cycling

A new Cycling With… profile featuring cycle-newbie Dr. Madeleine Lyes who, sez Paddy Cahill:

…started cycling so she could enjoy trips with her boyfriend but she soon saw the potential for cycling to transform Dublin, and other cities, for the better. We went for a cycle with Madeleine and she told us the lessons she has learned about cycling, her thoughts on recent changes in attitudes to urbanism in Dublin, and about her project, an urban forum in Dublin called City Intersections.

Previously: Cycling With Fergal

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Scenes around government buildings, Merrion Street, Dublin this afternoon as campaigners including Labour Party Anti-Water Tax Party worker Goda Akuockaite (top) and Labour’s Rebecca Moynihan prepare for the local and European elections..

It may get gnarly.

(Sam Boal/Photocall Ireland)

Meanwhile….

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Right so.

Thanks Cathal O’Rourke

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Annie writes

“I’m throwing an event this Saturday (1pm – 3pm) for the Beatyard festival at the Bernard Shaw, Richmond Street, Dublin 2, Just wondering if it would interest your readers? Tickets are €5 but if you use the code BEATYARD they are just €3, for that you get:
– tasting of Brown Paper Bag Project beers with brewer Brian Short
– digital photography class with Claire Nash
– some pizza…”

Tickets here

londonparissanfranmontreal
Multi-layered CGI composites of ISS photos,and geodata created by London-based fine artist Marc Khachfe, who explainz:

…I was blown away by the nighttime images taken of cities at night by the astronauts on the ISS (international space station) and wanted to print out a large poster of the london one for my office, but I found them too blurry and too small to look good good printed out large format.

The images above (London, Paris, San Francisco and Montreal) while geographically accurate, are augmented interpretations.

For between €44 and €145, he’ll composite the city of your choice and supply prints up to 1m².

We would choose Manorhamilton.

designboom

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[An ASTI delegate having his megaphone removed during Ruairi Quinn’s address yesterday in Wexford]

Megaphone diplomacy.

Class warfare.

They don’t know they were born.

Eamon Delaney writes:

We have teachers unions this week telling us all what a terrible life they have – yet they have shortest hours, longest holidays and very good pay, conditions that the rest of us, and European teachers, can only envy. But the unions are always angry – professionally angry, theatrically angry. And of course they will undoubtedly bring up the’ reckless bankers’ and other convenient whipping boys when in actual fact they should be celebrating how well off they are.

The reality is our public servants have got a very fortunate let off in our ‘fiscal corrections.’ Unlike in other EU countries, there were no compulsory redundancies and the pay cuts were minimal compared to the decimation visited on the private sector. The first of these cuts was, heaven forbid, a contribution to their own gold -plated pension, a thing the rest of us can only dream of.

This big let-off is thanks to the Labour party, of course, and a weak willed FG, who ring-fenced their public sector colleagues in the Croke Park deal and then, for good measure, in the Haddington Road deal, making sure that the only public servants likely to be among the 300,000 people at the welfare offices were those working there, at the hatch, with secure jobs.

Just look at the Haddington Road deal – public servants on over €65,000 will have their pay cuts reversed in three years. Nurses have to work an hour and a half extra per week, and teachers lose their supervision/substitution allowance but will have it restored in 2017. For the unions, this is great news, but they daren’t say so.

Better instead to keep up the moaning, as has always been done. No recognition here that the rest of us will have to pay for this big let off in longer hours and higher taxes, including among lower paid civil servants themselves. Meanwhile, the squeezed middle and the retail and SMEs continue to get hammered.

This is the great irony, that those with could complain the most are ground into silence and just trying to survive whereas those who should be grateful, such as many public servants like teachers, have the time and the job security to moan to high heaven. But was it ever any different?

Heckle!

Boo!

*ironic applause, walk-out*

Teachers lead the way in public sector whingefest (Eamon Delaney)

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On tonight’s episode of The Zoo on RTE One at 7pm.

Catherine O’Connor writes:

“Four-week-old rhino calf Jabari meets his father Chaka for the first time on this week’s episode of ‘The Zoo’. The animal care team are delighted to witness the young calf greet his dad as he ventures on his first clumsy run through the African Savanna. The youngster playfully spars with his giant dad as the animal care team look on with happiness at how well this important first meeting went.”

Mmf.

Dublin Zoo

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