Positive Signs

[Diable Rouge]

A Swiss referendum that would have effectively abolished international law by asserting the primacy of Swiss law has been overwhelmingly rejected by voters, with every canton against:

http://twitter.com/AlbertoNardelli/status/1066692892247433217

Sadly, the cow horn referendum also bit the dust.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Why is everyone coming to Cahir?

I don't think it's that they are all coming to Cahir more than any other place really. I just think that people are slower to leave. It's just a really nice place. I mean it's properly beautiful town, but housing is relatively cheap. Wherever you are from, there's a really good chance that Cahir is just nicer. It's got a river, and a bloody big castle in the middle of it. The town was laid out by an architect around 1800. It's got three John Nash buildings, the Protestant church, the old primary school, and there's a riverside walk through a park all the way down to the swiss cottage. But that's more stuff for tourists. There's a big meat factory, and a large, er, rendering plant maybe. There's not a huge amount of other employment that I can think of. You could commute to Cork city at a push.

It's always been a bit unusual compared to most other towns in the region though. It's at the crossroads of munster, in that the Dublin Cork road, cuts the Limerick Waterford road, so there's always been a lot of people passing through. It was a huge military centre, and had two cavalry regiments stationed there in a fucking massive barracks. (I don't mean by Irish standards, I mean by the standards of anywhere in the british Empire) Larry Goodman built two huge meat factories in the grounds of the barracks, and he's going to build a gas fired power plant in the 450 acre cavalry drilling field out the back. It's also a big tourist town, so even in the eighties you would hear a lot of different languages

There's a properly huge war memorial right in the middle of the town, and a fifth of my classmates had relatives up on it, so remembrance sunday was commemorated there at a time when it wasn't commemorated anywhere else. There were still a lot of old protestants knocking around when my parents moved there in the 60's, but they quickly died out as their sons had been killed in the first world war, but they stayed instead of selling up like in most other parts of the country. (there was even a fitzroy called Gray, who was the spit of his half brother Edward VIII. He used to come into town on his tractor once a month to collect his monthly stipend, and spend the day drinking in the hotel)

I was dimly aware of this organization that's putting on this festival. There's a neighbour of mine, and school contemporary who posts about it on the local facebook page. She's quite religious and involved in various church organizations, but they run free english language classes and conversation groups for people who want to improve their english. Voluntary organizations are a big thing in rural ireland. Much more so than in the UK as far as I can make out, so that helps quite a bit. It's not hard for people with kids to find themselves getting dragged into them. If you have a kid and are sending them to the local primary school there's a good chance their going to wind up in the GAA club, or the Soccer club, or the Choir, or the Comhaltas branch, because that's what all the other kids in their class are doing. Once they get involved in that sort of thing then you get dragged in, and before you know it, your accent is slipping, and odd things are happening to your vowels.

But I think the important thing to remember here is that these are all accidents of history, that make it relatively easier to become part of a community. The big thing though is that a lot of people in the town will have lived abroad for a spell, or have half their relations living abroad, so they aren't really under any illusions about what migration is like, and what migrants are here for. The other thing is what rural towns fear is depopulation and falling numbers. There's a lot of people that move away, and they need to be replaced. Every parish in the country is particularly keen on people moving to their area, and building a house and sending their kids to the local school, because resources are tied to population numbers, and schools can lose teachers if the number of children in the school falls below a certain level. there isn't any real narrative in ireland that migrants are taking resources from the local community, it's set up to be the other way around. And the total absence of new public sector housing means that there isn't competition for that, which is what sparks an awful lot of friction.

One other thing to remember though is there are fundamentally different societal dynamics going on here compared to a lot of other places in europe. it's not so much that we've become more liberal, it's that until surprisingly recently we were a miserable theocracy with prescriptive social norms, with appalling consequences for transgressors, and a terror that failure to abide by these rules would bring about disaster. And then we realized that that was all a total load of bollocks, that the people who were trying to impose this on us were disturbingly tolerant of organized child rape, and what other people get up to really doesn't matter. we managed to have an adult national conversation about abortion, despite a huge influx of foreign money which only wound up alienating and upsetting people. But the primary focus of the yes side was rather telling. It was that regardless of whatever law you pass, or whatever you yourself believe, this is going to happen, and all the current laws achieve is to traumatize women at a particularly difficult moment in their lives, while making proper maternity care an utter fucking nightmare. that's the approach that got 40% of the over 65's voting in favour of getting rid of the ban.

You can see the same dynamic in our new Trans rights legislation. I think we've managed to avoid a lot of really pointless rows by making it pretty much exclusively based on self-identification, because it's really just a matter for the person themselves, and that just means that we don't have to think about it again. But this isn't about Ireland being better or worse than any other society, we're still a really strange society, with a lot of weird attitudes about a lot of different things, it's just that they're not the usual ones. All of these things that I've been talking about involve no transfer of money. get into that realm of things, and things get very weird very quickly. We're operating an embarrassing, inhumane and absurd Direct provision system for asylum seekers, in large part because our govt is afraid of what will happen if they try to house these people any other way, in local authority housing at a time of absurdly long waiting lists.

[adams house cat]

Sounds like a decent place Berbs. When, if, I visit Ireland again a may make it a point of call.

[anton pulisov]

It doesn't even have a cinema.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Of course there isn't a cinema. this isn't the fifties. there's a multiplex in clonmel.

AHC, it's a lovely spot to visit. The thing is that it's in the South East, and people mostly go to the South West (West cork, Kerry and clare,) or the west (Clare, galway mayo donegal) but the south East is really lovely. It's got loads of old mountains, but it's dominated by three or four river valleys. I'd recommend getting a train down from dublin to Rosslare and hire a car. the train route is gorgeous, then potter around in wexford, then up to kilkenny, across to cashel and Cahir, south across the mountains to dungarvan, and then along the coast through east cork to cork City. It's off the beaten track a bit for tourists, but it's a really beautiful part of the world, and there's lots of nice places to stay and eat. East cork has the sort of range of restaurants that you would expect in an area that is home to a large pharmaceutical and computer industry.

[Moonlight Shadow]

The 'foreign judges' referendum was predictet to fail but not by the margin it has and even more surprising that every canton including SVP strongholds would reject it (Geneva tops the chart, as usual when it comes to reject rw populist crap).

Reasons to be cheeful, Switzerland was at the forefront of rw populism two decades ago, maybe things are evolving...

[Diable Rouge]

The 'foreign judges' referendum was predictet to fail but not by the margin it has and even more surprising that every canton including SVP strongholds would reject it (Geneva tops the chart, as usual when it comes to reject rw populist crap).

Reasons to be cheeful, Switzerland was at the forefront of rw populism two decades ago, maybe things are evolving...

Perhaps it has taken that long for integration to take full root among local communities and/or Switzerland is handling such matters better than the rest of Europe, if the national team is any indication?

[Sits]

The voters of the state of Victoria have delivered a crushing blow to the “Liberal” (Tory) party, casting into further jeopardy the federal government of Scott Morrison. The Victorian Liberals had run a fear-based campaign based on stories of “African gangs”, aided by a captive media.

[Sits]

Forgot the link.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

African gangs? in Australia???

[Sits]

Well precisely. A load of bullshit.

[jdsx]

UK wind power is increasing quite quickly. Yesterday saw the highest ever wind output (as far as I am aware) at 11.72 GW. Until fairly recently, the usual 'maxima' were around 5-6GW, but the records (by date) have been heading upwards:
7GW 21/11/16
8GW 11/1/17
9GW 25/11/17
10GW 17/1/18
11GW 23/10/18

Just to continue the thread:
12GW 28/11/18

[diggedy derek]

James Alex Fields Jr guilty of first-degree murder for Charlottesville.

Oh, and ad hoc, lovely.

[Diable Rouge]

I don't think it's that they are all coming to Cahir more than any other place really. I just think that people are slower to leave. It's just a really nice place. I mean it's properly beautiful town, but housing is relatively cheap. Wherever you are from, there's a really good chance that Cahir is just nicer. It's got a river, and a bloody big castle in the middle of it. The town was laid out by an architect around 1800. It's got three John Nash buildings, the Protestant church, the old primary school, and there's a riverside walk through a park all the way down to the swiss cottage. But that's more stuff for tourists. There's a big meat factory, and a large, er, rendering plant maybe. There's not a huge amount of other employment that I can think of. You could commute to Cork city at a push.

It's always been a bit unusual compared to most other towns in the region though. It's at the crossroads of munster, in that the Dublin Cork road, cuts the Limerick Waterford road, so there's always been a lot of people passing through. It was a huge military centre, and had two cavalry regiments stationed there in a fucking massive barracks. (I don't mean by Irish standards, I mean by the standards of anywhere in the british Empire) Larry Goodman built two huge meat factories in the grounds of the barracks, and he's going to build a gas fired power plant in the 450 acre cavalry drilling field out the back. It's also a big tourist town, so even in the eighties you would hear a lot of different languages

There's a properly huge war memorial right in the middle of the town, and a fifth of my classmates had relatives up on it, so remembrance sunday was commemorated there at a time when it wasn't commemorated anywhere else. There were still a lot of old protestants knocking around when my parents moved there in the 60's, but they quickly died out as their sons had been killed in the first world war, but they stayed instead of selling up like in most other parts of the country. (there was even a fitzroy called Gray, who was the spit of his half brother Edward VIII. He used to come into town on his tractor once a month to collect his monthly stipend, and spend the day drinking in the hotel)

I was dimly aware of this organization that's putting on this festival. There's a neighbour of mine, and school contemporary who posts about it on the local facebook page. She's quite religious and involved in various church organizations, but they run free english language classes and conversation groups for people who want to improve their english. Voluntary organizations are a big thing in rural ireland. Much more so than in the UK as far as I can make out, so that helps quite a bit. It's not hard for people with kids to find themselves getting dragged into them. If you have a kid and are sending them to the local primary school there's a good chance their going to wind up in the GAA club, or the Soccer club, or the Choir, or the Comhaltas branch, because that's what all the other kids in their class are doing. Once they get involved in that sort of thing then you get dragged in, and before you know it, your accent is slipping, and odd things are happening to your vowels.

But I think the important thing to remember here is that these are all accidents of history, that make it relatively easier to become part of a community. The big thing though is that a lot of people in the town will have lived abroad for a spell, or have half their relations living abroad, so they aren't really under any illusions about what migration is like, and what migrants are here for. The other thing is what rural towns fear is depopulation and falling numbers. There's a lot of people that move away, and they need to be replaced. Every parish in the country is particularly keen on people moving to their area, and building a house and sending their kids to the local school, because resources are tied to population numbers, and schools can lose teachers if the number of children in the school falls below a certain level. there isn't any real narrative in ireland that migrants are taking resources from the local community, it's set up to be the other way around. And the total absence of new public sector housing means that there isn't competition for that, which is what sparks an awful lot of friction.

One other thing to remember though is there are fundamentally different societal dynamics going on here compared to a lot of other places in europe. it's not so much that we've become more liberal, it's that until surprisingly recently we were a miserable theocracy with prescriptive social norms, with appalling consequences for transgressors, and a terror that failure to abide by these rules would bring about disaster. And then we realized that that was all a total load of bollocks, that the people who were trying to impose this on us were disturbingly tolerant of organized child rape, and what other people get up to really doesn't matter. we managed to have an adult national conversation about abortion, despite a huge influx of foreign money which only wound up alienating and upsetting people. But the primary focus of the yes side was rather telling. It was that regardless of whatever law you pass, or whatever you yourself believe, this is going to happen, and all the current laws achieve is to traumatize women at a particularly difficult moment in their lives, while making proper maternity care an utter fucking nightmare. that's the approach that got 40% of the over 65's voting in favour of getting rid of the ban.

You can see the same dynamic in our new Trans rights legislation. I think we've managed to avoid a lot of really pointless rows by making it pretty much exclusively based on self-identification, because it's really just a matter for the person themselves, and that just means that we don't have to think about it again. But this isn't about Ireland being better or worse than any other society, we're still a really strange society, with a lot of weird attitudes about a lot of different things, it's just that they're not the usual ones. All of these things that I've been talking about involve no transfer of money. get into that realm of things, and things get very weird very quickly. We're operating an embarrassing, inhumane and absurd Direct provision system for asylum seekers, in large part because our govt is afraid of what will happen if they try to house these people any other way, in local authority housing at a time of absurdly long waiting lists.

RTE article on integration in Cahir.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The man playing music in the middle of the kids is some kind of superhero. Not directly because of any of the stuff mentioned above, but he arrived down into Cahir, from Thurles 25 years ago to run a a pub, and over time, he has more or less single handedly created a thriving traditional music scene in Cahir. For a town which has a statue of an Uilleann Piper outside the library, it was a horrendous musical desert, and south Tipperary in general was quite the trad music wasteland, where it was only played by the children of blow-ins, and usually not very well. It was a real struggle to stick with it, because it was essentially such a lonely pursuit. I was so proud when I had to bow out of adjudicating the u-12 and senior banjo competitions, because there was someone from my home town in them. That's vastly more surprising than there being loads of people from around the world living in Cahir. It's now just another thing for kids to do right up there alongside the GAA club and Cahir Park.