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I've started a new thread as there are several comments along the lines of the structure of the AI championship being unsatisfactory owing to the Xmas break and the unavailability of club players for the inter-county season.

There are many calls for everything to be wrapped up before Xmas.

Now with 6 rounds required after the country championships, do people propose playing every weekend. A reasonable every second weekend would require 12 weeks to run off things, assuming that the final was 16 December then the county finals would have to be in September.

Do those who posted actually want this/think it workable?

Times are Hard!



The Republic fashion chain has collapsed into administration – putting 2,500 jobs at risk.

The Leeds-based company, which has 121 stores and employs 2,500 people, appointed Ernst & Young as administrators on Wednesday and immediately made 150 staff at its head office redundant.

It is the latest in a long list of retail failures since Christmas, including Jessops, HMV and Blockbuster, with the total loss of up to 10,000 jobs.

Hunter Kelly, one of the administrators appointed by E&Y, said Republic had suffered from a "very sudden and rapid decline in sales in late January".

"The impact on cash flows has resulted in the business being unable to continue to operate outside of an insolvency process. Unfortunately, it has been necessary to make 150 employees at the head office in Leeds redundant," he said.

Kelly said Republic would continue to trade "with a view to selling the business as a going concern".

Just watched this on TG4. It is on BBC 2 NI on Sunday night.
A bit of an insight into the Harte family, one that is remarkably stoic in the light of the tragedy.

Worth watching or catching on the players.

Boylesports odds for 2013!
Not sure that I would be putting money on Kerry at this stage!
Also not sure that Meath has so much better a chance than the next 5.

Kerry      11/4
Donegal   9/2
Dublin   9/2
Cork      9/2
Mayo      13/2
Tyrone   20/1
Kildare   25/1
Meath   25/1
Galway   66/1
Laois      66/1
Armagh   66/1
Derry      66/1
Down      66/1
Longford   80/1
Wexford   100/1
Monaghan   125/1
Limerick   150/1
Sligo      200/1
Westmeath200/1
Tipperary   200/1
Louth      250/1
Cavan   250/1
London   250/1
Offaly   300/1
Wicklow   500/1
Antrim   500/1
Fermanagh   500/1
Leitrim   1000/1
Clare      1000/1
Carlow   2000/1
Waterford   2000/1
New York   2000/1

Was the area now known as Andersonstown in Belfast formerly known as Ballydownfine? I was rather surprised to find Ballydownfine on a 1970 map, I hadn't heard of it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/18845231

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jAv6Ar1-4g

Some good news from the Belfast Telegraph poll
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/gaelic-games-protestant-support-for-gaa-in-schools-grows-16170781.html



Growing numbers of Protestants support GAA sports being offered as an option at state schools in Northern Ireland.

The Belfast Telegraph poll revealed that a total of 42% of people of all religions thought that sports such as Gaelic football and hurling should be offered with just 23% opposed. Support was highest among 25-44 year-olds.

Breaking the results down on religious grounds and excluding "don't knows", support was 44% amongst Protestants, who would mainly have attended state schools, and 85% amongst Catholics.

Some 81% of people of "other or no religion" also supported the idea.

Including "don't knows", just over a third (34%) of Protestants were opposed to GAA at state schools, 27% were in favour and 39% had no opinion.

This reflects softening of Protestant and unionist feeling towards the GAA since it lifted a ban on members of the Crown forces participating in its teams.

In January DUP leader Peter Robinson attended the Dr McKenna Cup final in his capacity as First Minister. The GAA also invited the Queen to its Croke Park HQ on her visit to the Republic.

Gaelic games are offered in a number of state, or controlled sector, schools including Limavady Grammar, Portora Royal in Enniskillen, Ashfield Boys' School in Belfast and Dungannon Royal.

This development has been paralleled by increased participation in rugby in Catholic schools here.

Aogan O Fearghail, the Ulster GAA President confirmed: "Ulster GAA is actively promoting Gaelic games to people from non-GAA backgrounds.

"Through these programmes Ulster GAA encourages young people from non-traditional GAA backgrounds to participate in our games, while also raising awareness of the association, helping to build good relations and using sport to break down barriers."

For full statistics analysis visit Lucid talk

One of the good things about the Internet is that people upload old pics and cine films.

Dublin 1976
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWUferyKCww

Newry in the days of the railway
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTAc1kq7a6s
(actually someone uploaded this from a DVD)

The colour of the year 2012 is
Orange

http://uk.lifestyle.yahoo.com/2012-colour-of-the-year-announced.html

I was never a major fan of the Saw Doctors, but they are mellowing in their old age. Their acapella version of Red Cortina last Christmas was great, as is their latest effort. I hope that I look as well as Petula Clark when I am 79!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItVEhL-T7qQ

Reduction to 16

Everything changed, except Newry/Armagh is actually reduced





http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1816829.html

Likely unionist loss at Westminster as mid-Ulster is merged with East Derry and likely SDLP loss as South Belfast is abolished.

building on some comments from Milltown Row in the "leaving" thread.

Where would you like to travel to, but in reality you'll probably never make it.

For me

Iran
Armenia
Madagascar


 

A 15-month-old baby girl survived a fall from a seventh-floor apartment in Paris almost unscathed after bouncing off a cafe awning and into the arms of a passer-by, police said on Tuesday. Skip related content

The infant had been playing unsupervised with her four-year-old sister on Monday when she somehow fell out of the window, a spokesman for local city police said.

A young man saw the baby starting to fall and alerted his father, who raced to get into position, arms outstretched, to catch her after she hit the awning, the daily Le Parisien reported.

"He must have played rugby for years to have developed reflexes like that," a bystander who saw the incident told the paper.

Police said the girl appeared to have no serious injuries and was under observation in a nearby hospital.

The owner of the cafe, located at the foot of the block of flats in the northeast of Paris, said it was a stroke of luck he had decided to leave the awning open that afternoon.

"I usually close it to stop it catching fire as people tend to throw their cigarette butts onto it," he told the television station i-tele.

The police spokesman said the circumstances behind the accident were unclear. "The parents were absent, and it's a bit difficult questioning the two girls, given their age.

26 county Vodafone have long had a 99c/day data deal  for prepaid users, which they also allowed you use anywhere the prepaid phone roaming worked.  They are now imposing a €2/day charge for roaming (not bill for the present).
http://www.vodafone.ie/aboutus/notifications/?ts=1287845177468

For roaming calls there is no charge for roaming in the UK, although there  is elsewhere. This data proposal treats NI like Albania, almost uniquely introducing roaming charges within Ireland where they did not previously exist.

Vodafone sponsor the GAA  and if you are a Dub and check the score on the phone at halftime in the game in Armagh or Newry this might affect you. But even if you are not affected directly, out of principle I'd encourage Vodafone users to complain on their forum etc. 26 county O2 earlier in the year tried to impose new roaming charges in NI for bill users, but were driven off by customer agitation. This island is small enough, you should not have to pay more for using one mast rather than another, when the same company owns it! This is especially true of a company that allegedly supports the GAA.

from the Irish Times Monday 11  October



IN NORTH Armagh they're rolling out the "Lurgan champagne" but it's not the expensive Veuve Clicquot or Moët variety. It is an affectionate euphemism for Buckfast tonic wine, locally called "Buckie" and made by the Benedictine monks of the eponymously named abbey in Devon who used an old recipe from France for their tipple.

The occasion for the celebrations is the fact that this year Lurgan is marking its 400th anniversary. And the powers that be are making a determined effort to reinvent its image to attract visitors to a part of the North that doesn't feature much on most tourists' radar but which has some elegant architecture that has been imaginatively restored.

Appropriately for its quarter-centenary, Lurgan has divided itself into Quarters promoting its heritage and colourful figures from its past. In 1610 John Brownlow of Nottingham was granted 1,500 acres of land that included Lurgyvallivacken, later shortened to Ballylurgan, and in 1629 became simply Lurgan.

Fast-forward to 2010 and this year, under a shopfront improvement scheme run in conjunction with Craigavon Council, many businesses have been spruced up with modern facades, brighter lighting and new signs. Some of the most impressive vernacular and ecclesiastical buildings are being renovated. Derelict properties have been overhauled and given new life; others, such as old mills, have been repurposed and turned into flats or taken over by small businesses.

Two of the main churches – St Peter's Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland Christ the Redeemer – are undergoing a multi-million pound makeover. More than £3 million is being spent on St Peter's, a late-Victorian church with a thin lofty spire built in the French gothic style, and £1.3 million on repointing the Church of Ireland tower.

Despite the Troubles and recent incidents that have projected it into the news headlines, Lurgan has managed to preserve some of its finest buildings and much of its historic fabric has been retained. It is a place with a strong pride in its past. A walk along the main streets is an architectural eye-opener with Georgian and Victorian town houses sitting alongside 20th- and 21st-century buildings. The development of the town is inextricably linked to the Quakers, who held their first meeting in Ireland here in 1654. Highly industrious, they were of great value to the town. The old Quaker meeting house is now occupied by accountants but in 1995 a new one was built, where weekly services are held.

A swathe of classical buildings, including banks and building societies in the central shopping streets, sit cheek by jowl with Paolo's Pizza, Central Chippy and Pound Shops. Vacant buildings, a product of the recession, detract from the grandeur of the streetscape but the imprint of the past is all around. Coach arches leading into laneways and courtyards still survive along with crumbling red brick industrial buildings, such as stitching factories for making handkerchiefs.

The first power loom factory was built here in 1855, and in 1866 James Malcolm set up the first factory for hemstitching of linen by machine. Linen was the essential basis of Ulster's prosperity and stimulated other industrial enterprises. In his 1888 Guide and Directory to County Armagh , GH Bassett wrote: "With the single exception of Belfast, no town in Ireland has increased in population and wealth so rapidly as Lurgan . . . this progress is entirely due to the development of the linen industry".

The neoclassical Mechanics Institute in Market Street is an intriguing landmark building and a throwback to another age. Its square tower sticks up like an exclamation mark in the town centre and is a focal point with its newly painted sky-blue façade. Built at a cost of £1,400 in 1858 as a place for the mechanics who worked in the linen power loom factories, it now houses a cafe, snooker room and private members' bar.

Along William Street a blue plaque on the wall of No 12 records the birthplace of a poet, mystic and social reformer who became one of the founders of the Irish literary revival and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre. George William Russell, who wrote under the pseudonym AE, was born in the street on April 10th, 1867. He attended Lurgan Model School for seven years before his family moved to Dublin in 1878. He was educated at Rathmines School and later went to the Metropolitan School of Art, where he met WB Yeats. His name is now commemorated in his home town in the newly established Russell Quarter.

But the historic name most associated with Lurgan is Brownlow and it lives on today – not only in the Brownlow Quarter and in Brownlow Terrace – but specifically in the architectural showpiece Brownlow House, an astonishing building on which £4 million has been spent in recent years. Built in the late 1830s in the Elizabethan style by Charles Brownlow (later Lord Lurgan) from honey-coloured Scottish sandstone, it was designed by the Edinburgh architect William Henry Playfair. It stood in an estate of 259 acres and included a lake which was dug as part of an employment relief scheme.

The spades used in the scheme had long blades that led to a well-known phrase to describe someone who is looking miserable: "A face as long as a Lurgan spade". Perhaps a glass of "Lurgan champagne" would be the ideal tonic to bring a smile to a gloomy long-faced countenance.

Former Westmeath U-21 footballer, whose football career was cut short by an accident wins World  Para-cycling medal.
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Athlone athlete Mark Rohan secured Ireland's first ever Para-cycling World Championship Gold Medal when winning the H1 Handcycling Road Race in Baie-Comeau, Canada on Saturday.

Riding a very tactical race, Rohan pulled away from the rest of the field in the first lap with the previous World Champion Austrian rider Wolfgang Schattauer.

In the second lap they were joined by the Israeli rider Yakof Lion and it was clear that these three would share out the medals.

On the final climb Rohan and Schattauer increased the pressure to drop the Israeli rider and leave it a two-cat race for the gold medal.

With just 500 metres to go Rohan attacked from behind to overtake Schattauer and held him off in a thrilling finish to win by just two seconds and take the gold for Ireland.

BELFAST BRIEFING: A new study shows the scale of the economic problem that Northern Ireland has to deal with, writes FRANCESS McDONNELL

WHAT IS the difference between Greece and Northern Ireland – and no, it is not a trick question.

The answer, national stereotypes aside, is several billion euro – although it is anybody's guess as to what the exact amount might be.

The Greeks, who have set new Olympic records for budget deficits, might be surprised to find that any other country could be in a worst position than they are when it comes to spending money they did not possess in the first place.

But they would have reckoned without Northern Ireland and its gold medal-winning ability to find someone else to pass the bill to – normally the UK Treasury.

Greek's budget deficit is estimated to be 13.6 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).

An economic study produced by Ulster Bank has just revealed that, in comparison, the North's fiscal deficit could be as high as 32 per cent of GDP.

The bank concedes that it is unfair to compare national deficits with regional ones. But then when have budget deficits ever been fair?

The Ulster Bank has put together some figures that rate the scale of fiscal deficits in what it describes as the sterling zone.

It makes for depressing reading in relation to the North.

The bank has uncovered that five UK regions have an annual deficit that tops that of Greece.

In Northern Ireland's case, its deficit is estimated to be more than 2.5 times higher.

Why are these figures relevant if they do not really compare like with like?

Because they show exactly the scale of the economic problem that Northern Ireland has to deal with.

The North's Executive may not have to find the money to try and fix its fiscal deficit problems like the Greek government but it's financial outlook is just as precarious.

Northern Ireland currently receives about £9 billion in annual budgets from the UK.

Historically the North has always received more public money per head of the population from the UK Treasury.

At the same time it has traditionally produced less revenue per head of the population compared to other parts of the UK.

What this adds up to is that Northern Ireland consistently spends more than it earns so it is not hard to see why a Greek-style tragedy could be on the cards when it comes to further UK public spending cuts.

These will likely be unveiled later this month when the coalition government publishes its emergency budget.

Richard Ramsey, Ulster Bank's chief economist, believes that the North could be looking at up to £1.5 billion in spending cuts over the next four years.

He says this is going to pose a major challenge for the local "public expenditure driven economy".

Latest economic analysis suggests that public expenditure in the North accounts for more than 70 per cent of local economic output.

According to Ramsey, the immediate outlook for Northern Ireland is grim even without the impact of any further budget cuts.

He estimates the economy contracted by at least 4.5 per cent in 2009 and says there has been a much weaker recovery in the first half of this year than had been previously anticipated.

Ramsey reckons Northern Ireland will be doing well if it sees growth of less than 1 per cent this year.

In his opinion the North will "struggle to get out of first gear in its economic recovery".

There is no escaping widespread and severe public expenditure cuts. In fact there is a school of thought in Northern Ireland that, in the long run, it could help transform the local public sector and the local economy.

But as Joanne Stuart from the Institute of Directors has repeatedly warned, reform will come at a price.

Stuart says there is wide agreement that the balance between public and private sector employment in Northern Ireland needs to be changed.

"Until now there has been no consensus about how to achieve such a step-change within a realistic timetable and there is little understanding of how such a shift could open up scope for creating more jobs," she says.

According to Stuart and the Institute of Directors, there is scope for private-sector money and expertise to be used more widely to secure high-quality, value-for-money, services.

She says it is time for the Executive to organise a "radical and strategic review" of how public services are delivered in the North.

Otherwise, Stuart says, local politicians might be forced into making "hasty decisions" to save money, which could further damage the local economy in the long run.

Suzi Quatro 60 today!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U_w5HlnhAM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SXWgC0SLCA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph6DHoN-H6M