Yes Dublin Can Be Heaven.

Dublin Can Be Heaven: I was on the Internet today trying to find a topic for my next blog and I came across this lovely You Tube video of a Song by Noel Purcell called  The Dublin Saunter. The video is a collection of photos of Dublin City through the years. Enjoy 4 minutes of peace.

The video shows a statue of Philip Parris Lynnott or Phil Lynnott as he was commonly known. Phil was the son of a white Irish mother and a black Guyanian father and was born in West Bromwich in England on August 20th 1949. Phil and his mother lived together in the north of England for 4 years together before Phil went to live with his grandmother in the Crumlin area of Dublin.

During his childhood Phil admired artists like Elvis Presley and Jimi Hendrix and decided to follow in their footsteps and become a musician. Phil went on to form the band Thin Lizzy and had both commercial and critical success with hits like Whiskey in the Jar and The Boys are Back in In Town among others. Phil passed away on 4th Janurary 1986 after a short illness.

Phil Lynnott Oslo 1980

The source of the song Whiskey in the Jar is really unknown but may date back to the 1650's as it appears to resemble the plot and some lines of a ballad called Patrick Flemming which is about a highwayman who was executed in 1650. Jumping forward 3 centuries the song was recorded by Irish folk group The Dubliners. The song became their signature tune and appeared on many of their albums in the 60's. In 1973 the song became a hit for Thin Lizzy and surprisenly in 1998 was relaesed by the band Metallica who received a Grammy in 2000 for Best Hard Rock Preformance for the song.

Presidential Election: All 7 canidates for the election will be on the The Late Late Show on RTE television tonight. The show is the longest running chat show in the world and is currently fronted by Ryan Tubridy having being hosted by Pat Kenny and Gay Byrne in the past.

As the The Late Late Show is a chat show I would imagine that the debate will be light hearted and entertaining and nothing like the future debates which will be fronted by more experienced political commentators.

Places to Visit: Croke Park in Dublin city is a sports stadium owned by the the amature sporting body of the Gaelic Athletic Association. The GAA run the games of Hurling and Gaelic Football among others. These are Irish games played by teams around the world. The stadium is the 3rd largest stadium in Europe and only the Nou Camp in Barcelona, Spain and Wembley Stadium in London England are larger.

Croke Park

Croke park has a capacity of 82,300 people and was full to capacity on September 18th this year when Dublin beat Kerry in the All Ireland Football Final to win a trophy called The Sam Maguire for the first time since 1995

Presidential Race update, Place of Interest, Facts

Dublin Facts: Dublin city is twinned with 3 different cities across the globe.

• Barcelona in Spain
• Liverpool in the UK
• San Jose, California, USA

San Jose is in California in the United States of America and has a population of 952,612 in 2010 of which 716,086 are eligible to vote in county, state and national elections. San Jose is also known as the Capital of Silicon Valley.

San Jose Tower and Rotunda

St. Josephs Cathedral

Barcelona is the second city of Spain and the capital of the Catalonia area of the country. Barcelona  has a population of 1.6 million for the city area and 4.2 million for the full administrative area.

Sagrada Familia Cathedral

Port Vell and the Columbus Monument

Liverpool is a city in Lancashire on the western coast of England. Liverpool is 135 miles or 218km from Dublin. The city of Liverpool is the home of The Beatles and had a vibrant music scene through the years.

The Beatles Tour

Liverpool Cathedral

                                                          



                                                                                                                    
Dublin fact 2: Dublin has been named as the safest Capital city in Europe with only 7 road deaths so far this year down from 13 for the same period in 2010. Thankfully there have been no fatalities on our roads since June of this year.

Places of Interest:
Dublin Zoo in the Phoenix Park in the city is worth a visit and especially since the current president officially opened a new gorilla rainforest area there yesterday Sept 28th which is open to the public from today. Our president did not have far to travel as her home is also in the Phoenix Park which is one of the largest enclosed recreational areas in any european captial city

One of the troop to move to their new surroundings is a female baby gorrila who was born on Sept 16th in the Zoo. Dublin Zoo have yet to name the baby gorilla and have invited people to suggest a name based on her West Africian origin. Your suggestion should be posted to the Dublin Zoo facebook page www.facebook.com/dublinzoo

Presidential Update:
Seán Gallagher has suggested that rather than all 7 canidates sending information leafleats to every voter in the country that only one leaflet with information about all 7 should be sent which would save around 10 million euro for the Irish tax payer in postal charges.

Dublin Facts and Places of Interest

Dublin Fact. Dublin Bus who run the majority of the public bus service in the Irish Capital have 950 double decker buses operating out of 7 different garages. Donnybrook garage on the south side of the city is the largest and is responsible for 198 buses.

Place of Interest.
The Jeanie Johnston Famine Ship replica is docked in the heart of Dublin at Custom House Quay. The original ship was built in Quebec, Canada and between 1847 and 1855 sailed between Kerry in the south of Ireland and North America and Canada. The people who travelled on the ship were trying to escape the famine that gripped Ireland following the failure of the potato crop.
A tour of the ship gives you a unique insight into the 3000 mile journey undertaken by millions of Irish people trying to make it to the new world.

                                                  Jeanie Johnston alongside at City Moorings Marina on Custom House Quay in Dublin


Facebook Being Audited: According to Silicone Republic the Dublin office of Facebook is to be audited by the Irish Data Commissioner following complaints from a lobby group called Europe Versus Facebook. The complaints that are being followed up are varied and include issues with 'Pokes', face recognition and how user deleted pictures are managed by Facebook.
The reason the Dublin office is being audited is due to the fact that this office in responsible for all Facebook users outside of US and Canada.

Fact. Dublin is home to a large number of Internet companies like Facebook, Google, Zynga, Microsoft, LinkedIn, eBay and PayPal and will soon be home to Twitter who recently announced the set up of their international operations here.

Dublin Facts and the Presidential Election 2011

In Ireland, according to the Constitution of Ireland (pdf file from Government office) if you are over 35 years and an Irish citizen you can try to get nominated to become President, provided you have not been President for 14 years or 2 terms of office. There are 3 possible ways to be nominated listed in the constitution

1. Get 20 members of the Oireachtas (Houses of the Government) to nominate you.
2. Get 4 of the local councils to nominate you.
3. If you are president of the Ireland and have served 7 years or 1 term of office you can nominate yourself.

As the current president Mary McAleese is not allowed to go forward having spent the past 14 years in office so an election needs to take place.

With a deadline of 12:00 noon on September 28th as the cut off for nominations we have 7 people in the race

• Michael D Higgins a member of the Labour Party with party nomination.
• Gay Mitchell a member of Fine Gale Party with party nomination.
• Martin McGuinness a member of the Sinn Fein Party with party, plus 4 independent Parliament members nomination.
• Mary Davis independent candidate with local council nomination.
• Seán Gallagher independent candidate with local council nomination.
• Dana Rosemary Scallon independent candidate with council nomination.
• David Norris  independent candidate with local council nomination.

Dublin Facts: Figures released by the Central Statistics Office show that the population of Dublin in April of this year was 1,270,603 people of which 618,541 are male which is 33,521 less than females. This is a 7% increase on the population count of 2006. The population of Dublin has risen from 505,654 in 1926 to the current level of 1.27million having broken the 1million barrier in 1981.

What is this Blog

I am new to blogging and this is my first attempt. I have started this blog as part of an assessment I need to do for the course I am doing in Web Technologies at the National College of Ireland.

In this blog I hope to be able to give you a taste of Dublin life and the people who live here. I will try to give an insight into Dublin through the years and also what life is like now in these new times of austerity and recession.

I will have links to sites which I feel are worth visiting to get information and also a list of things to do if you ever happen to visit this lovely city.

There is also the important issue of the election of the 9th President for Ireland on October 27th this year and I will have a section of the blog that gives information about the race to Áras an Uachtaráin (House of the President). The current President is Mary McAleese who is in office since November 1997 and is just finished her 2nd 7 year term as President and therefore can no longer hold office as per the Irish Constitution

The information and the facts that appear will be hopefully interesting and useful, if there is anything that you would like me to include that you think may be of interest please pass it on to me.