Festival of World Cultures Needs You
July 5, 2010 at 8:34 pm
I came across this on The Wheel – am happy to see the Jobs section we created on that site being used (also happy to see the Twitter-like “Sector Connector” in hot use):
Festival of World Cultures looking for volunteers
Festival of World Cultures is one of my favourite things about summer in Dublin. It’s always good, is family friendly and most of it is free.
Tags: festival of world cultures, wheel volunteer
This Should Have Been Yesterday
June 17, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Brightspark was 7 years old yesterday. I was busy getting out the door with my new baby boy to catch some rays and have the usual celebratory lunch (this time sans alcohol!). I really intended to get something up here to mark the cycle of 7, here is something I found that is kind of nice:
Spinning, laughing, dancing to her favorite song
A little girl with nothing wrong Is all aloneEyes wide open, always hoping for the sun
And she’ll sing her song to anyone that comes along
I won’t sing my song to anyone these days; 7 years of being in business has made me more discerning than that. But definitely dancing to my own tune these last 7 years of self employment has made my heart sing.
Enjoy the music, even if it is a bit high on the cheese quotient:
Tags: 7 years internet marketing business, brightspark birthday
What Did You Do?
May 11, 2010 at 9:28 am
In years to come, when economic historians look back on this period and our children are still paying for the mistakes and excess of recent years, what will you say when you’re asked “what did you do?”
“I was too busy working to pay an exorbitant mortgage. In those days we were glad to have a job…”
-Nobody forced you to take out a mortgage you couldn’t afford. True you had to work, but in this age of connectivity you have choices and options in getting your voice heard. The good news is this evening, a sunny May Tuesday when, let’s face it, there’s nothing on the telly – you can get out and protest the old fashioned way. Head to the Garden of Remembrance at 7.30pm and add your voice to the crowd who will be there to be make a stand and express dissatisfaction with the way things are being handled.
I’m going because it’s not just a Trade Union / Socialist Workers Gig.
Speakers include:
- Fintan O’Toole (Journalist)
- John Kidd (SIPTU Firefighters)
- Janette Byrne (Patients Together)
- Walter Cullen (Unite trade union)
- John Bisset (Canal Communities Project)
- Professor Kathleen Lynch (UCD)
- Siobhan O ’Donoghue (Community Workers Co-op)
I feel very strongly that the Government is bailing out the banks and not dedicating the same resource to making sure that businesses get looked after in the same way. Weren’t we all led to believe after the first bank bailout in Sept 2008 that banks were open for business and would keep lending? Yeah right! I know of many businesses who are on the rocks because they cannot get finance to keep afloat. My own brother who is a true entrepreneur is unable to continue expanding his operation which employs close to 50 peoeple – because he can’t get the banks to match his own investment in his enterprise. And sadly, we’ve all heard the shocking statistics of small businesses closing. These aren’t just numbers – these are people’s sweat and hard work – gone in a moment because there is no-one willing to help them.
Ireland got praised yesterday for being ahead of Spain and Portugal in terms of the austerity measures taken in Budget 2010. But the truth is that Budget was an anti-youth budget. The very strong message I heard was if you’re under 25, and without a job, feck off because we don’t want ya. We’re about to engage in a truly horrible social experiment. One in which we’ve seen working class areas transformed through employment these last years. Young fellas had bright futures as carpenters, plasterers, plumbers. They jumped at the opportunity and worked hard. Now that’s all come crashing down and the next generation is facing the same old shit that’s been available for time immemorial – unemployment or emigrate.
I finished college in 1993 when there weren’t really that many jobs. At least we had the option of going to the bright lights of London or New York. I chose the former and made my way there. Today’s graduates have no such choices – they’ve been hauling themselves through college while the Celtic Tiger has been dying around them… and now they don’t even have the safety net of London or New York to go to. I’d hate to be 22 again….
Yet my niece of 25 says she’d hate to be my age … because we all jumped into the property market and have mortgages around our necks.
We’re all sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves and each other. We’re happy to moan about what’s happening, being forced to do more with less in our jobs and our lives. Well tonight at 7.30pm you can join a bunch of like-minded people who want to show that they are not happy with what’s going on. I’ll be there – I’m the one with the bump!
Tags: Bank Protest Dublin May 2010
Me in Sunday Business Post
May 3, 2010 at 5:05 pm
A quality Sunday paper!
Be The Master of Your Own Domain Name
How to make the web work for your business
Tags: sunday business post computers in business magazine
Dublin Airport Car Parking Shite
March 22, 2010 at 4:51 pm
I’ve been experiencing problems with this site for a year now, and now I’ve lost my patience waiting for them to fix their piece of shit site. It’s a simple booking engine but it never works.
It never works for me on Firefox 3 – I encounter this sometimes with .asp sites.
When I shimmy on over to Safari – it takes ages to download and at least 2 or 3 tries to get the booking page to display so I can key in my days.
Don’t whatever you do choose the calendar if you’re trying to book for a weekend because the big security badge obscures it:
But when you select the dates and hit the quote button, all you get for your troubles is a database error message.
Is this site developed by the same shower who did the eflow one? And how long more do we have to wait until Dublin Airport get their asses into gear and fix the site? It’s been broken for a year now.
If they are serious about making money from parking, it’s a bit of a no-brainer to have a site that’s not shite.
Top Tip For Dublin Airport Parking
Park your car in the free IKEA car park which has loads of spaces and is about as near to the airport as the long term blue and considerably closer than some of the hotels who are offering themselves up as airport car parking.
A taxi from IKEA to the airport is about €8. 
Tags: dublin airport car parking
Give It Up For Mary Of O’Connell Street
March 1, 2010 at 4:45 pm
I remember a Dublin that was populated with individuals. Anyone who knew Dublin ‘back in the day’ would remember the lady who used to dance on O’Connell Street. She’d always be there, dancing away to her own tune, smiling, being herself. Her name is Mary and I came across a Facebook Fan Page for Mary at the weekend.
Who Remembers The Woman That Dances On O’Connell Street Beside The Anna Livia
It’s got 13,661 fans and growing. It seems lots of other people remember dancing Mary of O’Connell Street. The wall is full of tributes to this lady (who is alive and well) and is 83:
New York has the naked cowboy and we have Mary
She was part of my childhood memories going into town with my parents … never failed to make me smile.
We can all learn something from her approach to life…. she has and is living hers to the max…while not hurting or taking away from anyone, in fact she has given so much to so many people. Thank you Mary.
Used to see her all the time when I worked in Town . . . she always looked so happy . . . Fair play to her!!!
If you remember Mary and you’d like to take part in a Facebook organised get together, turn up this Sunday at Mary’s old dancing stop at midday. There’s going to be a tribute to the lady who danced her way into so many people’s hearts and minds. Rumour has it she’s going to be there. Here’s hoping it’s a really fine sunny day.
Tags: facebook fan page, mary of o'connell street
Debbie Metrusty (@debbiemet) RIP
February 15, 2010 at 8:39 am
There are some people on Twitter who are just generous souls; who always have a kind word to say, who respond to a tweet where you may be thinking you made a bit of an ass of yourself, people whose warmth carries over into the virtual world. Importantly these people also have Real Lives going on, they do not merely exist on Twitter.
Debbie Metrusty (@debbiemet) was one of those people.
I first met Debbie at the Twitter meet-up at Electric Picnic ‘08. She was so into her indie tunes, had an impressive list of ‘must see’s’ and I actually count her as the one who opened my eyes to Florence & the Machine… and Marina & the Diamonds…! She had retrained as a landscape gardener and was all excited about her home in Cloughjordan Eco Village. She loved cats. She was an early adopter of all sorts of new Twitter apps. And was one of the organisers of Dublin Twestival.
I couldn’t believe it, when I was dossing in college on Saturday, and I came across her obituary notice in The Irish Times. It couldn’t be. Such a exuberant lovely person has been taken from us – just like that. It is shocking. Alongside the tweet about the Irish Times notice, her reply from only last Wednesday was sitting in the column beside it.
The funeral is on tomorrow in Glasnevin, Sabrina’s blog has all the most updated details (and some really lovely comments too). I think everyone’s shocked and saddened by Debbie’s passing. Rest in peace don’t really work for someone so young and full of life. But they’re all we’ve got. So Debbie – Rest In Peace. You will be missed. And God bless you.
Tags: Debbie Metrusty RIP
Blog That Doesn’t Bother To Update In Times of Emergency
November 13, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Blacknight regularly wins awards for its blog and its use of internet marketing. Today I received a desperate call from a client who is hosting with Blacknight – the Blacknight server Morgana was hacked yesterday. All the information is gone. And shock of all – the last time it was backed up was 27 August.
The client found out by someone notifying them their site was down. I visited the blacknight blog just now and there’s some ego-driven article about ‘me in Seoul’. While the MD is gallivanting around the world, the server has been hacked and no-one is telling customers about what’s going on.
In the meantime, I telephoned Blacknight, got through to someone on support who had no answers, got put through to supervisor (Jonathan) who also had no answers. He told me he didn’t want to disturb the engineers who were fixing the problem by asking them why it hadn’t been backed up since August. As the client facing supervisor, isn’t he supposed to have those kind of answers? The one bit of information in relation to backup that I did manage to extract from him is that all their other servers are backed up everyday. Woopy doo. But can he prove it?
When I asked him how they were notifying clients about this failure in service, he said they posted a notice up to Blacknight Status.com – a first for me, I’ve never heard of that site before, but seemingly I’m supposed to know all about it and I”m even supposed to have RSS feeds so I can keep myself updated as to what calamity has happened next.
Blacknight have failed to deal with this problem effectively in my opinion.
- A blog is not just for vanity stories, it is also an ideal vehicle for communicating when errors have been made.
- A simple email to all clients they know are affected would notify people what’s going on – and possibly even instil some confidence that the issue is being well handled.
- Blacknight are all over Twitter. But there is silence on the Twitterwaves about this.
Once again we see another Irish business who uses social media tools for promotion purposes only. File this one under the same category as The Big Switch who forgot all about their Twitter account when people were urgently contacting them when the laptops and data went missing.
Update: read Blacknight’s response to this post.
Tags: Blacknight Server Hacked, Poor Customer Service
Money Saving Websites
October 21, 2009 at 8:23 am
You’d want to be living under a stone not to have noticed the trend for money saving websites. Here are some of my favourites:
They’re only going 10 months and are this week celebrating their 1,000th post. That’s a brilliant achievement. This is a great little site that shares recipes and reviews, and I particularly like the ‘what’s in this week at Aldi and Lidl’ reports. They always have a competition going on and as a result there’s a vibrant community of followers.
Practical ways to save money in the areas of Personal Finance, Family Spending, Lifestyle, Health & Beauty and Technology. Well known Irish journalists do much of the writing, so the feel is rather like one of the weekend magazine supplements – but all about saving cash.
An initiative from Dublin City Council, Dublin Waste is a space where people can advertise items they no longer want and you can get them for free! I remember spotting, a couple of years ago when it first launched, a BMW for swap for something interesting… there are no Beamers on there now but there are plenty of TV’s, items of furniture, baby goods, sporting goods and other random items. To avail of something good on this site, you’ve got to be quick. Arrange transport and soon that item will be yours – for free.
Jumbletown is similar. My only complaint with it (apart from the hideous navigation up top) is the difficulty in removing your item once it’s gone.
Tags: money saving websites
License To Print Money
June 10, 2009 at 12:21 pm
I’ve just finished reading Naomi Klein’s eye-opening book “Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”. A must-read, it has made me alter how I will consume news about wars and the economy. It made me re-think four years of economics at Trinity where we were thought that Friedman was good and Keynes was bad. Klein takes us through a guided tour of the shocking imposition of Friedmanism on countries such as Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Iraq… and, when there were no wars to profit from – United States of America. She outlines how, under Bush, the American Government turned on itself – devouring itself from within through outsourcing of lucrative contracts for its own operation. Everything is outsourced to large corporations: “big business and big government combining their formidable powers to regulate and control the citizenry.”
It seems like there’s a little bit of the same thing going on here in Ireland.
My recent experience at Deans Grange Business Park highlighted just how easy it is to make money in this country if you’re in with the right people in Government.
Take NCPS (National Car Park Services) for example. A licence to print money if ever there was one. A privately owned and operated car clamping company. They have no regulator. They can simply send in their vans to clamp you. Charge you any fee they like. And they don’t have a functioning customer service department.
- I was giving training to a client located at Deans Grange Business Park. Normally you don’t expect to pay for parking at a business park. I arrived in the morning, parked my car, and by afternoon I’d been clamped. I had to pay a fee of €125 to get free. Dublin City Council charge €80 to get unclamped. Seemingly NCPS the guys who got me can charge any fee they like – because they are privately owned.
- The problem was that there was totally inadequate signage in Deans Grange Business Park to alert drivers to the fact that they had to pay for parking. There was one small sign, located near a railing half way down the car park on the left. The parking meter was located there also, but on the morning in question both the single sign and the meter were obscured by white vans parked in the car park.
- Main Sign on Entry – no mention of paid parking here
- Look to the left, this is what you see (no signs)
Looking left again, nothing at the entry gate
See over there past the white van....you can't actually see it because the van is in the way. But that's where the sign is and the parking meter.
So what did I do?
- I wrote a letter to the Company Secretary bringing the lack of signage to their attention. I was ignored.
- I telephoned the office, got on to his secretary and was referred on to the Complaints Officer, who sent me a standard PFO letter in which he states “there is a large notice at the entrance informing you that pay & display is in operation and there are two more at the car park spaces.”. That is simply not true. I wrote back to tell him that and he has since ignored me.
- I have telephoned the office but have never been successful in getting past their receptionist. They are always ‘busy’. (Busy counting their mountains of cash more like).
What did I do next?
- I got on to Dublin City Council to find out about who regulates NCPS and was told they are privately owned and therefore not subject to regulation from the Council Traffic Department.
- The Office of Corporate Enforcement could do nothing, they suggested the Consumer Affairs Association.
- And so on. I don’t have the energy in me to try and get the Consumer Affairs people on my side.
What can you do?
- Link to this blog. Use the words “illegal clamping dublin” or “deans grange business park” so at least future visitors to the park might be alerted.
- Let me know if you have any other bright ideas on how to get heard.
UPDATE – due to the steady stream of comments from people who are all continually being shat on by NCPS, I consulted a legal friend who said the following:
It is open to those clamped by clampers working on behalf of local authorities to contest the matter before the court. Of course, in doing so they risk incurring a higher penalty (and possibly legal costs if represented) if they are unsuccessful.
And, if you believe that you have been wrongly clamped, you may refuse to pay a fine and call the police. It is up to the individual to consider whether that is the right thing to do.
Though I would point out that in the case of a private clampers operating on private property, it is arguable that they are the agent of those who have hired them to police the private property. It might be worth writing directly to the landlord/ occupier with any complaint as it is likely to be of more practical use than complaining to the clampers.
Hope this helps.
Tags: car clamping dublin, deans grange business park, illegal clamping, ncps, parking dublin
