Clare is a fantastic, stuuning place to be from.... but something about Kerry just hits different. What a thoroughly beautiful part of the world! #Ireland is just a wonderful island, especially when the sun is out!
Reminder: Partial #SolarEclipse this Saturday, March 29th.
From #Ireland the times are:
Start time ~ 9 am.
Finish time ~ Noon.
Max ~ 11am.
40% - 47% sun coverage depending on location on the island.
Nice warm up for much larger one (90 - 95%) in Aug '26.
WRNG: Never look directly at the sun!
Irish businesses will struggle to compete with Amazon ie, both online and in the high street.
Shop direct with your Irish retailers, who already exist.
Support local, not the billionaires.
Thread for all those cheering recent failures. Yes, it is great to see more and more people try.... but let's not forget that there are organisations like NASA, ESA, etc with a long history of success. But because they're Govt agencies, people are trying to kill them off.
State body rejected me today I "... don't have sufficient experience in HE governance" despite application stating I was on the board of NUIG for 4 years. 🤦🏻♂️ Reminded me of the pen pushers who claimed I hadn't the maths ability for a course I applied to before; I've MScs in Engineering & Astrophysics
Have known Minister Lawless for a long time, before ever he was an elected politician. All that time, he's been a consistent and vocal supporter of Ireland joining @cern.bsky.social. It's very apt that he should be the one there to officially sign the country up.
The Planetary Society strongly opposes the sudden, indiscriminate dismissal of more than 1,000 scientists, engineers, and explorers at NASA — the largest involuntary workforce reduction since the end of the Apollo program.
Read more on our stance. ⬇️
The best piece of evidence based writing I've seen thus far on the issue of rent controls in Ireland:
theweekinhousing.substack.com/p/the-truth-...
This by Dr. Michael Bryne (Lecturer in political economy at UCD) is a must read for anyone looking at issue of Rent Pressure Zones in Ireland.
Something for the more tech savy; Is there any way to auto-follow everyone you were following on Twitter, who has a BlueSky account, over here? (Yes I'm aware that I'm sounding more and more like my father every day.... as tech gets away from me! 🤪)
With the dust settled on the Seanad elections, 20 out of 49 seats are filled by women (40.8%) this is the best return so far for female politicians. If the Taoiseach nominates 10 women out of his 11 nominees, then Ireland would have a 50/50 split in a house of the Oireachtas for the first time ever.
For anyone interested here on #speirgorm, the list of candidates for the 5 vocational panels of Seanad Éireann elections #SE25 has been published. I've done some sleuthing to find people's affiliations/what whip they said they might take if elected. I've also put the expected outcome of each panel.
Thanking you very much.
Picture of a Masters degree certificate in the field of Astrophysics.
I need to start getting these framed and hung at this stage! Framer suggestions welcome #speirgorm people.
Nice surprise to get in the post following the Christmas celebrations. #Astrophysics
The outside panel is set to close nominations today (external nominating bodies) for the Seanad Election #SE25. Prospect of gender balance isn't looking great with 20 women and 44 men nominated so far for the 43 seats on offer. Agriculture panel is the worst offender with 3 women up against 14 men.
Might not agree with her politically on a number of things but still a positive move to see a woman elected as Ceann Comhairle of Dáil Éireann today. Record number of women TDs took their seats today also.
Hopefully this continues and we see a record number of women Senators elected next month.
One question that's still open from #GE24 is just how off is the electoral register. Using Census 2022 data, and EU voter registration averages of 80% to 90%, we see that it's off by anything from 174,000 to 564,000 people. This is something the Electoral Commission badly needs sorting! #speirgorm
In perfect Irish timing, the post election lul on social media is gonna be broken by the #latelatetoyshow tomorrow night. In preparation, I submit for #speirgorm use your #toyshow 2024 bingo card! #Ireland I wish you well tomorrow evening. (Please drink responsibility!)
Table of party's/groups' seats and how many potential quotas that can achieve in each of the five Seanad electoral panels
Below table gives an idea of how many quotas each of the parties/groups potentially has per panel ahead of the Seanad Elections #SE25 following #GE24 results.
*PA = Progressive Alliance (Lab + SD + GRN).
IND/O = all others & ergo, will split all over the place!
Graph of support for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael support vs time, along side support for Independent candidates and the combined total computed. 3 key events noted are Spring Tide of 1992, the global financial crash which shaped the 2011 election and the 2020 election which followed Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael's confidence and supply agreement to allow for a minority FG Government to be formed.
The 2024 election is 1 of only 3 where the combined FF+FG vote share hasn't dropped in my lifetime. The 28% drop in their combined vote in that time has coincided with a 13% rise in IND support (vast majority of which are centrists). Overall drop in combined support coincides with 3 key events.
If the register is out by this much, then turnout on Friday was around 69%, not the official almost 60% figure reported.
Unsurprising, however. Political parties (of all hues) used to go door-to-door between elections updating the register. This stopped >10 years ago.
www.rte.ie/news/electio...
Had chats with people prior the election on this. These reports should outline how long people have been here, what they've contributed to our society, and how difficult a process it was to attain citizenship more.
A lot of people have the wrong impression citizenship is frivolously handed out.
Go raibh maith agat. No point in doing the work in creating such a projection model unless you're willing to use it yourself was the thinking. Nothing crazy though. Just enough to net a good night out over the Christmas.
Ah tis all in good jest indeed. Thanking you.
To be fair, the only ones there I'd have queried were Mick Wallace (given Verona Murphy had the vote sown up in their part of Wexford) and Lettie (too boxed in with bigger candidates). Rest were decent picks that got unlucky really.
Haha. Tis a *little* bit more than that. The Christmas party is sorted anyway.
Let it never be said I'm not willing to put my money where my mouth is. Backed my own statistical analysis and projection model it produced ahead of #GE24. It's proven profitable! Mathematical skills are good for your wallet folks. Who said an MSc in Astrophysics doesn't have its uses!? 😝
Haha! Yes indeed! All the running numbers all weekend has the brain fried clearly.
Ah you'd miss the cut and trust of politics the odd time alright. Looking in from the outside at the various counts and the highs and the lows on all sides, brings back a lot of good memories too. #GE24
With all #GE24 counted, there are a whopping 50 casual vacancies on local authorities across the country as a result.
These are broken down as:
13 FG
12 FF
8 SF
5 LAD
5 SD
4 IND
1 each for Aontú, S/PBP and II.
Lots of conventions to come shortly to replace them. 7 on Dublin City Council alone!
Looking at #ge24 #exitpoll and something just doesn't seem to align with constituency polls I've seen. Not massively out, but more than reported margin of error (1.4%). That said, putting those numbers through the model, so many last seats are just too hard to call now. Transfers are everything!