Feckoff.net

Go read this blog post right now. It describes very well precisely what’s wrong with modern Ireland and should be published in the newspapers.

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As seen on last night’s Questions and Answers. This is the most moving thing I’ve ever seen on television. Please repost this video on your own blog or whatever to bring as much attention as possible to it, and thus as much shame as possible on the government and the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland. Maybe then they might admit some responsibility and treat the victims properly.

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Judging by the reaction of the Fianna Fail (no, there is not a fada missing there) faithful on Joe Duffy’s whineline today, George Lee putting himself up for nomination as the Fine Gael candidate for the Dublin South by-election has really given them a sound kick up the hole. Thus I approve. More please.

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A few of the regulars over at The Property Pin have put together a template for people to use to complain to the EU authorities about Fianna Fáil’s latest stroke – their builder bailout that stands to cost the Irish taxpayer billions of euros whilst putting anyone foolish enough to go for one of their falsely titled Home Choice Loans (not much choice considering you can only buy a new build house with one) in negative equity.

See here for the details. The more people that complain, the better.
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This was posted on youtube way back in June after the Lisbon Treaty referendum and is even more relevant now, given the events of the past week.

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All this evening’s radio news shows and the RTE Six-one news are talking about how one of the Fianna Fail backbenchers has quit the party over the over 70’s medical card fiasco. Now a few other TDs are sticking their oar in and the greens are making noises about putting an ultimatum to their coalition “partners”, i.e. reverse the decision on the medical cards or they walk.

I would love to see the current shower in government take a fall, but there’s a small part of me that would also be sad to see it, because whoever takes over from them is going to inherit their shitstorm. It would be nice to see them take some punishment for their utter mismanagement of the country.

More details.

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Brian Lenihan just delivered his Budget 2009 speech. One again, Ireland’s motorists get screwed. He’s added 8 cents per litre on to petrol, and has increased the VAT rate by 0.5%, which brings our fuel prices roughly into parity with UK prices. He’s also hiking motor tax by 4% for all cars below 2.5 litres or in CO2 bands A-D, depending on which idiotic system your car falls into. Cars with bigger engines will be hit with an extra 5%, because as we all know, big engines are the work of the devil. Tax on diesel fuel has stayed where it is, most likely because they’re trying to shove everyone over to diesel just to try and minimise their already massive Kyoto CO2 bill. Since the other pollutants in diesel aren’t counted for that, they don’t care about them.

Oh, there’s also this: “Levy of €200 on employees for car parking in major urban areas” – because our public transport system is so fucking awesome.

Pretty much the only good thing about motoring in Ireland was our relatively cheap (by EU standards) fuel, and now they’ve crushed that. We’ve got awful roads and punitive taxes on everything to do with driving.

Here’s a quick run-down of what other changes they’re making.
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I had to transport some stuff to north Dublin today which meant I had to drive there. What a pain in the ass. It took an hour to get from Newlands Cross to the Red Cow roundabout, followed then by the usual M50 bullshit. I’m glad I wasn’t going southbound though – nothing was moving on that side of the M50. Apparently a pedestrian overpass collapsed further south and fucked the whole thing up.

Because of that, I went back home through the city centre, which was fine until I hit the Naas Road again. Further bumper to bumper bolloxology, all caused by two out of the three lanes being closed all of a sudden, and this being Ireland no bastard will let you merge.

:stress:

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Brian Cowen has announced that the infamous Fianna Fail tent at the Galway Races is no more.

Some of the posters over at The Property Pin had some amusing comments to make on it:

daltonr

Brian’s no fool.

Scraps the tent.
Avoids having to face the builders.
And comes accross as cleaner than Bertie, clean slate, no more FF tied to the builders.

Nice one BC.

kerrynorth

They’re downsizing to a telephone box – they are not expecting many solvent builders at Galway this year.

verbatim

He knows that being seen to be cosy with builders when the full scale of the mugging of young Irish people becomes apparent over the next couple of years won’t be a wise move.

conor_mc

I disagree, in the 70’s they were probably the farmers party with the IFA pulling the strings. In the 80’s, it was the industrialists like Goodman, Smurfit and co.

They’ll move on to the next profitable donor-industry now – this is as sure a sign as you’ll get that property has had it day. BC is cutting the apron-strings, the CIF are on their own now.

I have to say I agree with most of them. As anyone who knows me already knows, I’m no fan of Fianna Fail but its refreshing to see the new Taoiseach making some changes that appear to be for the greater good, even if there are possible ulterior motives that can explain them.

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I took a drive down to Mahon Falls in Waterford today. Its a natural beauty spot in the Comeragh Mountains, easily accessible by road from Dungarvan or Carrick on Suir. It was beautifully sunny on the way down but once I got up into the mountains the clouds became very low and dark very fast.

I’ve put a few photos on Flickr here (took ages to upload a mere 20 or so MB, I need faster upload speed). I had another go at HDR although this time from only a single exposure. I used Nikon’s RAW software to generate JPEGs with 7 different exposure levels from the one RAW file (.NEF in Nikon land) and then fed those into Photomatix and fiddled about with it to get the following.

Straight from camera:

HDR’d up the ass:

Click the photos for the flickr page with full size versions available.

In the past I would never do anything more than cropping or rotating a bit to fix lopsided shots but I think this photo really benefited from the tone mapping shenanigans of Photomatix. Which do you prefer?

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