Yikes.
Bannon!
Previously: Know Your Constituency: Longford/Westmeath
Thanks Patrick Conboy
Oireachtas Retort’s new election website is live.
From their first despatch…
During this past government term Galway merits special distinction for making headlines around the world after Savita Halappanavar, a local dentist, was left to die. When the news broke that November morning I brought coffee to a solitary protester who made a dignified and defiant stand at the entrance throughout the day. We exchanged few words having few of comprehension but understood well enough. We will never forget Savita in Galway.
Another woman was buried just this week, having been found in Merlin Woods after a seven day search. This follows a young woman who was recovered from the docks two weeks ago having met the river the night before. The sound of the RNLI helicopter has become grimly familiar to everyone. Its drone heard all hours of the night and day.
“Tragic circumstances” have become so routine as to soften traditionally austere hearts. We have reached the point when burly pub security men sincerely bid you “safe home” as you pass their door into the night. They are very often the last ones to see people alive. The back of a bouncer’s head now a regular cameo on desperate grainy CCTV footage.
The decent generosity and cooperation of community in these agonising moments is unrecognisable from a world that leaves people feeling so isolated to begin with. It is difficult for me to reconcile the two.
Galway has always been a town of blow-ins and transients but behind the statistics we are familiar with, it is frightening to see how the place has been hollowed out.
…Welcome to the new Oireachtas Retort site. A gloomy start perhaps but we might find something to cheer about soon.
All Politics Is Local (Oireachtas Retort)
Previously: ‘I Have Six Years Of Extensive Notes’
From top: Regency Hotel shooters; Weapons seized during 2014/2015 from ‘dissident Republicans’ displayed at Garda HQ last month
‘Paul Michael Glazer’ writes:
Perhaps your excellent firearms contributor (Mark Dennehy) can help me? I was struck by the age and state of the machine guns used by the gunmen [dressed in Garda uniforms] during the Regency Hotel shooting. Why would wealthy gangsters use ancient, clapped out machine guns?
Then [Crime journalist] Paul Williams said Garda were investigating whether the weapons were “brought in from Libya for the Provisional IRA because it looks like one of the 1970s versions of the AK47. “
And then I recalled your post last month on the dissident Republican weapons put on display at Garda HQ featuring weapons as part of Garda “efforts to disrupt the activities of dissident republicans”.
As I say, I’m no expert but they look very similar and I am wondering if the gangsters stole the guns from Phoenix Park along with the uniforms?
Anyone?
Update:
Paul Michael Glazer adds:
Re: comments (below). I didn’t pose any theories it was a serious question. I am also genuinely interested in what the firearms guy has to say. Why not see if the guards are missing any weapons?
Previously: I Want My MP7
They Seemed Very Calm And Collected
Rollingnews
Elevenses
at
Gavan Reilly tweetz:
This was just parked outside Government Buildings. No opposition party logos on it to claim credit…
Anyone?
September Girls – Love No One
What you may need to know…
01. Dublin-based shoegaze/psychedelia specialists take off the gloves with upcoming album Age of Indignation: bolstering their increasingly raw, garagey sound, the five-piece tackle everything from feminism, to religion, to Irish life as we know it at present. Heavyweight stuff, to say the very least.
02. Named for a Big Star song, the band came together in 2011, and immediately proceeded on a number of single and split releases via various labels, before settling with UK indie pillar Fortuna POP! for debut album Cursing the Sea. The band signed with Brooklyn indie label Kanine Records for their subsequent Veneer EP, co-released with Fortuna.
03. The British press are all over the quintet. From the Guardian and the Sunday Times, to the NME and the sadly-departed The Fly, praise was everywhere for their debut LP. Time magazine, no less, deigned them among the 11 best new bands in the world in 2014. Lofty expectations to exceed a second time around, especially off the back of appearances at SXSW and Liverpool Psych Fest.
04. Jaw on the Floor, inspired both by the 1916 Rising and early feminism in Ireland, features the album’s only big vocal cameo: Oliver Ackermann, of the equally excellent A Place to Bury Strangers.
05. The album, released April 8 and followed by an upcoming Irish tour, continues in this vein, taking aim at social media, modernity and the legacy of the Catholic church in Ireland. Love No-One (above), deals with narcissism in the modern day.
Verdict: Their upward trajectory has been frightening, and they look set to provide the tempestuous, confrontational agit-pop that our generation has been sorely lacking, hopefully opening up as many conversations about the issues at hand in Ireland as their reverbed-up, boxcutter noise.
@drilography
at
Tweets from the novelty twitter account @dril typographically enshrined by Amelia Hamrick.
Sinéad O’Loghlin took the words out of my mouth. Her point about the great majority of published contributors to your Letters page being male had struck me very forcibly in recent months. For my own amusement, I have been keeping a running check on letters published.
From February 3rd to February 15th, inclusive, a total of 196 letters have appeared. Five signatories might have been either gender; of the other 191 letters, 155 (over 81 per cent) were from men and 36 (under 19 per cent) from women.
Do these figures really reflect the contributions received? If so, I can only echo Ms O’Loghlin’s appeal to women to get writing.
Colette Ní Mhoitleigh,
Baile Átha Cliath 6.
Women and ‘Letters to the Editor’ (Irish Times)
Pic: True North Quest
Ballybunion, Co. Kerry.
Maire-Crístíona Ni Ghormain writes:
I think beach art is a fantastic way of canvassing. It is also the most environmentally friendly which is so important in our generation. It is for independent candidate Michael Pixie O’Gorman.
They’re out at it, again.
Electioneering is rife, and amid all the false promises and fiscal space invasions, Dublin’s premiere observers of the sterility of Irish modernity are releasing a new tune.
Shrug Life, who impressed with strident yet sarky EP The Grand Stretch last year, continue in their wry mode of gentle agit-pop with new single Making Progress, streaming in the widget above.
Sez the lads, ahead of a gig in Dubland on Thursday:
Evoking the rabble rousing spirit of The Jam and the black humour of The Smiths, ‘Making Progress’ is fuelled by the uncertainty and false promise of electioneering Ireland.
Produced by Fiachra McCarthy (Squarehead, Dott, So Cow) and mastered by Mark Chester (Ginnels, Paddy Hanna), the song is available as a free download from the band’s Soundcloud and Bandcamp pages (links below)
Shrug Life will also play Dublin’s Bernard Shaw to celebrate the release this Thursday at 9pm. With a capacity of 80, and free entry, get there (very) early
