The votes are in.

Last week, with a blazing €25 Golden Discs voucher on offer, I asked you to name your favourite song about summer or sunshine.

You answered in your tens.

But there could be only one winner.

Third Place:

Celebrated Summer by Mark Kozelek

Specific Gravity writes:

A sublime cover of a wonderfully evocative summer song!

Runner up:

Summer In Dublin by Bagatelle

Celticon writes:

I’ll always love Summer In Dublin. It’s been a comfort song since I left the country in ‘98.

Winner:

July by Mundy

Morgen Scheißekopf writes:

Irish Summer encapsulated in less than 5 minutes. No need to say anything else.

Thanks all.

Last week: Win Nick’s Voucher

Golden Discs

‘sup?

This afternoon.

Henry Street, Dublin 1.

Protestors representing the 1,000 workers who have been laid off from Debenham’s and told that the company does not have sufficient assets to fund their agreed redundancy package. Photo:

Leah Farrell/Rollingnews.

Yesterday.

In the Dáil.

Independent TD Denis Naughten claimed that some employers are getting their employees’ Covid-19 test results and that these employers are telling their staff whether they are Covid-19 positive or negative.

Mr Naughten had been asking the Minister for Health Simon Harris about Covid-19 infection rates at meat plants when he made the claim. He was also talking about a delay in returning negative results.

He said:

“….negative results are being long-fingered for days and possibly weeks. In fact, the system is so bad that employers are being directly provided with a list of test results and they are the ones informing employees as to whether they are positive or negative for Covid-19. Will the Minister now confirm that medical data are being shared with employers before employees and explain to me why this is happening?”

Mr Harris said he didn’t know anything about employers receiving results, saying:

“I do not have any information about the issue of patients’ details going to their employers but I would be very happy to receive it and revert to the Deputy.”

Later, the Ceann Comhairle raised the matter with the minster and they had this exchange:

Ceann Comhairle: “Deputy Denis Naughten raised the point that information in respect of test results was going to employers before it went to those who had been tested. That would be fundamental concern to the public and needs to be addressed.”

Simon Harris: “As Deputy Denis Naughten has made that comment on the record of the House, I have asked him to provide the details.”

Denis Naughten: “It has happened in a number of instances across the country.”

Harris: “I do not have that detail so I do not intend to comment.”

Anyone?

Transcript via Oireachtas.ie

Naughten tells Dáil ‘contact tracing is so poor that employers informing staff’ (Longford Leader)

On the 173rd anniversary of his death (today).

Finally emancipated from black and white.

Old Ireland in Colour writes:

…we bring Daniel O’Connell to life.

Combining AI techniques with human creativity to reimagine the Liberator, including: Colourising the only surviving photo of O’Connell; Animating portraits and Making him ‘talk’…

Meanwhile…

Excellent O’Connell thread here.

‘The Cup’.

A sea-borne meditation on the lockdown,

Kalle Ryan writes:

Really proud to have been commissioned by the London Irish Centre to write this poem for their Solas season [Irish culture and community online content]

I hope it resonates with you during this stormy time…

Solas Season (London Irish Centre )

 

Bewley’s Café, Grafton Street, Dublin 2

The permanent closure of Bewley’s Café on Grafton Street in Dublin due to a combination of financial pressures has attracted much media attention in recent days.

It is most likely that many further closures will occur in the near future, and the enormity of the challenge of recovering from the effects of the Covid-19 recession is now coming into sharp relief.

Memories of the last recession are still fresh and one of its greatest effects was on retail businesses and services.

These effects had visible expression in the great extent of shuttered premises along many business streets and the consequent atmosphere of dereliction and neglect, which no amount of high-quality paving and planting could offset.

During this period much attention was paid to problems with high rents on business premises, and in particular to upward-only rent reviews.

Even when excessive rents resulted in closures, many institutions and landlords seemed prepared to accept this.

Options of abolishing upward-only rent reviews were examined but it was advised that, without constitutional change, this could be done only for new leases.

I cannot say how much has been learned from the last recession. In normal times the legal framework governing leases, defaults, relettings, etc, appears to work in a broadly satisfactory manner, but the current problems surely require much more radical action, with the underlying aim of enabling viable businesses to be restarted as soon as possible.

Whatever changes are needed to the legislative framework, the implementation of these should be readily achievable in the current climate.

Significant contributions from public funds are likely to be part of the solution but all other stakeholders will have to suffer some pain, with institutional investors and owners of large retail centres having to play their part.

Diminished rates of return might have to be accepted for quite some time but a sustainable resumption of economic activity within a reasonable timeframe must be the over-riding aim.

Michael Walsh,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3

Anyone?/FIGHT!

Retail Sector And Rents (irish Times Letters)

Rollingnews

Broadsheet.ie