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Looking for stocking fillers that won’t empty your pockets.

Read on.

Charmaine Kenny, of The Irish Workshop, online home of Irish crafts and whatnottery, writes:

Two weeks to go folks! Here are some Irish-made gifts that you’re unlikely to find on the high street, and that might just surprise and delight on Christmas morning… All of these items are available on The Irish Workshop, and will make it on time for Christmas.

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1. Turf Fire Candle €16.50

The comforting smell of a real turf fire is magically captured in a scented candle by Belfast’s Bearded Candle Maker. This is a perfect little gift for people who don’t have a solid fuel fireplace. Oh and they have a ‘Midnight Mass’ scented candle too.

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2. Rustic Fern Scarf €25

Foxford Woollen Mills are well known for their high-quality and cosy blankets and rugs, but they have a wonderful collection of scarves that are just as high-quality and cosy. There are 10+ designs to choose from.

illustrated-map-of-navan-by-richard-e-dalton-on-the-irish-workshop

3. Illustrated Map of Your Home Town €25

Illustrator Richard E Dalton has 25+ towns in his repertoire of town maps including Navan, Naas, Enniskillen, Westport and Dundalk. A particularly nice gift for the returning emigrant.

mr-pocket-by-pippablue-on-the-irish-workshop

Pippablue have a series of sewing kits for crafty children and adults alike. Mr. Pocket is our favorite. He can be made by hand, or using a sewing machine. And we love that his body is made from Irish tweed from Tipperary.

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5. Love is in the Éire Print €20

Super cute. Super clever.

The Irish Workshop

irish-made stocking fillers to broadsheet@broadsheet.ie marked ‘Irish-Made Stocking Fillers. No FEE!

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From top: Denis O’Brien, Noel Rock.

In yesterday’s Sunday Business Post.

Fine Gael TD Noel Rock wrote a column about Independent News and Media (INM) and its pension cuts – some of which will amount to 70% – describing the company’s moves as “appalling”.

He also referred to the pockets of INM’s biggest shareholder, Denis O’Brien, without naming him.

Mr Rock wrote:

“… But what shifts it from appalling to repugnant is that INM is a massively profitable company, in large part because workers agreed to write down the value of their pensions by 40 per cent in 2013.

“INM announced some months ago that it made a profit of €37 million in 2015. It will have a Euromillions Jackpot figure of €87 million in pure cash burning a hole in its corporate pockets by the end of this month.

“…Sadly, and wrongly, this is not illegal in Ireland. It is in Britain.

“…While Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar is investigating the possibility of intervening in the forthcoming High Court hearing on the capital restructuring of INM and asking the court to consider appropriateness of capital restructuring when it’s closing this pension scheme, it’s certainly worth asking if a “wait and see” approach is good enough, or whether we need to directly intervene.

“…[INM shareholders] also benefited when banks, including the state-owned AIB as well as Bank of Ireland, wrote off almost €140 million in INM debt. These are banks that we bailed out.

“So every single person in Ireland was involved in the indirect bailout of INM. We wrote off their debts, and they crushed their own pensioners to the tune of two-fifths of their entitlement.

“We didn’t take that hit as a society so that, three years later, the company would come back, throw its pensioners under a proverbial bus, and suck all the money out of the company for the shareholders we, effectively, did a deal with.

“Nor did we do it so that the company could use the cash it is taking off pensioners and transfer it directly into the pockets of its largest shareholder, by buying Newstalk or any other asset he happens to have.”

Yikes.

Noel Rock: Why the INM pension scandal should concern and anger us all (Sunday Business Post)

Rollingnews

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The Orange Kyte – madness escaping Dublanders via Canada

What you may need to know…

01. Dublin-rooted psychedelia/fuzz/pop, emerging nowadays via their home in Vancouver, British Columbia.

02. Led by vocalist/guitarist Stevie Moonboots, a solo recording project took a transcontinental move to be fleshed out into a functioning band, but the last year has seen exponential growth, including monthly single releases throughout 2016, and consistent gigging around their new home territory.

03. Streaming above is the band’s last single of the year, Fizzy Orange, available for streaming and download at their Bandcamp.

04. Home for the holidays, and gigging around Ireland post-Xmas, including the 28th, alongside the Urges at Dublin’s Grand Social for the Retro Revival Indie Club; the 29th, at the Kino in Cork with The Sunshine Factory, Oh Boland! and more in support; and the 30th in Derry’s Sandinos Bar, with local boys Asimo’s Understudy.

Verdict: A madcap rush through a whole musical idiom, from minor-key shoegazing and psychedelic walls of sound to retro-pop keys and four-to-the-floor indie-rock stomping. A treat for those what wants it.

The Orange Kyte

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This morning’s Irish Sun

On Friday, Gary Meneely reported in The Irish Sun that the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) is investigating allegations that a Munster-based garda sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl.

Mr Meneely reported that the garda, against whom the allegations have been made, “is based in a busy station and involved in some of Ireland’s most serious crime cases”.

Further to this, Mr Meneely reports today:

“…we [The Irish Sun] have learned the gardaí failed to contact the appropriate child protection agencies as rules of conduct dictate.

“It is understood that concerns — that the young girl had been abused by a senior officer — were raised to gardaí around three years ago. But it was only when a separate complaint was made to the Garda Ombudsman that GSOC referred the concerns to the relevant children protection agencies.

“…Gardaí have acknowledged that on this occasion a referral to the HSE Children and Family services was not made. This was is in contravention of the responsibility for reporting in accordance with the Children First Guidance document — the national guidelines for the protection and welfare of children in Ireland.

The District Officer failed to retain in writing a record of the decision and the justification for not initially reporting the alleged child protection issues in compliance with the HQ directive.

Garda quizzed over sex attack on 11-year-old girl (The Irish Sun, December 9)

Gardai failed to report claims that a senior officer sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl (The Irish Sun, December 11)

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Further to US president-elect Donald Trump becoming Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

The latest video from Jonathan Pie, who sez:

Trump is man of the year, May is arms dealer of the year and Farage is twat of the year.

Jonathan Pie