Letters to the Editor: Waterbutts should be a requirement for all new houses
Waterbutts are a cost-effective way of having access to water.
Last week, for €30, I bought a waterbutt from Aldi that attaches to the gutter pipes and collects rainwater.Â
I’d seen these in schools and thought them a cost-effective way of having access to water.
After near two months of rain, I knew it wouldn’t be long before mine was tested, and our soft damp day on Monday duly obliged.Â
However, what shocked me was just how quickly the butt filled up. After a couple of hours, the 100 litre barrel was full to the brim.
It was a real eye-opener — an example of just how much rainwater is channelled into the drains when houses and estates are built.Â
There are several going up in Midleton as I write, and it’s kind of frightening to think of all the potential floodwater that’s now going to run helter-skelter through the many drains towards the estuary when these are complete.
The other thing that struck me, though, is just how easy and cost-effective it would be to ensure that each household have one of these attached to their house, primarily as a way of slowing down potential flood water (as well as the great savings in terms of tap water use in our gardens etc).
Could it be a requirement on all new houses have one of these?Â
Could there be a retrofitting programme that the Government would roll out that might be a lot more cost-effective than compensation schemes, especially in towns like Midleton, so prone to flooding and yet also growing so rapidly?
Regarding the new hospital for Limerick. Well this is not exactly a surprise, it was always on the cards that yet again Clare would be sidelined and effectively told that the lives of people living in West Clare simply do not matter.Â
This hospital will take many years to come to fruition and in the meantime it will provide cover for the ongoing crisis that is UHL.Â
A disastrous decision not only for the people of Clare but for anyone using the dangerous facilities at UHL for the next 10 plus years.
Gareth O’Callaghan’s evocative essay really struck a chord not only with me but also, I’m sure with so many other “vinylphiles”.Â
Many of us have travelled that same journey, possibly with a happier ending, from buying his first LP to his “blast of sheer madness”.
I would bet I know the shop in Dublin where he cut the umbilical chord; just last week I was in that very shop.
I haven’t parted with my collection, which is in no way as exhaustive as Gareth’s.Â
I have the very first LP I bought, it’s , Bill Haley and His Comets, AH13.
Thank you for reminding me of my now largely unplayed LPs, it’s time that I took them for a spin to revive the sounds and memories of my own vinyl journey.
Amy-Joyce Hastings states a truism when she says all films are political ('Elon Musk is wrong about empathy — and Irish film proves it', March 10).
She says “there is nothing more monstrous that we are capable of than deliberately harming children. It is the clearest moral line that exists”.
At this weekend’s Academy Awards, two films in the international category highlight the juxtaposition between what is real and what is fiction, between art and reality.
The Tunisian entry, The Voice of Hind Rajab is the critically acclaimed story of a five-year-old girl trapped in a car with the deceased members of her family around her as Red Crescent volunteers keep her on the line as they try frantically to rescue her from the smouldering ashes of Gaza.
Not only did they not succeed but the Israeli defence forces also took out the clearly marked ambulances and the first responders that were sent to rescue her.
Kaouther Ben Hania’s depiction of this war crime is nominated for best international feature film.
Veteran Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s is competing with .Â
It is also nominated for best original screenplay and the story is based on Panahi’s recollection of events that happened while he was incarcerated in an Iranian prison.
All post-production was done in France and it is that country’s entry in the best international feature film category.
As Ms Hastings says: “Yet the most evil men who currently occupy the highest positions of power in our world have shown us they think nothing of harming, abusing, and murdering children. Indiscriminately. Repeatedly”.
Perhaps the Taoiseach might spare a thought for Hind Rajab and all the little children mercilessly taken out reportedly by an American missile in southern Iran during his visit to the White House.
I want to thank Matt Ahern for highlighting the Taoiseach’s questionable statement at the recent ’s Future Cork event, when he suggested that “the day has long since gone when sports organisations in this country could lay full claim to the properties that they rightly own” ( , March 6).Â
I just missed reading your editorial on Martin’s statement (February 28), and after I had returned to it, I just could not believe what I was reading. It “beat Banagher”.
I hope someone will ask Micheál Martin what possessed him to make such a weird statement, and was he thinking that his popularity would increase as a result?
However, he might soon realise that the opposite could be the case, because many GAA members who have worked tirelessly to better thousands of communities for decades are very angry indeed, and some are not likely to forget anytime soon.
On Tuesday, it was reported that digitally altered Cork City Council documents were circulated around WhatsApp groups, making false claims of a very serious nature.Â
This is an extremely worrying development, beyond the pale of what is acceptable in a decent society.
The AI altered documents purported to show a proposal, allegedly coming from councillor John Maher, that the council seek planning permission to develop the disused commercial premises at the old Keating’s Fitted Furniture building in Ballyvolane as an international protection accommodation service centre.Â
That is simply untrue, false, bogus rubbish. It’s fabricated, vicious nonsense.
This is what fake news looks like.Â
And yet, while the news may be fake, there is nothing fake about the political fire it bolsters, and the racist, bigoted, petty, and intolerant views it nurtures.
Fake news shreds the fabric of society, it undermines the foundations of democracy.Â
These are not my views, but the views of someone who in her eventful life experienced these things at first hand, someone who escaped Nazi Germany, was a refugee, and eventually settled in the United States.Â
Her name was Hannah Arendt, one of the most influential and significant philosophers of the 20th century.Â
When Arendt speaks to us about totalitarianism, she knows what she is talking about, and we should listen.
Arendt's most famous work was , published in 1951.Â
It is a worrying state of affairs that 75 years later this book is still pertinent, in fact to deny the obvious would be extremely unwise.Â
This is one of the most alarming but insightful comments by Arendt from her book: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, and the distinction between the true and the false, no longer exist”.
Collapsing the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, is an intentional political project.Â
It’s the essence of the politics of post-truth, which is the enemy of democratic politics.Â
Post-truth delegitimises objectivity, opening the flood gates to the validity of any opinion, no matter how vile or offensive or inaccurate or false it happens to be.
Arendt goes on to say that the aim of totalitarian sympathisers is not to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.Â
When AI fabricates fake news,and passes it on as legitimate, it becomes impossible for many of us to know what to believe, or who to believe, which is exactly what the totalitarian merchants of post-truth want to achieve.
Truth matters, especially in politics.Â
As Arendt reminds us, truth matters because truth is what we share, what we have in common.Â
Without truth the common world collapses, the social sphere becomes impossible to navigate.Â
Without truth we cannot genuinely act because we don’t know what or who to believe.Â
Without truth solidarity collapses, and is replaced by dogmatic loyalty.
This is the truth about post-truth, and why it must be resisted and fought: Post-truth makes it impossible for us to be in the world.Â
Post-truth means that we are unable to think, to act, and to make sense of reality.Â
Unless it is challenged, post-truth will make our life in common unbearable and unfeasible.
Currently there are a minimum of 20 major conflicts taking place in our world resulting in the unnecessary loss of hundreds of thousands of human lives, without even considering the widespread destruction of property.
Perhaps when Micheál Martin presents a bowl of shamrock to Donald Trump in the White House on March 17, rather than making any comments regarding warmongering instead offers Ireland as a safe neutral venue where opposing combatants can engage in conclusive peace talks for whatever duration is necessary.
Helping to restore peace and normality to our extremely troubled world would be the greatest tribute to offer St Patrick on his approaching feast day.
The two new sets of lights on the R630 near the Lakeview roundabout are causing traffic chaos.
This road serves Ballycotton, Shanagarry, Aghada, Cloyne, and Whitegate.Â
The placement of two sets of lights so close to the roundabout is simply terrible planning and is causing huge tailbacks on the N25, the R630, and the exit from Midleton.
Talks of different timing resolving the issue are nonsense.Â
They are too close to the roundabout and are disrupting traffic in a major way.Â
I drive this road daily and it's gone from free-flowing to a standstill in all directions. They should be removed immediately.
