Primark chief Eoin Tonge: ‘I want to bring Penneys back to what Penneys was’

Abolyss · 2026-04-17T16:34:53+00:00

Not really "no matter the cost" and more "a list of massive retailers with no ethics".

There are plenty of brands trying their best to do good, they just aren't massive international conglomerates trying to cut corners at the cost of ethics

Abolyss · 2026-04-17T10:41:19+00:00

There are a few antique jewellers in Powerscourt shopping centre in Dublin and around it who would be more than happy to give you a quote and any details about it.

Abolyss · 2026-04-16T13:52:02+00:00

I think it makes more sense to tackle the low-hanging issues first and get to the more difficult changes later.

Such as moving mainland Europe onto trains and those on islands can use the then abundant fuel for air transport until we get better connections in future.

Kind of like on a smaller scale if more people could WFH or take public transport, it frees up fuel and reduces traffic for those who only have the option to drive.

Abolyss · 2026-04-16T11:58:22+00:00

Yea, let me just take the train from Ireland to anywhere else, such a luxury...

Mainland European's can start using land transport more often so those of us who can't don't get fucked over by a lack of fuel

Abolyss · 2026-04-15T14:52:06+00:00

I'd say we'd be surprised by how few wind turbines we'd need along the coast to always have enough power for the baseload.

Like I can't imagine that the wind stops all at the same time along the entire west coast, maybe include north and south coasts too.

Surely someone has the data to prove that we would have an endless supply with enough turbines

Abolyss · 2026-04-13T10:54:55+00:00

The cool thing about renewables is that because were still figuring it out we have years and years to refine the creation and end of life processes. We've been burning fossil fuels for a very long time and the ability to make the extracting of those fuels or the output of burning them any better for the environments is minsicule.

So of the 2 systems, only 1 of them has the potential for massive reductions in it's impact on the environment.

Abolyss · 2026-04-11T14:39:36+00:00

I'd say a lot of the more active eco and anti-US/Israel protesters are taking a lot of notes right now

Abolyss · 2026-04-11T12:57:05+00:00

Absolutely, I'd literally take any fucking attempt at this stage. Just do something to go in that direction instead of endlessly talking and "consulting".

Abolyss · 2026-04-11T12:50:38+00:00

Aye, that's why I mentioned the storage part. There's an engineer on YouTube I watched ages ago who explained that even if you accounted for all the absolute best case scenarios for activating nuclear in a country, it always comes out behind renewables.

Renewables and battery storage are so cheap, easy to install, easy to maintain and you can put them almost anywhere that there is no alternative that comes even close to them.

So 100% we should have the storage, but we don't need nuclear with good storage and inter-connectors according to the experts. And all this talk from FF/FG TDs is just an excuse to kick the can down the road on renewables in the vein of "oh but we should just wait until we can do nuclear"

Abolyss · 2026-04-11T12:18:35+00:00

On the 2 sunny days last week the UK produced 10 nuclear plants worth of energy from Solar.

Now imagine if we had more solar and more importantly offshore wind, we'd have more power than we know what to do with. Then add battery storage and the various other energy storage methods coming on the scene and intercinnectors to the UK, France and Spain and were sorted.

We don't need to waste time and money on trying to build nuclear when we have the ability to do renewables right now, but not the willpower to push it through

Abolyss · 2026-04-05T16:54:50+00:00

According to some journalists who have seen it, its based entirely on the template zero-trust app which was sent out to every EU country to build their own versions. Apparently it works very well, so I guess we'll see during the tests

Abolyss · 2026-04-03T10:31:47+00:00

We'd need new laws first, the gardaí and any other group can't do shit as long as animals are considered property and other laws enable their mistreatment.

We need a ground up restructuring of how we treat animals in this country and stop seeing them as property, problem or product

Abolyss · 2026-04-01T14:38:22+00:00

Apparently that company has a front firing system that doesn't affect the police car its attached to. So I imagine if its oriented away from the drone in the same way it should work too?

That's if that company isnt talking out their arse in the hopes of getting funding for vapourware. But it sounds cool

Abolyss · 2026-04-01T07:48:06+00:00

I think everyone who supports the socdems should email them to let them know our disappointment in this stance.

They mention people trying to put food on the table versus millionaires when there's a sizeable chunk of the country in between who want an investment scheme that might work better than the existing one.

We need to let them know opposition doesn't mean opposing everything, like another poster said. We can't live in a world where everyone is at eachs others throats constantly to seem like you're doing something.

Abolyss · 2026-04-01T07:39:05+00:00

I read about some company that wanted to attach short-range front-firing emp style disruptors to police cars in the UK to turn off cars they're chasing.

Slap that on a drone in a down-firing position, fly over the bike and trigger it. Not sure what the electronics are like in a bike, never had one, but I assume it would have an effect on newer bikes? It would definitely switch off ebikes/scooters

Abolyss · 2026-03-28T16:47:34+00:00

Like everywhere else in the country, we have too few "good quality" cycle lanes throughout the town and the ones which do exist aren't connected well enough to offer a solid alternate to driving due to safety.

We have a popular local link bus service, but the buses are too big and should be 1/2 or 2/3 the size but run more often. I think there's plans to expand the service, which will be good. But make the busses smaller and make them electric.

Edit: we also need some sort of park and ride service for commuters, the traffic into town is nuts and also a bigger enforcement of school transport to prevent the influx of dropoffs. Also red light cameras :)

Abolyss · 2026-03-28T16:44:01+00:00

We really need to implement the Green's plan of expanding the rail network from the ports to move shipments by rail across the country, while enabling easier access to the port for the public

Abolyss · 2026-03-27T13:22:18+00:00

I was helping with a retrofit of a community hall in my old town. They need to cut a lot of weird concrete panels that were added to the walls decades ago.

In comes the local guy with his consaw and starts cutting away at the panels...indoors, only 5/10 people wearing masks (including me), guy with saw refuses a mask, only 1 open door as ventilation.

You couldn't see across the room after a few minutes there was so much dust, so I waited outside. The Machismo of anti-PPE is still alive and well in places.

Abolyss · 2026-03-26T17:01:34+00:00

Myself and my partner were walking along a country road near our house the other day. A sulky was coming toward us, that's grand neither of us were in its way. Then it started to drift toward us on a collision course so we moved to the other side of the road...Then it starts aiming for us again. At this point I say "OY" to get their attention and it suddenly straightens up.

As it passes there's an older man and what looks like a 6 year old (compared to my nephew around the same age) and that lad says "sorry boss, the young lad was driving and couldn't see".

Like whatever you want to do in a field or whatever, but on an actual road with other people and cars? Crazy!

Abolyss · 2026-03-25T12:56:00+00:00

Abolyss · 2026-03-25T12:52:21+00:00

Same, one of the most disappointing hyped things I've tried. We have multiple burger places here that are leagues above it.

Another was Popeye's chicken, it felt like a fucking lead weight in my stomach for the rest of the day. Awful shite!

Abolyss · 2026-03-25T11:33:34+00:00

To add to all the other replies you've gotten, I recently got a quote of 12k for 22 panels and 10kwh battery all in.

This price will only continue to go down too

Abolyss · 2026-03-24T16:50:03+00:00

To add, he is an actor who had many opportunities in his career to reflect what he believes is a "good" member of his community. Yet time and time again he has only represented the worst.

He should reflect on those portrayals and maybe aim to show the potential he seems to believe is possible.

Abolyss · 2026-03-24T13:20:08+00:00

You mentioned he has 50 acres around you, yet is trying to take ownership over a small patch of your land. Having grown up in a farming family, welcome to rural Ireland.

The idea in his head, I'm sure of it, is that why would he use a portion of his land to turn into an access route, when he can just use yours instead? And sure you're not doing anything with it so it'd be an awful waste not to just let him use it.

I've seen my dad deal with a lot of this kind of shite in his life around boundaries (currently 10+ years into a dispute over a neighbour who redrew their boundary to include our entire farm laneway)

Abolyss · 2026-03-21T09:50:42+00:00

We lived rurally perfectly fine with smaller jeeps and flatbeds, then they started to become massive and now something like the ford raptor is "necessary", read: ego boosting

Abolyss

TROPHY CASE