I read about that bicycle shelter on RTE and in spite of the OPW's lame response to try to explain it, I thought it sounded extremely expensive. Then when I saw the photo of it in the Irish Indo - holy fcuk, it's even worse than that. IME such debacles are usually due to sloppiness, apathy, naivety ...

Anyone see the puff piece on RTE news yesterday about the new charging hub in Mullingar? Nice bit of free advertising for SSE yet nothing from inept RTE about how much charging would cost. Somebody on the other site dug out a figure of 80 cent per kWh. Now according to RTE: "Each ultra-rapid ba...

Fair play to you for making the effort and for keeping going for as long as you did.

The artist UBI is 325 quid a week, if I got that it would do me just fine. If I was working, I would retire. Others might not be able to retire with their current level of expenditure but a UBI could encourage them to evaluate their lives, become more frugal and and make other changes so they could ...

I had to Google this story as hadn't heard about it before this thread. That in itself is telling. What is also telling are the knots that idiots are tying themselves in trying to defend this. If it's about "power", is it acceptable to call a black police officer (of which there are many i...

Who is providing them with tents and how is this funded. This looks like another example of farce and theatre that we are fond of in this country in lieu of planning for anything. Are tents being bought from a for profit private company by one taxpayer funded NGO - while the taxpayer funded county c...

I remember watching a Top Ten punk bands programme on Ch4 in the early 00s, IIRC The Stranglers were at no.3. Burnel was interviewed and looked very youthful. He aged significantly since then though - not exactly a surprise. Anyone got Burnel's Euroman Cometh album? I love the Freddie Laker/Concorde...

The irony of your story is that if you talk to any of the so called experts, they'll tell you to always buy a name brand as you'll never get parts for the spurious ones. :D I think in my case the mower lasted so long that Honda had probably stopped producing a lot of the parts for it a long time ag...

My parents and I had a Honda walk behind lawnmower for over 30 years, Cast aluminium deck, shaft drive. In that time it just had oil/plug/filter changes and the occasional blade sharpening. Then it developed a problem with the drive and I could find nobody to even look at it. "shur that yoke is...

Some good ones there that I had forgotten. Tank and Walk On By - brilliant. Have to say though that while Always the Sun was probably the first Stranglers song I ever hear, I think that era was when they were declining badly. All Day/All Night is nowhere near as a good a cover as Walk On By was. The...

I found a mix CD I made of my favourite Stranglers songs - what a super band they were, at least for the first few albums. They started to slip in the mid 80s and I'm not familiar with any of their work post Hugh Cornwell. I was born in the late 70s so this isn't a case of thinking that the music th...

This is probably the strongest point yerman in the video made : watching your state of charge risks becoming an obsession and distracting you from the act of driving. From what I've been reading, it does seem like EVs are most suitable for/promoted by people who love predictable routine in their li...

Further to this is that the claimed range is for optimum conditions. Now I know they pull that trick for ICE cars too but you can reasonably expect an ICE car to perform the same whether you drive it on a wet day or a dry day, in daylight or in darkness or whether it's the 31st July or 31st Decembe...

For years, I was looking forward to buying an EV, I was doing over 60k kms per year and a home charged EV would have saved me a huge amount in fuel costs. However despite my techno optimism that suitable and cheap EVs would arrive "next year", IMO and taking into account the cost of and is...

Yes - old steel pipe fitted snugly over the end of the spanner. Spanner is a "one-ended" version, sold for use on 1.5" plumbing fittings, with a slight taper on the handle, so it jams into the pipe nicely. I still think you are getting leakage unless you BATE the spanner into the pip...

They don't look that bad and the fact that some came off easily enough is a good sign - this 1.5 metre extension, you are using it with a spanner? How well is the spanner fitting with the extension, are you getting "leakage". I have a feeling that if you were to acquire a 1.5 inch socket a...

Just watching Prime Time there Jennifer Carroll was mentioned as a possible candidate. Christ. I'd say she's lethal.

Fratboy, divisive, gaffe prone Taoiseach, was he ever suitable for the role or even to be a TD. I assume now that he won't be running in the next GE as he doesn't seem the sort who would be willing to retreat to the back benches IF he were to get elected. Hopefully M. Martin will go too. In some way...

You are being too generous IMO. There were lots of highly qualified people throughout the world who, in 2020, pointed out how wrong it was to lock down, prevent people from going about their business, don masks, put any credibility in the PCR tests and so on. That 'our lot' followed instructions fr...

Report from the Comptroller & Auditor General https://www.audit.gov.ie/en/find-report/publications/2023/special-report-114-emergency-procurement-of-ventilators-by-the-health-service-executive.pdf I'll be generous to the HSE and say they were dealing with a panic situation and with hindsight it i...

When humans panic, they lose the run of themselves and there will always be opportunists ready to pounce in these situations. Combine that with narcissism, hubris and techno optimism and we get the "let's make ventilators" stuff from around this time in 2020. Also, remember the carefully c...

I've lost any respect I had for Family Carers Ireland (NGO supposedly representing carers) over this. Yesterday on six one news, a representative made several false statements. Said that a Yes vote would place an "onus" on the state to support carers. She then used the example of the carer...

Tens seems to be a problematic term, I've never heard anyone call the 1910s the tens either but it's normal to say the twenties, thirties, forties etc.

True enough. But do many know when to consider the need for a defib unit, I doubt it. Who has the courage to make the decision that someone needs a shock to the heart to help them. Thats the thing that would worry me. If you use a defib unit on someone who does not need it, what harm can you do apa...

My understanding is that there is very little training needed to use an AED, the main thing is to keep a cool head and get working immediately. CPR requires more skill but even so, if you do it somewhat correctly it can still make a difference. If someone goes into cardiac arrest you ideally need to...