We slipped Rashers Tierney into a pair of wellies back in September and sent him off to report from the muck on how the country cousins were faring at one of Europe’s largest agricultural events. There’s a few gatherings in Irish society that send our media into full on bombastic broadcasting mode. Events where each and every outlet competes to bay with excitement about excruciatingly irrelevant competitions, hashtags and en … Read More
Divide and Conquer.
The Great Wall is a studied meditation on the nature of borders in the 21st Century. On one side we have the towering urban powerhouses of capital and on the other the wretched of the earth. Throw in a chilling soundtrack, stunning cinematics, a riff on Franz Kafka and you’ve a work that puts a dose of dystopian shits right up ya. Rashers Tierney had a tick for tack with the … Read More
Under The Tree.
One of our readers sent us in this sorry tale of penny pinching by a Spar store on Capel St. It seems you’ll find everything under the tree bar a one cent coin. It touches on some of those calls for one cent coins to be scrapped last year. Here’s what Hipnosis had they had to say for themselves: “Pissed off, I rarely venture into that Spar on Capel St. … Read More
Who’s Afraid Of The Dark?
A UK lobby group has published a report identifying the “culture of fear” that stymies a night time economy estimated to run at £66 Billion a year. The report comes right at a time when London gets a 24 hour tube. One can only imagine what a similar report would have to say about our own archaic Dancehall Act. Finish up their lads. Have you no homes to … Read More
Where Everybody Owns A Share.
The media vaunts tech gurus and metric driven social entrepreneurs as elevated beings with cures for all our ills but cooperatives have been answering our needs for a lot longer. Rashers Tierney sets out, dictaphone in hand, and finds a form of community led organisation that brought life to derelict parts of the city, wades in against rural isolation and keeps boozers open in Britain. Most of us have some … Read More
#lookup: Chq This Out.
Chris McCall takes a look at a free jacks on the North Quays and provides us with a complementary parable on the state we’re in. I found myself on the North Wall during daylight with an hour to kill and a bladder to empty. I decided to look in to the CHQ Building for the craic. There wasn’t any, but at least I didn’t have to pay to use the … Read More
May The First Be With You.
In the early 2000’s, activist Joe Carolan cut an unmistakable figure at demonstrations in our dirty old town. For the last decade however he’s been working in New Zealand with the Unite union which, on May 1st of all days, won a victory in the struggle for McDonald’s workers’ rights. Rashers Tierney picked his brains on how they did it. How did an Irish “red” with a fondness for Johnny … Read More
Krugman: Your Government Hates You.
Economist Paul Krugman appeared on BBC’s Newsnight on Tuesday. He spoke about Austerity Europe and agreed with Kevin O’Rourke’s summation that our government is working against our best interests. Professor Krugman said: “I talked to some Irish economists. They’re pointing out that the government in Ireland is really acting against the interests of the people of Ireland but in its own interests by saying oh look, we’re good, we’re anti, … Read More
In The Arms Of An Expert.
Conor McCabe is bringing a little humour to the tedium with his collages and his reports from the Banking Inquiry. Here’s one fine example: “When I was a child in primary school my way of dealing with Irish class was to find a word in the question that matched a word in the text and hope for the best. The sentence I would find would be the one I’d … Read More
Solidarity When It Suits.
The oft-maligned Luke Ming Flanagan shared a few thoughts after a meeting of finance ministers he attended this morning. This is taken from a Facebook post he shared earlier: “I was at an ECON meeting this morning (Economics & Monetary Affairs) at which two Finance Ministers, Wolfgang Schauble (Germany) and Pier Carlo Padoan (Italy) were the guest speakers. For obvious reasons I was particularly interested in hearing what Wolfgang had to … Read More