04.30.08
Posted in Domestic/Relationships at 9:20 pm by Sarah
Look, it’s terribly nice. He had a great suit. It’s a good swansong and very significant for Irish relations with the US.
BUT IT’S NOT HISTORIC.
All bloody day, historic this historic that.
It would be historic if he was the first but given that all three previous FG Taoisigh have addressed the joint houses too (Bruton, Garret and Cosgrave) and that WT, Dev and Sean T O’Ceallaigh also addressed either the joint houses or the Senate, then it’s NOT historic.
Most overused word EVER.
Bit heavy on the make-up. But jeez, Ted Kennedy coulda used some.
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Posted in Domestic/Relationships at 9:16 pm by Sarah
This is the ST column from two weeks ago – forgot to post..
It’s almost as if newspaper editors have a template for planning stories. Here’s the latest one. In Lahinch, Co. Clare permission has been granted for 114 housing units in the seaside village. An interesting angle is that the line-up of objectors includes an order of nuns who are worried about the anti-social consequences of more houses, or rather, more people. A careful reading of the reports leaves one completely uninformed on the merits of the development. It’s just the usual line up: greedy developers, NIMBY protestors and an incompetent council.
Is this the only planning story in Ireland? Are all councillors muck savages who rezone land for their developer mates? Are residents anything other than concerned about new development? Are officials either guilty of appalling decisions or martyred bureaucrats forced to act against their consciences by the moronic, but unfortunately democratically elected, representatives of the people?
Bad planning has left people without basic services while good planning that wasn’t followed up by necessary investment has turned some areas into ghettos. No one disputes that, but I am tired of the stereotypes. There must be more to planning than this cast of caricatures.
Let’s take the councillors. I know for a fact that there are councillors who have neither proposed land for rezoning nor voted in its favour unless its been approved by planning officials. Well, there’s a least one anyway; my excellent father whose been a councillor for over 40 years. All land rezoned residential in our home village of Enfield was proposed by officials, not councillors. While development has placed typical pressure on infrastructure, from water to public transport, most neutral observers would acknowledge that the village has grown at what’s called a “sustainable” rate.
The local population has increased dramatically but so has the population of the whole country. The 1991 census recorded 3.5 million people living in the country. By 2006 that was just over 4.2 million. We had to squeeze those 700,000 people in somewhere. Where were they supposed to live? In shoeboxes on the M50 hardshoulder? Alright, a lot did move into shoebox apartments not too far from the M50, but more are experiencing the joy of a 3 bed semi-d on the outskirts of our towns and cities.
Those houses had to be built and councillors and officials had to legislate for their construction. That might have discommoded the incumbents who believed a quiet street and a view was a fundamental human right, but the needs of the many outweighed the fortress mentality of the few. I suppose local authorities could have ordered our emigrants not to come home as they did in their tens of thousands in the 1990’s. If they told the immigrants to sod off and instituted a one-child policy, then yes, we could have avoided building housing developments. But this is not China and if our population increases, then we have to accommodate it.
Despite my bias in favour of councillors, I am willing to acknowledge that there have been occasional outbreaks of rezoning psychosis amongst our elected representatives. One of the more creative efforts was in Monaghan, where last year councillors voted to zone enough land to house an additional 100,000 people even though the county’s population was only 55,800. When it was pointed out to them at a Council meeting that one parcel of land near Ballybay was actually underwater, helpful suggestions regarding Venice and the potential to build on stilts were made. Thankfully, our system of local government was reformed in 2000 to protect us from the worst excesses of those we elect.
Under Section 31 of the 2000 Planning Act the Minister for the Environment has the power to direct councils to ignore councillor’s rezoning votes. Last July, John Gormley directed Monaghan County Council to scrap the zoning, carrying out threats made by his predecessor Dick Roche.
This Ministerial power has been used in two other cases. In 2006 Roche intervened in Laois where councillors wanted to provide enough houses for the entire population of the midlands. The other case was more interesting. In 2004, then Minister Martin Cullen ordered Dun Laoighre-Rathdown Council to zone land for housing. Its councillors had refused to do so in the face of opposition from the NIMBYs. Cullen said Dun Laoighre Rathdown was failing in its duty to provide sufficient housing and over-ruled opposition to development.
Still, one could argue that two cases of Ministerial prohibition on excess housing isn’t much. What about all the unserviced housing estates, holiday home madness and environmentally destructive ribbon development? Councillors are an easy target. What part do planners play in this game?
When councillors zone land for residential use, there is no obligation on planners to grant permission to build houses. Planners can refuse permission especially if there is no infrastructure, services or if there is more suitable land yet to be developed. A refusal of planning permission creates no liability for the council. Councillors can do their worst but officials still stand between them and the best interests of the people. If they have consistently granted permission in accordance with zoning, then we have to accept that one of three possibilities operates in each case.
If councillors corruptly rezone land, then planners grant permission corruptly too. I have no doubt that this is the case from time to time. As councillors trail in and out of the Mahon Tribunal it would be naive to believe that past planning travesties took place without the collusion of officials. George Redmond was caught, but you can bet there are more.
We should also consider that rezoning and subsequent development is often correct. In that case we need to get over the knee jerk reaction that zoning equates to either malevolence or incompetence.
The final possibility is that bad development, however misguided, is not the product of an inherently corrupt process, but rather the democratic will of the people. The core function of a planner is to implement the development plans which have been voted on, openly, by those whom the public elects. They might have the executive power to prevent disaster but they must also accept that councillors are accountable to the people, while officials are not. If the people consistently elect pro-development councillors, then why the headlines and complaints when development goes ahead?
People have a terrible habit of wanting what’s bad for them. Our love affair with bad planning may well be just one of those self-destructive instincts. But in that case, the story is about our unlimited desire for development, and not how the antics of a small group are thwarting the fervent wish of the majority to limit housing.
If that’s the case, isn’t it time to change the template on planning stories?
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04.29.08
Posted in Sunday Times Columns at 9:07 pm by Sarah
Note: turned a post into a column. One small update – I watched the 3rd part last night and it was interesting – the most interesting characters who started coming into the picture were the grandparents! Their experience and wry view of life was in stark contrast to the chirpy parents who still believed they had control over their lives. With the exception of the mother of 8. She was relaxed and lovely.
ANOTHER week; another television series about children. This time it’s 21st Century Child, Monday nights on RTE. I used to Hoover up information on parenting, loved programmes like Supernanny; now I can’t take it anymore.
Here’s their bottom line: if your children are hassling you, it’s your fault not theirs. For every child’s problem there’s a parenting solution, so you’ve only yourself to blame. Fine! I blame myself. My confidence has been so destroyed by the avalanche of advice that my boys have seized on my doubt and bully me from one end of the kitchen to the other.
The terrible tragedy is that on those rare occasions when I acquire resolve and implement the advice – it works. The problem arises when I either lack the necessary resolve, or struggle with conflicting advice. It’s a paradigm of competing needs – mine for peace and quiet; theirs for maximum attention. Telling them to buzz off just isn’t done anymore – it’s all about them now, and honestly, I’m weary. What about me?
I could just stop watching the TV shows, but it’s Monday night and there’s not much on. 21st Century Child, presented by child psychologist David Coleman, will track ten families with different backgrounds and approaches to parenting for the next six years. The families were picked with scrupulous attention to diversity. We’ve got Nigerian and Eastern European immigrants, a disabled mother, a single, teenage mother, suburban first-timers, and a midlands family with eight children. I noticed they hadn’t managed to persuade any affluent, SUV-driving, nanny-enabled families with their ostentatious fourth child to take part. That’s a real pity since, of all factors, money has the most significant influence on a child’s health and advancement.
As Coleman visited each family, I learned that I had instinctively indulged in what’s called attachment parenting. I breast fed on demand, had the babies in the bed, picked them up when they cried and stayed at home with them full time until they were two.
Now they are little emperors who expect Mammy to stay attached. But Mammy has detached. Mammy wants to go to the toilet by herself. She wants to listen to the radio and read the paper without being interrupted three times in every sentence. So Mammy tells them to go outside and stop bugging her. But the parenting experts say that Mammy should play co-operatively with her children. So Mammy feels bad and wonders if it would be easier to take a job full-time and hire a professional to rear her children since she is clearly so inadequate for the task. Mammy also can’t understand why she’d love another baby.
All that before we even hear from the Freudians, before we address the Oedipal nightmare being created at home. It’s 3am and the four-year-old potters into the bedroom, climbs over Daddy and curls up between us. Daddy isn’t going to stand for space invasion, so what does he do? Carry the child back to bed? No. He departs to the spare room. One day those kids are going to call it Daddy’s Room in front of the in-laws and we’ll all be terribly embarrassed.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure that the eldest son displacing the father in the marital bed is going to cost someone a lot of money in therapy in 30 years’ time. But I’m too sleepy to be authoritative in the middle of the night. I roll over and go back to sleep, postponing the worry about the psycho-sexual consequences until the morning.
Apparently, it’s all about building their self-esteem. But I was reared before self-esteem was invented so what little I have is being destroyed by the constant reminders that I’m doing it all wrong. Why can’t someone make a programme that builds up the self-esteem of parents? How about a series that says once you feed them properly, put them to bed on time, keep them clean and tell them you love them, they’ll be grand? And sure there wasn’t much you could do about their personalities anyway. Here’s a classic scenario. Coleman previously said he doesn’t allow his children to watch “broadcast TV”. That left a sneaky get-out clause – they could be watching hours of DVDs – but I still panicked. He says TV makes children aggressive. True. Mine saw Power Rangers a couple of times and went berserk. I blocked the channel that shows it, but it’s too late. Now they’re obsessed. They run around shooting and killing each other while I shriek “Boys! Don’t be so rough!”
I used to intervene but then I tired of that and fretted that I was feminising them. You read a lot about that now: men’s natural instincts being repressed since the feminists took over. Maybe boys are supposed to run around playing with pretend guns. So there I am, watching these two boisterous bundles of energy, wondering if I’m a bad mother for allowing them to fight it out, or a bad mother if I intervene. What I really want to know is if one ends up in jail and the other gay, will someone say it was my fault? Is their destiny dependent on how I act at this moment, and all the other moments that make up a day, a week and a year with a child? It’s nerve wracking. It’s not all bad, of course. Mine are at the stage where escalators and tractors are a source of huge excitement. But though dealing with toddlers is difficult, other parents keep warning me about the terror of teenagers. One friend has found a solution: she’s sent her 13-year-old daughter to boarding school. “Otherwise we’ll fight every morning to get her out of bed, and every night to persuade her to go to bed. I’m not spending the next five years at that lark.” Sounds like a great idea to me.
But we’re not Victorians and we can’t pack ours off just yet. Anyway, once I get over the fabulous feeling of freedom when I go away for a few days without them, I miss them desperately.
The point is that it’s difficult enough to rear children without having an entire industry shouting at you, pointing out the dire consequences of getting it wrong. As far as I can see, there’s nothing wrong with the self-esteem of today’s children. They get buckets more attention than we did. It’s the parents who are gibbering wrecks. Why won’t someone make a TV series for us?
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04.28.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:16 pm by Sarah
Well what do you know, they kept it under wraps for months, then supposedly came clean, and now they’ve had to come clean again. The BOI didn’t lose the details of 10,000 customers but 30,000. Idiots. And who are these fools leaving their laptops in cars anyway?
Daire O’Brien’s column last week in the Indo was the best on the subject I thought. Hope he addresses it again.
“The Bank of Ireland laptop saga proves once again that when it comes to fraud protection, the financial institutions are only interested in preventing fraud against themselves, not their customers.”
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04.24.08
Posted in Sunday Times Columns at 6:24 pm by Sarah
J: Mammy, can I have some of your wadi?
Daddy: It’s not your wadi its MIwadi
J:(screaming) It’s NOT YOUR wadi – its Mammy’s wadi!!!
Mammy: – ok ok its Miwadi.
sigh.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 11:49 am by Sarah
My father is going to Serbia to supervise elections in May as part of a party of 33.
He’s certainly qualified. They go to polling stations and make sure the ballot boxes aren’t stuffed.
Maybe he’ll pick up some tips!
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Posted in Uncategorized at 11:28 am by Sarah
P O’Neill sifts through the language..
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04.22.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:17 pm by Sarah
I watched David Coleman’s show last night – the one that’s supposed to be like 7 Up. Last week we were introduced to 10 couples and this week their babies were born.
My cantankerous streak was bugged by the overwhelmingly PC efforts that were made to get “diversity” into the people chosen. The Nigerian couple (who were outstandingly nice), the Eastern European immigrants, the midlands family of 7, the single teenage Mother from Limerick, the disabled mother, the home birthers and the young couple living with his mother while waiting for their own house to be built. It was all so..agenda-less and non-judgmental. Pass the puke bag. And of course, its very worthiness makes me feel like a bad person for not liking the set-up.
But I suppose they had to do it. Though a conspicuous absence of rich, SUV-driving, nanny-enabled, property millionaires who display their affluence by producing 4 children instead of the standard 3. No members of the upper-middle class represented in a show which went out of its way to represent Irish babies. Odd.
ANYWAY, while I ooohed and aaahed and indulged my broodiness as the babies appeared, I also got depressed by the talk of parenting methods. Since I was reared before self-esteem was invented, but my soft heart indulged my babies by instinctively going with “attachment-parenting” I am torn now that the are running around and arguing with me. Every day provides 50 situations, conflicts and dramas when I am left looking at them wondering: do I tell them to piss off outside and leave me alone or do I have to ACKNOWLEDGE every bloody demand? It’s exhausting. I am destroyed by doubt and lack of confidence. When I am clear and determined I am brilliant, but when it comes to my children I am determined about 20% of the time. It’s not enough. I could blame myself, but its easier to blame all the bloody parenting experts! Unless one of them would come and live with me.
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04.21.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:43 pm by Sarah
as he flew over our heads….NB This is True. I thought it was funny. Does he send such greetings to everyone as he flies around?
HER EXCELLENCY MARY MCALEESE
PRESIDENT OF IRELAND
DUBLIN
ENTERING IRISH AIRSPACE EN ROUTE TO ROME AFTER MY VISIT TO THE
UNITED STATES AND THE UNITED NATIONS ORGANIZATION I RENEW MY
GREETINGS TO YOUR EXCELLENCY AND CORDIALLY INVOKE UPON ALL THE
BELOVED IRISH PEOPLE GOD’S ABUNDANT BLESSINGS
BENEDICTUS PP. XVI
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Posted in Uncategorized at 6:04 pm by Sarah
Much relief. I see that Paul Newton is out of danger. From the IT today…
” Belfast attack victim improves
The Sligo man who was assaulted in Belfast a week ago, has been moved out of intensive care in hospital as his condition improves.
Paul Newton (43) was moved yesterday to the Royal Victoria Hospital’s high dependency unit after a week in intensive care. A hospital spokesman said his condition had improved from critical to stable.
Mr Newton, a businessman well known in GAA circles in Sligo, had travelled to Belfast to attend a rugby match between Ulster and Connacht.”
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