Month: February 2019

Air traffic controllers in America had their version of a ‘blue flu’ day recently in response to President Donald Trump shutting down the Government. They weren’t getting paid and wanted to make a protest but because they are public servants, they don’t have a formal power to strike so they did the next best thing and went sick instead.

The gardai did the same thing back in 1998 and the term ‘blue flu’ was born. It was a day of protest by the rank and file members of An Garda Siochana when over 5,000 gardaí reported sick and unfit for duty on the same day. We took this unusual step because we were not legally allowed to strike but we felt that we had been pushed to the limit and needed to make a point.

Many of us debated the rights and wrongs of that action at the time and there were plenty who disagreed with it. But at the end of the day, our representative association didn’t have the strength of a trade union, so we felt we really had no other choice.

I’m sure the Air Traffic Controllers wrestled with their conscience too and the decision to call in sick wasn’t an easy one for them either, but the timing of their protest was perfect and while I’m no expert on American politics, the odds of getting the right result were in their favour for two very simple reasons.

Mr. Trump was taking a beating in the opinion polls and we know he lives and breathes by those things, and grounding all flights was not going to gain him any brownie points with the voting public. The other thing was that if there was an incident involving a flight resulting in the loss of life, the finger of blame would have been pointed squarely at him.

These two factors alone were enough to ensure a backdown from the President and that’s exactly what happened. Mr. Trump is adamant that he is going to get the money he needs to build his wall, but he will be reluctant to introduce another shutdown, even though he’s threatening to, because he could face the same problem with the Air Traffic Controllers.

These ATC guys are well trained. They know how to focus, they are determined, and they won’t be easy to beat because they also have a secret weapon. They’re strange creatures with no fear and I know this to be a fact, because my brother, Alex, is one. He worked in Shannon for years but now he is stationed in Cork and moved back to Cobh in recent years.

A few weeks ago, we were up in my late mother’s house, trying to clear it out so it could go on the market for sale. It was a difficult task because we spent so much time going over old photos and other personal items that we were making little headway. We were taking stuff from one place and just putting it somewhere else and we were going around in circles.

We eventually decided that we were just codding ourselves, and my sister, Deb, suggested getting in the professionals, so we contacted JWG Rubbish Removal. These guys would arrive with their skip bags and trailers as soon as we gave them the go ahead and they would clear out the house. All we had to do, was mark whatever we wanted to keep, and then get out of their way.

We spent a few days sorting out some bits and pieces until finally, we were ready for the removal guys. On the morning they were due to arrive, we called up to the house early, to have a last look around in case we missed anything.

The house hadn’t been lived in for over a year and it was musty, so we opened the windows to let in some fresh air. The heating hadn’t been on for months either and the house was like an iceberg even before we opened the windows. The new fresh air wasn’t helping.

It had been bitterly cold the night before and my weather app was suggesting that it should now feel like two degrees. As far as I was concerned, it felt a lot lower than that and I was perished. I was beginning to understand what it might be like to live in Siberia. I had a coat, scarf and hat on and that was while I was indoors.

And this leads me to why I think that Trump will never beat the ATC people.

We had our final look around the house and when the removal people arrived, we went outside to let them at it. They didn’t need us looking over their shoulders. We were standing by our cars and I was on the verge of developing hypothermia, when I asked my brother where he was headed. He told me that he was going down to the local beach for a swim.  

That single act of lunacy is why I believe that Air Traffic Controllers won’t be defeated by Mr. Trump. They are not like normal people.

They deal with stress and pressure in their normal every day life. They are highly trained professionals who know how to remain calm in difficult situations. They are responsible for thousands of lives on a daily basis and they are trained to cope with all kinds of emergencies. They must deal with whatever is thrown at them. 

Then, in their spare time, when they want to unwind, they go swimming in the open sea in Baltic conditions.

If I was Donald Trump, I would just give these people what they want. I would apologise sincerely for any upset caused and I would promise not to irritate them again.

I’ve never had a dog. Never really had any interest in having one.  Taking it for walks, cleaning up after it or trying to find a home for it while I went on holidays wasn’t my cup of tea. But lots of people do and I can understand that. But there are two types of dog owner. There’s the one who looks after the dog responsibly and then there’s the other type.

I could never understand why someone would want to have a pet and then let it run wild around the neighbourhood and roam freely. Many are released early in the morning by their owners and allowed to run riot until they are locked up again for the night.

Dogs aren’t the least bit embarrassed about fouling the public street, any garden they can get in to or the common green areas where many children play and their owners couldn’t care less either.

So, what’s the story with these irresponsible dog owners? They are plainly flouting the law for one. The law states that dogs are not to be out in public without a leash. It also states that it is an offence for the owner not to clean up after their dog.

But whatever about the law, they obviously have no regard for their neighbours or for the public generally. They are completely thoughtless about the impact their darling pets are having on their community. In short, they are selfish and inconsiderate.

I remember as a youngster watching people toilet training their dogs. They used to shove the dogs nose into the mess and then give them a smack. Apparently, this made the dogs realise that they should go to the toilet somewhere else other than the kitchen floor. Maybe we should start using that technique on these carefree owners.

As an alternative, there is also the legal route because there is a serious side to this dog fouling business. It can be especially dangerous for anyone with small children.

According to Cork City Council, under Section 22 (of the Litter Pollution Act, 1997) , it is not an offence to allow a dog under your control to foul in a public place, however it is an offence to let your dog foul and fail to remove and dispose of the foul subsequently. This means that you or the person in charge of your dog is required under this law to remove dog faeces and dispose of it in a suitable and sanitary way.

An on-the-spot fine of €150 can be imposed on the owner of a dog who fails to remove dog faeces from a public place, with the maximum fine for this offence being €3,000.

Failure to clean up after your dog can result in humans, particularly children, becoming infected by a dog parasite that can cause blindness.  The parasite is a worm called Toxocara canis that passes its eggs in the dogs’ stools. Toxocara is a roundworm which infects dogs in Ireland.  It is rare for a dog, especially a young pup, not to be troubled by worms at some stage.  Even in dogs that are regularly wormed can still carry some of these worms. The worm lives in the dog’s intestine and its eggs are passed in the dog’s stools.

Toxocariasis is an infection which humans can pick up as a result of coming into contact with the eggs contained in the dog’s stools. Although usually a mild infection in humans, Toxocariasis can have potentially serious health effects such as blindness. This is rare BUT it can and does happen.

The Toxocarra eggs have to be ingested (i.e. taken into the mouth and swallowed) before someone can catch the infection. This could happen if a person handles soil, sand or any other material that is contaminated with dog stools and subsequently has direct contact with the mouth before hand-washing. Gardens, play areas and public parks are likely sites for contamination with dog stools.

So, there is a genuine cause for concern apart from the fact that it is particularly unpleasant to look at. The Control of Dogs Act 1986 requires owners tobe over the age of sixteen years, they must licence the animal every year, keep them under control in public places, accompany their dogs at all times and prevent the nuisance of excessive barking. That’s not happening.

In short, we seem to have lots of rules and regulations governing the control of dogs in public places. Rules about pooping, barking, cleaning poop and not being allowed to run wild in public. On the other hand, we have an abundance of dogs roaming freely all across the land, pooping and barking at will and nobody seems to care.

Maybe it’s just me, but whenever I set about doing a simple job, things usually take a turn for the worse. Something that should only take half an hour invariably becomes the job from hell and gets very complicated.

When my wife went back to work after Christmas, I decided to take down the Christmas tree and the decorations and earn myself a few brownie points. My wife would be impressed when she came home. So, I got the boxes down from the attic and lined them up in the front room and, even though I had no idea where stuff went, I was determined to do my best.

I removed the baubles, put them in various boxes and I was going along nicely. The radio was on in the background, I wasn’t anticipating any difficulties and the artificial tree was clean and easy to dismantle. That’s why we got it in the first place.

There was a time when we had a real tree at Christmas and I loved the smell but there was a bit of effort involved in collecting it, transporting it, skinning your knuckles on the door frame getting it into the house, cutting the end off when it wouldn’t fit properly, putting it in a bucket and trying to prevent it from toppling over. It was a lot of work.

The kids loved to get involved in picking the tree but that wasn’t always straightforward either. One time we went into town looking for the perfect specimen, but the pickings were slim. The good one’s were all reserved and had labels attached to them with the names of their new owners, while the rest looked sad and miserable.

The children were getting impatient and I was getting desperate, so to my eternal shame, I removed a label from a lovely looking tree and tied it to a branch of a poor neglected twig that looked like it had just about survived a horticultural famine. It was a wretched looking thing.

My daughter realised what I had done, and she was giving out to me that I had stolen the tree. I was trying to get her to keep her voice down and I explained that I had actually paid for it, but she was having none of it. When we got home, she immediately told her mother that I was a robber. So, the following year, for an easier life, we bought an artificial tree.

Anyway, I continued with my work and the next job was to take off the lights. There were about five sets and they went on without any drama, so taking them off should be a doddle.

But of course, it wasn’t. They didn’t want to let go and put up quite a struggle. I reckon they must have been trying to mate with each other because they got themselves into an enormous tangle.

They were twisted and knotted but they weren’t going to get the better of me. I began by pulling gently on the wires but as my patience waned, I introduced a little violence into the operation and eventually the tree fell over. I was sweating profusely.

By the time I was finished, there was as much of a mess on the floor as there would have been if we had used a real tree. There were bits and pieces of it all over the place. I got the hoover out and that’s when things took a downward turn.

While I was hoovering, the smoke alarm in the hall started to beep. It was only an occasional beep and I ignored it for a bit, but it soon got to me. So, I climbed up on a stool and changed the battery and returned to the hoovering.

Then I heard it again. This time it was the alarm upstairs that was beeping so I got my stool and changed the battery in that one too. Then the one in the kitchen started so I did the same thing there. The alarm in the hall that started all the trouble, began beeping again and soon there was a beeping contest going on all over the house because they’re all linked to each other.

I went up to the attic and changed that battery too just in case that was somehow responsible for upsetting the others, even though there wasn’t a sound out of it. As soon as I put in the new battery though, the thing went ballistic. I pushed the reset button and it stopped but as I was coming down the stairs, it gave a single beep as if it was laughing at me.

A few minutes later, they were all at it. Every miniute or so, each of them beeped in turn. I checked them again just in case I had put the battery in the wrong way or something and when I thought I had them sorted, off they went again.

At this stage I was getting fed up of carting my stool around the house and the beeping was getting on my nerves. I was losing patience and I managed to pull one of them from the ceiling. I could feel my blood pressure increasing and I was starting to sweat again.

When my wife came home from work, the house looked like a bomb had hit it. There were alarms going off all over the place and the floor was covered in bits of ceiling and broken Christmas tree and I looked completely demented. She decided it was time to take control to prevent further carnage.Her nephew, an electrician, arrived to stop the beeping while she looked after the decorations and put everything into the right boxes. I did my bit by staying out of the way.

They say it is inevitable that robots are going to replace a sizeable chunk of our workforce in the not too distant future. Technology will perform many tasks that are currently being carried out manually whether we like it or not. I have already had a taste of it.

A few months ago, I had surgery in the Mater Private Hospital in Dublin, and it was performed by a robot. It was controlled by a surgeon sitting at a console in the corner of the operating theatre, like a guy playing a game of FIFA or Space Invaders. Thankfully, both of them sorted me out.

I was told that the outcome of robotic surgery is no better, or no worse, than the traditional method using a scalpel, but it is easier on the patient. It’s not as invasive as a knife, so there is less pain associated with it. There is also less scarring, and the recovery time is quicker so that’s all good. But that kind of progress comes with a cost.

Leo Varadkar has warned that developments in artificial intelligence will force people across the economy out of work unless they are retrained. He says the government is acutely aware of the risks to employment at all levels, posed by advances in AI and robotics and jobs at all levels can be affected, so people need to be ready for it.

He’s right of course and technology is changing at an amazing pace. Just look at how far we’ve come with the mobile phone for example, in a mere twenty years. We’ve moved on from the black household phone that weighed a ton, to a small device that we can fit in our pocket to provide us with global connectivity. It also doubles as a computer.

Who knew that it would happen in such a short space of time? Certainly not me. Back when mobile phones were in their infancy, my buddy John O’Connor got one. We were up in Mosney in County Meath helping out with the Community Games at the time and I was queueing up to use one of the public phones to ring home when John showed me his brick of a mobile.

In those days, coverage was scarce, and it very much depended where you were whether you had a signal or not. So, you might have to walk around for a bit before you could make a call and even at that, calls were expensive, so conversations were kept to a minimum. I remember telling him that they would never catch on which is something he doesn’t let me forget.

But they did catch on and now they play a considerable part in all our lives. Ironically, we criticise phones and social media at times for ruining the art of conversation but at the same time they keep us in contact with friends and relatives all over the world. Whether mobile phones are a good thing or not is debatable but they’re here to stay.

Watches have changed too, and I remember the first one I ever had. I was five years old and it was given to me by my parents when I was in hospital in Cork. It was my pride and joy. Years later I got my first battery operated watch which was an amazing leap in technology at the time. There was no more winding and surely it couldn’t get any better than that.

But it did, and now I have a watch that lets me know when I get a text message or if someone has contacted me on social media. It counts how many steps I take every day and sets targets for me to reach to improve my wellbeing. It measures my stress levels, my heart rate, the amount of sleep I get and the number of calories I take on board. It even records how many times I go up and down the stairs.

Not so very long ago, we had a TV at home with just two channels. If you wanted to change from one to the other or adjust the volume, you had to get out of your chair and do it manually. My new watch would have had lots of fun counting all that movement back then.

My current TV is bigger than any of those old sets we had, but it only takes up a fraction of the space thanks to modern technology. It can access hundreds of channels, it’s interactive and completely controlled remotely. I don’t understand all the features on the thing because some of the functions are just too complicated for me, but I suspect it might be able to make my dinner or take me for a drive.

All this happened in the blink of an eye so maybe Leo is right to be concerned about the future. There’s no point in trying to deny progress. The modern workforce must be ready to embrace it and be able to adapt to change because it’s coming. It’s not all bad news though because the robotic age will bring benefits too.

I had surgery as a child back in the sixties and it left me with a prominent scar going from my belly button to my breast bone. It remains with me to this day, fifty-five years later, as a reminder of the event. Last year I had my prostate removed by a robot and you’d struggle to find the excavation site a mere five months after, so I know where my loyalty lies.

Bring on the robots I say, so they can look after our health. But Leo is right to be concerned though because some efficient robots in the Dail might just be more productive than what’s there at the moment.

There’s a very catchy statement on the Cork County Council sponsored website for Spike Island which tells you that in the last 1300 years, Spike Island has been home to heroes and villains, captains and convicts, red coats and rioters, sinners and saints. 

The islands impressive 104 acres have at one time or another hosted an Island monastery, an Island prison, an Island fortress and an Island home. If that doesn’t peak your interest, then nothing will. Fortunately, I have been aware of this little island all my life because my mother was born and raised there.

She was born on Spike Island in 1934 and her mother was well known around the locality of Cobh and The Great Island because she was the local midwife. She travelled in a launch from Spike, in all types of weather, to get to Cobh to deliver babies. She was known to most people as Nurse Carson and she delivered around two thousand babies during her lifetime.

The family moved to Cobh when my mother was still a young girl and they lived on East Hill overlooking Cork Harbour. For the rest of her life she had an unrestricted view of Spike from her sitting room window and she always retained a special love for the place. I grew up looking at that little island and often heard her telling stories of her childhood there.

We were chatting one day, and she was lamenting the fact that she hadn’t been back there in such a long time, so in 2006, I arranged for a launch to take us over for the day. As it happened, the guy driving the launch was also born and raised on Spike, so when we got there, the two of them walked ahead and talked about days gone by and remembered their old neighbours while myself and my father brought up the rear.

Many of the buildings were in a dilapidated state with windows broken, roofs falling in and the entire area was generally overgrown. But as bad as it was, she got a great kick out of retracing her childhood steps. She had a great day and that’s why I was delighted to see the fantastic work that has taken place there in recent years and it’s great to see it open to the public as a major tourist attraction.

David Linnane reported in this paper some time ago that Spike Island beat the Eiffel Tower and Buckingham Palace in the race to be named Europe’s leading tourist attraction at the 2017 World Travel Awards. Stiff competition also came from the Acropolis in Greece and the Coliseum in Rome, but the former prison and fortress came out on top.

More than 45,000 visitors went there in 2017 and they hope to raise that to 100,000 by 2020. About €6 million, partly funded by Fáilte Ireland has been poured into the refurbishment of Spike and its success puts it right up there with Titanic Belfast and the Guinness Storehouse.

I have no doubt that if my mother was still alive, she’d be a regular visitor too because there’s a lot to see and the place is steeped in history. I remember looking over at Spike Island in 1985 when it was a prison and the prisoners had rioted, and the place was on fire.

When the prison closed, there was little activity on the island until the Cork County Council took it over and it’s great to see some life there again. The large number of visitors flocking there during the summer months are very welcome. But not every island serves up a warm welcome to strangers.

Take the story of an American tourist who tried to land on a small island off India recently. North Sentinel Island is part of the Andaman Islands, deep in the Indian Ocean and the Sentinelese tribe, believed to be only 150 in number, doesn’t want to have any contact with the outside world and is openly hostile to anyone who tries to get too close.

Outsiders are officially banned from going within three miles of the island to protect the way of life of the natives and to safeguard them from 21st century diseases but there is a suggestion that this particular tourist was a missionary and was trying to make contact with the tribe to convert them to Christianity.

He ignored instructions from the authorities, and advice from locals, to stay away from the place. According to police, he had tried to reach Sentinel island previously but failed so this time he got a boat to bring him in close to the island and went the rest of the way on his own in a canoe but instead of being met with a holiday brochure and the offer of a tour, he was hit by a hail of arrows and he was killed.

The warning signs were there because in 2006, two Indian fishermen moored their boat near the island while they went for a sleep but the little boat broke loose and drifted onto the island. The fishermen were never seen again, and their bodies were never recovered. 

The Sentinelese tribe is one of the last groups in the world to be untouched by modern civilisation and they should be left that way. It’s supremely arrogant for someone to think they can improve the lives of any tribe by introducing them to religion. The authorities there respect their privacy and only observe them from a distance. The Indian Coast Guard flew over the island one time and the tribesmen tried to shoot down the helicopter with bows and arrows.

Spike Island on the other hand, is a different kettle of fish. You’ll have a great experience and you won’t be attacked by the natives.