The water in Cork City has been shut off.
The bottled water in Lidl in Togher is gone.
The bottled water in Aldi in Ballyphehane is gone.
All the cheap water is gone and the tap supplies are not expected to resume for a few days.
RYANAIR was accused last night of a "serious lack of imagination" after the airline insisted its 2010 cabin crew calendar was "art".
The new calendar, featuring two Irish employees, is more risque than previous editions.
The National Women's Council of Ireland (NWCI) said the no-frills carrier was "irredeemably old-fashioned" for using images of scantily clad women to raise funds for charity. But Ryanair accused the NWCI of not having "a clue how young women empower themselves".
"What we have is one step up from last year which makes it a little bit sexier," spokesman Stephen McNamara said at the launch in London yesterday.
However, NWCI director Susan McKay said: "It shows a serious lack of imagination presenting women as sex objects."
The Catholic has failed us in Ireland. Members of the church have perpetrated horrific crimes on vulnerable children and have done everything to avoid paying compensation and even owning up to their crimes.
It now emerges that we exported our child abusers. Where Irish religious orders went, child abuse followed. It is clearly that something is rotten in the church. It is time to disband the corrupt institution to protect our children.
Tardun was one of the more notorious of Australia's 500 or so children's institutions. It had all sorts of Irish connections. It was one of four such institutions run by the Christian Brothers, who were tightly controlled by their Irish leadership, based at the Dublin headquarters in Marino. They even named another of their western Australian institutions Clontarf - it is to be found in Waterford, a suburb of Perth.
Many of the brothers working in the Australian institutions were first generation Irish. These included Br Paul Keaney, the infamous resident manager of Bindoon (another Christian Brothers-run boys' orphanage) up to the 1950s, who was born in Rossinver, Co Leitrim.
Thousands of boys passed through these institutions. Most were Australian, who, like so many Irish children, ended up in care during the middle decades of the 20th century for reasons of poverty and disadvantage.
From Irish Election
Brian Lenihan’s credibility takes a further dent as he comes bottom of the pile in this year’s ranking of top EU finance ministers by the Financial Times
I've another post up at GlobalComment
There’s nothing new about record companies throwing their weight around. Since, Napster they have sought to control access to illegal music, encouraged by artists such as Metallica, who themselves originally owed their fame to bootleg tapes.
In Ireland, the record companies represented by the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) have recently taken the fight to the ISPs in an illegal attempt to block Irish internet users from accessing certain sites. The courts cannot legally censor internet content so IRMA targeted the providers. It is just a little ironic that the Irish broadband rollout is one of the more ineffective schemes in Europe...
John Waters is in the Irish Times today, whining about bloggers aka citizens journalists. Away he went pontificating about mob mentality and whinging about bloggers being mean to his bestest buddy Bono. Naturally, he doesn't name the blogs he quotes because the backlash would be too much for his delicate feefees. Isn't that journalism fail right there? Isn't one supposed to credit when appropriating another person's words?
It was an interesting enough overview of a subject that will be much analysed in the coming weeks. More interesting, though for the wrong reasons, were the responses in the thread of posts from readers that grew on to the article. Of the 89 posts I could find, only four were vaguely and somewhat unenthusiastically positive about the article, aid, Geldof, Bono or indeed anything at all. A further eight might be called neutral, in that they sought to make some elliptical points about the issues raised, without rubbishing anyone.
The rest – roughly 85 per cent – were abusive, expressing rage, scorn, hatred, jealously, cynicism and an authorial self-righteousness lacking any visible means of support. Not a single post indicated that its author had been to Africa, or had any special knowledge of, or even interest in, that continent.
I've a new post up at GlobalComment
The self declared visionary Joe Coleman has been making waves in Irish religious circles for the past few weeks. He claims that that the Virgin Mary speaks to him on a regular basis, specifically since he died on an operating table in 1986. Until recently, Mr Coleman was a spiritual healer who claimed to cure cancer by laying his hands on people with the disease. Now he devotes himself entirely to “our Blessed Mother.” A humble man from Ballyfermot in Dublin is now our channel for love and a channel for God.
JOHN O'DONOGHUE asked the Irish Sports Council for two tickets to the Rugby World Cup final, it was revealed last night.
Mr O'Donoghue was Ceann Comhairle at the time, and had ceased being minister for arts, sports and tourism for five months. He offered to pay for the tickets but the council gave them to him for free in recognition of his efforts on behalf of Irish sport.
The cost of the pair of tickets, for Mr O'Donoghue -- and it is thought his wife, Kate Ann -- came to nearly €1,000. The tickets were ultimately paid for by the taxpayer.
