Yearly Archives: 2014

tycdinners flyer-01 (1)

A restaurant for TWO?

At a secret location?

Are you completely insane?

Ahmad Fakhry writes:

“I am from designgoat, a design studio in Dublin 8, and we are taking part in OFFSET’s Transform Your City project. For this we have made a very small pop up restaurant in a secret location and have hired five amazing chefs from Ireland to put up a unique dining experience. There is only two seats in our restaurant and we are giving the dinners away for free. 

Across five nights we will seat two people a night in a small box, right next to the chef, breaking down the barrier to the kitchen and allowing a flow of conversation, education and banter between the chef and diners.

We are asking people to go to College Green, Dublin, take a picture of the miniature restaurant we have placed at the feet of the Henry Grattan statue in front of Trinity College, and tweet the picture with the hashtag #TYCDINNERS, to enter the draw. We will select a winner the day before each dinner.”

But won’t the chef ruin the romanNOMNOMNOMNOM

silicon-valley-poster

What you may need to know:

1. Mike Judge made a new TV show for HBO.

2. Mike Judge gave us Beavis And Butthead, King Of The Hill, Office Space (1999) and Idiocracy, so this is a kind of a big deal.

3. HBO are only rocking it these days. They’ve got new seasons of Game Of Thrones and Veep next month, too. And we’re presuming you saw True Detective.

4. The advance word is only massive.

5. Broadsheet Prognosis: The Social Network (2010) meets Office Space

Broadcast Date: April (US)

abandoned2 abandoned1 abandoned4 abandoned3
The surreal sight of an abandoned open air cinema in Egypt’s Sinai Desert.

According to photographer Kaupo Kikkas (helluva name), the story goes that, 13 years ago, a  Parisian film buff in Egypt had a glorious dream.

Raising the necessary capital back in France, he travelled to Cairo where he bought projection equipment, a generator and a tractor to erect the sail-like screen.

On opening night however, the generator was allegedly sabotaged by miffed local authorities. The premiere was cancelled and, to this day, the cinema hasn’t shown a single film.

It must happen. And when it does, let it be Dune.

mymodernmet

Bradyy

[Former member of GSOC and former Irish Times editor Conor Brady]

Further to reports that the Garda Inspectorate has recommended that the power to cancel penalty points be removed from divisional garda officers and instead be transferred to the Fixed Charge Processing Office in Thurles, Co Tipperary, former Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission member Conor Brady spoke to Keelin Shanley on the RTÉ Radio One Today with Seán O’Rourke show this morning.

Mr Brady said GSOC investigated the processing office in 2007, found it to be ‘utterly dysfunctional’ and yet the results of that investigation were completely ignored.

Conor Brady: “In 2007/2008, the Garda Ombudsman Commission actually conducted a full investigation of the Fixed Penalty Points system, in other words the office in Thurles [Co. Tipperay] to which all problems are now going to be referred. The GSOC report on the fixed penalty point system found it to be utterly dysfunctional, utterly ineffective, only a small proportion of cases were actually brought through to conclusion and in some category of offences, fewer than 17% were actually brought through to conclusion.”

Keelin Shanley: “That’s what GSOC found and this is the body we are now charging with…

Brady: “We found that in 2007. What I would say now is that the minister laid that report as he is obliged to do before the House of the Oireachtas, not a single politician of any persuasion or party referred to it once. Now it may well be that some reforming spirit has spread through the central processing office in Thurles since then, I genuinely don’t know but if it hasn’t then they have a major job ahead of them because this is a system which is not fit for purpose..”

Shanley: “Well, was not fit for purpose, as you say, we don’t know what has been done.”

Brady: “Well, was not fit for purpose.”

Garda chiefs’ powers to terminate penalty points to go (Irish Times)

Kerryman
[Today’s Kerryman, not online]

Councillor Danny Healy Rae this week defended payments of close to €300,000 by Kerry County Council to his family’s plant hire company, saying contractors are not stealing the money but working very hard for it. Healy Rae plant Hire Ltd, of which Cllrs Danny Healy Rae and Johnny Healy Rae are directors, topped the list of Kerry County Council payments to plant hire and haulage contractors in 2013, with payments totalling €294, 192. The Kilgarvan plant hire company has consistently been among the top earners from council contracts and has been paid almost €1.9m by the local authority since 2008.

Jaykers.

Hillgrove

[Hillgrove Hotel in Co. Monaghan]

You may recall in how an internal probe was launched in October 2010 after Sgt Maurice McCabe claimed Assistant Commissioner Derek Byrne assaulted and falsely imprisoned Sgt McCabe in the Hillgrove Hotel in Co. Monaghan on October 11, 2010.

Sgt McCabe alleged this happened after he revealed he had removed hundreds of files from Pulse which showed gardaí had falsely claimed that certain people were involved in criminality.

Sgt McCabe claimed Assistant Commissioner Byrne would not let Sgt McCabe leave the hotel with the files. Assistant Commissioner Byrne took the files from Sgt McCabe.

Further to this, Edmund Heaphy, of the University Times Magazine, reports claims from Garda whistleblower John Wilson that the seized files led to records being altered retrospectively.

John Wilson, another prominent Garda whistleblower, known for last year’s penalty points scandal, gave some brief additional details regarding the event, although he insisted that as he was not at the meeting, it was second-hand knowledge.

…

Wilson used an example of falsification in relation to an illegal lock-in in a pub, and the expunging of records to remove evidence of such an event, to explain the type of falsification in the Pulse system that McCabe had evidence of. Regarding the specific evidence that McCabe had, he said:

“Hundreds of records were allegedly falsified. The material that Byrne seized was sent back to the various Garda districts and then after that they were allegedly all altered.”

Digging in Hillgrove (University Times Magazine)

Penalty points to be overhauled after damning report (Irish Independent)

Previously: The Thin Blue Timeline

Thanks James Bennett