Joerg's Ramblings – Page 13 – A Foreigner in Ireland

Ryanair does hate you!

01 September 2018Written by Joerg Steegmueller

It must be hate for its customers, there is no other way I could explain the constant messing around with the rules for baggage. I can’t even keep up with it anymore and to keep it that way, I have to admit that I am going out of my way to avoid flying with Ryanair. Oddly, I like Ryanair – or at least what it had wanted to and did achieve. Without Ryanair we would still pay super high ticket prices for highly inefficient airlines. Ryanair got others to tighten their ship (or plane) to get more efficient and to reduce the profit margins. Thank you, Ryanair!

But now they are changing the baggage rules again and it is ALWAYS getting worse for their customers. We never wanted to bring a huge suitcase on board, we would all prefer to check in our luggage, but Ryanair forced us to re-think. They thought that it would reduce cost for them because baggage handling at the airport is expensive. But people continually increased their bags (despite the bag size checker at the gate) to bring on board and that delayed planes.

Then the told us that Priority customers can still bring their 10kg bag on board, but the rest had to hand it over at the boarding gate (initially they wanted you to check it hand luggage at check in – the contradiction! – , but that was changed) and only a Laptop-sized bag was allowed on board. But the handed over hand-luggage that was to be carried in the hold of the plane was not charged extra.

Now the new change is that UNLESS you pay for priority boarding you will now have to pay for your hand luggage as well. Ryanair claims that they are making this change because planes are getting delayed because people bring too much hand luggage. This is TOTAL nonsense. Since there was a definite 10kg limit for ONE bag only, they can’t bring more than 10kg in one bag. So NO the planes are not delayed because of too much hand luggage. And the ONLY reason why we bring lots of hand luggage anyway is because Ryanair pushed us in the direction of the check-in-luggage-free flight.

You really could get the impression that Ryanair hates their employees (especially pilots and flight attendants) and even more so, they seem to hate us so much that they even lie to us. :-O

www.rte.ie/news/2018/0823/987129-ryanair-hand-luggage/

Irish, Tourism cabin baggage, hand luggage, Priority Boarding, Ryanair

LUAS Drivers at it again – Row over stupid stuff!

01 September 2018Written by Joerg Steegmueller

Luas Drivers, or rather their union is causing problems again and you have to read this full article as published by RTE.ie to understand how ridiculous the issue is and how unions are (not all, but most!) at total waste of space!

The row is over where 13 LUAS drivers (out of 67) have to have their lunch. Because they can’t have it where they might have parked their car and where they start their shift, they seemingly want compensation. The reason is because they can’t bring a packed lunch anymore but will now have to buy their lunch.

Transdev, their employer, nicely placated them and offers to provide Cooler Bags for lunch transport purposes instead of additional money. Ooops, that’s not what they wanted.

Read that article, it is nearly hilarious!

Dublin, Traffic Cooler Bag, LUAS, SIPTU, Transdev, unions

Misguided Pope Outrage! Focus on the real issues!

25 August 2018Written by Joerg Steegmueller

Interesting, these complaints about the Pope’s visit! There is a level of outrage on Facebook that starts getting overboard. I don’t have a problem with people not being keen on the Pope or the Catholic Church or this event. I myself am not a big Pope fan and I won’t go to Phoenix Park or Croke Park, but I have an issue with lies and half-truths, just to justify a bigger “amount” of outrage.

Here are some of the arguments:
1) The horrible pope is costing us 32 mio. taxpayers money.
2) Nobody wants to see the Pope, but he will cost us lots of money.
3) Because of the Pope homeless people will have to stay off the streets over the weekend
4) It is the Pope’s fault that I can’t get out of my house on Sunday

Let’s do a fact check on these reasons for outrage:

1) The horrible pope is costing us 32 mio. taxpayers money.
It is indeed estimated that the visit might cost 32 mio, although nobody really knows yet the exact amount. Of the 32 mio I read that 20mio, the Catholic church is paying and the rest is paid by the state. So then it is 12mio instead of 32mio! In addition, the 32mio is not that huge in comparison to recent state visits: When Obama and the Queen where in Ireland, the combined visit did cost 36mio and of that amount about 15mio were paid DIRECTLY to the Gardai.
Interestingly, most of the 32mio will be paid to people and for services or products in Ireland, so that means the money is staying in the economy and then cycling money is often an important process to stimulate the economy. And why is the whole thing costing that much, well because close to 600,000 people have to be accommodated and a international guest has to be protected.
Look at it this way: The promoter of a big “popstar” has discovered that there is an audience that wants to see that performer. The promoter is certainly keen to run the gig and bring the performer to the country. If no one had requested tickets, there would be no gig in Phoenix Park!

2) Nobody wants to see the Pope, but he will cost us lots of money.
When the invite went out at least 500,000 tickets were requested and this is a lot more than “nobody”. Now protesters will tell you that they all have requested 12 or 24 or thousands of tickets and have no intention to use them. You could argue that this is not very tolerant and open minded, but let’s look at it from a different angle. If we assume that the cost of the visit is 32 mio and 600,000 tickets have been given out, then the 24 tickets a protester might have secured will cost 24 x 53 Euro. So complaining about the cost and sitting on tickets sounds a little hypocritical.
If the fans buy up all the (free) tickets, then the promoter has to prepare for a BIG gig. He can not assume that half of the fans won’t appear.

3) Because of the Pope homeless people will have to stay off the streets over the weekend.
Actually I would be surprised if the Pope had requested or even demanded that!! But maybe it is our government who doesn’t want to seem to have nothing done in that area. So why are people criticising the Pope over the homeless situation this weekend and not the government?
Yes, I know, the 32 mio could have helped a few homeless, but it is not that we would provide housing for everyone if these 32 mio hadn’t been spent. Last year we didn’t know yet that the Pope would come and we still didn’t spend 32mio or even 2 additional mio. It is not the Pope’s fault that the money is not spent where it is needed.

4) It is the Pope’s fault that I can’t get out of my house on Sunday.
Ohh, did he make the plans for traffic diversions and restrictions? Sure if he didn’t come, there would be no traffic restrictions, but the traffic restrictions are caused by the large amount of people that MIGHT come (including the unused protester tickets!) and also by the Gardai in Ireland. Not by the Pope or by the Church! Oh and by the way, the Phoenix Park neighbours who complain so loudly should just for a GAA weekend swap with people around Croke Park to realise how good they have it ALL year every year apart from the odd Pope visit every 40 years or so.

There are LOTs of things you can have a serious issue with the Catholic Church over, but people should stick to the real issues like child abuse and hypocrisy and the attitude to women and LGBTs etc. Yes you can get outraged about all that and you have every right to be. But getting outraged with a person or an organisation over nonsense like road closures etc is just weakening the correct and important discussion about all the other issues.

On Monday the Pope is gone again, I wonder what will cause the next wave of outrage. :-O

So, that’s my outrage sorted! LOL

Catholic, Dublin Pope

Scandalous Church!

18 August 2018Written by Joerg Steegmueller

It is less than a week now until the Pope will be in Dublin and up to 500,000 people from all over Ireland will assemble in Phoenix Park for a mass (which seems to me far above the number of normal weekly mass goers, but that’s only an unimportant side observation).

It will probably be the biggest event in Dublin in my lifetime and in addition it is free, but I have decided that I will not go to Phoenix Park. I would have access to tickets and I even could have sang in a humongous 5000 people big choir that sings at the Phoenix Park Mass or in a 1000 people strong choir in Croke Park, but I will stay at home instead.

It is not the Pope that gets me to stay away, I actually think he is one of the most progressive Popes (if these two words “progressive” and “Pope” are even compatible) that ever was in that job. But I also think that he is heading a rotten organisation that refuses to see its own rottenness.

I am raised catholic, I would call myself somewhere between “a la carte” catholic and “spiritual” (whatever that means!) and even go to mass regularly because I am involved with a Gospel Choir, so I am definitely not a church hater. I even think that the community that a grass roots church provides is a positive thing, but so is a community that a sports club or music club or even an atheist group provides.

But the thing that gets me really upset and annoyed is when there is hypocrisy.

300 priests in Pennsylvania abusing thousands of kids and a few years ago the scandal in Boston and all the cover ups and Ireland had its own scandalous Church. How can these animals look in a mirror?

I know plenty of great and caring priests and nuns and I know that not everyone is like that, BUT an organisation that can have that level of horrible behaviour that even condones or at least covers it up is rotten to the core and should be broken up!

Catholic Church, Pope

Weather Shambles in Ireland!? Can we handle the weather?

11 August 2018Written by Joerg Steegmueller

Before I start into this article, let me state – for the avoidance of any doubt – that neither the Irish government nor Irish Water can be made responsible for the weather. Irish politicians would probably love to lay claim to organising the most suitable weather for their constituents and Irish Water is never at fault about anything at all anyway, but we will have to let them off the hook regarding their weather responsibility. :-)

The question that I came across during the week does, however, have something to do with Irish authorities and with their ability (or not!) to forward plan and to do what we need them to do when it comes to weather challenges.

Weather is an important topic in Ireland! We love to talk about it and even more to complain about it. We don’t really have any weather extremes, but you wouldn’t know that if you listen to weather news or read just a normal newspaper.

Oddly, though, we seriously struggle as soon as something out of the ordinary (i.e. 13 degrees and scattered showers) happens. If we have 2 cm of snow, the country comes to a stand still. Traffic collapses, schools close and the country stops operating. On the other end: Give us around 20 degrees for a few weeks with no significant rain fall and we are (nearly) running out of drinking water.

Is this normal? Well, there are countries in Europe that regularly have significant snow fall and just keep going. And there are other countries where they know they will have hardly any drop of rain from Spring until end of Autumn and still, people will water their lawn and drinking water is plentifully available.

We claim that we are not used to it and therefore we struggle dealing with it. Hmmmm, Middle Europe (around Germany) had temperatures of above 35 degrees for well over a week and they are also not used to it, but life continues. Water is still there despite very little rain this year. Mallorca, Fuerteventura and the south of Spain (just to mention a few popular places) have no rain at all in the summer, but there doesn’t seem to be a hosepipe ban. And if we look at the other end of the year: Snow is never guaranteed in parts of Middle Europe. But if there is snow, then they deal with it and continue!

When will we start to prepare for increasing temperatures, lack of rain and occasional snow? The holes in the water pipes need to be plugged asap, we need more deep wells to get better water than surface water and we need to think about water desalination.

But what about winter time? We now do have salt and we have snow ploughs and still there is panic and mayhem. Do we need new rules? Make Winter tyres compulsory? Make it compulsory that house owners clean the footpath?

What do you think would fix the problems in summer and in winter?

Environment, Odd, Politics Ireland, Irish Water, Weather