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GE2024Sound Quality Gifts
IF YOU ARE on TikTok I would wager that you have seen at least one of Helen Drumm’s videos.
The glitzy gift store owner is not afraid to have a bit of fun and doesn’t take herself too seriously online.
With over 65,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok, Drumm regularly posts clips promoting her (often quirky) gift products, ending every video with a wink and reminder of where to find her: “It all happens here, at sound Quality Gifts, Monaghan…Ireland.”
Sound Quality Gifts’ TikTok account first went viral with a video of Drumm promoting one of her exclusive ‘rainshader’ umbrellas.
“That put us on the map,” Drumm told The Journal today, “We’re the only shop in the world with it.”
Drumm also clocked up serious views (1.7m) last summer with a video of herself and her staff, some looking a little uncomfortable it has to be said, all dolled up in pink ready to go see the blockbuster Barbie film.
Drum’s business acumen is unquestionable, with the Monaghan woman easily tapping into social media trends and using them as a way to market and drive traffic to her store.
Her videos often involve singing and dancing of some sort, most usually jiving.
She’s also no stranger to visits from stars in the country music industry, Nathan Carter, Declan Nerney and Ireland’s ‘first lady of country music’ Susan McCann, to name a few.
Such is her influence that Drumm had not one, but two political party leaders drop into her store yesterday while out on the campaign trail.
Taoiseach Simon Harris and Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald were both clearly hoping for a viral moment of their own when they paid her a visit just hours apart.
In clips posted on social media, McDonald and Harris are both seen to receive a warm welcome from Drumm.
Harris exclaimed “The TikTok Queen!” as the pair embraced in a warm hug before Drumm asked the Taoiseach to jive with her.
“Ah you’re not bad at all,” she said as they ended their dance to applause from staff and Harris’s campaign team.
“Sound Quality Gifts for all your sound quality needs,” Harris told the TV cameras that were trailing him, whatever that means.
Just a few hours later, Drumm’s account uploaded another jiving video, this time with Mary Lou McDonald who can be heard joking: “The things I will do for a vote.”
“It’s an open door policy in my shop,” Drumm told The Journal, adding that both politician’s teams had checked with her earlier in the day if it was okay for them to stop by.
“I’m not linked to any politician, I’ve been asked to get into politics by some local people and political parties but I think I’m better off where I am entertaining the people.”
Having been in business for almost 39 years, diversifying from just music into gifts during that time, Drumm knows exactly how difficult it is to keep things ticking over.
“I’ve seen three recessions in that time and had to cut my cloth to suit my table,” Drumm said.
Given this, did she have a particular message for either leader yesterday?
“Unfortunately because they were both flying I didn’t get the opportunity.
“But I would have told them that it is very important to support small businesses,” Drumm said, adding that people in the locality are also acutely impacted by the cost-of-living, the cost of housing, issues in healthcare and the costs associated with third-level education.
Drumm kept her card close to her chest when it came to her personal view of both politicians, giving nothing away.
She didn’t however hold back when it came to assessing their dance skills.
“Mary Lou was in with me before the summer and I’ve seen some improvement since then. Simon though, he needs to visit Monaghan a little more.”
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I would expect hydropower to return every litre it uses. It’s just a diversion of the water flow none of it is consumed. It should not appear in this at all.
@Steve O’Hara-Smith: That’s probably the case with all users, water always returns to the ecosystem.
@Donal Balfe: Except hydropower returns water as it finds it.
The others contaminate the water.
@Donal Balfe: Some of it gets bound up chemically into products. The rest gets polluted by all other users. Hydropower just pumps it around.
Why is the dept of agriculture, which is funded entirely by us have the right to redact information for ANY reason.
@bruce banner: And why would they want to?
That is concerning.
@bruce banner: GDPR reasons. The Department of Agriculture, other government agencies, and private companies, collect a lot of sensitive personal data about us.
GDPR rules state they must ensure the info they collect and retain about us is accurate, is only retained as long as it’s needed, is only used for it’s original stated purpose. They must also delete personal data when it’s no longer needed, and above all, they must never to publish our personal data.
For example, if the CSO released it’s unredacted Census data, you could find out all sorts of private info about your neighbors, from their educational attainment to health. So the CSO aggregates Census data to ~20 households or more, preventing you finding individual information for your neighbors.
This is the same with the Department of Agriculture avd farmer’s data. Strict privacy laws and EU wide GDPR rules means they cannot publish individual information, unless it is required by law e.g. The Industrial Missions Directive means you can go to the EPA’s website and see what pollution lincesed companies, not people, are likely to produce and what they are allowed to release.
@David Jordan: individuals arent using that much water though. I would suspect they are hiding companies that farm on industrial scales. Data protection was high jacked by corps as a means to keep their business private from citizens in precisely these types of situations.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: I wouldn’t be concerned
@David Jordan: this explanation you give doesn’t make much sense to be honest. They can release the information as a sector or large grouping, not as individuals when it comes to colating the data for this exercise. GDPR doesn’t need to come into it. It’s made a nonsense of the whole study as it isn’t fit for purpose if farming isn’t accurately recorded in it. I’ve worked in GDPR so I don’t need a lesson in it in response to this, only know that there was a way to report the findings without entering into a GDPR issue.
These Sunday morning articles sometimes really are a waste of time. I’ll comment on the Cork hydropower one only. Water comes from the source of the river Lee. Flows through the ESB hydroelectric dam, then continues straight back down the river Lee out through the harbour into the Atlantic ocean. Why in the name of god is that even been measured in terms of water consumption/diversion when neither is occurring?
@Mark Murphy: And with Turlough hill, the water flows down the mountain during the day and it’s pumped back up the mountain at night. It’s not used up or polluted. Water still flows down the river.
“IDF recovers bodies of 6 hostages murdered by Hamas”
There fixed your headline for you.
Regarding the above story …
@frank dowling: Far more likely killed by the wanton rampant bombing of the Palestinian by the israeli.
Even if not, all the death and destruction in that region is caused by the israeli who have been attacking the Palestinian to drive them off their land to take it for themselves. That is how this “israel” came into existence in the first place.
None of this would be happening if not for israeli crimes against humanity.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: as-salamu alaykum islamic shill
@jak: Gaza population in 1960 = 265000
Gaza population in 2023 = 2.1m
Some annihilation ..
@frank dowling: “Were it not for the delays, sabotage, and excuses those whose deaths we learned about this morning would likely still be alive.” (Campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum)
There.. contextualised your comment for you.
@jak: what a load of mindless krap Hamas control your thoughts ?
Israel is the rightful home of the Jews and they would be happy to live in peace with the Arabs, but the terrorists are against it.
Hamas are the problem, remove them and allow the innocent Palestinians live a normal life .
@frank dowling: I watched a programme the other evening on Saudi Crown Prince and it seems that he was trying to regularise relations with Isreal. Hamas couldn’t have that and was one of the main reasons behind the Oct 7 attacks. As you say remove Hamas and there can be some hope for Gaza.
@frank dowling: israel is NOT the rightful home of the Jews.
There was never a land called Isreal in what is Palestine.
There *was* a land called Judah, from which Jews came to be called. There was another land called Israel, though more commonly Samaria or The Northern Kingdom, further to the north in modern day Lebanon. The people of Judah despised the Samaritans, possibly because they had been conquered and ruled by them for a time.
Either way, people who are descendant from those who left a region have no right to return.
Palestine is the rightful home of the Palestinian, the descendants of those who have lived there for millennia, the descendants of those who REMAINED in the region.
But most of whom had the gall to change their religion, some to Christianity – which is how that cult spread to become worldwide – and most to Islam when it came on the scene.
Those that call themselves israeli merely CLAIM to be descendant from those who LEFT the region long ago.
And just as those who claim to be descendant from those who left our shores long ago have no claim to return here, to establish terrorist groups, to attack our people to steal our land, to attack our government to steal our homeland, then neither do those that call themselves israeli
Palestine had Jew, Christian and Muslim until the racist colonist arrived to take it for themselves.
Those racists allow me, as a Jew, the “right to return” to this state they created even though I might have only a single Jewish grandparent, but deny any right for the true people of that land to return to the land their forebears have been in since time immemorial.
Those who support what the israeli do to the Palestinian would not support it if done to any other.
So it can only be racism.
If you have another reason – one than stands to logic and reason, one based on fact – then please tell us.
@The next small thing: Saudi Arabia? The Saudi Arabia of Mohammad bin Salman, known as MBS or more affectionately as “Bone Saw”? The Saudi Arabia that oppresses its own people, and perpetrates appalling atrocities on its neighbouring people, the Yemeni?
Yea, israel and Saudi would be great bed-fellows.
Of course, the actions of the Palestinians would have had nothing to do with the continuous atrocities and crimes against humanity perpetrated upon them by those who call themselves israeli.
@offside again: Conveniently ignoring the numbers forced into that concentration camp from other parts of Palestine over the decades.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: sure it happened between the Saudis and Yemen, Syria and itself, the former yugoslavia, Iran and Iraq, Afghanistan and the taliban, Pakistan and India, Russia and Ukraine, and various part of Africa.
@offside again: You israeli shills cannot handle how easy it is to destroy your propaganda.
Accept it: israel has no right to exist, much less to commit any of its atrocities, its crimes against humanity.
And to do so on the people who are descendant from those they too claim to be makes it all the more disgusting.
@P. V. Aglue: I do not know what you intend by that word salad.
Probably to try to deflect, or confuse.
In any case, nothing changes that those who claim to be descendant from people who left our shores long ago do not have any right to return here. Any right to wage terrorism on us to create their own state on our homeland.
And neither does any other.
Neither do those who chose to call themselves israeli.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: yawn
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: AHH the irony ,the only democratic government in the whole region, Palestine is controlled by hamas terror against its own people.
That is why no one will Arab govt will put it’s full force behind hamas because they do not want them to grow they took control in Palestine by murdering their opponents.
@sean weir: So because you claim it to be a “the only democratic government in the whole region”, then its atrocities, its crimes against humanity, are to be ignored?
Do you not see how this claim makes it far worse?
That the actions of such a rogue state reflects on all of us?
And how the rest of the world see our “modern democratic states” and associates these atrocities with us too?
While the Palestinian is the victim of this “greatness”?
Why do you try to hide israeli atrocities behind this veil of democracy?
Anyway, that claim about israel being the only democracy in the region that they use to somehow justify their atrocities is yet just another lie. Turkey, which used to rule that entire region until relatively recently, is a democracy.
As it the country just to the north.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: no, killed by Hamas.
None of this would be happening if Hamas wasn’t turning billions of aid money into rockets and smuggling tunnels.
@John Mulligan: he would blame Israel for the Oasis ticket prices that lad.
@John Mulligan: Do explain how those who merely claim to be descendant from people who left a region long ago have any right to return to it, to establish terrorist groups – like Haganah, the Stern Gang and Irgun – attack the people of that region to drive them off their land to take it for themselves, attack their government to steal their homeland for themselves.
And do explain how the victims of all these atrocities are not entitled to fight back in any way they can.
And then explain how all the death and destruction, all the suffering, is not the consequence of the colonial invader.
All the death and destruction, all the suffering in the region is caused by and the responsibility of those that chose to call themselves israeli.
You can the other israeli propaganda shills have never been able to refute a single point i have made.
For it is the simple truth.
All you have is your propaganda lies.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: there is only one language spoken there today which was spoken 3000 years ago .. not Palestinian, not Arabic.. Hebrew .. the language of the Jews . It’s their land .. they were there before the Arabs and they are the one constant .. not the assyrians , not the Samaratans, not the Babylonians or anyone else .. give over this stuff about Judea (Israel) not being home of the Jews.. of course it is .. your antisemitism prevents you from seeing the truth ..
@frank dowling: They were not there before the Arabs, read your Bible if you’re lost on this point. The people of Israel have no more right to Palestine than American Irish have right to land their ancestors left behind in Ireland.
If you leave your home vacant and somebody squats in it they typically have ownership rights within 15-20 years. Now if the ancestors of those who left that land return in 500 years they still have rights to it, they don’t? Get real!
Fill up bottles with tap water and sell it at the farmers market as pure mineral water. A great scam a la del boy.
Falsely make hydropower look like a significant water extractor in order to make industrials look not that bad. How about we see a breakdown of industrials and see what portion is data centers and animal agriculture food production, which is broken down into export versus home consumption. It looks like there are some funky presentation tactics going on with this data to mask some industry or industries.
@Lewis Armstrong: Yea.
Hydo does not extract water at all.
Not in any common sense understanding at any rate.
@Lewis Armstrong: hydro effects the migrating fish and the land up stream.
Data centers consume vast quantities of electricity and water.
The cover up on Data Centres continues, nobody in Ireland investigating the scandal, nobody will take notice till we start getting blackouts to keep the Data Centres on. If we had any investigative journalism in Ireland, they would be looking at the energy use & water usage by Data Centers, both of which are off the Richter scale.
Really good article, great depth.
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