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WE’RE NOW IN the final week of the presidential election campaign and by this stage we know plenty about the men and women who want to be the next president of Ireland but what about their spouses?
All of the candidates aside from David Norris are married and Norris has already gone on record to say that he is currently not seeing anyone nor does he have any plans to bring a partner into Áras an Uachtaráin if elected.
The role of a president’s spouse is generally not a high-profile one. The presidencies of Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese were marked by the low profile kept by their husbands Nick and Martin.
Martin McAleese has only recently come into the spotlight after he was nominated to the Seanad by Taoiseach Enda Kenny.
But what of the husbands and wives of the current crop of candidates?
We’ve been finding out:
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A reminder that data centres use more electricity than every residential urban household in the entire country combined.
@James Groden: A reminder that these data centres generate hundreds of millions in tax for the government.
@Ciaran O Donoghue: Wrong
@James Groden: A reminder that these comments are utilising a data centre
@James Groden: yet you use this app and many others which are facilitated by data centres..
@Ciaran O Donoghue: how do they generate tax?
@Chutes Idiot: Winter fuel allowance is €33/week. Pensions and carer’s allowance were both increased by €12/week for people qualifying for 100% allowances. At least make an effort and look up the figures.
@Nick Vasilakis: when was the increase by €12 a week started?…
January 1st, which brings a disabled person living alone ( must be living alone to get fuel allowance) otherwise if there are two people in the home, both qualified for for fuel allowance, only ONE can get it,
That means a person on disability has to manage on € 300.50 per week, if they live alone,
..
The cut off point for “Survival” during COVID was €350 per week, as being able to live on,
People with disabilities weren’t given that, and years later with massive increases they’re still far away,
At least show a bit of intelligence
@Niall English: Would the data centres be here if their parent companies, who generates BILLIONS each year in tax, we’re not resident here?!?!
@James Groden: Any data behind that statement?
@Niall English: Simple they allow Internet traffic through and they charge for it, then they deduct costs, get a profit and get taxed….they aren’t all owned by say Amazon etc..3rd party providers service pharmaceutical companies, airline leasing companies…….its a very long list.
@another one? what’s going on is the semi state sec:
do you mean the parent companies rinsing money through Ireland, as evidenced by the apple fiasco,
Which totally mangles our gdp, thus inflating our contribution to the EU, leads to leprauchan economics, that the international financial world christened us in derision,
Check out the aviation industry ” based in Ireland” … the one that massively increased our GDP,
We’re part of a Ponzi scheme between the US and Europe
@Chutes Idiot: yes, despite calls from “age Ireland” amongst others there was no change in fuel allowance in budget 25′….. Wouldn’t even buy a bag of coal
@Ciaran O Donoghue: A reminder that the government will only squander said taxes
@John Darker: Yep, those parent companies which generate well over 10 billion a year in corporate tax revenue, provide 10s of thousands of high paying jobs, all of which generate massive income tax for the govt….. Our contribution to the EU is what it is thanks to how well we’re doing. Fair is fair. We’ve done very well out of our EU membership!!!!….. What’s your point?
@another one? what’s going on is the semi state sec: my point is it is FALSE MONEY, that can be taken away at anytime,
Give me an example of thousands of employees working in Ireland from Apple, …give me examples of thousands of people working Amazon which store their shite here, along with thousands of other countries,…
I bet you can’t even prove thousands working for apple
@John Darker: about 6k employees here…. Staff costs of $6.33 billion as per the article…… And that’s just apple….. You do maths!…. The money has been here a long time, it’s not going anywhere else soon with that amount of investment and skilled workforce….. That false money is paying real people, affording them great lives and also being wasted by govt.
https://businessplus.ie/business-insights/apple-average-salary/
@James Groden: a reminder sent from a device that uses a DC…go figure.
@John Darker: FYI, they’ve been here since 1980!!!
@another one? what’s going on is the semi state sec: nothing to do with it . Data and tax don’t have to be in same jurisdiction
@Ciaran O Donoghue: “Hundreds of millions” Please publish your findings backing this up. The one or two staff members don’t get paid that much. Lol.
We are paying the most for electricity in Europe. Write an article on that.
@reg morrisey: I’ll do it for ya really fast. The greens banned coal plants. Banned offshore gas drilling and off shore oil drilling (loads up of Donegal). Greens pushed for gas powered plants to close. Banned us buying and storing gas (proposed site in limerick/claire area or somewhere around there anyway!) . So we can’t use are own offshore gas. Cant buy gas cheap for Qatar and store it. So we are basically full relying on gas from the uk and uk produced electricity sent over to us from under sea cables. We are years away from producing all of our electric needs from Irish only renewables. So we get over half of it from the uk and they charge us top dollar surprise surprise. That’s a very general synopsis but it’s basically why we are paying so much.
@Orban Orban: Peat was replaced by Amazon wood chips, to fire the plants along side gas and to make all sorts of eco brickets too.
@Brendan Ryan: Brazilian Woodchips. How environmentally friendly to pay them to chop their forests down and ship them half way round the world for us to incinerate. Any comment Eamonn cabbage head?
@Orban Orban: pipeline from Scotland is not big enough to supply our needs when Corrib field runs out in a few years. Ryan is a traitor to this country. Put his half baked beliefs before his countries security.
@Orban Orban: 60% of Electricity generated by Gas along with all the industrial and Domestic gas users. We would be screwed if there was a serious disruption of supply. Where is the wisdom of banning the exploration for a product in our own Territory that we will clearly require for years if not decades to come. We expect other countries to supply us with gas but hold our hands up saying look at us and our wonderful green credentials not allowing anymore exploration. Hypocrisy at its worst. There was a news article this week about the pressure on UK gas reserves because of the cold weather.. We are playing a dangerous game not allowing exploration and having no gas storage. Both of these decisions have to be overturned as a matter of urgency.
Twas a record that red alerts should have been called in worst affected counties where 1000s without electricity, water and vulnerable at risk of access to support.
Red alerts would have meant mitigation with joint hse/army/council etc response, but didn’t want to interrupt the dail holidays.
@Padraic O’ Sullivan: Still an ice wrink in Tipp, they must have diverted the money to Lowry’s legal case ha ha
@Padraic O’ Sullivan: I’m grateful for any warnings like this, especially with something as changeable as the weather. They seem to trigger the hell out of some folks tho, but really thats only a facade that folks wear to create contention in argument and actually has nothing to do with the weather. Thats where we are right now.
Data centres
Data centres
Data centres
Nothing to do with individual households
@Argus Romsworth: house’s are now been built with no chimney and are reliant on keeping the house warm with renewables which are reliant on electricity. So win win for ESB.
Disgusting “fact check” article about Muslim rape gangs in the UK. I don’t know how these so called journalists live with themselves. Now I await Brendan, to mount his defence of the indefensible.
@FlipBip: Facts aren’t your friend, are they?
@FlipBip: make sure you come up for air after servicing Elon love
@Brian D’Arcy: Ah, here come the pedo defenders.
@Brian D’Arcy: :))) it has long been very apparent the journal fact checks and debunked articles are complete falsities. LOL LOLLOLLOLLOL
@FlipBip: instead of just discrediting the source, why not be specific and let us know the actual issue that you have with the article?
@Kevin Kerr: What would be the point? If you have read it and found no issues yourself, I don’t think we’ll get anywhere. It will be a long, pointless conversation, you’ll accuse me of racism, islamophobia blah blah blah… I was having these conversations a decade ago mate and I don’t really feel like wasting my time and rehashing them. Go read some of the court documents and tell me if their “factcheck” is reasonable.
@FlipBip: ‘But that space guy said it, it must be true’
Musk is getting a rude awakening from MAGA now, they don’t want to approve his high tech visas for the workers he needs and they’re not too keen on him either.
@FlipBip: So you can’t actually make a case for what you’re saying. You only assert; you never support the assertion.
And, given that you describe yourself as ‘far-right’, it goes without saying that you’re a bigot. Self-confessed.
@Ronan Mc: It has absolutely nothing to do with Elon Musk. It’s about the rape of 10′s of thousands of young girls, many of whom were murdered. What on earth is wrong with you?
@FlipBip: Court reports bear no relation to the contents of the article. And I’ve been having these conversations for 40 years, only back then it was the Afro Caribbean or Irish community who were in the firing line for horrendous crimes committed by a tiny minority, this time it’s the Pakistani Muslim community. The more things change,the more they stay the same.
@I’m a robot Robot: Brendan’s problem is that he’ll just read something in the Guardian, let the author explain everything to him, and then store that in his brain. It’ll stay there and be impervious to any argument or reason. “Men can be women now? Cool, thanks for letting me know. Muslims raping kids, aided by politicians and police isn’t a problem? Oh good, I don’t need to worry about it so. We have always been at war with East Asia? Yeah that sounds right to me.” That is literally how his mind works. If him and I had an actual debate in person, it would last about 5 minutes, before the cognitive dissonance was too much for him to bear, and he would leave. I’d bet my mother’s life on it. His mind is broken.
@Kevin Kerr: Apples and oranges. It’s not a race problem, it is an ideological problem. That water is being deliberately muddied. Which is what you are doing now.
@FlipBip: it’s not apples and oranges, it’s exactly the same. You are tarring a whole community due to the actions of a tiny minority from that community. It has been going on forever. And BTW, that idealogical argument was always used against the Irish also. For Afro Caribbeans, the racists just considered them animals
@Kevin Kerr: I haven’t tarred anyone with anything. I am sure that most Muslims are perfectly nice people, but that doesn’t change the fact that Islam is absolute poison. I’m guessing that you don’t like scientology, but do you hate all scientologists?
@FlipBip: Religion is not my thing, full stop. But only a tiny minority of Muslims subscribe to a version of radical Islam that could be considered a threat. Just like only a tiny minority of all people amongst us are a threat. But you were right earlier – we could be here all night discussing this
@FlipBip: try the lrish rape gangs…called Priests and Nuns if your’re interested…aided by Gards Judges and Politrickians for DECADES
So that’s why they had an amber warning when it was just cold – to discourage driving as an increasing amount of electric cars puts a strain on the grid. As we get more electric vehicles, expect red warnings when it’s cold to force people to stop driving their cars.
@Tony Humphreys: For the millionth time, most EV charging is done at night, because that’s when off-peak rates apply, and they apply then precisely because demand is low, so stop with this tired BS.
@Stephen Wallis: thats RUBBISH. EVs are charging day and night.
Lidl near me has a rotating group of EVs including a Squad Car on their charge points. Many people in towns CANNOT charge cars at home if they have no off st parking as the cables are a danger to pedestrians when they are places over pavements to cars.
Sure what would you expect when they want us so reliant on electricity for everything.
Imagine having a higher demand for electricity with 100s of thousands of extra people and data centres popping up everywhere.
Still not enough to power the Delorean
While remaining to pay inflated prices for Gas and Electricity, or have we forgotten
Maybe our population growth has something to do with it? But data centres dont help either
And I wonder how many were without power during that peak demand on Wednesday. How much more would the real figure be?
The record is 7,148MW set on 27/11/2024.
What about the remaining 23%s oil, turf, coal or imported?
I’m sure the 2 new data centres I saw yesterday helped add to that. And we will be told it’s our fault for taking showers.
According to the Planet Irelanders, all we have to do to solve the Climate crisis, is get rid of the data centres, kill half the cows and buy a million more bicycles. Job done.
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