Yearly Archives: 2017
Underdogs
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A 2017 calendar by photographer Jason Kenzie and designer Tania Ryan – dogs photographed from below.
MORE: The Underdogs Project
Hot Wheels
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A 1955 Mercedes Benz 300SL Gullwing – once the property of its sole owner, pilot and US Merchant Marine, Sig Noygren – it’s been in dry storage since 1976.
From the Fire Engine Red paint and red plaid upholstery, the car (with just 32,239 miles on the clock) remains in its original state aside from custom enhancements, including a chronometer, altimeter, and thermometer, as well as fog lights, an eight-track player, and a defroster fan.
Yours for around $1,000,000.
AIMS Ireland writes:
If you could change one thing about Irish maternity services, what would it be? Interested to hear from women/pregnant people and HCPs [health care providers]!
Reply on AIMS Ireland (Facebook) or at AIMS Ireland (Twitter)
On Thursday, January 19.
At the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School.
From 4pm to 5.30pm.
The launch of the book Austerity and Recovery in Ireland: Europe’s Poster Child and the Great Recession edited by William K. Roche, Philip J. O’Connell, and Andrea Prothero and published by Oxford University Press.
The book – which will be formally launched by the former Governor of the Central Bank Patrick Honohan – includes a chapter on housing by Rory Hearne, Cian O’Callaghan and Rob Kitchin.
A panel discussion, chaired by dean of the UCD College of Business Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh, will also take place as part of the launch – involving John FitzGerald, of Trinity College Dublin; Stephen Kinsella, of University of Limerick; Theresa Reidy, of University College Cork and Mary Corcoran, of NUI Maynooth.
The free ticketed event is open to all. Those interested can register to attend here
Earlier: Judgements In Favour Of Vulture Funds Will Explode In 2017
Pic: Rob Kitchin
Lighght – Oddball electronic noises from Cork
What you may need to know…
01. Cork musician Éamon Ivri makes sounds under the moniker of Lighght.
02. The project has been in development for about a year, working on it when not sessioning for 12-15-headed funk monster Quangodelic, or running Cork community nightclub Diffract.
03. Streaming above is free-download single What U Need, available now via Lighght’s Soundcloud.
04. The next Diffract night happens on the 28th at the Kino in Cork, headlined by a live appearance by YMLT featurees ooSe.
Thoughts: Off-kilter soundings from the fringes of a booming Leeside electronic scene.
Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris
Louis Le Fronde writes:
As a French-Canadian looking from the outside-in. Might I ask a couple of simple questions?
Why do you not have directly elected mayors in Ireland?
Why is it that Dublin, your capital city does not have a directly elected mayor with executive power, when it is pretty obvious it needs one?
I’m sure, I can predict some of the stock answers readers of Broadsheet are likely to give, including the fear that certain politicians might have, such as your prime minister feeling overshadowed by a strong Mayor in Dublin (it wouldn’t be hard). But such is the nature of politics. It was ever thus.
Nevertheless, I thought I might raise these questions with you directly.
And to those first two questions might I add three more?
Is it not absurd that Ireland does not have a system of directly elected mayors?
Is it not absurd, that Dublin which is marketed as a dynamic European city, does not have a directly elected mayor?
and finally,
What are you going to do about it?
Anyone/FIGHT!
1862 Bray Athletic Grounds/Carlisle Grounds, Bray, Co. Wicklow (top), Bray Wanderers Strategic Plan (above)
Further to the Sunday Business Post story on the future of the Bray Wanderers and the inclusion of a new 4500 seat stadium in their future strategic plan.
Bray Wanderers shareholders will lobby present their plans to Councillors tonight in Bray at a public meeting.
Bray Wanderers who currently lease the Carlisle Grounds from the town council cite that the old grounds are not big enough for their future plans and that there is a need to aquire a site outside of Bray for their new greenfield leisure complex.
Steven Matthews, Green Party said:
If they (Bray Wanderers) want to go, it’s up to them, we haven’t initiated any process to ask them to leave. It’s the remit of the councillors to decide what happens to the land. It’s public land, it belongs to the council and we have no plans to develop it.
Any developer looking at Bray would say: There’s one I’d like to keep an eye on.
*drops fish and chips*
Save The Carlisle Grounds (Facebook Public Group)
Bray Wanderers Owners Push For Carlisle Grounds Land Swap (Sunday Business Post)
Paul Cahill (photo credit: Bray Wanderers Strategic Plan)
He’s back.
With a bat.
Are Ya Having That writes:
‘LeatherJacketGuy’ & ‘JohnnyBS’ Try American Baseball For The First Time. They also Taste Test some USA Sports Snacks!
Members of the anti-eviction group Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) in Spain; Niamh McDonald, of the Irish Housing Network, and Dr Padraic Kenna of NUI Galway
Last night.
RTÉ One broadcast a documentary by Sunday Business Post editor Ian Kehoe, called The Great Irish Sell Off.
It examined how vulture funds have bought close to €200 billion in distressed Irish debt – while paying minuscule amounts of tax on the profits – and looked at the on-going consequences of these purchases, given that vulture funds have bought almost 90,000 mortgages in Ireland.
For the documentary, Mr Kehoe travelled to both the US and Spain to see how the same vulture funds operate there.
In Barcelona, Spain – which has seen Blackstone buy 40,000 mortgages from a bailed-out bank while vulture funds Goldman Sachs, Cerberus and Oaktree manage around 150,000 mortgages – Mr Kehoe met with members of the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH).
PAH is a grassroots organisation that is campaigning for housing rights and attempting to prevent evictions by occupying homes that are in the process of being repossessed.
Mr Kehoe reported that PAH has prevented thousands of evictions.
As he sat in on one meeting, Mr Kehoe realised 14 Irish people were there, including Niamh McDonald, of the Irish Housing Network, who has also been involved in the recent Home Sweet Home campaign, and Dr Padraic Kenna, a lecturer in property and housing law at NUI Galway.
Ms McDonald told Mr Kehoe:
“In Ireland, people seem to be embarrassed to turn around and say that they can’t afford to pay their mortgage or they can’t afford to pay heir rent and I think that helps the banks in many ways. But if we had a movement that would kind of encourage people not to feel ashamed, then I think people will start to fight back.”
Dr Kenna said:
“People, in fact, are leading the politicians with the solutions here [in Spain]. For instance, they have a law where a family or the administration can buy a property at the same price as a vulture fund. Now that’s something that we could seriously consider.”
Meanwhile…
Following the documentary, RTE’s Claire Byrne Live held a discussion about the programme with panelists Fine Gael TD and Minister of State for Financial Services, eGovernment and Public Procurement Eoghan Murphy, Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty and Ross Maguire, a senior counsel and chairman of New Beginning.
Members of the audience also contributed, including James Treacy, the chief executive of Stubbs Gazette.
Mr Treacy, above, said:
“I was very surprised that, in 2016, there were actually only 4 registered judgements awarded in favour of the vulture funds. Now, at Stubbs Gazette, we believe that that figure is going to explode in the next 12 months and there’s a number of reasons for that.”
“The first reason would be that I think that there’s currently about 250 cases currently with the courts that have not been adjudicated on so a significant proportion of those will end up with judgements and secondly, and more importantly, is that the Central Bank have brought out figures that show that 38% of all of the mortgages that are owned by the regulated bodies are over 720 days are in arrears.”
“Now, depending on who you believe, or what you read, there are between 45,000 and 90,000 mortgages that are currently owned by the [vulture] funds. So, whichever way you look at it, there are tens of thousands of these mortgages in serious arrears.”
Watch The Great Irish Sell Off here
Watch Claire Byrne Live here
Previously: Selling Ireland By The Pound