The Dundalk Blog

DERMOT AHERN DUNDALK IRELAND – Not much on there now but apparently this blog “named and shamed” drug dealers and criminals in Dundalk and surrounding areas.
They’ve taken down all the interesting slanderous bits, but it was fairly irresponsible to put it online in the first place anyway!
You might be able to find some of the content on the Irish Republican News forum.

gometric.ie :: Countdown to Metric speed limits

gometric.ie is the Irish Government’s site to inform the public that speed signs will be going metric on January 20th! It’s accompanied by a mailing campaign and advertising on radio and television so hopefully the message will get through to everyone!
“Ugh! Yeah officer, I saw the sign. It says 50mph in this area.”

From 20th January it’s kilometres for speed as well as distance.

Oooer, that NCT feeling!

I brought my car down to the Blarney NCT center this morning and checked in and joined a lot of other worried looking guys in the waiting room. The tension in the room was palpable as soon as I entered, and when vehicles were driven into the test garage half the room stood up and stared intensely through the windows. I read about discovering new earths in National Geographic.. when else am I going to get half an hour to do nothing but read? The disquiet and oppressive atmosphere was lightened considerably by a 3 year old girl and her parents – the parents were worried, but their daughter was oblivious reading her animal book and chatting to her mom!
Finally, just before 9am a man appeared at the waiting room door, said my name and I followed him out. With a smile he handed me my shiny new NCT certificate. Yay! No need to worry about that again until 2007!

Cheap Calls in Ireland, continued

This boards.ie thread on UTV Talk is englightening. I should have read the terms and conditions when I signed up, because according to section 4.10 I can’t use other telecoms providers like Vartec or Telestunt for mobile and international calls.
Funny thing is, I used both services after my UTV Talk account went active and my call was connected each time. I’ll wait for my Vartec bill to come before I can say for certain what happened. Meanwhile, a phone call to ComReg might pay off.

4.10 The Customer accepts and acknowledges that (i) the Access Provider shall bar access to all carrier selection and carrier access codes on telephone lines that have SB-WLR applied and (ii) override codes are not available for use by the Customer in conjunction with the Service (i.e. a Customer cannot access another operator’s network in making calls through use of a prefix). The Customer accepts that UTV shall have no liability for any losses or damages howsoever arising from non provision of the Service in the event that such restrictions are not accepted by the Customer.

Note – I received an Eircom bill a few days ago and UTV sent me an email saying they had some problems with lines. Scroll to the bottom of the thread above for recent comments on same!

Major Storm Heading Our Way!

Scary notice up on the MET EIREANN website! *gulp* I’m now glad that Blarney is inland!

Severe Weather Warning
A MAJOR STORM WILL AFFECT ALL PARTS OF IRELAND DURING WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY. SOME STRUCTURAL DAMAGE AND FLOODING CAN BE EXPECTED. Winds, initially mainly between Northeast and Southeast in direction, will reach mean speeds of 45 to 55 miles per hour, with gusts of 70 to 80 miles per hour. Winds will may veer southerly on the South coast later. Structural damage such as fallen trees, etc. can be expected. Rainfall totals in excess of 50mm over a wide area will lead to some severe flooding, due to the already saturated ground. Some parts of Munster and south Leinster could see totals of up to 80 mm of rain. High Seas and high tides, will lead to coastal flooding, particularly in the South and East of the country.

Here’s a global wave height map of the Atlantic. Looks like Wexford’s going to be pounded! (Warning – trying to access that image crashed my copy of Moz FF, but wget worked fine.)

Beautiful Ireland!

So much for the race against waste! It looks like more people are cottoning on to Bring Centres where you can recycle paper, cardboard, plastic and glass (but for 10 points, who knows where it goes once you dump it? And no, it’s not dublinwaste.ie!)
Pity they can’t even dump their rubbish properly. Where’s that survey says that Ireland is way down the list of clean countries? Go Irish People! Woo! We’re slobs!

UTV – Cheap Call Challenger

UTV very recently started an ad campaign to publicize their unbeatable local and national call tariffsFREE!
Unfortunately, their mobile tariffs don’t compare well to Tele2 or Vartec who I looked at earlier. The same goes for international calls (outside of the UK which is free evenings and weekends too) which are only 10% less than Eircom’s.
So, who provides the cheapest calls in Ireland? It depends. A mixture of providers will benefit users if that’s possible.

The cheapest phone call in Ireland – Tele2 Vs Vartec

Several months ago I looked at who provides the cheapest calls in Ireland. At the time Vartec and Eircom were the cheapest – Vartec for mobile calls and Eircom for evening local and all weekend calls.
Now TELE2 are here and their tarriffs look great! They beat Vartec on evening and weekend calls and are only more expensive on daytime calls (when I’m not at home!)
Their international tariffs aren’t as good as Vartec’s however.
The minimum call charge of 6.35¢ compares favourably against 15¢ charged by Vartec however.
I had to ring Tele2 to get their mobile tariffs so here they are for ever more..

Network Day Evening Weekend
087 22.99¢ 18.99¢ 10.99¢
086 22.99¢ 16.99¢ 13.99¢
085 22.99¢ 18.99¢ 14.99¢

* Cost per second.