Tonight.

Via The Mirror:

FC Sheriff Tiraspol star Adama Traore went to ground clutching his chest in concerning scenes during Wednesday night’s Champions League encounter against Real Madrid.

The forward has caught the eye with his performances for the Moldovan champions in this year’s competition but had to receive urgent medical attention following the incident.

The 26-year-old had evaded a challenge from Madrid defender Nacho Fernandez as the ball went out of play, but as Traore turned away and began walking back onto the pitch, he suddenly clutched his chest and slumped to the ground.

Sheriff Tiraspol’s Adama Traore goes down clutching chest sparking concern vs Real Madrid (Mirror Sport)

Earlier…

Last night

Anyone?

John Fleck: Sheffield United midfielder taken to hospital after ‘urgent medical care’ during game at Reading (Independent.co.uk)

PA

Previously: Fourth Quarter

This morning.

Royal Hibernian Academy, Ely Place, Dublin 2.

The launch of the RDS Visual Art Awards & exhibition 2021 supporting “graduating Irish artists and guiding them into a professional world”.

From top: Juliette Morrison with her work ‘Quarantine (2020-2021)’; Fiona Gordon with her work ‘EXCESSIVELY CHAOTIC UTOPIAN ESCAPE’; Lauren Conway with her work ‘A Great Public Meeting’; Rachel Daly with her work ‘Til we part’; Vanessa Jones with her work ‘Self Replicating, Self Portraits’, and Catherine McDonald with her work ‘How Far’.

The exhibition runs at the RHA Gallery until December 19.

Bloke-free by the looks of it.

Fight!

Meanwhile…

Stop that.

Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland

Andrew McGinley on RTÉ One’s Prime Time last May

This afternoon.

Via Independent.ie:

RTÉ has defended its decision to drop grieving father Andrew McGinley from The Late Late Show after receiving correspondence from members of killer Deirdre Morley’s family.

The father-of-three was due to appear on the primetime TV show on October 8 to announce plans for a fundraising concert in his children’s memory.

However, just hours before the show was to air, he announced he would not be appearing.

Yesterday, Independent.ie revealed the national broadcaster told Mr McGinley it had received a letter which said that “it could be a painful and traumatic experience” to see him talking about Conor, Darragh and Carla on The Late Late Show.

Letter from members of Deirdre Morley’s family led RTÉ to drop Andrew McGinley from Late Late Show (Independent.ie)

Meanwhile…

Via RTE news:

Mr McGinley, speaking to RTÉ’s News At One, said he “honestly cannot understand” how the launch of a charity and a colouring competition could be seen as being sensitive material.

“I wouldn’t have talked about anything painful and I would have hoped the Late Late Show, being an entertainment show, wouldn’t have intended to speak about anything that would have caused distress or pain,” he added.

“I honestly don’t understand that,” said Mr McGinley.

“For me, I was being invited on for what I intended … because I’m tired of grief-filled conversations.

“I just want to keep the children’s memory alive with love and for me I was coming on to have a loved filled conversation about Conor, Carla and Darragh.”

Meanwhile…

Sunspots are much cooler than the surrounding solar surface because the magnetic fields that create them reduce convective heating. But you knew that. So why are the regions above them hundreds of times hotter? To wit:

To help find the cause, NASA directed the Earth-orbiting Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) satellite to point its very sensitive X-ray telescope at the Sun. Featured here is the Sun in ultraviolet light, shown in a red hue as taken by the orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Superimposed in false-coloured green and blue is emission above sunspots detected by NuSTAR in different bands of high-energy X-rays, highlighting regions of extremely high temperature. Clues about the Sun’s atmospheric heating mechanisms come from NuSTAR images like this and shed light on solar nanoflares and microflares as brief bursts of energy that may drive the unusual heating.

(Image: NASA, NuSTAR, SDO)

apod

The Irish Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

This afternoon.

Via RTÉ News:

The Department of Foreign Affairs has advised Irish citizens in Ethiopia to leave the country immediately.

International concern has been increasing due to the escalating war in Ethiopia as Tigrayan rebels edge closer to the capital Addis Ababa.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney has said that around 80 Irish citizens in Ethiopia have been advised it would be prudent to leave the country due to an escalation in the political situation in the conflict-ridden country.

Earlier…

Statement On November 5 from the UN Security Council on the situation in Ethiopia

Via AP:

Ethiopia has ordered four of six Irish diplomats working in Addis Ababa to leave the country because of Ireland’s outspoken stance over the ongoing conflict in Ethiopia

The Department of Foreign Affairs said Ethiopia’s government informed the Irish Embassy in the Ethiopian capital that the four must leave within one week. The Irish ambassador and one other diplomat were allowed to stay.

In a statement, the department said that Ethiopian authorities indicated this was “due to the positions Ireland has articulated internationally, including at the U.N. Security Council, on the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia.”

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the yearlong war between Ethiopian and allied forces and fighters from the country’s northern Tigray region, who long dominated the national government before Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office

Ireland and African members of the U.N. Security Council led a statement on Nov. 5 calling for a cease-fire, stressing the importance of full humanitarian access to Tigray and political dialogue between parties.

Ethiopia expels Irish diplomats over Ireland’s stance on war (AP)

Pic: DFA

Yesterday.

Dáil Éireann.

TDs debated a Sinn Fein amendment to the government’s redress scheme which excludes adopted people who spent less than six months following birth in a Mother and Baby home.

People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett said:

“I am telling the Minister now that he will have to revisit this. Arbitrary time periods, or tables of compensation linked to time periods, are offensive.

They completely fail to take into account the reality of coerced, forced separation of mothers from children. The trauma, suffering, impact and lifelong and varying consequences are unique to every single case.

There should be no attempt to try to link those consequences to arbitrary time periods in an institution, or to a table with amounts of money linked to time periods, and it is offensive to do so.

“I ask the Minister to think about it. It is shocking and he will have to revisit it.

“I was born in a mother and baby home and from what I understand, I was in two mother and baby homes. I do not know how long I was in them and I am sure many others do not know how long they were in them either.

“The impact could be horrendous if you were in a home for one day and it could be somewhat less if you were in one for six months, depending on the outcome. However, in every case, the primal wound of children being separated from their mothers and mothers being separated from their children is a crime that was committed by the church and State against tens of thousands of mothers and children.

“To create arbitrary thresholds that you reach, where the State considers you worthy of redress, is absolutely offensive.

I know the Minister did not mean to be offensive, but the problem with this whole sorry saga, which is about the crimes of the church and the State against mothers and children and their then trying to cover their backs and limit the damage, is that he has ended up compounding the hurt, insult, abuse and trauma perpetrated against mothers and children and retraumatising the victims. It is obnoxious. I know the Minister did not mean to be obnoxious, but that is the net result.”

Galway West independent TD Catherine Connolly said:

“In the past Ireland has been criticised for its narrow interpretation of the category of persons who should qualify… All participants emphasised how the Final Report failed to recognise the gravity and magnitude of the human rights violations that occurred in Mother and Baby Homes and related institutions… [They reported] a perceived lack of recognition [I would go much stronger than that] of trauma of being separated from mother or child and the ‘family destruction’ therein.

“The Minister has come forward with a scheme and, notwithstanding his best efforts, he is now perpetuating that discrimination all over again and adding to survivors’ trauma, whether he likes it or not.”

Opposing the amendment, Anne Rabbitte, Minister of State at the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, said:

“I acknowledge the amendment to the motion tabled this evening. I value all contributions from Deputies on this most important of issues. However, the motion calls for action that would be grossly unconstitutional. The Chamber cannot and should not seek to pre-empt or anticipate matters that are under the examination of the courts. The Government simply cannot support the amendment…”

Last night: Disappointment And Disgust

Transcripts via Oireachtas.ie

Thanks Breeda

From top: The Christmas Market, Eyre Square, Galway; Eamonn Kelly

The news is all up in the air. It’s like the same news every week, more or less. Paul Murphy TD called it Groundhog Day. It was becoming surreal, so I’m taking a little time to catch up on some art projects simmering on the back burner.

The Autumn rugby internationals have been a nice break, with a sense of normality about the crowded Aviva stadium, happily witnessing another defeat of the All Blacks. I believe that’s three victories over New Zealand in ten years. Prior to that, victories were so rare that the one victory, by Munster, way back when, inspired a stage play.

Missing Christmas

I must say, like many people, I’m beginning to miss Christmas. To paraphrase Oscar: Losing one was tragic, but losing two seems like carelessness. The head of Limerick’s ICU unit in University Hospital, Dr Catherine Motherway, (what a great name for a doctor) told RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland that she believed everyone would eventually catch the virus, the Delta variant being so transmissible. This would result in a kind of herd immunity, with casualties, of course.

She said the idea was to contain the spread in order to protect the health service from being overwhelmed. This is where the vaccine is useful for those whose immunity has yet to be tested in the field, since it cuts the numbers of people being admitted to ICUs. So the real effort here, for the public, is to protect the health service, the same one that has been weakened for years by successive governments spreading that other virus, neo-liberal privatisation.

Help Us Help Our Business Cronies

In a sense, official Ireland is asking the public to help it buttress a health service that Official Ireland has shown scant regard for. Which suggests that official Ireland may now be in a bargaining frame of mind. Maybe people like the Tánaiste might agree to stop butchering the health service in return for the public’s co-operation in protecting the health service – which is still, essentially, a public health service – by wearing masks, getting jabbed and so on. Maybe it’s time for a little give and take on the question of a true public health service.

I see that new rules have been made to protect the public this winter from cuts, with data centres now being tasked with providing their own generators in times of grid stress. Now that, as they say, is a start; like the old joke of what do you call a dozen lawyers at the bottom of a lake? A similar prioritising for the public Health Service over private profit would be extremely visionary.

Christmas Market

I stood in Eyre Square, Galway with a half hour to kill, taking in the atmosphere of the Christmas market. They were playing songs over the tannoy, and one of them was that song from the 1980s, “Walking In The Air”, from Raymond Briggs’ animation film “The Snowman”. The song has become, I realised, a Christmas standard. It’s funny to have lived so long that you’ve both witnessed the premiere of a Christmas “carol” and seen it take its place in the traditional Christmas fare.

The pubs are suffering. You can re-open a pub, but you can’t necessarily just switch on the atmosphere they once had. Pubs were homes from home for many people. It’s likely that two years of pub closure has resulted in people creating new habits and new ways of socialising. It would be more than weird if the Christmas of 2019 turned out to be the last “real” Christmas of a world we may one day look back on with a bitter-sweet nostalgic longing.

But there was a flavour of that old world in the Aviva stadium, with the crowd singing The Fields of Athenry. And while it could seem callous, to hunger so openly for “normality” in light of those who have died, there is a sense of this being a war situation, where the small joys are felt all the more keenly and indulged in with greater passion than usual.

Memorial

In Barnsley, England, A covid memorial of bronze figures depicting key figures from the pandemic was unveiled. The piece, titled, “Reverence”, by bronze sculptor Graham Ibbeson, features a retail worker delivering groceries; an old man and a young child, victims of the pandemic; an ambulance driver and a health care worker. The memorial is engraved with a poem by Ian McMillan which reads, “Barnsley’s fierce love will hold you forever in its heart.” The project cost £210,000, with the sculptor and poet volunteering their contributions for free.

Ireland needs something similar. A focus for the bereaved to remember this particular “war”, perhaps supplemented by a political vow to protect the public health service in the future and put the days of penny-pinching privatisation behind us, as a mark of respect to the victims of the pandemic and to those who worked with limited resources and the best of their abilities to protect the public, not just from the virus, but from their political masters, intent, it always seems, on putting a premium price on charity and care.

Happy Christmas, and a Healthy New Year. See you in ‘22. Hope it’s not Catch-22.

Eamonn Kelly is a Galway-based  freelance Writer and Playwright. His weekly round-up appears here every Monday.

Previously: Eamonn Kelly on Broadsheet

Pic via Galway Beo

From top: Lab pizza takeaway (arrowed right) and the Vicar St venue: Harry Crosbie, The Lab’s Rory Gleeson and Vicar Street staff member, Caroline Marsh; Harry with The Lab’s mode of delivery

This afternoon.

Vicar Street, Dublin.

Joanne writes:

‘Over the past year Harry Crosbie has worked on upgrading the iconic Dublin venue – Vicar Street. From a new mural on the main bar wall featuring award winning local singer, Imelda May amongst others, to new flooring in the auditorium and today Harry unveils something new – Pizza by Pram.’

Harry explains:

“Next door to Vicar Street, Lab makes delicious woodfired sourdough pizzas but he only has one table. We have 50 tables in an empty, well ventilated room literally meters away, so I thought we could do something together that would be fun hence delivery by pram.

“For a limited period we are offering two Pizzas and 2 pints or 2 glasses of wine for €35 on Friday and Saturday between 12 -6 and we will see how we go. An extra incentive is that every day we will raffle a pair of tickets to a gig at Vicar Street”.

Pizza By Pram Available at Vicar Street – Starting this Friday and Saturday.

The Lab

Vicar St

Broadsheet.ie