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The good people of Irish sports management? The winner is John Delaney! NOT!

08 April 2017Written by Joerg Steegmueller

Every country has its fair share of questionable characters. Many are in politcs and mesmerize with their dodginess, a good few are in business, but for some reason, the third area is an area where we are even more amazed to find self-serving and dubious behaviour in the main protagonists and in the management of that area. This third area is “Sports”. Somehow we seem to hope that sports people are all honest, trustworthy and totally above board. But interestingly, from the performance enhancing doping of the gymnast or runner via the big crooks like Lance Armstrong or Sepp Blatter, Sports seems to be the field that is just riddled with dishonesty, cheating and personal enrichment.

But little Ireland is probably not THAT much affected, right? WRONG!! Remember Pat Hickey, the president of the Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI)? He has not been charged with any offence as far as I know, but there is some lingering fishiness around the Oylmpic ticket scandal that just doesn’t seem right. His deputy (Vice-president of the OCI) was or is John Delaney, who is also head of the Football Association of Ireland (FAI). Unfortunately he never made any public statement about the ticket scandal.

At the same time he is reported to more than EUR 400,000 per year or at least EUR 360k, which is either way FAR above of what the Spanish or Italian heads of their Footbal Associations earn. And it is also SIGNIFICANTLY more than what the Irish Taoiseach or the German Chancellor Angela Merkel earn. According to this and this.

Last week the same John Delaney was voted onto the UEFA Executive Committee and the Irish Times suggests that this will come with a six figure salary and will require up to 100 days of his time per year, so in the end he will just do a half-day job for the FAI for his 360k. Here!

At the same time it emerged that the Irish Women’s Football National Team has to share their training clothes with others, are treated worse than amateur footballers and get no rewards for all their successes. The women went on strike and since then an agreement was found with them, but Delaney’s riches and their bad treatment just looks like one man pocketing big time for himself while treating others like “shit on his shoe”. www.bbc.com/sport/football/39502054

Irish, Odd, Other FAI, John Delaney, OCI, Olympic Council, UEFA

TheJournal.ie removes ability to dislike comments

19 March 2017Written by Joerg Steegmueller

TheJournal.ie featured very lively discussions since 2010. After nearly every article (there were some exceptions) readers could express their opinion and once an opinion was expressed, others could give a Thumbs Up or a Thumbs Down to that opinion. It meant that some opinions found huge support, but it also meant that stupid comments were punished by the public vote.

On Wednesday, however, they announced that the commenting option would change dramatically. You can still LIKE (Thumbs Up) an opinion, but you can NOT express your dislike anymore. A change that will make the discussions a lot less attractive and a move that is heavily criticised by the reader community at TheJournal.ie

In an astonishing #AlternativeFacts approach, the removal of the “downvote” has been presented to readers as an improvement. Instead of the downvote you can now “mute” a commenter, hide a comment or report a comment. NONE of these three options gives a reader the opportunity to express his/her opinion to the original commenter, so TheJournal.ie just killed one of its most liked features.

If you are not a TheJournal.ie user, imagine this: If a contentious comment was made in the past, that comment might have received 250 Thumbs Up and 250 Thumbs Down and other readers clearly saw that there is a divided opinion. With the new system, there will ONLY be Thumbs Up and a comment with 250 supporters and no visible opposition will appear as supported by a large part of the commentors. You see how misleading it will be?

www.thejournal.ie/journal-comments-section-changes-3286318-Mar2017/

Other downvote, TheJournal, Thumbs Down

International Women’s Day! Progress Made? Maybe not….

11 March 2017Written by Joerg Steegmueller

Wednesday was this year’s International Women’s Day and in my daily post on the Dublin Event Guide Facebook Page I wrote

“The focus of the day is in some regions a celebration of respect, appreciation and love towards women for their economic, political and social achievements and in other regions there is a strong political and human rights focus.
We are lucky that the position of women in our society is a lot better than in other countries. But “better” is not the same as “good”! The onus is on us (men and women!) to demand (and provide) fairness and equal opportunities.”

So we have to question/check how far we really came, because it is easy to convince yourself that WE don’t have any problems only others have problems.

Well, a former Dublin Event Guide reader who now lives in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) wrote on Facebook that all women in her job got a voucher equivalent to EUR 100 for some treatment. She would have liked to get a massage, but it turned out that only invasive beauty treatments (fillers, botox, etc) would be covered. Shocking! So the assumption must have been by the person/organisation giving the gift that all women want/need some invasive beauty treatment.

“Well, it is UAE, what do you expect!” some might think, but then on Friday Newstalk posted on Facebook that Sean Moncrieff was very unhappy with what the newspaper wrote about Amal Clooney. Amal Clooney is a human rights solicitor who addressed the United Nations (UN) last week about some serious issues regarding Iraq and ISIS. Not something most of us do regularly and she must have worked (and probably fought) hard to get to that position. Amal Clooney also happens to be George Clooney’s wife and it seems that she is pregnant. So what do the UK newspapers like The Sun,The Express, Daily Mail, The Mirror and Vogue write about? They commented on nothing else but her “baby bump” and her “chic dress”. Watch that shocking video clip here: www.facebook.com/newstalkfm/videos/10155966083037907/ So, we THINK we came far in our Western civilised world!? We are not much ahead of the countries we look down to! :-(

General, Other, Society Amal Clooney, International Women's Day, Newstalk, Sean Moncrieff, UAE

Bad bad 2016!? – Celebrity Deaths

30 December 2016Written by Joerg Steegmueller

In 2016 a relatively large amount of celebrities died. There was David Bowie, Prince, Alan Rickman, George Michael, Muhammad Ali, Gene Wilder, Leonard Cohen, Carrie Fisher and many others that unfortunately left us in this year. Some died of illnesses other of other health reasons and others again because they had reached the age where their bodies decided to pack it in.

Importantly there was absolutely no link between the deaths, but oddly many Twitter and Facebook users and even some “news websites” tried to “blame” 2016 on it. With common statements after another death like “2016 you can f*ck right off” and similar.

Yes, it was a relatively large amount and there are good reasons for it, but the reactions were just nonsensical bordering on stupid.

If people switched their brains on and thought for a second, they would realise a number of things:
+ We know a much higher number of “celebrities” than any generations before us. That has to do with the Internet, with our global media outlets and with the fact that it is a lot easier to become a “celebrity” in the last 20-40 years than ever before.
+ Many of the celebrities we grew up with are – surprisingly – ageing like us. So if we get older then they also get older. With increasing age the risk of illnesses increases and – oddly – the risk of death is much higher for old people than for young people.

What does that mean? It means that the dying will continue! 2017 will probably see a similar high number of deaths. When will it end? When the end has reached us! I know that sounds brutal, but I see it happening with my parents, for example. They are at a funeral for people that they knew well during their life nearly every week and bit by bit, the friends and family get thinned out and you feel the unavoidable end coming closer and closer.

A very morbid tone for the last This is Odd in 2016? Yes, it is dealing with death, but it is something we will all need to deal with at some stage and stupid statements like “Stop that 2016!” are not facing up to facts about life.

So how should we react? The best approach is always to appreciate the fact that the people that pass away have been with us. To remind ourselves what nice memories we have and to accept that life is terminal. Only that way you can properly deal with it. Grieving is fine, even for someone that you have never met. Some celebrities, like George Michael, really were part of some of our lives. So keep the memories and stop the blaming on a year or other non-related entities and circumstances.

www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2016-year-in-review/look-back-all-famous-figures-who-died-2016-n698791

Elsewhere, Odd, Other 2016, Celebrity Deaths

New Architecture and Planing in Dublin – Getting better or worse?

07 June 2016Written by Joerg Steegmueller

Let me start with this: I am NOT an architect, not an expert in building design and I also am not a structural engineer or a town planer, so I am not speaking from a place of trained or studied knowledge, BUT I do have an opinion.

On Friday it was announced that Hawkins House in Poolbeg Street, near Tara Station will be knocked down and replaced by a new building. The Department of Health will move out and once the building is finished some other department will move in. The Department of Health will move to the former Bank of Ireland building in Baggot Street.

TheJournal.ie had one of the best articles about this development here and they also provide some detail about the new building.

Through my day job, I know the current Hawkins House building reasonably well and I have to say that it is VERY ugly and doesn’t seem to be structurally safe anymore. Scaffolding is supporting the building in many places OR is protecting pedestrians from pieces that might come off. On the inside, Hawkins House is certainly not modern (it is from 1962), but not too bad looking. However, I can see many areas regarding comfort, but also regarding energy efficiency etc where significant improvements would be hugely beneficial.

After the announcement a good few people argued that building projects and the massive amount of money they will cost shouldn’t carried out as long as sick children can’t be looked after well and appropriately and I can empathise with this point. However, I don’t think one is directly linked to the other or simpler put, I don’t think one should exclude the other!

So with Hawkins House needing some significant work anyway, it probably makes more sense to knock it down than to patch it up.

The newspapers write about the “ugliest building in Dublin” and there are many competing for the prize. Hawkins House is a strong contender, so I was curious to see the proposal for its replacement and shockingly (but not THAT surprisingly) the replacement doesn’t look much better at all. It is a more modern ugly building, but it is questionable if any normal office building can ever look good.

I heard (but have no proof for it) that Hawkins House won some prizes when it was built in 1962 and in the same way the new building could win prizes, but in 40 years time, I would expect the new Hawkins House also being declared ugly. So now change there.

What puzzles me the most, though, is the fact that the current 11 storey building will be replaced with a 10 storey building. How does that makes sense? Liberty Hall and the Ulster Bank buildings are quite near and they are all higher than Hawkins House. And with space limitations in the City Centre, we need to make maximum use of the available space, so I would have expected an INCREASE in height, not a decrease. It should be at least 13 or 14 floors high, not 10.

And if you accept that in 30-50 years it will be declared as ugly anyway, then I also wonder if it should be attempted to make it “pretty” for today’s taste!?

Dublin, Other Architecture, Hawkins House, Poolbeg Street