Just ‘dropped’.

Episode 4 of Poxy Bleedin Shop.

Creator Thomas Quain writes:

Eddie is shocked to discover the state of Greg and Craig and suspicious about sudden the appearance of body parts in the alleyway. Meanwhile Thomas and Brian begun to be suspicious that more customers than usual in the shop are on drugs.

Featuring the voice talent of Owen Colgan, Emma Doran, Bernard Casey and Tadhg Hickey.

Poxy Bleedin Shop

Ireland sits in ‘the longest and most stringent lockdown in the Anglophone world’

This morning.

Via Michael Brendan Dougerty in The National Review:

…Some countries, like the United States, have never been as strict. Others, like Israel or New Zealand, took harsher and more stringent measures than Ireland ever did, but did so for much shorter bursts of time, with the aim of relaxation. Ireland, however, seems to have a lockdown perfectly calibrated to be a marathon of penitence, anxiety, and misery.

A brief relaxation is followed immediately by a terrible surge in cases, and the door slams shut again. It has never been strict enough to exit more thoroughly, as has been done in Australia and New Zealand, but the restrictions of daily life over 14 months have been much more difficult and emotionally taxing than anything known in America.

…The humiliation is close to home, too. The U.K. also had absurdly intrusive lockdown policies. But now, Northern Ireland, the part of the U.K. that sits on the same island as the Republic, has vaccinated nearly 40 percent of its population. Ireland sits just at 10 percent.

Why is it like this? Isn’t Ireland a land of rebellion? Beyond voices like Gary Dempsey, not really. Social critic Conor Fitzgerald has diagnosed Ireland’s political culture as suffering from an acute case of “goodboyism,” which he defines as “the tendency in the Irish establishment to ostentatiously direct themselves towards external sources of cultural authority over and before the Irish populace.”

Resistance to lockdown is associated with Donald Trump, or troglodyte Tory backbenchers. Ireland self-image is more enlightened and progressive than that. The Royal Irish College of Physicians made Dr. Anthony Fauci an honorary fellow this March. He proceeded to warn them against getting too frisky too soon. Pat on the head received: Good boy!

…On Easter Sunday, a priest said Mass on the rocks of Achill, where the Mass was said the last time a government in Ireland made saying it vaguely criminal. Two men in Dublin, both getting their 5k of exercise, met and brought lilies to the General Post Office, which was the site of Ireland’s great rebellion in 1916. They were conscientious men who would have no truck with lockdown skeptics.

But, for this patriotic act, they were hassled by the Guards. “You’re not exercising.” In fact, this gesture was an exercise of sorts. Commemorating that place on that day in Ireland summons people to contemplate the “unfettered control of Irish destinies.”

The most miserable lockdown in the Western world (The National Review)

RollingNews


From top: tress felled on the former rail line at The Marina, Cork; Dan Boyle

Over the past month environmental issues/controversies in Cork have involved all the elements: air (incineration), water (culverting rivers) and earth.

Our earth story involves removing trees and vegetation on the Blackrock/Passage greenway as part of an enhancement programme.

I’m aware my last sentence reads as an oxymoron. How is it possible to have an enhancing removal of trees and vegetation? There really isn’t. What it shows is that even with the best intentions considerable ecological damage can be caused.

The Blackrock/Passage greenway had until the 1930s been a working railway line. In the 1980s it was among the first former railways lines to be converted into an amenity walk.

Over the years it has acquired a popularity among many Cork people as a place to escape to, to exercise in, to commune with nature within.

Over time it has been determined that amenity walks should conform to designated standards. These standards are now deemed to be a walkway width of no less than five metres, with a need to ensure that access paths onto the walkway are accessible especially to those with mobility needs.

Before any action was taken a public consultation did take place. Often what is written on paper seems anodyne than what becomes physically experienced. No consultation process can avoid such a lack of nuance. So it proved when works began a number of weeks ago.

When the scale of the work was done it evoked a huge horror among the public. The number of trees taken down, the amount of vegetation removed was nothing like what was imagined.

Some of this should have been anticipated. Making omelettes and breaking eggs is a cliche that comes to mind. Even if the appearance of of a denuded area could have been expected, so should the negative public reaction that followed have been.

Part of the sadness of the reaction is as much about the methods used as it is about the devastation caused.

The tree removal began at the start of nesting season, applying a derogation to this work that in all other circumstances would be illegal.

Too much material and too many trees were removed far more than was necessary. It spoke to a ‘to be sure to be sure’ engineering perspective of having enough room.

The widespread use of mechanical diggers seemed to underpin this however the cards might fall attitude. How we do this work should matter as much as what is done. Sensitivity should be the sensibility.

Mitigation was factored into how the desertification would be addressed. New trees and growth would be planted subsequently.

Again good intentions can’t replace the damage that has been caused. Saplings and semi mature trees will take years of growth to replace the biodiversity that has been lost.

That loss includes insect life that fed birds and other wildlife. It will take years before what has been there will be restored.

This saddens rather than angers me. I don’t attach any blame onto officials whose motivation has been to improve an amenity. It’s the traditional approach to these works that is flawed and badly needs to change.

Cork City Council will be hiring a Trees Officer, something we Green councillors have campaigned for. Too late for this event but hopefully future events will be dealt with differently.

Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD and Senator and serves as a Green Party councillor on Cork City Council. His column appears here every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle

Pic via Dr Eoin Lettice


Readers of ‘The Golden Treasure of the Entente Cordiale’ could win an historic golden casket worth €750.000

It may be worth taking a punt
In this fiendish clue-finding hunt
For you could win treasure
With worth beyond measure
In a massive publicity stunt

John Moynes

Behold: four of Saturn’s 82 true moons. Four you say? That’s right, four. To wit:

First — and farthest in the background — is Titan, the largest moon of Saturn and one of the larger moons in the Solar System. The dark feature across the top of this perpetually cloudy world is the north polar hood. The next most obvious moon is bright Dione, visible in the foreground, complete with craters and long ice cliffs. Jutting in from the left are several of Saturn’s expansive rings, including Saturn’s A ring featuring the dark Encke Gap. On the far right, just outside the rings, is Pandora, a moon only 80-kilometres across that helps shepherd Saturn’s F ring. The fourth moon? If you look closely inside Saturn’s rings, in the Encke Gap, you will find a speck that is actually Pan. Although one of Saturn’s smallest moons at 35-kilometres across, Pan is massive enough to help keep the Encke gap relatively free of ring particles. After more than a decade of exploration and discovery, the Cassini spacecraft ran low on fuel in 2017 and was directed to enter Saturn’s atmosphere, where it surely melted.

(Image: Cassini Imaging Team, ISS, JPL, ESA, NASA)

apod

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