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Wingsuit flight through ESB chimneys a “serious safety incident”

Written by Joerg Steegmueller

Something spectacular happened over our heads on Friday: Three Red Bull Wingsuit pilots jumped out of a helicopter over Dublin and subsequently flew towards and then through the gap between the iconic ESB chimneys at Poolbeg. It seems to be part of a series of flights through landmarks and just three weeks ago wingsuit pilots flew through the gap at the Tower Bridge in London.

Nobody thinks that wingsuiting is a safe sport, Red Bull themselves say “Wingsuit flying is the most dangerous extreme sport in the world”, but it is still laughable that the ESB felt they had to release a statement calling the event a “serious safety incident”. Sometimes it is just better to say nothing. Have a look at the great flight here: www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2024/0531/1452382-dublin-skydive/

Red Bull is known for usually getting all necessary permissions and since the ESB probably doesn’t own the airspace above their buildings or between their chimneys they probably didn’t need to be asked.

The City of London took a different stance when the pilots flew during a much more spectacular stunt “through” the Tower Bridge. They didn’t complain about a safety incident, instead they supported the event by closing the Tower Bridge for the event. In London UK air traffic control also kept the airspace clear for the event on 12 May and a pontoon was installed in the Thames for the landing of the pilots. In Dublin ESB complains about a “serious safety incident”. Interesting!

Dublin, Overexaggerations, , , , ,

St. Brigid or just Brigid – Truth or Myth?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller

On Thursday 01 Feb is Brigid’s Day and the following Monday is a new public holiday in Ireland since 2022.

Brigit or Brid was possibly a celtic goddess. Also possibly, she was a woman that lived from 451-525 and who founded a monastery in Kildare. And also possibly the whole thing is complete invention. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigid_of_Kildare

St. Brigid is one of three national saints of Ireland (St. Patrick, St Brigid and St Columba/Columcille), but she was never canonised (made a Saint by the Catholic Church), but instead was a “popular Saint” and allegedly in 1969 her name was removed from the list of saints (mylesdungan.com/2019/02/01/fake-histories5-was-saint-brigid-a-canonised-saint-of-the-roman-catholic-church/. This seems to be confirmed by archive.org/details/CalendariumRomanum1969/page/n85/mode/2up)

Her Feast Day is the 1st of February, but as a non-Saint she can’t really have a feast day. St. Bridget of Sweden who still is a Saint has her feast day on 23 July or 08 October, not on 01 Feb (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridget_of_Sweden) (Some people thought that the two Brigid’s have the feast day on the same day, but that is incorrect.)

Somehow St. Bridget got linked to Imbolc (probably through her Celtic goddess connection), which is the celtic festival of the start of the brighter half of the year, which is NOT the same as the start of Spring.

So on 01 Feb is the feast day of a woman/god that probably never existed, who is not a saint and therefore can’t be a national saint of Ireland. And spring starts on 01 March as Met Eireann keeps confirming, not on 01 Feb. Yes, Imbolc is on 01 Feb, but Imbolc is not the start of Spring. Uff, a bit of a mess!?

Confused? No need to be! Many “truths” in life are inventions of our imagination (or someone’s story telling). ;-)

The only slightly annoying thing is that because of this flawed story, a bank holiday that should be in warmer September was put in the first week of cold February. ;-) But at least it’s another public holiday!

Picture by Culnacreann – Own work, CC BY 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3500722)

Events, General, Irish, Odd, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Let’s hope for a better new Dublin City Chief Executive!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller

Like at a funeral, when people in Ireland feel it is inappropriate to tell the truth about the person in the coffin, Dublin City Councillors were trying to be find complementing words for the now-retired former Chief Executive of Dublin City, Owen Keegan.

But many of them were probably more leaning towards the “Good Riddance” side than the “What a pity” side.

Without a shadow of a doubt Keegan left a stamp on Dublin City (and on Dun Laoghaire) and many think he caused significantly more damage than good.

He started in 1993 as an Assistant City Manager in Dublin and then became Director of Traffic. Dublin got a break from him when from 2006 until 2013 he was County Manager of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, but reportedly people in Dun Laoghaire celebrated his return to Dublin City 2013, then as Chief Executive. Another 10 years (2013-2023) in Dublin completed his THIRTY year long (questionable) contribution to our city.

Having ZERO accountability to councillors or citizens or inhabitants of Dublin City is the worst possible arrangement. The Chief Executive of the city runs the city in ALL aspects, with the grandiose titled “Lord Mayor” being just a representative figure with no control or influence over anything. It is shocking that we still do not have an elected mayor!!

And when you then get a chief executive (that is selected by the “Public Appointments Service”, which is purely looking for the right CV, not the right passion and ideas) who has his own agenda that he ruthlessly pursues for 10 years, ignoring and overruling the elected City Councillors at every possibility, then it becomes a real good news story when he finally retires.

Deputy chief executive Richard Shakespeare will be in charge now until the Public Appointments Service (not them again!!!) will have selected a new chief executive, who again will have NO democratic mandate to rule our city. At a salary of EUR 200,000 per year, we can be certain that many civil servants will be interested in the job, but despite the high salary, it is unlikely that a talented business leader will get a chance.

www.irishtimes.com/ireland/dublin/2023/09/04/owen-keegan-bows-out-after-10-years-as-dublin-city-council-chief-executive/
and
www.independent.ie/regionals/dublin/dublin-news/dublin-city-council-confirms-date-for-owen-keegan-to-retire-as-ceo/a960772956.html

Dublin City Council, Politics, , ,

Ireland is riding the wave! In a BAD BAD way!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller

21,926 new infections today and that is not even the highest number in the current wave. But for tiny Ireland it is a HUGE number! A good reality check is always to compare it to other countries assuming that Ireland was their size, so let’s have a look how we fare:

Let’s pick some of the worst affected countries in Europe and the USA. The list below shows their respective population and also the factor with which we need to multiply the Irish cases):

Ireland (4,937,786) Factor 1
Germany (83,783,942) Factor 16.97
France (65,273,511) Factor 13.22
Spain (46,754,778) Factor 9.47
Italy (60,461,826) Factor 12.24
UK (67,886,011) Factor 13.75
USA (331,002,651) Factor 67.03

Applying this multiplication factor to the Irish new cases number will get us this:
If Ireland was the size of……. we would have……..cases.

Ireland 21,926
Size of Germany 372,084
Size of France 289,861
Size of Spain 207,639
Size of Italy 268,374
Size of UK 301,482
Size of USA 1,469,699

21,926 is a BIG number of daily cases but when we look at absolute number we could think that it is not sooo serious. But let’s now compare the “if Ireland was the size of…” numbers with the REAL numbers and I picked the highest number from the other countries from the last three days. (All data taken from Worldometers.info)

Ireland 21,926
Size of Germany 372,084 — ACTUAL number: 63,191
Size of France 289,861 — ACTUAL number: 261,481
Size of Spain 207,639 — ACTUAL number: 137,180
Size of Italy 268,374 — ACTUAL number: 219,434
Size of UK 301,482 — ACTUAL number: 194,709
Size of USA 1,469,699 — ACTUAL number: 751,512

If you compare these figures, Ireland is doing ATROCIOUSLY bad! The numbers here are higher than in ALL the “badly affected” countries above.

But maybe the other countries had their peak at an earlier time and Ireland is just a little behind!? Possible, right?

So here are the highest numbers ever of these countries, compared to today’s Irish rate if Ireland was the size of these countries. And the result is SHOCKING!

Ireland 21,926
Size of Germany 372,084 — HIGHEST number: 79,051
Size of France 289,861 — HIGHEST number: 322,894
Size of Spain 207,639 — HIGHEST number: 137,180
Size of Italy 268,374 — HIGHEST number: 219,434
Size of UK 301,482 — HIGHEST number: 218,705
Size of USA 1,469,699 — HIGHEST number: 1,018,935

(Spain has reported 372,766 cases on 03 Jan, but since they accumulate the cases from the last three days in that number, I left this week’s number as the highest.)

The only country that EVER had a higher number of new cases than today’s Irish case numbers is France.

We were all shocked when we heard about the 1 million cases in the USA, but if you put in in proportion to the numbers in Ireland, then the USA is doing quite well. We are significantly worse than the UK or the USA, but we shake our heads over the situation across the water to the East and the West.

And compare the Irish numbers to Germany!?!?! How can Ireland do THAT bad?

What went wrong? Why is Ireland doing sooo badly? Did the government and NPHET totally fail us? Are they absolutely useless in the current situation? A shower of useless %&*$§?

Or are they guilt free and all blame is with us, the people who live in Ireland and party and meet up like it is 2019?

And WHY do our media outlets (or the opposition parties) not run comparisons like the one above to show how badly Ireland fares and then demand answers from the people in charge?

And it gets worse! The Irish Times reported on 06 Jan in an article entitled “Tens of thousands of infections not captured in official figures” that since the beginning of December at least 380,000 maybe even up to 500,000 were not captured, according to official figures. So with 31 days in December that means that the daily new cases were underreported by between 12,000 and 16,000 cases. And that means we could have DOUBLE the currently reported numbers. SHOCKING!

Corona Virus, Covid-19, Health System, Politics, Society, ,
 
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