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Mayor No. 349

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Mayor No. 349

Every year, Dublin City Councillors elect a new Mayor and last week was that day again. This would be a relevant event in many cities around the world, but not in Dublin. The mayor of Dublin has a big title (“Lord Mayor”), but absolutely no power to change anything. He will move into Mansion House for the year, will cut ribbons and open shops and has the BIG job of turning on the Christmas Lights in December.

Unless we get a directly elected mayor – and this should have happened years ago – he is just a figure head that we easily could do without. :-O Instead of a mayor, an unelected “City Manager” is running Dublin and he often even ignores what the Dublin City Council wants. “In the interest of the people” is different!!

The new mayor is the 349th one. Mad!

The name of the mayor is Nial Ring. Ring was part of disgraced Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s inner circle in Fianna Fail for many years, but when his party didn’t want to support him when he wanted to be elected as a councillor, he suddenly became a “Independent” candidate. In 2017 he lost his house in Clontarf because he didn’t pay the mortgage payments and had arrears of EUR 500,000, so maybe he is lucky that he can move into Mansion House now.

Dublin, Dublin City Council, Elections, Politics, , , , ,

“Hosepipe Ban” – Are they for real??

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
“Hosepipe Ban” – Are they for real??

When I read this, I thought it was a Waterford Whispers News story. (Waterford Whispers News is an Irish satirical news website that usually hits the nail on the head with their brilliant headlines.) The announcement that made me think it is a joke was the announcement by Irish Water on Friday that from Monday 02 July a “hosepipe ban” would be in effect in the Greater Dublin area.

At first I thought it is Irish Water nonsense, but checking into it a bit more I realised that a piece of Irish Law really mentions that the “use of water drawn through a hosepipe” can be prohibited for the use of “watering a garden, watering recreational parks or sports grounds […], irrigating or spraying crops […], or washing a mechanically propelled vehicle or a trailer”.

Water conservation makes sense if there is a shortage and due to the idiotic way public water supplies in Ireland are ONLY served from surface water in lakes and reservoirs (instead of using water from underground sources) we are currently entering a period of water shortage. BUT a “hosepipe ban” just sounds like a ridiculous piece of law.

The ban will be in place for the whole month of July and if someone is found in breach of the ban, they could be fined EUR 125.

But here comes the interesting stuff:

While the wording above is taken from the “Water Services Act 2007”, Irish Water is NOT banning all wasteful water use. Instead they reduce the ban to “watering a garden, cleaning a private motor-vehicle using a domestic hosepipe. […], filling or maintaining a domestic swimming or paddling pool (except when using hand held containers filled directly from a tap), […]” so that means if you use a domestic hosepipe you are not allowed to clean the car, but if it is a commercial hosepipe, you can go ahead without any issues. It also means that your swimming pool must not be filled via hosepipe, but if there is a tap above the swimming pool OR if you get LOTS of big containers and fill it by hand, you are all above the law.

Dublin, Environment, Irish, Odd, , ,

Bloomsday!?!?! What is that?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Bloomsday!?!?! What is that?

You either love it or you don’t care at all about Bloomsday, there seems to be nothing in between. It is a HUGE day for some and others don’t even know what it is about. If you belong to the latter group, let me help you a bit.

Bloomsday is a made up day and nothing of it is based on real events. James Joyce wrote the book Ulysses between 1914 and 1922 and the book describes one day, Thursday 16 June 1904 when Leopold Bloom, a fictional figure in the book, went about his business from 08:00 to the early hours of the next day. This invented day, lived by an invented person became Bloomsday.

You could compare it to McClane Day! Which doesn’t exist!!! But would be the day just before Christmas when we copy all the things that John McClane did in Die Hard. We go to Nakatomi Plaza for a Christmas Party, have a disagreement in the toilet and then spend the rest of the day to fight against Max Gruber and some terrorists/thieves with all sorts of weapons. So if McClane Day makes sense to you, then Bloomsday will also make sense.

The James Joyce fans dress up like characters from the book in clothes that were worn by people around 1904, then they have a breakfast like Leopold Bloom and visit the locations he went to during the day.

Does that help a bit? If not, get a better description here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomsday :-)

I think we should plan for McClane Day! We just have about 6 months to prepare for it! :-O

Dublin, Events, ,

200 new Stationless Bikes For Hire

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
200 new Stationless Bikes For Hire

Two companies, BleeperBike and Urbo, got a licence from Dublin City to operate stationless bikes for hire and to compete with Dublin Bikes. This is a big step! And it also a development that has advantages and disadvantages.

One year ago, Dublin City threatened BleeperBike to remove their bikes from Dublin’s streets if they launched as they had planned back then. Now they got the licence and are ready to launch immediately. The bikes are white and are already available in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown. The great thing about the new bikes is that they will allow us to hire bikes in and to areas that are currently not covered by Dublin Bikes (and that might never be reached by Dublin Bikes). The disadvantage the new bike hire schemes might bring is that Dublin Bikes membership will be less attractive for some and therefore the Dublin Bikes charges might go up when less people subscribe.

For users the big difference is that there is no yearly charge, instead you pay from the first minute of usage after you unlock a bike with an app. Dublin Bikes allow you to use the bike for free for the first 30 minutes as often as you like during the year, but you pay a yearly fee. Bleeperbike also have a 3 Month membership and 12 month membership plan that also gives you the first 30 minutes for free if you don’t want to use the Pay as you Go plan, but these membership plans are a lot more expensive than the Dublin Bikes plan and Dublin Bikes could use that as a justification to increase their charges too.

And another important thing to note: “Stationless” doesn’t really mean completely stationless!! You are not allowed to park and lock the car anywhere, instead, the bike has to be locked to a “recognised public cycle parking space” and these spaces are identified in the BleeperBike app.

www.thejournal.ie/dcc-stationless-bikes-4044090-May2018/
www.thejournal.ie/share-bikes-dublin-urbo-bleeperbike-2-4046606-May2018/

Dublin, Dublin City Council, Taoiseach, ,

National Museum at Collins Barracks hikes up Parking Fees

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
National Museum at Collins Barracks hikes up Parking Fees

We have something great in Ireland! All our four National Museums do not charge any admission charge. That’s the National Museum at Collins Barracks, in Kildare Street, in Merrion Street and in Turlough, Co. Mayo. This is a bit of a luxury that not many countries have. Sure, it is not really free because in the end we all pay for it through our taxes, but at least you can go there without paying as often as you want.

Collins Barracks is a huge site with only half of it open as a museum and the other half is storage for a huge amount of additional exhibits. Collins Barracks also has is – as a former barracks – on a huge site that has its own car park.

Until 2013 parking was free there, but due to budget cuts in 2013 it was announced that they would have to charge for parking and the fees were a very moderate
+ EUR 2 for 0-3 hours
+ EUR 4 for all day parking.
That was still a good price and you could go to the museum for up to three hours for a low cost.

But last week on 19 May this substantially changed. The new charges are now
+ EUR 2 for just 1 hour
+ EUR 5 for up to 4 hours
+ EUR 12 for all day

That is a HUGE increase! If you assume maybe 2.5 hours for an extensive visit it will cost you EUR 5 instead of EUR 2 before. That’s 150% of an increase!! :-O

And no! Your taxes didn’t go down!

Dublin, Events, Tourism,
 
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