Leo Varadkar says there have been no discussions with Michael Lowry “yet” pic.twitter.com/OmbNBYFN7n
— Mícheál Lehane (@MichealLehane) June 8, 2017
Hmmm.
More ‘disappointments than appointments’ over cabinet selection – Varadkar (RTE)
Previously: Phil In The Gaps
Top pic: Rollingnews
The Cronins – A Day In The Life
A cover version of the Beatles track as tribute to Sgt. Pepper’s 50th anniversary.
Mick Cronin muses –
I know you shouldn’t go there and try and cover this but we did.
We are Beatles freaks so decided to spend a few hours last Thursday 31st May to record and film this with the intention of putting it out on the 50th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper on June 1st.
Yesterday: It Was Five Days Ago Today
A selection of frozen ‘treats’ concocted by art students Hung I-chen, Guo Yi-hui, and Cheng Yu-ti of the National Taiwan University of the Arts.
Using samples collected from 100 locations in Taiwan, frozen, then preserved in polyester resin, the project was designed to highlight high levels of water pollution in the country.
All quiet outside Poolbeg Incinerator after incident which saw 11 people hospitalised pic.twitter.com/FuFDgvpWSj
— Sean Defoe (@SeanDefoe) June 8, 2017
Sarah Burns, in The Irish Times, reports:
Eleven people were taken to hospital after a small amount of lime was accidentally released inside the flue gas treatment area at the Poolbeg Incinerator in Dublin on Wednesday night.
“Late on Wednesday night a small amount of lime was inadvertently released inside the flue gas treatment area during the commissioning and testing of the Dublin Waste to Energy plant at Ringsend,” said a spokesman for Dublin Waste to Energy Ltd.
“At the time there were a number of workers in an adjacent area. As a precaution, eleven workers were sent to St Vincent’s Hospital nearby for medical evaluation. Two were detained overnight.”
Eleven hospitalised after ‘uncontrolled release’ at Poolbeg (The Irish Times)
Lambert Puppet Theatre tweetz:
Want to invade heads with a song for the day? Spread this: “Here comes the wagon……”
The panel on last night’s Tonight with Vincent Browne
Last night.
On TV3’s Tonight with Vincent Browne, presented by Newstalk’s Sarah McInerney.
The panel included Fine Gael TD Colm Brophy, Labour TD Jan O’Sullivan, postdoctoral researcher at Maynooth University Dr Rory Hearne and Irish Independent columnist Colette Browne.
At the beginning of the show, Dr Hearne repeated his claim that the State is over reliant on the private sector to provide social and affordable housing.
It followed an interview Dr Hearne did on RTÉ’s Today with Sean O’Rourke yesterday morning and an opinion article he wrote for yesterday’s The Irish Times, headlined Why Government response to housing crisis has failed.
Last night, Dr Hearne said:
“Last year, Rebuilding Ireland set out to build 2,000 new social housing units by local authorities, only 650 were built. We had 1,000 rapid units promised to be delivered for the families in hotels who are homeless. Only 150 are going to be built by the end of this year.”
“…They [The Government] are not willing, I think, to stand up to the property interests, the developer interests, the financial interests, the vulture funds. They don’t want the Government to provide a much greater amount of supply of affordable and social housing.
“I think, they’ve been bought over by this idea, they’ve been captured by this idea that you have to encourage the private sector to build. The private sector isn’t building…
“The private market has shown it doesn’t work. The State has to provide housing but the Government seems to be ideologically captured by this, they don’t believe in social housing, they don’t want affordable housing, they seem to just want to follow that private market model. And I think that’s the reason why we’re in this crisis.
Following this…
Colm Brophy: “Well listen, I mean, a lot of what Rory said there was just either palpably ignorant of what the Government is actually doing, it’s either ideologically derived and I don’t say that with any pleasure but it really…”
Colette Browne: “What facts, what facts that Rory mentioned do you disagree with?”
Brophy: “Sorry, can I just, listen, there’s one of me here now so I’ll, I’ll just, there is no question, it is completely wrong to say that the Government doesn’t want to provide social housing, that the Government doesn’t want to provide housing, that the Government is somehow involved, and I heard you earlier on, in a couple of media interviews where you nearly have this hard-left, conspiratorial view that, somehow or other, there is some divine right that everything should be done by the public sector and if you advocate any other way or approach to it, that you’re involved in some type of conspiracy with venture funds and banks and everything else like that.”
Hearne: “I never said that.”
Talk over each other
Brophy: “No, the fact, no but I’m saying you seem to be coming from this type of view, that the only solution is the one you look at and advocate. Now let’s look actually at what is happening and what is being done. This Government came in, Simon Coveney took on a ministry for housing, it was especially created to recognise the importance of the problem which was there. There’s a commitment for €5.3billion to be made available by this Government to provide social housing. Now that’s between now and 2021.”
“The thing people always want to overlook and they think, I just, I don’t know why people don’t get this: you can’t wave a magic wand and make houses appear…”
Sarah McInerney: “No, ok, ok but hold on, hold on, hold Colm, you’ve made a number of charges against Rory there, ideological charges there, etc. But let’s just stick with the figures for a second. Because Rory made a number of different points but one of the things he talked about was figures and that’s not factually incorrect or not factually incorrect, it’s just the figures as we know them and one of those figures is that there were 650 new social housing builds in 2016, instead of the 2,200 that were planned.”
Brophy: “But, again, it’s all…”
McInerney: “Now the Government told us they were going to happen, they didn’t happen. They told us they could wave that wand, that we would get those houses…”
Brophy: “No they didn’t…”
McInerney: “Well, we were told that they were getting 2,200 and we got 660, so what happened there?”
Brophy: “What the Government has said very clearly is that there’s a mixture, which certain people don’t like, I mean I was on the original Dail housing committee, so I’m familiar, I’ve heard all the hard-left arguments before of…”
McInerney: “Ok, forget ideology for a second…”
Brophy: “No, no…”
McInerney: “Because I’m just asking you about the facts. I’m asking you about the target that you set yourselves that you failed to reach. Why did you not reach it, is what I’m asking.”
Brophy: “If you actually look at it, and by the way, just to clarify another point, the money problem is not there, the [inaudible] is the supply problem…”
Watch back in full here
Previously: Whose Interests Are Dictating Our Housing Policy
‘They’re Loud And They’re Growing’
Meanwhile…
Free next Saturday, June 17?
‘sup?
This morning.
Duke Street, Dublin 2
Conor Mulvagh writes:
Found a seagull very keen to go to the Duke Street Gallery…
From top: US president Donald Trump; Dan Boyle
Last Friday, I joined the liberal loser chorus queuing up to pour disdain upon Donald Trump. His well signposted announcement that he intended to withdraw the United States from the Paris Accord on Climate Change, was the hammer on the knee most of us had been looking for.
My contribution was to tweet the headline of the Berliner Courier newspaper. It read Erde an Trump: Fuck you! Beautiful language German.
He hadn’t surprised. His tiny world view exposed, whether to anger or ridicule, hasn’t been tempered in any way. He is what it says on the tin, albeit a vacuously empty tin.
Like a child with his hands over his ears, making compensatory noise to drown out being told what he doesn’t want to hear, Trump will say and do what he wants.
He cares little about consequence. Despite his obsession to build a particular wall, his political goals are to tear down walls. Those walls of hope, fairness, and justice, those unacceptable impediments in Trump World. His instinct is to demolish them to have them replaced with his garish casino type alternatives.
His disdain, his disgust, for the environment was immediately re-inforced with his decision to appoint, Scott Pruitt, as Director of the US Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt, a serial litigant against the previous administration’s attempts to enforce basic environmental standards, is the ultimate in fox in the henhouse appointments.
Pruitt sat smugly on his hands as the budget for environmental protection in the United States was reduced many, many times beyond decimation. The web sites of environmental agencies were denuded of content.
The demands have gone further. Not only was the publication of data on climate change being actively discouraged, the seeking of data itself was being defined as verboten. This being the ultimate Orwellian affectation.
This type of behaviour, this abhorrent barbaric behaviour, has been designed to bring froth to the mouths (and not just from our lattes) of we self styled guardians of the Earth.
At least that would be one impression. Some venting is necessary. Environmental campaigners won’t lack for anything to complain about while Trump is in office.
But maybe, just maybe, environmentalists should learn to embrace Trump in all his awfulness.
Campaigns highlighting the need for greater public awareness, could be organised on The Donald’s whims. Instead of hiring researchers and public relations people, environmental NGOs would merely need to mirror whatever The Donald tweets, knowing that the opposite will always be the apposite.
Trump is the Anti Christ that every movement needs to define what it is and what it needs to do. We should wink knowingly as we roll our eyes, that someone with such an appalling lack of awareness is there to be, the polar opposite of where we on this planet need to be.
He is the inverted talisman of our time. He is our villain. He is the master of the Ignorverse. He is Our Donald.
Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD and Senator. His column appears here every Thursdyay. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle
