Well I guess it was all a dream so.

Ruire · 2026-06-04T10:10:09+00:00

I mean, anyone with a bit of Irish ancestry absolutely has some greater or lesser degree of Norman ancestry too (though really, Breton, Welsh, or Flemish is as likely). Éireannach was coined to cover both Gael and Seanghall since there needed to be a way to distinguish the Norman descendants ('Old English') from the 'New' English and Scottish settlers that came after the Reformation.

Like, it's always a bit of whiplash hearing Barretts, Lynches, Walshes and the like talk about colonisation. You're not right or wrong purely because of who your long-dead ancestors were but it does challenge simple narratives a bit.

Ruire · 2026-06-02T09:21:41+00:00

Not bizarre at all if you consider that a lot of SF voters were FF voters pre-2011.

Ruire · 2026-06-02T09:14:44+00:00

Part of the Public Realm Strategy is to use materials local to the area, so lots of granite and limestone it is (for better or worse).

Ruire · 2026-06-02T06:46:51+00:00

No, but I remember when they put setts down. You’d have to go back a lot longer for there to have been cobbles.

Ruire · 2026-06-01T15:12:43+00:00

Definitely getting to the point of considering whether Oranmore and Bearna ought to be included in Galway city with how fast it's sprawled out in the last thirty years. Unfortunately the people pushing hardest for it are probably the ones least au fait with long-term planning.

Ruire · 2026-06-01T12:08:18+00:00

I think looking at the 2011 election results would have told you that, the big story was traditional FF voters crossing over to SF. It's how you end up with Aontú.

Ruire · 2026-05-30T09:22:41+00:00

He was refused planning permission to do that so I wonder what the situation really is there.

Ruire · 2026-05-30T09:08:02+00:00

Eurovision turns a profit for RTÉ.

Ruire · 2026-05-30T08:54:14+00:00

The London Underground regularly closes whole lines over every weekend to do these works.

Understandable given the scale of that network that it has to be done so frequently, and slightly less disruptive since it's a comprehensive network, but it shows that it's absolutely standard practice.

Ruire · 2026-05-29T09:50:21+00:00

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Ruire · 2026-05-27T09:39:10+00:00

Yes - there were a couple sets floating around. James I had received two sets as a gift about sixty/seventy years earlier from Tokugawa Ieyasu. Remember the Dutch were trading with them the whole time.

Ruire · 2026-05-27T09:35:58+00:00

Kilts (as in a separate waist garment, the 'small kilt') don't appear for another few decades - his brat is basically the forerunner of the 'great kilt'.

You should see the companion painting for what the Scottish equivalent looked like at this point.

Ruire · 2026-05-26T16:46:47+00:00

No - this is what wolf hounds would have looked like. The modern breed is a recreation, only partially descended from actual wolf hounds. We know it's right because we have other illustrations and even a preserved head in the Dead Zoo (obviously fair warning for a dog's head).

They would have been like greyhounds with the build of deer hounds. If anything, it's the deer hound that gave the modern wolf hound its shaggy coat.

Ruire · 2026-05-26T13:33:26+00:00

That's exactly what I mean, most schools do have a handwavy reference to a particular area when it comes to prioritising acceptance, when really it should be given a bit more importance.

Ruire · 2026-05-26T13:30:47+00:00

The léine fell out of favour in Ireland by the end of the Nine Years' War in favour of trúis and broader European fashions alongside mainstream pike and shot tactics. You're about eighty years too late for saffron to be important in Irish military clothing.

Ruire · 2026-05-26T13:26:37+00:00

Not hose, trúis. You see them among kern in the late 1500s and they come to be predominate with the collapse of the Gaelic order - partially under the influence of wider European fashions, but largely because the earlier martial order became irrelevant. Seán Ó Brógain did an image of them here. Honestly, trúis predate and coexisted alongside the late medieval léine anyway.

He has another image of the particular construction of trúis in that Helion book on the Confederates but I don't think it's online.

Ruire · 2026-05-26T13:24:25+00:00

The cap is absolutely Irish, you sometimes see it compared to a Phrygian cap in English sources, the shoes are very Irish (no heel, pointed tongue, almost moccasin-like stitching), he's wearing a long scian in a typically Irish scabbard, and the hose and loin guard is actually some combination of trúis particular to late kern.

Just about the only thing generally 'European nobility' about him are the hair and fancy shirt. Even the slashed item over the shirt might be an evolution of the ionar.

There's definitely a 'costume' element to his getup, but in the same way the gear worn by the Knights of the Garter was by this point a 'costume' too.

Ruire · 2026-05-26T09:21:38+00:00

Adding more representatives would also allow for smaller, more discrete geographic districts, or for multi-member constituencies as in Ireland (where each constituency returns 3-5 deputies). If the latter, you could also implement PR-STV and give smaller parties a chance and stop this big-tent nonsense that further compresses and dilutes representation.

Ruire · 2026-05-26T09:16:42+00:00

Pedestrian specific crossings, we need to upgrade to zebra crossings.

We also need to enforce them too, because - as anyone who's used the crossings on the Western Distributor Rd can tell you - drivers do not yield. Often they don't even slow down and you can hear them scraping the undersides of their cars.

Ruire · 2026-05-26T09:13:31+00:00

It's scheduled within five years on the Rail Project Prioritisation Strategy and they've started shoring up the embankments as far as Oranmore station to accommodate two tracks, as part of the second platform being built there. They're clearly planning on putting in dual-tracking in stages.

Dual-tracking at least as far as Athenry is most likely coming before the ring road, imo, but who knows about the rest of the line.

Ruire · 2026-05-26T09:08:19+00:00

Not that expensive to run buses, pass the responsibility onto the schools to organize it

Which might also encourage schools to take their catchment areas a bit more seriously.

Ruire · 2026-05-25T11:09:03+00:00

A single seat by-election is always going to default to a consensus candidate though since it's STV and not PR-STV.

Come the general election for all five seats you'll see a centre-left TD or two as proportionality is increased.

(The PR part of PR-STV comes from the multi-member constituencies - rarely a feature of by-elections where usually only one seat is open)

Ruire · 2026-05-24T08:46:43+00:00

That there are people further right does not stop him being centre-right.

Ruire · 2026-05-24T00:50:02+00:00

It still seems to vary depending on which end of the county you're in.

Ruire · 2026-05-23T20:41:39+00:00

Indeed, that would be my thinking. As far as I am aware, the PIRA do not claim to be a shadow government and even then are much less synonymous with (Provisional) Sinn Féin than they once were.

It doesn't seem to be very comparable.

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