There literally isn’t one.

Yesterday’s New York Times extolled the kindness of the Irish towards the residents of hurricane-hit Breezy Point in New York.

But noted:

“But complicating the current embrace from abroad is the gated community’s extreme insularity. Breezy Point is the whitest neighborhood in the city, a demographic makeup that critics say illustrates the enclave’s entrenched xenophobia, a dark flip side, perhaps, to all that ethnic pride.

The consul general of Ireland, Noel Kilkenny, said he and others had made special efforts to avoid the impression of “the Irish looking after their own.”

“Over 63 percent of the 4,381 people in Breezy Point and nearby Roxbury are of Irish descent, including a large number of police officers and firefighters who live in bungalows and one-bedroom homes. That connection became well known in Ireland after Sept. 11, 2001, when the community lost dozens of residents in the attack.

“After 9/11, we became very aware of where the Irish were living,” said Anthony Kearns, a member of the Irish Tenors who sang at the Christmas luncheon. “After Hurricane Sandy it became highlighted even more.”

“Its ethnic and racial makeup has also been a source of controversy. It was once called an “an apartheid village” by the Rev. Al Sharpton during a protest.

Steve Greenberg, the former chairman of the Breezy Point cooperative’s board, said that to his knowledge, no black family had ever held a share in the private community. Even in the days after the storm, volunteer firefighters in the community repeatedly told a visitor as she left to beware of the residents of Far Rockaway, the predominantly black neighborhood at the other end of the peninsula.”

“Concerns over the community’s insularity have been privately broached by the Irish coming to the aid of Breezy Point.”

Ah

When Irish Hands Are Helping an Enclave in County Queens (Sarah Maslin Nir, New York Times)

 

Pic FDNY Flickr

A presumably tongue-in-cheek homage to the iconic sword throne of Game of Thrones made from twenty scorched and melted keyboards by Mike DeWolfe, who explains:

The underlying message is one of suffering. The keyboards have been melted and warped. They’re made to twist to fit, but at the same time that renders them unuseable because they cannot fulfill their intended purpose. The keyboards are black and silver, and the underlying chair is white, but those colours have been replaced with black, in whole or in random splotches. The keyboard warping includes the scorching of almost all of the ESC keys to symbolize how impossible it can be escape suffering and blackness. The only key that is consciously left undamaged is the ESC key on the highest positioned keyboard. Around the back, the keyboard cables have been arranged like human hair with an attempt to braid the cables that is ultimately left in a tangle. This denotes how good plans and order can degenerate into chaos.

Now for yeh.

illuminations


John Tierney.

Appointed as the new managing director of the newly-established semi-State body Irish Water.

Formerly Chief Running Bull Dublin City Manager (2006-2013).

How did that go?

– Mr Tierney was forced to apologise after Dublin City Council was accused of mismanaging public funds, following an official audit of the €80million spent on the Poolbeg incinerator project. The audit, which came out last December, found the council’s handling of the project was weak and inadequate.

– Last November, Mr Tierney became embroiled in a row which developed after a TG4 documentary Iniuchadh Oidhreacht na Cásca about a proposed development on Dublin’s O’Connell Street/Carlton site, which encompasses the 1916 buildings on Moore Street. The documentary alleged a continuing cover up involving officials in Dublin City Council over a secret deal with developer Joe O’Reilly to sell the site to O’Reilly’s Chartered Land and buy it back at a potentially higher price.

– In December 2011, Mr Tierney invoked a veto introduced by former environment minister Martin Cullen to overrule a Dublin City Council vote 52-50 against the sale of its waste-collection services to Greyhound. This was despite the fact Greyound was, in 2009, forced to pay back €1.3million to Iarnród Éireann – which had hired it two years previous – because of inadequate services. In January 2011, Greyhound was forced to pay €9,000 in fines and costs to the Environmental Protection Agency for breaches of its licence to run a waste facility in Clondalkin, Dublin.

Oh.

Previously: Nothing To See Here 


(Eamonn Farrell/Photocall Ireland)

 

A Yamaha 90 maybe.

But a Honda?

*sucks teeth*

Greg Ryan writes;

My brother is involved with a charity driving from Limerick to Mongolia on Honda C90s, Yes, those bikes with the 85cc engines, max speed 50mph, all in aid for Temple Street Children’s Hospital. Here is a video of their story so far.

 

Limerick to Mongolia 2013

 

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