James Galvin

I’ve been watching the Sopranos from start to finish since I got some boxed sets last Christmas. Lots to say about them, but I’ll keep it short for now.

Currently, I’m on season 4, and just watched this episode, “Watching Too Much Television”, where Tony and Ralphie devise a “HUD” scam (Housing and Urban Development). Basically, the gangsters buy up some low cost property in a disadvantaged part of Newark, get someone to value them at a high valuation, and then sell them to the government at the inflated price to be included as part of a low-income housing scheme. Tony makes a lot of money out of it.

Fast forward about 12 hours to a discussion I had with my brother yesterday, telling me about this thread on an Irish property website called The Property Pin.

Cork City council has purchased 96 apartments for social housing in a development at Atkins Hall, Lee Road, Cork City for a fee of €25,365,000. This apartment development has been on the market for 7 or 8 years but has had poor sales because it is located in a former mental institution and my fellow Corkonians being a somewhat superstitious lot were none too keen to move into the building. Step forward Cork city council to bail out the developers by buying up all their unsold stock at an average cost of €264,218.75 per apartment.

Apparently Cork City Council’s plan is to house elderly residents in the former mental institution that most Cork people like Rymus wouldn’t live in if they were offered with a free car and a cheque for €300k. And it’s also on a steep hill outside the city with no buses or essential services in the area.

So the council swoops in and pays above the odds for 96(!) apartments that were having a hard time selling. I’m not an expert in the property market, but if I were buying an apartment which has been sitting on the market for years, I would try bargaining to bring the price down a bit. If for some reason I wanted to buy 96 of these apartments, then I would be reasonably confident in my ability to haggle a few grand off the price tag, wouldn’t you? Somebody should tell Cork City Council that usually when you buy in bulk you’re supposed to save money.

Piecing together what I’m reading on the rest of this thread, what we have effectively is this: a developer buys this entire place from the government in the 90s for £900,000. They do up the apartments, sell a bunch of them to private buyers, and then flog the rest of them back to the government for nearly €26 million. You can be sure there’s some crooked valuer in there signing off on the hefty valuations too, and a couple of fat cats lapping it up.

As far as I can see, the only difference between this scam in Cork, and the Sopranos in Newark was that Tony Soprano was dealing on a much smaller scale (haggling over $7,000), and the HUD scheme actually made sense for the residents. Or maybe I’m just watching too much television?

I’m posting on behalf of someone who has lost their dog in the Knockraha area (near Glanmire in Cork).

The dog went missing two days ago, a quiet male dog, part spaniel, pictured here:

Please send me if you know of anything.

It has been over a year since thousands of French tourists caused havoc on our roads as they emerged like lemmings from Cork airport in their rental cars, driving on the wrong side of the road. As they spilled precariously onto the Kinsale Road dual carriagway, hurtling towards the oncoming traffic (which was already agitated by the chaos of the pre-flyover magic roundabout) they could only think of one thing: fromage. But if they had been able to think of anything else, they would surely have cursed the careless road sign maker who led them astray with explicit instructions to “Conduire a droite”.

As the seasons passed, the rogue sign makers slowly grew in confidence, knowing that the public would soon forget the former destruction. At last, they have returned, as John Finn presents evidence of more of their handiwork on display, down at the train station. Perhaps they are toying with our Dublin visitors who tend to struggle with their reading even when the spelling is correct. I recommend that you take a look at some of John Finn’s other photos, because he has some some great ones in there.

Most people laugh cynically when I say that I am not a geek. I have never seen Battlestar Galactica, I’m no good at electronics, and I don’t even know where that “smoke me a kipper” quote comes from. They just retort with the cruel wisdom: “any true geek is in denial”. It stings because despite my best efforts, I know who CmdrTaco is.

Adam has thrown down the gauntlet for those of us who know dopefish from blowfish: a geek table quiz. The proposal is just at interest-check stage, so if you think that you have what it takes to be the alpha geek, then leave a comment on Adam’s notablog. I’ll be there if its in Cork.

RTE notes that new Census of Population figures published today have ordained six new large towns. Any Cork people who were confused last year by the city’s official decrease in population will not be surprised by the fact that three of the “new major towns” are within 25mins drive from Cork City.

By now, most people acknowledge that the population figure associated with the city of Cork is very misleading, since the official boundry of the city is too tight. With no room for expansion in the city centre, the inner suburbs have been packed in recent years, and now the CSO acknowledges the same trend slightly further afield. What perks will this glorious new title bring to Cobh, Mallow, and Midleton? I don’t know, but word on the street is that the locals are expecting a shipment of white runners and Nissan Micra body kits.

Situated halfway between Blarney and Mallow, on the back road, the little Cork village of Bweeng doesn’t have much to offer. Its still a few years off meriting a Wikipedia entry, and currently its claim to fame is a comical name, and the close proximity to Stuake (pronounced Stwick). If you haven’t heard of Bweeng (pronounced Bwing, as in “stwick bwing”) its because theres nothing there to attract your attention. Unless, like me, you live in Donoughmore.

Damien has raised the curtain on Eircom’s Schrödinger’s Cat - their elusive fixed wireless service which names Bweeng as one of its alleged high sites. I spent the past two years in Donoughmore (north of Blarney) up on top of my roof, plotting line of sight to every mast in the greater Cork area. 18 minutes outside of Cork City, at a height of 180m, a 15 foot pole gave me clear line of sight to just about everywhere. I defied physics by associating with access points as far west as Bandon, and south at Farmer’s Cross, but I was just too far out for any ISP to cover me. My plight led to encounters with other technology refugees seeking any form of terrestrial broadband in Donoughmore, willing to pay whatever it took. And now we are told that somewhere just a few miles away, on a hill in Bweeng, Eircom looked down upon us, silently sniggering as we scurried about with ladders and binoculars and ordinance survey maps and 20 foot poles and 30 foot poles, meeting with ISPs, and group broadband schemes, and amateur initiatives to no avail.

Eircom FWA is, of course, a scam. I see several locations on their list of wireless base stations that are known as black spots, with no broadband available which isn’t backhauled via satellite. But it must be a valid product, it is listed on broadband.gov.ie… although when searching by location it does not appear to be on offer anywhere. The installation cost of €605 must put it up among the most expensive in the world. Just to compare it with a few other fixed wireless providers who operate in the Cork area:

The Insanely High Installation Fee
How can Eircom justify charging 500% of the average installation cost? The customer premise equipment for fixed wireless broadband is often very expensive, and each unit could be worth a few hundred euro. Combined with the manual installation costs, fixed wireless installation is not trivial. So what does every other wireless ISP in the world do? They claw back any loss on the install by specifying a minimum contract period (6 or 12 months in Ireland), and they reclaim their gear off your chimney when you quit the service. There is NO justification for the astronomical install fee that Eircom proposes, especially when coupled with the high monthly rental.

The Ridiculously Low Upload Rate
64k - on par with ISDN, and in practice not so much better than dial-up. There are 340 different Irish broadband products listed on broadband.gov.ie, with costs ranging as low as.. er.. free. Out of these 340 products, excluding a couple of low-end satellite services, Eircom FWA is the only one that insults us with an upload speed as low as 64k. I remember a few years ago there was a Croatian ISP which offered 64k upload on their broadband. These days, the very idea is a joke. Even your local group broadband schemes and small local operators can muster more bandwidth than that, at a far lower monthly cost.

The Scam
In general, fixed wireless has some major advantages over satellite. For starters, is far cheaper to install, and the low latency facilitates VOIP and gaming. But the tiny upload in Eircom FWA is a bottleneck which prevents both VOIP and gaming, and the crazy installation fee speaks for itself. Eircom only want this product to exist on paper. They have deliberately made it so unreasonable that nobody would be mad enough to apply, even if it was on offer. Milo Minderbinder would be proud. Damien says they are squatting the spectrum - this makes sense to me, although I would love to know more about this - what frequencies they’re sitting on, who (aside from the customer) is losing out, what Eircom hope to gain in the long run. Whatever the case, it is very wrong if they use this phantom product to gain kudos off the government for extended rural coverage. My guess is that Bweeng national school is sitting on an expensive, bulky, slow, limiting satellite connection, just like every other school in the area, while the locals continue to spend a fortune on slow ISDN.

I’ll be keeping an eye on this… with all the pressure that has been put on the government lately, this is a great opportunity to highlight dodgy dealings and a rip-off of the highest order. The funny thing is, believe it or not, I would consider signing up for it… anything is better than ISDN

And yes I do understand how unlikely the Cork double would be, since it will surely be third time lucky for Kerry, right? Just back from a drizzly Páirc an Chrócaigh where Cork defeated Waterford in a very close game. Hogan stand has a report here which agrees with Aertel’s score of 1-16 to 1-15… I was under the impression that Cork had 1-17, but makes no difference, either way it was another extremely tight game which has kept cardiologists in the Regional busy after the 1 point victory over Donegal yesterday in the football championship.

I have to commiserate with the Déise fans, this team deserves an all-ireland final at the very least, and I would liked to have seen them get a crack at Kilkenny. They had a very strong team today, with John “turkey head” Mullane having been allowed out of the institution for the occasion. Parts of the stand erupted in “gobble gobble gobble” whenever he had the ball, and it looked like he was indeed going to lose his head, towards the end of the match.

Cork City FC were knocked out of the Champions League this evening after a heavy 3-0 loss at the hands of Red Star Belgrade / Crvena Zvezda. The gulf between the sides was evident for the 90 minutes, and despite a shaky defence, Red Star were rarely threatened. The Serbians will now go on to face AC Milan in the third qualifying round, with a place in the group stages for the winner, and UEFA cup for the loser.

Cork City were missing five star players (unfortunately that isn’t an exaggeration), and although it wouldn’t have changed the overall outcome, its a shame that our most creative players were unavailable.

• 2005-2006 player of the year: George O’Callaghan
• Irish international: Joe Gamble
• Defender: Danny Murphy
• Star striker: John O’Flynn
• Captain: Dan Murray

Man of the match tonight was Dave Barry for having to put up with Roddy Collins in studio. Although, as much as I hate to say it, Roddy was right about CCFC’s squad going backwards in the past 12 months. When you consider the quality of the players that went out - Kevin Doyle, Liam Kearney, Greg O’Halloran, Shane Long and now maybe George O’Callaghan, there has been very little done to improve the first team.

I know it stems from the fact that the club is bankrolled by a guy who made his money selling burgers and chips, but I had hoped that after all the success last season that we’d bring in a decent left-winger at least. Now to look forward to Derry City vs Gretna in the UEFA cup.

Cork City 1 - 1 Apollon Limassol (2-1 agg)

Cork City drew with the Cypriot champions tonight in Nicosia, and thus they advance to the next qualifying round of the Champions League. For long spells Apollon were a handful, with their star player - the Polish international Łukasz Sosin - looking particularly dangerous. It was he who scored the inevitable goal which had seemingly turned the tie, but Cork City responded by stepping up a gear and attacking continuously, looking the better side in the second half. The decisive goal came from Neale Fenn’s corner which was powerfully headed into the top left corner of the net by the big defender, Dan Murray. A great performance as usual between the posts by Mick Devine (who has proved himself to be a first rate keeper over the past few years), and some top notch defending by the back four.

Next up for the Rebel Army is an encounter with the former superstars Red Star Belgrade, aka Crvena Zvezda from Serbia. This is the team that won the Champions League outright in 1991, and currently have a number of World Cup internationals in the side. The first leg takes place next Wednesday in Turners Cross.

While the Limassol game was a battle of equals, this is clearly a David vs Goliath fixture, and it would be unfair to expect a result for City, but this is one to look forward to nonetheless.

Job done in Turner’s Cross this evening as Cork City drove the Cypriot team Apollon Limassol to their first defeat since May 2005 in this Champions League first round qualifier. I was shocked by the poor quality of football from Apollon at times, but it took a nice goal in the second half by Billy Woods for Cork to capitalise. No match report on the official website yet, and it seems their forum has just been hacked so the webmaster could be busy this evening.

I was sickened going into this match by the loss of John O’Flynn due to injury, but moreso by the loss of George O’Callaghan due to a load of shite between himself and the manager, Damien Richardson. I think its disgraceful that such a situation can escalate to this extent - it is in everyone’s best interest that GOC be available for such important and high profile games. If Georgie’s statement in the examiner had any truth to it then questions need to be asked of Rico’s handling of the situation. A course in basic psychology and people management would do a lot of good for some Irish managers.

The second leg in Cyprus will be a different story altogether. The heat will cripple the pale white Irishmen, while the Cypriots will be reinforced by a traditionally strong home form in Europe which has seem them claim many scalps against top European opposition over the years. 1-0 is not comfortable, but its one step closer to Belgrade.