Yearly Archives: 2014

clampers

[Cars clamped on the Mespil Road last summer]

The Irish Times has seen documents showing that clamping company Dublin Street Parking Services have been given a clamping target of 60,000 vehicles a year by Dublin City Council with the council threatening to pay the company less if this target is not met.

In order for the DSPS to reach that target it is offering to pay its 50 staff members a bonus of €2,000 each – should the target be met.

Also, the Irish Times reports that clampers can leave a 10-hour shift after 8.5 hours if they’ve clamped 21 cars.

It reported:

In a letter to staff last year, sent prior to the appointment of the facilitator, the company said the council was not happy with the number of clampings in 2012. “We were expected to deliver approximately 60,000 clamps in 2012. We delivered approximately 54,000. If we continue to deliver 10 per cent less than the service that is expected, the council wants to pay less for the service.”

Dublin City Council set 60,000 target for clampers (Irish Times)

Meanwhile, alternatively:

A man takes matters into his own hands and removes a clamp from his van at an unknown location in Dublin, before driving off.

http://instagram.com/p/lNfzD9ESyO/#

[Click on picture to play video]

Via Brian Walsh

Thanks Clampers Outside

fighterpilot1
A Danish airforce F-16 pilot launches an AIM-L9/M missile on a training exercise.

Dave Cencotti of The Aviationist adds:

Self-portrait photographs (nowadays known as “selfies“) have always been a must among fighter jocks and you can find thousands taken by military pilots in the most unusal flight conditions. However, selfies taken while launching missiles are much more rare just because firing activities involving the launch of an air-to-air missile don’t take place too often.

Here’s a video of the incident.

mymodernmet/petapixel

champions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuSfb4XFg6o

Indeed and he can

Greg writes:

Just thought I’d  let you know that [multi-instrumentalist] Paul Quinn has just thrown up a new YouTube video and it’s amaze-balls. Literally. It’s the Champions League Anthem [based on Handel’s Zadok the Priest] acoustic cover and it’s just lovely.

Paul Quinn Music (Facebook)

90331865[

[Angerla Kerins, Rehab CEO and John Maguire, the charity’s head of fundraising leaving last week’s Public Accounts Committe]

Rehab chief executive Angela Kerins did not disclose her husband’s large shareholding in a company when she told the Public Accounts Committee that its dealings with Rehab prompted him to resign his directorship of the company….

Ms Kerins’s brother Joseph McCarthy is also director and one-third shareholder of Complete Eco Solutions and Ms Kerins’s predecessor and senior Fine Gael strategist Frank Flannery is a director and one-third shareholder

Kerins Did Not Disclose Husband’s Shares To PAC (Irish Times)

Meanwile.

Last week

KerinsLou

At the Public Accounts Committee hearing on Payments to Rehab..

Mary Lou McDonald: “Are you uncomfortable with the notion of family members, people close to you, having a commercial relationship with Rehab – given your position, does that put you….?”

Kerins: “I, in relation to this, I would always be uncomfortable…but people and families and people help out, and try to help out the Rehab Group across all of our staff and all of the families.”

McDonald: “I’m referring specifically to a commercial and transactional relationship, not a voluntary effort.”

Kerins: “Yes, to a degree and despite what one might hear, to the degree that I absented myself from any of this decision making and our audit committee and our board had to take oversight of that. It was a short-term activity so…”

McDonald: “How long did it go on for?”

Kerins: “Deputy McDonald, I don’t have any details of that activity with me so we’ll come back to you on it.”

McDonald: “Yeah. And tell me was there any, were any other family members of yours involved in this enterprise, or any other commerical venture?”

Kerins: “My husband was a director of it. But once this activity started, he stood down.”

McDonald: “Ok. And you have no further detail than that?”

Kerins: “No, and there has been no further dealings other than that one.”

McDonald: “So when did it cease? The pilot.”

Kerins: “Again, like I said, we’ll come back to you but it was probably about 2009/2010 but let me come back to you on that, I don’t have…”

McDonald: “But they only became operational in 2009, so, and by the way, are still operational to this day.”

Previously: That’d Be The brother

 (Laura Hutton/Photocall ireland)