Splutter!
Rob writes:
UKIP launched their manifesto for the UK General Election yesterday. A friend of mine has the misfortune of having to read it for his nub and has been sending me the “best” parts. It’s as mad as you’d hope. As well as saying burquas should be banned because they deprive the wearer of vitamin D they are also looking to Bono for policy advice…
Anthony Flynn, of Inner City Helping Homeless, and new figures from the Department of Housing
Last night.
Just before the Fine Gael leadership debate in the Red Cow Inn, Dublin.
During which contender and Minister for Housing Simon Coveney said the party needs to represent both “the man in a sleeping bag on Grafton Street tonight as well as the man creating 1,000 jobs”.
The latest homelessness report, for the week April 24-April 30, 2017 from the Department of Housing was released, showing that the number of people who are homeless has reached a new record high of 7,680 – 4972 adults and 2,708 children.
The figure surpassed 7,000 for the first time ever in December 2016.
Further to this…
Last night.
Anthony Flynn, of Inner City Helping Homeless, wrote:
The last number of days have been fairly chaotic when it comes to homelessness. Tuesday in particular, we saw the highest ever recorded number of rough sleepers and a drastic situation of no hotel/B&B accommodation for 12 families.
This led to a frenzy of supports required to be put in place and services increased to cope with demand. A number of families were referred to Garda stations as there was nowhere else to go. One such family had to be accommodated within our offices until supports could be put in place Wednesday morning. Some of those that were affected slept in tents others in cars.
How did we come to this situation?
A lack of short to medium-term planning is the best answer I can give. A complete lack of inter-agency communication and a lack of will from the powers-that-be. The eye has been taken off the ball in regard to homelessness and the long-term planning aspect has left short-term problems. Homelessness has become a crisis right across the State but hasn’t been treated as such. Our volunteers deal with thousands of individuals weekly, many of whom have become lost in a system of ‘no hope’.
I have spent the last four years in a voluntary position within Inner City Helping Homeless; I have met an abundance of people, from homeless to colleagues. I have made some great friends and am privileged to lead an organisation that shows empathy, compassion and is made up of decent human beings.
This week however, I can say that it has been the worst week I have seen within the homeless sector. Up to 30 children refused accommodation, whilst those who are charged with solving our homeless crisis enjoy their evening off.
Families sent from pillar to post in order to be left with no hope, no accommodation and no home. Homeless has become an epidemic, a plague that has spread so wide across our city and state.
Homelessness has become a business, a sector, it cost in excess of €100million a year to operate. To some that means profit, which in turn means that homelessness will remain.
This however should not take away from our responsibilities, people are suffering.
Children are being now left on the streets, a prediction that Father Peter McVerry made only a year ago. Homelessness has become socially acceptable. It has become tolerable to pass somebody by in a doorway, it has become bearable to leave families stuck in hotels, and now, this week, it has become justifiable to leave children without a bed.
An impressive graphics showcase at this year’s Google I/O Developer Festival at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California. To wit:
Fluid Structure is an immersive interactive installation which explores how an ephemeral and amorphous shape reacts under various stimuli, internal and external. Forces and collisions bend the shape until it breaks, recombining it into new aggregates. The result is an ever changing landscape, mysterious yet familiar. A dramatic data-like visualization emphasizes the internal structure of the shape and its motion. Using computer vision the audience is made an integral part of the process, leaving its temporary physical mark, always bound to eventually to disappear. The system is driven by a state of the art fluid solver able to process in real time the forces and constraints the shape is subjected to.
Spotted while awaiting the 2337 Dundalk train at Connolly station last night.
Ken Sweeney tweetz:
I used to get embarrassed carrying a guitar on public transport
Will you stay up?
Broadsheet on the Telly returns tonight at 11.45pm streaming LIVE (above) and on our YouTube channel.
Join a panel of your peers as they tackle the topics of the week or get an early night And watch it back at your LEISURE.
If you are a ‘chatty Cathy’ and would like to be on the telly please send short bio to broadsheet@broadsheet.ie marked ‘Broadsheet on the Telly’.
All political persuasions welcome.
Thank you
Previously: Broadsheet on the Telly on Broadsheet
‘sup?
Ultan writes:
Appreciate you don’t normally do this but I Just found this ID on Sussex Terrace [Upper Leeson Street, Dublin 2]. Maybe your readers will know the guy?
Anyone?
Tonight.
At Arthur’s Blues’n’Jazz Club on Thomas Street, Dublin 8.
Richard Farrell and Richard Ray Farrell (top) will play some blues.
To wit:
Richard is a Dubliner living in Copenhagen while Richard Ray is a Niagara native, with Corkonian roots, who has moved to Spain.
Last June, in a blues bar in Copenhagen, somebody mentioned to Richard that there was another bluesman out there with a virtually identical name. What was initially idle bar chat turned into a mini obsession and soon an email with the subject ‘Long Lost Blues Cousin?’ was winging its way to Richard Ray. It took mere days for a plan to be hatched — a joint tour of Ireland and Denmark.
The Blues Cousins Tour has conquered Copenhagen already, now they’re on their way to West Cork, via Dublin…
Richard and Richard Ray will play Hackett’s Bar in Schull tomorrow night, at 9pm; Levis’ Bar in Ballydehob on Sunday, at 6.30pm; and Crane Lane, Cork, also on Sunday, at 11.30pm.
46 years after the song’s initial release, Elton John sanctions director Max Weiland – one of three winners of a YouTube competition – to make a video for ‘Tiny Dancer’, shot, appropriately on the streets and highways of LA.
The song is one of three such videos that debuted at Cannes this month: Iranian filmmaker and refugee Majid Adin’s animated take on ‘Rocket Man’ and ‘Benny And The Jets’ directed as an origin story by Jack Whiteley and Laura Brownhill
This afternoon.
In the Dáil.
TDs made statements on the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement, received by Fine Gael’s Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Mary Mitchell O’Connor.
It followed the acquittal of former chairman of Anglo Irish Bank Sean Fitzpatrick earlier this week, after lead investigator from the ODCE shredded documents which were relevant to the investigation.
Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty said:
“The first thing I think we need to say, in relation to this debate, is that Ireland doesn’t do prosecution of white collar crime and it’s not just this collapse of this trial or the acquittal of Seanie Fitzpatrick, but it’s, for decades now, we’ve seen that thread.
“We’ve seen the underfunding of resources, of agencies that are supposed to be tackling white collar crime, we see staff resources being cut and we see our legislative framework, that should underpin a strong, robust anti-corruption and white collar crime agenda, simply not there.
“My colleague spoke about the request, when the ODCE was established in 2001, and it was established as a result of the tribunals of investigation, the massive corruption that we’ve seen in those tribunals, tribunals that span three decades, yet only one conviction because of corruption.
“Despite the fact that we know that politicians were up to their neck in it, in relation to brown envelopes. Despite the fact that we know that people had benefitted, in terms of their own lifestyle as a result of backhanders given to people in influential places but CAB didn’t go in and seize the assets at that time, because there’s one rule for certain individuals and another rule for others.
“But when it was established in 2001, within a number of years, the director was requesting resources. The director wrote to Micheál Martin, who was the line minister at that time in 2005, and continued to write to him over a period of time, telling him that the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement was wholly inadequately resourced.
“Minister Martin at the time refused the request and at a time when tens of thousands of additional public sector workers were bing recruited, not an additional staff member was given to the Office of Director of Corporate Enforcement.
“Bertie Ahern, sitting for years where you’re sitting today, and said that they needed to wait their turn. And, at the same time, at the same time, Seanie Fitzpatrick and his ilk were setting in train the economic disaster that people the length and breath of this country had to endure over the last ten years. And that is a symbol of how this country deals with white collar crime.Continue reading →
