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WHILE IRELAND’S PERCEPTION of North Korea is, by and large, in line with that of other Western countries – that North Korea is something of an economic and political failure – Pyongyang seems to keep quite a close eye on what’s happening over here.
The website of the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) – which issues regular daily despatches in English and Spanish as well as in Korean – often features references to the economic and political goings-on over here.
So, for example, those getting their news from KCNA will be aware of Vision-Net.ie analysis telling them that five Irish firms “collapsed” per day in the first 11 months of this year, leaving aggregate debts of €1.15 billion.
They will also be aware of our recent presidential election, with the president of its Supreme People’s Assembly – the de facto head of government Kim Yong-nam – sending his best wishes to “Micheal Higgins” last month after his October election.
North Koreans are also kept well abreast of the fall in Irish car sales last month, the simultaneous fall in consumer confidence, the dip in retail sales in the third quarter, Eamon Gilmore’s address to the UN General Assembly.
They are also informed, as a matter of sweet diplomacy, that Kim Yong-nam sends St Patrick’s Day greetings to us most years – including in 2009 and 2010.
North Korea’s worker-oriented politics find close favour with those of similar mindsets in Ireland. KCNA tells us that in September 2005, the Irish Workers’ Party appointed a committee to prepare for the 60th anniversary of the foundation of its ruling Korean cousin.
Though little evidence remains of what that committee may have achieved, the KCNA report does tell us that the committee was to be chaired by Sean Garland, the then-president (and current treasurer) of the Irish Workers’ Party.
Garland – a senior figure in the Official IRA – allegedly has other links with North Korea; he is currently the subject of an application to be extradited to the United States, whose currency he is alleged of counterfeiting.
It should be explained that counterfeit $100 bills are one of North Korea’s main exports: as NPR reported earlier this year, shadier businessmen will exchange real US dollars for counterfeit ones, often at a rate of around $60 genuine to $100 fake ones.
The Workers’ Party has other historical solidarity with North Korea – joining with the Communist Party and the Irish-Korean Friendship Society in April 2001 to write to the Irish government, expressing support for North Korea and condemning the US-led campaign against it.
While representations from North Korea are rarely raised at Oireachtas level, North Korean representatives have been present to see some of the Dáil’s most important business.
On the first day of Dáil sittings after Ireland agreed to apply for EU-IMF funding, proceedings were held up (albeit only by a few seconds) to welcome DPR Korea’s ambassador to Ireland, Ja Song-nam, who was watching business in the visitors’ gallery.
North Korea does not have an embassy in Ireland – its British ambassador is accredited here – while the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs’ embassy in Seoul, South Korea is also accredited to Korea DPR.
Despite the two countries establishing formal diplomatic relations in 2003, the Department of Foreign Affairs has affirmed this afternoon that it had “no plans at this point to issue a statement in relation to the death of Kim Jong Il”.
Indeed, relations between the countries – on an official level – are not entirely without their hitches: one of Michael Noonan’s first formal acts as Minister for Finance was to reaffirm a ban on financial transfers to the world’s most secretive state.
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Strange, I would have thought more people would feel the government are doing far too much on climate, considering it all seems to do is tax, tax, tax and more tax.
And in Eamo’s case, just opening his mouth.
The government policy of green taxes will drive people away from a green way of life. There must be a better way that is based on actual green policies, like planting trees, more wild folage, etc. If farmers cut fields in circles, not squares, then more wild follage and cost nothing.
@did you every wonder: what do you mean cost nothing? Reduced land usage will mean farms will not be able to produce as much food meaning reduced supply, meaning it will cost more. With the addition of reducing food security. I’m not sure if your suggestion was serious or just Poe’s law.
@John K: We have enough farm land in Ireland to feed us all provided our population stabilises.
I’ve seen many farmers in my area that removed trees & ditches for no real gain. Nature loses out and the livestock loses shelter. These kind of practices should be stopped.
As for co2 reduction I think that’s going to need new technology. No one realistically wants to cut back very much on consumption.
@John K: Farmers have been paid to take land out of use.
Might as well use it for “Green” purposes, if possible and if it would make a difference.
The carbon footprint of an individual is the biggest load of codswallop big industry foisted onto people to shift the blame to the consumer while they burn the planet alive for profit.
@InTheHead: Ah, tarring the great unwashed with the same brush… That’s what our betters are good at. Taxing by equalling all actions and behaviours is wrong.
We need two cars, living rural and bus ‘schedules’ don’t match working our changing working hours and days. Neither do neighbours’ match ours, so no car pooling.
We don’t need two holidays abroad, we’ve been holidaying locally for the last 24 years.
Got PV installed last autumn, have micro generated 2MW since and, according to the app’s data breakdown, have ‘saved’ just over 3t of CO2.
Tax the “want have”s and not the “must have”s.
Lower taxes on Irish products and services and hike them up on (unnecessary) imports, especially those that should or could be avoided (see South American beef, biomass or peat imports).
The climate is changing, I think it’s getting colder
: Like the other Earth sciences of biology and geology, climate covers many research areas. One topic is Ireland’s maritime climate, which will not change as it sits in the Atlantic.
Those who imagine that climate can be railroaded into one definition of long-term weather and nothing else deserve to be manipulated into believing human control of climate is possible. The more considerate commenters, otoh, go to ground zero for all scientific method modelling where experimental predictions are meant to scale up or clockwork solar system modelling.
“Rule III. The qualities of bodies which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.” Isaac Newton
Society has been victims to this for centuries.
@Max: Not all parts of the planet will experience climate change in the same way.
The pole is warming at a much faster rate than the average.
Which means that other parts of the planet must be experience less than average. And climate change can result in some places being cooler that “normal” at any given time of year.
The people of Delhi are not enjoying the warmth they have been experiencing recently.
The Govt isn’t doing enough to incentivize people or bring people with them. The Irish people have always shown they are willing & environmentally conscious. Green Party ironically have turned more people off than brought people with them. We recycle everything, compost bin in action, reduced use of plastic & reduced our energy use by 25% over 2 years before the increases in energy prices. Since the smart meter was installed, they are saying our Energy usage has increased by 30%, the meter is faulty & I have proven this but the CRU dismissed my complaint. I would say there are thousands of homes been fleeced. Not enough Recycling Centres nationwide either & Retrofit grants are unaffordable for two people working, those who sit on their holes are rewarded. You try but you get punished here.
@SV3tN8M4: Might I ask how you have proven the Smart Meter is faulty?
They have been in touch with me about installing one of these.
(Which would not be of any benefit to me anyway, as far as I can make out.)
We should see a big reduction in hot air after polling day.
They will bring in more taxes.
I would have thought the people felt the opposite. We’ll see now if the green party will lose heavily in the election.
The first line of defence will be that it is a European decision for this and that… And nothing can be done about this… Bla bla blah
By the way more taxes on the way…
Election time. Don’t miss the opportunity to send a message people
@Dominic Leleu: you’d have thought that they’d promise tax cuts coming election time… tax cuts and spending increases, as usual.
These will be coming in the next Budget though, to kick in a couple of weeks before GE day.
The aviation industry estimates that it will take between $1.45 trillion and $3.2 trillion in capital development to increase the share of Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) in the fuel market to 65%. The world’s two largest aircraft lessors, bankers, and airline executives met in Dublin recently. They stated that governments would need to invest massive sums of taxpayers’ money for this to happen, so they want the taxpayer to pay for it.
The airline industry has never paid tax on aviation fuel, unlike other industries that are heavily taxed for the fuel they use and the rest of us who put fuel in our cars to drive to work, so maybe it’s time for the like of the very wealthy Data Centers and Aviation industry to do the heavy lifting and give the rest of us a break, we have done enough.
Probably the most meaningless pointless survey ever.
The wording of the question was clumsy, it was a which eye is your favourite type of question. Green is an ideology that will bring us back to Victoria times.
Taxing People to death Won’t fix it!!!
The “carbon footprint” idea was sponsored by fossil fuel companies to create the false narrative that individual people are responsible for climate change through their choices as consumers. The same handful of multinational corporations are responsible for most of the world’s emissions. This isn’t a conspiracy theory, these are all perfectly widely known and understood facts that you can easily verify with a quick google search.
The only solution to climate change is policy and legislation to curb industry. I don’t see how Irish people are responsible for that.
Get real. Stop driving, well improve public transport, and seriously improve it. Give up flying, we live on an island ffs. Give up meat, meat is one of the most nutrient dense foods, plus it’s delicious.
Everyone needs to play there part, I understand that, but in the grand scheme of things, the world isn’t actually worried about what Ireland is doing about climate change as its effect will be minimal.
Majority?
When was the survey?, was the whole population asked?
No!
I’m so proud of this Government,for all that they do for us people, and for the environment . We need to fall onto line and believe in them more and more …
The usual tripe about farming spouted on here. Easily known most of the green tds are urban, most probably think food magically appears on the shelves everyday. Farmers worldwide are subject to extremely biased carbon regulations where all their offsets, land, hedgegrows, trees,have been handed over to big industry to offset their footprints. You also can’t export your carbon with your produce like industrial processes can i.e Germany export a car to Ireland carbon goes with, same with Saudi and it’s oil. That’s the reason why Germany and France were so eager to get mercusor over the line carbon free beef from South America according to the rules they made this lowering their carbon footprint, absolute load of cobblers. Ireland’s carbon footprint is highly inflated due to these rules seeing as we import almost all consumer goods, we are being lied to on a grand scale and a lot of Muppets on here swallow it hook line and sinker
There must be an actual physical circuit/pathway in the human brain that leads to othering responsibility for the ills of the tribe/society. Think of the number of times you will read comments, or hear people say, that it is ‘them’, not ‘me’ (or whatever ‘us’ the ‘me’ identifies with) that is at fault. It appears to be a way of avoiding personal responsibility, while retaining self-justification that should have come from taking personal responsibility. Basically a quick way of churning emotion through the body. Emotion frequently being a convenient way of side-stepping reason.
@Numinous20111: The enlightenment subculture or ‘Age of Reason’ tried to obliterate the perceptive faculties from research, so now it is all mental this or mental that without the ability to affirm or reject conclusions using the higher faculties of head and heart.
Many of you could learn from a genuine researcher like Pascal who had the perceptive/reasoning balance and, by doing so, raise the standard of consideration in society from the current abysmally low standard.
Stupid mathematicians mistake intuition for hypothesis when Pascal means the perceptive faculties.
Cut meat and milk production by 50%. How many bottles of milk or piece of meat are thrown away every day?
Many. So much pollution for creating garbage.
The Greens and other government parties have been using the Climate agenda as a means to further direct support to business interests at the cost to the people.
A report recently on Reuters showed that just 57 enterprises were responsible for 80% of CO2 emissions since 2016.
Another on NPR showed that Natural Gas is as dirty as coal, due to the enormous methane leaks primarily at wells.
Yet another by the Guardian showed that recycling plastics is a scam, a scam dreamed up by the plastics industry, a scam that is harmful to the environment, a scam that the government now us paying for.
We have a government – including the Greens – supporting the proliferation of Data Centers, at great cost to the environment, at great cost to us.
If the government was really interested in Climate and Environmental issues, then it would have policies that would actually reduce harms. Instead its policies encourage these harms, while the people pay the cost.
If the government had any interest in Climate Change and the Environment it should be putting the burden of recycling onto the producers of waste, not to consumer who has no choice. The producers would then have a very big incentive to reduce such waste.
The government should put costs of plastic packaging onto the producers, creating an incentive to use alternatives.
If the government had any interest in Climate Change and the Environment it should be giving grants to householders to implement RE solutions where that grant aid is NOT tied to specific business interests.
If the government had any interest in Climate Change and the Environment it should never have approved Data Centers, and a halt to this is imperative. These result in the consumption of fossil fuels, no matter how the PR spins it. They result in an enormous increase in Ireland’s energy consumption.
And the benefits are miniscule.
If the government had any interest in Climate Change and the Environment…
Having spoken about clockwork solar system modelling often enough as the root of all experimental modelling, including climate change modelling, it is probably best to demonstrate why it is an assault on the eyes and mind.
https://astro.dur.ac.uk/~ams/users/solar_year.gif
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210922.html
That is RA/Dec modelling, where the planet’s divisor pivots off the Earth’s equator, and the planet has a 90-degree inclination to the orbital plane.
It would be less offensive if they manipulated imaging to show a flat Earth, yet this comes from the same modelling community that insists humanity must control the weather by controlling human behaviour.
The changes in the seasons are due to the motions of the Earth and not the Sun.
@Gerald Kelleher: You believe in a MODEL, the heliocentric spinning ball in a vacuum MODEL that does not exist in reality. We observe the sun moving, we do not observe earth moving.
@Science: the sun doesn’t move, the earth rotates around the sun.
@john dowdall:
It is always a privilege to work with the original perspectives.
Copernicis thus speaks of “sunrise” and “sunset,” of the “rising and setting” of the stars, of changes in the obliquity of the ecliptic and of variations in the equinoctial points, of the mean motion, and variations in the motion of the sun, and so on. All these things really relate to the Earth, but since we are fixed to the Earth and, consequently, share in its every motion, we cannot discover them in the Earth directly and are obliged to refer them to the heavenly bodies in which they make their appearance to us. Hence, we name them as if they took place where they appear to us to take place, and from this one may see how natural it is to accommodate things to our customary way of seeing them.” Galileo
@Science: I see the anarchy of experimental theorists and an exceptionally compliant society. The RA/Dec descriptions allied with manipulating imaging of the Earth from space are meant to be devastating to all but the most indifferent.
The last time a dangerous academic modelling conviction so enslaved a society was Victorian natural selection and the imperatives attached to it.
“Nature is cruel; therefore, we are also entitled to be cruel. When I send the flower of German youth into the steel hail of the next war without feeling the slightest regret over the precious German blood that is being spilt, should I not also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin?” Hitler
@john dowdall: the Sun actually moves through space, at about 200 km/s. But from our perspective you’re right, the Earth rotates around the Sun. And Science said “we observe” the Sun moving. Which is correct, relative to our position on our planet.
@Jerry LeFrog: You have an Einsteinian mind.
(Einstein made use of “thought experiments” in which the point of view of the observer played a large and central role.)
@john dowdall: You OBSERVE the sun moving, every day of your life. You have NEVER OBSERVED the earth moving. There is no evidence that earth is moving.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: “thought experiment” aka imagination land, that’s what Gerald’s heliocentric spinning ball in a vacuum bendy space time model is based on, not on observations of physical reality.
The Government is just taxing which does very little for the environment, what about enforcing nature-related laws to protect areas of conservation; build a decent public transport infrastructure not only in Dublin; and incentivize farmers to use less harmful approaches instead of using this land to produce meat and dairy products for export?
Bet they’re doing enough for asylum seekers though.
We will never reach the targets set as, since the base year, we have had a lot of energy intensive industries added e.g. data centres and a large increase in the general population. By all means help increase biodiversity in the country and reduce pollution as this would improve the lives of the people living here.
Basically, this article tells us that the vast majority haven’t the interest/education to inform themselves, and don’t want to do anything anyway.
We are an apathetic country.
Copernicus and Galileo knew the original framework, which was Ptolemy’s. In this framework, the Sun moved directly through the background stars and defined the ecliptic or orbital plane of the Earth.
https://astro.dur.ac.uk/~ams/users/sun_ecliptic.gif
“Moreover, we see the other five planets also retrograde at times and stationary at either end [of the regression]. And whereas the Sun always advances along its own direct path, they wander in various ways, straying sometimes to the south and sometimes to the north; that is why they are called “planets” [wanderers]. Copernicus
Clockwork solar system modelling by Newton put the Sun in a wandering motion, and many astronomical interpretations and conclusions were lost due to that vandalism.
Kepler gauged the motions of Earth and Mars against the background stars.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Kepler_Mars_retrograde.jpg
“Copernicus, by attributing a single annual motion to the earth, entirely rids the planets of these extremely intricate spirals, leading the individual planets into their respective orbits, quite bare and very nearly circular. In the period of time shown in the diagram, Mars traverses one and the same orbit as many times as the ‘garlands’ you see looped towards the centre, with one extra, making nine times, while at the same time, the Earth repeats its circle sixteen times ” Kepler Astronomia Nova 1609
This is how an astronomical hypothesis, using the Ptolemaic framework, was converted in a moving Earth in a Sun-centred system.
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