4 posts tagged “dublin”
From this morning's Guardian:
A "green" budget airline was criticised by environmental campaigners yesterday after it admitted advertising for actors to make up passenger numbers to ensure it reached an airport quota.
The Exeter-based carrier apparently needed phantom farepayers because of a dispute with Norwich international airport over passenger numbers.
To avoid a £280,000 penalty, Flybe also put its own staff on standby to fill seats, laid on extra flights, and offered free trips. Flybe was 172 people short of its 15,000 annual target on the Norwich-to-Dublin route and placed an advert on the website StarNow.com, to find extras who could be "customers".
It increased the Dublin flights from three to 11 this weekend, offering 200 free return tickets, though in the end did not use any actors.
The row is a huge embarrassment for an airline claiming to have environmental credentials, having last year launched an "eco-labelling" scheme, telling passengers how much carbon dioxide and noise levels are generated by each flight.
"We have a responsibility to reduce the carbon emissions produced by our aircraft," it announced.
A spokesman for Greenpeace said Flybe's environmental efforts were a sham. "This just shows there is no such thing as an environmentally-responsible carrier. These revelations are indicative of the binge-flying culture where environmental considerations come so far down the list of priorities as to be virtually ignored."
A Flybe spokesman said the airline regretted its move but said that Norwich airport had shown "petty behaviour" in refusing to accept a compromise deal and in "forcing" it to run superfluous flights.
Now that's not very "Green", is it? Wonder what they'll do next to improve their image...
Today's Irish Independent carries an interesting story about Irish students turning to prostitution to help survive financially:
The Irish Independent has learned that many students are turning to prostitution to fund increasingly costly college lifestyles, in some cases estimated at more than €7,000 a year.
One student confirmed he was working as an escort to fund his way through college and was earning from €160 for an hour to €500 for a 12-hour overnight stay.
And adverts by male and female students, some as young as 18, are selling their services on the internet forum "Escort Ireland Network".
One agency said students could earn up to €135 an hour as an escort, with the potential of earning €2,000 a week.
Student prostitution has become a serious problem in other European countries, particularly in Britain.
Education Minister Mary Hanafin said she was "appalled" that any young person would turn to prostitution and pointed out there was assistance available for students with financial difficulties.
But Labour's Education spokesperson, Jan O'Sullivan, called on the department to take "responsibility" for the situation.
"This is definitely an indication that going to college is getting increasingly costly. It's very worrying that student's feel they have to go to such lengths," she said.
Some of those advertising their services on websites include: * "A good looking 19-year-old Waterford student" who said he was a "tall, fit and attractive student badly in need of a few quid".
*A 21-year-old female student called "Lady Lisa" who was "trying to earn some cash.
"I am new to this, but very open minded," she added.
One student, who did not want to be named, told how he got involved through another friend who was also on the game.
'Alan' deals only with gay men and is using it as a way to fund his studies.
The final year student has been working as a male prostitute for the past three years but says he would "die" if his family or friends found out.
The 21-year-old started off with a gay escort agency in Cork and there were four other students also working there.
In Dublin, he said, there were more students on the scene.
At least three escort agencies, Teasers in Limerick, Dublin-based CityWest Models and Dublin Models, advertise the fact they have student on their books.
Incredible.
And I, like the chump I am, scraped through by playing piano in bars and restaurants... when all that time I could have been whoring myself across Dublin.
<sigh>
Show us a picture of where you used to be.
However, as this is an 'all ages' blog, I won't recount them here.
From this morning's Guardian paper, a great review of yesterday's Ireland v England rugby match in Dublin. As you'll see from the post below, Ireland won, and I was mildly pleased. To say the least. This article takes a brief look at the historical importance of yesterday's game.
History laid to rest as Dublin welcomes old enemy. (Euan Ferguson)
"We were waiting a full minute for it: one whole, long minute, perhaps the least it could have been, for it covered 87 years. At 5.31 yesterday evening, under high arc lights, the all of it - the vast green pitch, the 80,000 souls, the history, the tension - surrounded by the low black hills cupping the city of Dublin, the first strains rang out at Croke Park of God Save The Queen
The first England team to play rugby at 'Croker', sacred home of Gaelic football, had a few minutes earlier taken to the pitch safely, successfully, to cheers, from both travelling fans and many Irish: the memories literally buried within that pitch, memories of Bloody Sunday, of English perfidy, of the beginnings of the Irish Free State, are now just that: memories. Ireland has, officially, moved on.
By half past seven, Ireland had moved on in the most exuberant way imaginable. Not just by welcoming England, without blood or rancour, but by sending them home quite chagrined on the sporting field: the deserved 43-13 victory of Brian O'Driscoll's men, with Isaac Boss's last-minute interception the crowning plume on their stamp of superiority, may just be how this night sits most happily in its place in history.
There had been talk, threat, dark mutterings, of demonstrations. In the end, a smattering of Republican Sinn Fein representatives behaved rather well in the rain behind a barricade on the Lower Drumcondra Road, while women gardai sat atop police horses blocking off the Clonliffe Road. There was no riot.
In the stadium, an hour later, there was anger, whistles, booing - but the vast majority was against the dissenters. At 5.30 on the dot, as England lined up, and the crowd realised it was seconds before the massed bands of the Garda and Army played the opening chords of the national anthem, hoarse shouts rang out: harsh, guttered, sporadic, unorchestrated. Each time, they were met with a wave of 'Shhhh..!"
Seconds passed. A minute. Eventually, the crowd began to think the band was waiting for true silence, and laughter rang out, and applause, and a few seconds later the drums began, and the singing, and after the singing, the cheers. The only vexed hint of ill spirit came, quite legitimately, two minutes later, when Jonny Wilkinson ran up for his first spot-kick, but the booing was, surely, fine by then. We were into the game - the real reason so many were there - not into the history.
You could sense palpable relief as the game got into its swing, particularly so as Irish faces creased wider with each minute; savage enmity might be forgotten, but it's still bloody good to beat the English. The day had gone far better than hoped. The president had shaken English hands. Jerusalem had been sung, even before the Fields of Athenry. No mobs had formed, no horses had charged, no ghosts had visibly risen.
Just after 9.30 yesterday morning a soft smirr of rain was falling in north Dublin: Ireland's usual February morning rain, from an otherwise bright blue sky. It slid gently off the wheelie-bins in the front yards of Clonliffe Road, landing on the resigned scowls of the garden gnomes: it irritated the gardai getting into early place all around Croke Park, and collars were shrugged high against the long day ahead. It actually helped Vincent O'Sullivan, scrubbing the side of his house with a hefty wire brush.
'No Crossley Tenders Beyond This Point.' The graffiti had appeared an hour or so before, carefully stencilled, in blue paint, and Vincent had the police at the front door to tell him about it. 'They caught the boy pretty much in the act, got the photos and all. He smiled, a big open smile. 'Ach, well. I should get it off soon enough, not that bothered. The wall's coming off easier than the paint. Crossley Tenders? Some kind of old British army thing?'
For those who choose to remember, yes: very much a British army thing. An armoured car, developed in France early during World War I to carry a Lewis gun and 10 armed men. They were used, on Sunday 21 November, 1920, to carry Empire soldiers, native English and the despised 'Black and Tans', into Croke Park where they opened fire on the crowd at a Gaelic football game between Dublin and Tipperary. Fourteen innocents died, including a boy and the Tipperary captain; it became known as Bloody Sunday. The first Bloody Sunday; this being Ireland, it wouldn't be the last.
Croker - proud home to the most popular amateur sport in the world, Gaelic football - and, until two years ago, about as likely to open its 100 turnstiles to the 'foreign' sports of rugby and football as the Vatican would coat itself orange. But, in 2005, The Gaelic Athletics Association decided, momentously and controversially, to join the rest of the new, modern Ireland: to decide that there was more to the land today than Michael Collins and Patrick Pearse. To let rugby be played there, for the first time, while Lansdowne Road is being refurbished. To let the English sing, for the first time, God Save the Queen
And, it has to be said, on the evidence of 24 hours spent in Dublin beforehand, it's the attitude of Vincent O'Sullivan, with his dry humour and wire brush, which is so far winning out over the thrawn anger of those with the paint.
Partly, of course, because Ireland has moved on. Take a walk round central Dublin, starting in Pembroke Street, moving round to Lower Baggot Street. Start at Number 28, in the first street, where, at nine o'clock on that morning in 1920, on the word of Michael Collins, Captain Leonard Price was the first to die. Two colonels, another captain and a major died next in the same boarding-house: all were undercover members of the 'Cairo Gang' of British spies in Dublin. In Lower Baggot Street, a Captain 'Newbury' was shot in front of his wife while climbing out of the window. In all, 14 British agents died. It was vicious. But the over-reaction in Croke Park that afternoon, against innocents, is credited with uniting a nation. The Irish Free State began to be born that day.
Number 28 now stands between the Rhubarb Deli and a coffee shop called Insomnia. The window from which Leonard was left hanging now sits above a Pilates studio and the Chai-Yo Asian restaurant. The local evening paper carries a supplement in Polish. It's all terribly Celtic Tiger, terribly modern - and a little bit irritating after a while as I try to find a slightly older Dublin. Thankfully, around the corner, are the old pubs, spilling out with laughing souls and chilly smokers, and the first carries the happily unpretentious sign: 'James Toner's. A Pub.'
Here, and in the Dawson Lounge, which calls itself 'Dublin's smallest pub', and in the heaving smoking-patio of the Oliver St John Gogarty, bang in the middle of the Anglo - and drunk-friendly Temple Bar area, the talk is not of Crossley Tenders and far from Michael Collins. It is between English and Irish, about Jonny Wilkinson and whether he'll play, and his likelihood to 'drop one in the last fecking minute'; and they're having fun with the English over pronounciation, particularly when it comes to Dun Laoghaire. Sometimes, among the Dubliners, talk grows a little darker, but even then it's about the game. 'We can't lose, not against England. But forget the Michael Collins thing; it's not about that, not much. We just really, really want to beat England again; doesn't everyone?'
It had been tempting, the night before, to read much into the big guys with fake ginger beards and giant leprechaun hats, dancing to the Gypsy Kings along with four guys in English shirts. Tempting symbolism until you realised they were all Young Farmers from Surrey.
But, Dublin confusion aside, a great many enough seemed to be willing this city, to move on. To move on at 5.30 pm And, later, as they walked past that house in their thousands, after Ireland's triumph, the walls of Vincent's house were clean. The graffiti, the emotion, had gone. And more than a little history."
