Everyone was there.
Last night.
Wren Hotel, Dublin 2.
A party to launch the festive showcase of gifts from Max Benjamin. Run by brothers Mark and David Van den Bergh from their studio in Enniskerry, county Wicklow, Max Benjamin is recognised worldwide for ‘home fragrance gifts using natural and renewable ingredients’.
Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland
My Dalymount Days,
By Fran Cassidy.
He knows he is, he’s sure he is.
Bohs til he dies.
MCD’s Denis Desmond
This morning.
Via Irish Times:
Concert promoter MCD, which runs the Electric Picnic music festival, is facing claims of “abrasive management behaviour” within the business.
The company, controlled by US events giant Live Nation Entertainment, said it was examining the claims but did not provide any details, saying its internal affairs were private.
Confirmation that MCD is facing the issue came after The Irish Times submitted questions about the company’s response to complaints.
The reply was issued by MCD co-founder Denis Desmond, the driving force behind the business for decades. “We can confirm for the record that MCD is looking into allegation [sic] of breaches of the company’s dignity-at-work policy relating exclusively to abrasive management behaviour,” he wrote in an email. “The welfare of our staff is of paramount importance to us and we are looking at the allegation accordingly.”
MCD faces claims of ‘abrasive management behaviour’ (Irish Times)
Good positive proposal for dogs on/off lead at all times areas in @DubCityCouncil’s #StAnnesPark to accommodate all park users; total off lead area proposed 77.5 hectares; pic.twitter.com/ynG8fZwFzO
— Deirdre Heney (@DeirdreHeney) October 19, 2021
This morning.
St Anne’s Park, Raheny, county Dublin.
Arf.
Thanks Alan Bracken.
Pete Kavanagh – Mercy
The sins of the fathers…
Pete Kavanagh (top) is a man on a mission. His new single is a powerful blues-driven narrative that is “a testament from an Irish working man in support of the victims and survivors of clerical and state abuse in Ireland, and indeed worldwide.”
Pete says:
“I attended primary school in Ireland in the late 1970s, a school with an obligatory Catholic ethos. I witnessed daily displays of physical and mental abuse. There was also sexual abuse. The Christian brothers, nuns, priests, teachers and community at large, collectively created an environment where this behaviour became the norm.
“By the mid-’90s, I was an angry young man with a guitar. I wrote songs to vent my anger and express my emotions. Music was a healing force, a form of therapy. It was during this period that I heard Christine Buckley (Dear Daughter) recount her horrific experience of life at St. Vincent’s Institutional School in Dublin (Goldenbridge). Her story moved me to tears and it inspired “Mercy”. I feel now is the right time for this song to be heard.”
Look out for his album Join Up The Dots on November 5.
Nick says: Clerical terror.
This morning.
Dublin Castle, Dublin 2.
Arriving for a cabinet meeting to agree arrangements for the possible lifting of restrictions this Friday were, from top: Minister Eamon Ryan, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly and Taoiseach Micheál Martin.
Meanwhile…
The National Public Health Emergency Team has advised that existing restrictions on hospitality should stay in place for several months.
If adopted by Government, it would see basic measures such as mask wearing, social distancing and Covid certificates remain in place until around spring 2022.
However, the NPHET advice does provide for ways to be found to allow other venues such as nightclubs open safely, including through the use of the Covid certificate.
This Friday was due to see an end to the requirement for physical distancing, or mask wearing outdoors, or indoor, in private settings.
There was also to be an end to the need for certificates of vaccination, or immunity or proof of having contracted Covid-19, for access to or engagement with any events.
Last night, coalition party leaders considered the NPHET advice and Government today must decide if some of the outstanding pandemic restrictions will be altered on Friday.
North Korea has fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile into waters off the coast of Japan, South Korea’s military has said
For reasons that still baffle me
North Korea’s proud military
Just launched what they said
Was a high tech warhead
And started a war with the sea
Reuters
MORE to follow.
The Taoiseach has denied that the wait to see if restrictions are lifted on Friday is like “groundhog day” for those who will be affected by the Govt decision. Micheál Martin also said that he is a “strong believer” in antigen testing | https://t.co/UntGEWWq2y pic.twitter.com/H2P3Z3bm8R
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) October 18, 2021
This afternoon.
Earlier…
chief scientific advisor to the Government Professor Mark Ferguson said that while antigen tests are useful and provide an extra layer of protection, they are “not a solution”.
Although widely used in many European countries, antigen testing has been discouraged in Ireland as public health officials said the tests should be used in strictly controlled settings and warned individuals might receive “inappropriate reassurance” from a negative result.
Getty
Behold: lovely spiral galaxy NGC 289 – about 70 million light-years away and much larger than our own dear Milky Way. To wit:
Seen nearly face-on, its bright core and colourful central disk give way to remarkably faint, bluish spiral arms. The extensive arms sweep well over 100 thousand light-years from the galaxy’s centre. At the lower right in this sharp, telescopic galaxy portrait the main spiral arm seems to encounter a small, fuzzy elliptical companion galaxy interacting with enormous NGC 289. Of course spiky stars are in the foreground of the scene. They lie within the Milky Way toward the southern constellation Sculptor.
(Image: Mike Selby)
