmháil a dhéanamh liom mo trà r-phost prÃobháideach (mrpatkwchan52@yahoo.com.hk) le haghaidh tuilleadh sonraÃDearbhófar do fhreagra túisce chun an litir seo a mhór.
An tUasal Patrick Chan
E-mail: mrpatkwchan52@yahoo.com.hk
I suppose it was bound to happen now that Google translates text into Irish. Well done to Gmail for marking it as spam!
Last year I voted no to Lisbon and despite reading about the controlling superstate in “Vulcan’s Hammer”, as a consequence of the fictional Lisbon Laws I’ll be voting yes today.
More than anything else, the “No to Lisbon” campaign has convinced me to vote that way. Thanks.
So, here I am working on my end of year accounts with the help of my wife and I read Gavin’s unbelievable report that the Dail, our national parliament, has lost 29 months worth (over 7 years) of expenses data for Irish politicians! You’d think that after almost 100 years in existence they might have got something as simple as storing expense sheets down to a fine art?
Why is this not so bad? Well the news aspect firstly. The Houses of the Oireachtas have so far been unable to locate expenses data for a combined period of 29 months. Eh? Not alone that, they want to charge me to find this information. Information that really should be in the public domain anyway. But we have to deal with the system we have…
Still feel guilty about losing that petrol receipt now?
The kicker is, it’ll cost €2,440 to pay civil servants to search for this information that should already be in the public domain. Gavin is looking for donations to pay for the FOI request but I think a national paper or media organisation should stump up the cash and help bring politicians down a peg or two when the sh*t hits the fan.
This weekend we stayed in “Aisling Heights”, a B&B in Clonakilty, County Cork while attending my cousins wedding in the area.
It was my first time in a long time staying in a B&B but I think I may be back because it was a great place to stay. After ringing them, we were met in the town and guided back and helped with our bags.
All the rooms in the house were immaculate and exquisitely decorated. As (bad) luck would have it I didn’t photograph the rooms themselves but check out the photos of the hallway and living room below! If you’re tired of staying in yet another shabby, run down hotel, give this B&B a go. Beds are fairly comfortable, rooms are nice and large and light pours in as there is plenty of space around the building. Breakfast is fine, lovely fry up, toast, tea and cereal and it was very competitive at 35 Euro each for the night.
Our 2yro Adam stayed for free although they didn’t have a travel cot so we brought our own.
Anyway, many hotels in this price range (and more expensive!) are in a shabby state of repair and understaffed, so you owe it to yourself to spoil yourself with the picturesque surroundings of this delightful B&B. Call them at +353-23-8833491. (More photos and details are available on this page.)
This message from Cllr. Dan Fleming was stuffed into gates all over my estate this evening. I know they only have so much time on their hands but the letter was rolled up tightly and squashed between the bars on our gate and in the gates of other houses. I’d venture to say that it took as long to roll and fold the letter up as it would to walk to our front door. Oh, and yes, we were in when they “called”. The only other people to stuff literature into our gate are those clothes collectors and they’re possibly more popular than Fianna Fail at this stage.
I’m sure he’s a great guy and he’d have a great chat with you and all that but there’s no sign that he’s a Fianna Fail man. The missing party name strikes again! His website is down but his Fianna Fail page is up however.
I’m still not sure who I’ll vote for but you can hurt Fianna Fail without helping Sinn Fein if you vote carefully.
A couple of days ago my wife and I discussed our next holiday and she was quite taken with the idea of going to a particular hotel. I searched for the hotel and when I discovered that Google showed hotel reviews linked right from the search page I had to write about it.
After I had written the post I realised that someone might ring up the hotel and if they were feeling nasty or malicious they might cancel the holiday. Therefore, I’ll use the Radisson SAS in Limerick, an excellent hotel we stayed in a few months ago thanks to SuperValu Breaks.
So, search for the Radisson on Google.
Clicking on the reviews link takes you here:
I can only echo the good reviews. It’s a 4 star hotel, but book through SuperValu and you’ll get a big discount! (with the appropriate book of stamps of course)
Richard knows more about this sort of thing than I and he blogged about it 2 days ago. Looks like a good change for Irish businesses!
BTW, the break away is booked, the hotel is child friendly, we’re looking forward to it already!
PS. Richard has a post on Google’s local search which is definitely worth a read.
While I was away last week John Handelaar announced his new project, kildarestreet.com. It’s a site dedicated to reporting all the goings on in the Irish Parliament, from the horses mouth so to speak. It makes available to the general public everything that TDs (our members of parliament) say in session. This information is available on the official Government websites but it’s not easy to find.
I live in Blarney, in Cork North Central. I checked the list of TDs and found those that represent me, my family, my neighbours:
Interesting stats on each of their pages, and I really like the “most recent appearances”. I wonder if TDs will watch more closely what they say come the general election to avoid giving ammunition to their competitors or to avoid “putting their foot in it” in front of a suddenly more well informed electorate.
Earlier this month someone walked into the National Gallery in Dublin, Ireland and hung a nude painting of our illustrious leader, Brian Cowen, in the “National Portrait Collection” section of the gallery.
Another painting was hung in a nearby gallery. More details can be found on this Tribune article.
All a bit of fun right? Sure, nobody wants to see a satirical nude photo of themselves hung up in public but the pictures were only on display for a short time. One or two newspapers reported on it and the national broadcaster, RTE, carried the following report on Monday night:
I never saw the original news clip. I was barely aware it had happened until this morning when the blogs and twitter were all alight with talk of the apology RTE broadcast last night. They also removed the news clip and article from their site.
RTE has to apologise and be censored for reporting the news? What sort of country are we living in? If Fianna Fail had let things lie all this would have blown over and be forgotten by now.
Ray D’Arcy speaking on TodayFM (a private national radio station) revealed the painter is Conor Casbey yesterday, but he wasn’t the one who hung the paintings. After the show yesterday a Garda called to the TodayFM offices looking for the email of the artist to caution him. The request was refused. Ray admitted that if the Garda hadn’t called he wouldn’t be talking about the paintings today.
More coverage by Irish bloggers:
Grandad has a different viewpoint. Brave of you 🙂
Control of the media is essential at this time, lest they say something negative about His Holiness. In fact, the Director General of RTE should immediately be reassigned to a menial task in the Ringsend Sewage Station as a lesson to the rest of those who would speak ill of our Great Government.
We must all revere and adore His Godliness for his inspired leadership in this time of crisis. Nothing negative must pass our lips.
The North Koreans have the right idea.
(Great caricature by Alan Cavanagh)
So, next time you see something funny about Gordon Brown or Barack Obama be glad you don’t live in Ireland. Spread the news. Check out #picturegate on Twitter.
PS. Many many more blogs are covering picturegate now but take a look at this thread on Creative Ireland. Great photoshopping going on there! (Alastair)
