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BREXIT and Who are these neighbours of ours?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
BREXIT and Who are these neighbours of ours?

It is less than a week until the British voters will decide if they will stay in the EU or if they will leave and while we in Ireland have no influence over the vote, it is still interesting to look at the what Britain was before the EU discussion began and what it is now.

I love the multicultural society in Ireland and if you compare it to an Ireland from the 80s, the society has changed SIGNIFICANTLY. Not for everyone, I know and you don’t have to change anyway if you don’t want to, but for the people that like variety, they can find events from all different countries and cultural backgrounds in Dublin.

But whenever I was in the UK in the past, I was always puzzled that the UK was soooo much more multicultural and that all seems to be working quite well in the society. There are Indians&Pakistani, Africans, Asians and Caucasians and a lot more in close proximity and nobody seemed to mind in the slightest.

The favourite national dish seems to be Indian, Italians are in charge of the previous national dish: Fish & Chips and they brought Coffee and Ice Cream, Jamaicans provide the music and had a sizeable influence on youth culture in the 60s and 70s were hugely important, Black people seemed better integrated than in most other countries. All in all, it just seemed as if Britain endorsed their colonial past by accepting all different cultures in and giving them the same opportunities. I know that Irish people had to deal with a lot of subliminal or even open racism at some point, but it seemed to me that this had improved a lot as well.

Please note: No formal research went into this, it was just an impression!!

But then the Brexit discussion happened! And the “new” Britain seems to be divisive, intolerant, selfish, excluding, “we are better than they”, confrontational , bullying and Anti-European or even Anti-International. What happened??

Imagine you had a nice, friendly and tolerant neighbour who over night became an intolerant, antisocial bully. You would probably not WANT to have anything to do with the bully anymore, right? So, if the majority of British people decides for leaving the EU, I think we should be glad that they are gone and we should treat them like you would treat the anti-social bully neighbour.

By the way: I don’t think the EU is perfect and we should be grateful for all it does, BUT I do think that Ireland and many other countries have and still do benefit hugely from the EU. I also am a strong believer in co-operation and “strength in numbers” instead of doing it on your own and I think that improving the EU from the inside is the right approach. So, Brexit supporters, I don’t understand you at all!

 

Economy, Elsewhere, , ,

Renewable Energy in Ireland!?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Renewable Energy in Ireland!?

I got my Electricity Bill this week and discovered a table on the back of the page that identifies how the electricity is generated. The table says that in Ireland 34.5% of the electricity is made from renewable energy sources, the rest id from Natural Gas, Coal and Peat. Unfortunately the ESB only uses 19.4% from renewable energy sources.

On the same day I discovered this video on Facebook www.facebook.com/greenpeace.international/videos/10153896061433300/ It is a video by Greenpeace that says that from 07-11 May Portugal powered the entire country solely from renewable energy. And in 2016 until now, about 75% of the energy was from renewable sources (Solar, wind and hydro). It continues to say that in Germany 87% of the electricity on 08 May was from renewables. And in the UK Solar power beat coal generated power for one day.

Looks like Ireland – and especially the ESB – will have a LOT of catching up to do!!

Environment

First find a woman then start your drink driving ban – Legal System in Ireland

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
First find a woman then start your drink driving ban – Legal System in Ireland

The legal system in Ireland, of which judges are a cornerstone, keeps puzzling me. I haven’t checked yet how judges are chosen, but whoever does the choosing must be some odd ball or alternatively these judges become odd balls themselves only AFTER they are appointed.

The Irish Times reported about the case of a bachelor farmer in County Kerry and the Irish Examiner had a slightly different interpretation of the story. The guy is called John O’Shea and he is 60 years of age. In July 2014 he went from Mastergeeha to Waterville (approx. 9km) to get food for his cows and drank too much when discussing football. On the way home, he drove into a ditch and was found to have nearly four (!!) times the legal alcohol limit in his blood (198mg). The penalty for that will be a a 3-year driving ban and luckily, the judge didn’t indicate that he plans to deviate from that.

The solicitor asked for the driving ban to be delayed until after the summer and here starts the oddness. It seems that the solicitor asked for the delay so that the farmer can look after the cows, but the judge seemed to have suggested the 60 year old never-married farmer should find a “nice woman” that will drive him around and – possibly seeing the opportunity – the solicitor quickly suggested that he could go to Lisdoonvarna to the matchmaking festival if he still had a car for the summer.

It seems that there is a lot of stupid-talk in court rooms in Ireland and it also could be that the solicitor just saw the opportunity that the judge provided and jumped on it without having planned to go for the “find a woman” reason for the delay.

But it really makes you wonder about the ability of Irish judges to do their job. This farmer had FOUR times the amount of alcohol in himself than he should have, so he didn’t just drink a little bit more than he knew he should have, but he filled himself up. Luckily nobody got hurt, but is it really the right message a judge should send??

Odd!!

Elsewhere, Justice, Odd, Society, , ,

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

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
New Architecture and Planing in Dublin – Getting better or worse?

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, ,

Big Time Crime vs Small Time Crime: Speed Limits and Killing people!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Big Time Crime vs Small Time Crime: Speed Limits and Killing people!

I got caught breaking the law! Yes, it is hard to admit (especially for a German :-) ), but I did break the law (unintentionally) and I got caught AND paid for it. A few weeks ago, I drove home on a very quiet Sunday evening on a well built and well lit street in Dublin. Hardly any traffic, no pedestrians or cyclists and I was not distracted by mobile phone or anything else. All was well…

…until about two weeks later when a letter arrived, telling me that I was recklessly breaking the law. What a bad boy! I know! I drove 59 km/h in a 50 km/h zone. I had to pay EUR 80 and will be punished for three years due to the 3 points I also got.

Interestingly, if I had driven 120km/h in a 50km/h zone, I would have been punished in the EXACT same way. Odd!!!

Then on Tuesday, I heard about the shooting of another gang member of the two feuding Dublin criminal gangs. We might think, that it is not the worst if they terminate each other, but keep in mind that in every killing one side will win over the other and it will give that “winning” side more power, which is never a good thing when you talk about criminals. These ongoing killings are a bad bad thing on another level. As we have seen, the risk for random bystanders is significant, because these killers seem to have trouble at times knowing who they really want to get and also because they are getting more and more ruthless.

So how does my speeding tickets link to the gang war in Dublin? — It doesn’t really! I am not the type of person who complains that the police should spend their time on hunting down the big criminals and let the small criminals go. I broke the law and got punished, which is annoying but fair. But when it comes to fairness, it seems that bigger criminals get away with a lot more.

For Friday of this week a big “clampdown” on speeding has been announced. It’s easy!! Put up a few vans around the country in locations that are not really accident hotspots and then just send the tickets by post. You will get lots of money back and have a nice Press Release about the success and the catching of the criminals.

At the same time, the gangs, make millions through drugs and from their HUGE amount of properties that most likely were bought from drug money as well. Clampdown? Not much!

Is it resources? I don’t think so! It is just easier to get honest people to own up and pay up for their small crimes than to get criminals to own up to their big crimes. It not wrong to punish the small time criminals, but it is wrong to let the big time criminals get away with as much as they do.

Justice, Society, Traffic,
 
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