Newsbits 29.12.07
Hopefully returning to my normal posting on 2nd January. However, there have been suggestions that we put all the news stuff into one post and concentrate more on more “positive” stuff about the city and County. What do you think. Continuing this format and allowing general daily discussion in them? or going back to ten posts a day?
Anyway, here are some stories for Saturday
Blackout: This week saw 6,500 homes and businesses on the northside of the city without power. Two incidents caused the blackouts. 1,500 residents of Castletroy were left in the dark after a power surge left them in the dark at 1730 hrs on Thursday. At 2300 hrs, heavy lighting activity knocked out power to over 5,000 homes in Cahirdavin on the same night. A motorist travelling from the Coonagh Shopping Centre to the City told the Limerick Leader that the streetlights went out as he was travelling, and the first place he encountered en route with lights was the Maternity Hospital. Earlier in the week, residents and business were without power in the Ballyneety and Cariconlish area were left in the dark after power failed in the area on Christmas Eve, Both Meelick and St. Mary’s Park also suffered blackouts on the same day. All the blackouts on Christmas Eve were said by the ESB to be unrelated.
No ID No Smokes: That is the lesson to be learned from another story in the City Edition of the Limerick Leader this week. 11 transactions were found to be in breach of the law by not asking a 14 year old boy, employed by the Health Service Executive, for identification after he went into the stores to purchase cigaretes. The stores were The Mill Foodstore, Reddans Spar, both in Corbally, Roxboro Stores, Shell Select in Thomondgate, and Mayes Foodstore on Parnell Street. Will Leahy, representing the Roche family, proprietors of the Roxboro Store, told the court that he was surprised the store was still open as the owners were victims of weekly intimidation He asked to court to take their unique situation into consideration, comparing the security at Roxboro Stores to that at Fort Knox. The court was told that the woman who served the teenager was the daughter of the proprietor, and was watching TV at the time she served him, and “didn’t take much notice of his appearance.” Solicitor John Devane however claimed that the woman thought he looked a lot older being six feet tall and with stubble. After being informed of the breach, the proprietors of Mayes has included a clause in his employees contract referring to the sale of cigarettes to minors. The maximum penalty for selling cigarettes to children is €3,000 or three months in prison. The sting operation occurred on April 2 of this year. The Roche family were fined €100 and ordered to pay €250 legal costs, all other defendants were fined the same but were ordered to pay the full legal cost of €750.
December 29th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
I have a lot more time for the shops - many of whose staff work long hours - than for well-paid and well-perked Health officials. 1,000 euro (fine + legal costs) is a hefty amount, particularly as the officials used some kid who apparently looked much more than 14.
Feel good about ruining someone else’s Christmas.
December 29th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Positives are often overlooked when Limerick is mentioned so the more (and there are many) the better, but I’d hate to give the impression that everything is rosy, this happened in the past and it’s only now that we get a daily Limerick bad publicity feed that the government are being forced to do something to improve things in our great city.
December 29th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
it was €100 not €1,000 . the maximum fine is €3,000
December 29th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
@me
While I acknowledge that the negatives should not be over looked, it is the practical side of things I was considering. Writing between five and ten individual stories every day can be exhaustive and time consuming for one person.
I don’t have a problem with making individual posts for more important stories, however I would like to reduce for example three or four posts concerning people brought before the same court on the same day and so on. Maybe putting all court cases on a particular day into one post.
December 29th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Reducing the number of my own posts would also allow other contributers stuff to be seen more.
December 29th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Sounds good squid, thought you might be talking about leaving the bad stuff to other sites, not that I want anymore bad things to happen in this city.
December 29th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
I am more interested in ways of reducing the workload the site creates for me as it can get out of hand at times. but I don’t plan on “leaving the bad stuff to anyone.”
Also needed for consideration is the evolution of other news sites in Limerick. When I started this both the post and leader sites were infrequently updated compared to this one. Now both update daily and I need to find a way to make this one different to them.
December 29th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Squid
I have a few ideas for you regarding making this site different. Would you not consider using the Oscalt free software that Indymedia Ireland uses. This site would be ideal for this concept.
This would mean not having having advertisers. This would give you a much better scope for a site navigation for people logging on to individual stories. This reduction in revenue could be met by the people who read LB. I would be happy to donate some squids.
I would also suggest you allow more people to edit the posts with a monthly meeting to discuss and develop the ethos and protocols of posting.
There is something very interesting going on around this site. I think you should allow it to fly. There is thousands of Limerick stories to be tapped into. The people of Limerick are just waiting for a chance to tell their own side of whats going in Limercik.
December 29th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Two problems I would have with the oscailt software. for starters, ongoing contracts with advertisers. also i would be uncomfortable with members of the public writing stories. With indymedia, it tends to look like a collection of press releases from various organisations at times.
December 30th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
this happened in Sligo a few years and it was thrown out of court due to entrappment…i’m no legal expert but did they not break the law in order to break the law???
can anyone clarify?
December 30th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
No, the stores would have been informed in advance that a random check was comming by letter beforehand