Author Archives: Admin

Animals at Tayto Park zoo during last weekend

‘sup?

‘Love Your Zoo Week’ returns to Tayto Park, Ireland’s only theme park and zoo this Saturday, May 25 – June 2.

The week is an annual campaign established by BIAZA (Britain and Ireland’s association of zoos and aquariums) to educate the public on zoos, aquariums and wildlife centres.

Ian Collins writes:

Take some time with the family to monkey around with a selection of primate-themed events…

Families can meet the latest troop of lemurs in the newly opened lemur walk-through enclosure…

Visit the critically endangered macaques, the parks trio of tamarins and the boisterous squirrel monkeys…

Finally, make sure to check out the park’s smallest monkey, the Silvery marmoset, weighing in at a tiny 350 grams….

Plus, bush dogs, , Amur Tigers and Leopards!

We have a pair (yes, two) tickets to allow free admittance to Tayto Park to celebrate Zoo Week to the most deservign Broadsheet reader.

To enter, please complete this sentence:

‘I need to spend some quality time with animals, particularly the ______________[name of animal] owing to_________________’

Lines MUST close at 6.15pm MIDNIGHT!

Tayto Park

Pics: Patrick Bolger

Elon Musk’s proposed Starlink laser-linked high-speed internet satellite project showing the shortest path in the network between New York and London.

Ross writes:

How is it costing 3bn to get broadband throughout Ireland when Elon Musk can give the entire planet high speed internet for an estimated 10bn?

Anyone?

Elon Musk just revealed new details about Starlink. Here’s how it might work (BusinessInsider)

From top: Election canvassing in Dublin; Ciaran Tierney

Here he comes in his shiny new suit, primed for action and full of the joys of life. He wants your vote and he’s ready and willing to engage with you on your doorstep. As long as you don’t delay him for too long!

Funnily enough, you haven’t seen much of him for the last five years or so.

There’s football on the telly or you are engrossed in your favourite soap opera and you wonder if you should bother answering the door.

But you should!

Because this is the one time of the year when your local politicians will truly listen to what you have to say.

They are desperate for your votes and some of them are running scared. It’s your chance to tell them what you think.

Such as your disgust that the beautiful green space next to a historic castle, where you like to take an evening stroll, is about to be turned into a four lane urban motorway.

You haven’t spoken to him in five years and maybe it’s time to ask him why he and his colleagues have no imagination when it comes to transport in your city. The medieval streets are clogged and they can never imagine life beyond the car.

Maybe it’s time to tell him how healthy you feel because you abandoned the car and now you cycle to work or school.

But also how unsafe you feel in the mornings because you are so vulnerable on the road.

It’s time to ask why the roads are so eerily quiet during the school holidays and why so many people are so reliant on their cars.

Why, in the past five years, have he and his colleagues done so little to provide your neighbours and friends with viable alternatives to their cars?

And why are we building motorways when the very future of your planet depends on less reliance on our cars?

You could tell him that you wrote articles about wonderful plans for a state-of-the-art tram system a decade ago, only for them to be discounted by the “powers that be” at the time.

You could ask him about the scandalous rent prices and how some of the people you work with are spending more than half their wages just to keep someone else’s roof over their heads.

You can ask why local authority meetings can end in furious arguments over issues as trivial or irrelevant as whether or not they should have a monthly prayer and why his party doesn’t feel ashamed that there are now so many homeless children in this city.

You could ask him why a national emergency wasn’t declared when the number of homeless people in this country passed the 10,000 mark for the first time.

And you could ask him if he felt even a tiny bit of embarrassment when the man in charge of housing people in this city “slept out” for charity last Christmas. All for a glorious photo opportunity, admittedly for a worthy charity, alongside the auctioneer who thrives on pushing up the prices and the businessman who put half of his staff out of work last year.

He might tell you that health care has nothing to do with the local authority, but you might tell him how I felt when I saw my 93-year old father spend 48 hours on a trolley in the Emergency Department of our local public hospital last summer.

About the despair I witnessed all around me and the fear in the voices of people who felt they would be punished or further delayed if they dared to complain.

Only for you to see a smug, happy, smiling Minister for Health post a photo of his dog on social media the following week, seemingly without a care in the world.

You might tell him how hollow the great national “recovery” seemed as you sat there, hour after hour, watching the stressed out hospital staff struggle to cope with the sheer number of bodies in that overcrowded corridor.

You might ask why so many people you know are frightened, clinging on to private health care they can’t afford in the full knowledge that they are only one pay cheque away from being left without a home.

You might ask why so many of your friends and neighbours are struggling, when it still seems that a tiny elite of select individuals can make a “killing” from lucrative Government contracts which are beyond the reach of 99% of us.

You could ask why those who are scraping a living in insecure jobs are forced to pay the deeply unpopular Universal Social Charge, or why the council doesn’t seem to build any houses while so many people are relying on emergency accommodation.

If it wasn’t for those charities, or the kindness of friends, how many people would be forced to sleep out in this city every night?

. . . Or you could leave the telly on and not bother to answer the door!

Ask Them! (Ciaran Tierney)

 

From top: Dublin Airport; Protesters against the new North runway at Dublin Airport over noise issues last February

This evening.

The Aircraft Noise (Dublin Airport) Regulation Bill – sponsored by Independents4Change TD Clare Daly – to deal with noise levels at Dublin Airport returns – following amendments in the Seanad – for debate in the Dáil.

Astrid Madsen writes:

Beyond hearing loss, noise is a pollutant that is linked to cardiovascular disease, sleep and cognitive impairments. And we don’t know how many people are at risk; the figure for Dublin alone is at least 20,000.

Noise is a stress inducer that triggers a fight-or-flight response in the body and if you live beside aircraft, road or rail, your body will process the harmful effects of noise even if you’re not conscious of it. The health risk is especially well documented during the sleep stages.

Says Owen Douglas, a professor who researches noise at UCD:

“The evidence suggests that children are among the most susceptible, leading to problems with reading, attention span, problem solving and memory. There is a clear physiological response. The safe decibel levels presented in the WHO report are beyond a reasonable doubt accurate.”

People living near airports should only be subject to a level of noise akin to a library environment (45dB) while those near roads can bear a bit more, the equivalent to the amount of noise your fridge might make (53dB).

That’s according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region published late last year.

This low threshold may sound surprising but there is a big difference between someone living near a source of noise and someone walking past. The difference is repeated exposure to mechanical sounds, aircraft being the worst.

The WHO considers noise “a disease burden that is second in magnitude only to that from air pollution” and is appraising the health impact of a wide range of noise emitters, from wind turbines to seemingly innocuous sources such as mobile devices.

The representative health body for over 190 countries estimates 50% of the EU population lives in areas where noise is considered to have adverse health impacts; in Ireland, Fingal County Council’s figure for the Greater Dublin Area (GDA) is at 1% because the data is incomplete.

The local authority, as part of its final Noise Action Plan, provided a list of how many people (20,300) in the GDA were affected by average noise levels at or above 55dB, based on 2016 data compiled by a UK acoustics consultancy paid for by the Dublin Airport Authority.The 2016 Census figure for the GDA is 1.9 million people.

The difference between Fingal’s figures showing how many people are affected by noise levels of 55dB or more, and the WHO strong recommendation of using 45dB as the cut-off is equivalent to a doubling of noise levels.

The decibel scale is logarithmic and on average, according to the US’s Federation Aviation Administration, a person perceives a change in sound level of +10 dB as a doubling of loudness.

Owen Douglas cautions that average values may not reflect the true extent of exposure with evidence suggesting that maximum values, such as an aircraft revving up at 6am, might be a better way of measuring sleep disturbance and resulting negative health outcomes.

However he also flags that the current noise methodology might be exaggerating how many people are affected by noise, which is partly why the research community is moving to a more accurate data collection system known as CNOSSOS.

Official response

The health impact of noise is well documented, which is why the public consultation document for Fingal County Council’s Noise Action Plan (NAP) published in September stated it would:

“consider the implications of any relevant [WHO] publication in terms of policy provision”.

The WHO guidelines were published in October and Fingal’s final NAP, published in December, discarded the recommendations on the basis that “National and/or EU led policy guidance is required”.

When Clare Daly managed to introduce the WHO guidelines into legislation that is currently going through the Dáil to appoint a noise regulator as required under EU legislation, the Aircraft Noise Dublin Airport Regulation Bill 2018, Minister for Transport Ross said:

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