Good to have you back Kunle!

Olunkunle Eluhanla made a brief appearance at the Residents against Racism rally on O'Connell Street last Saturday 2nd April 2005. Here's my press statements on the issue
I made a comparison between Martin Luther King's 'Red Hills of Georgia' Speech and the Green Hills of Ireland, hoping that 'little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers' ... without fear of being deported with no notice.
There was a crowd of around 300 people, with many parts of the country and the world represented.

Oxigen

Oxigen Plant in Dublin The Oxigen plant in Coolock on a bitterly cold Friday Morning. The smells from the Cadburys Chocolate Factory and Tayto Crisps are in the air down in the village, but here in the Industrial Estate off the Oscar Traynor Road there's barely a whiff coming from a pile on the floor that represents today's contents from all of Dublin's Green Bins.

€9.50 an hour for the Professors and teachers from Eastern Europe working on the sorting line. The plant can deal with 10 tonnes an hour and is operating 24/7. A new plant in West Dublin will have 5 times the capacity, once it opens later in the year. The worst contents of the green bins so far have been dead cats, and grass clippings, oh, and a back boiler that almost broke the conveyor belt.

D-Day for Climate Change

It’s D-Day for Climate Change. Today the Kyoto Protocol comes into force. 

 

Named after an ancient city in Southern Japan, the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change is a United Nations Treaty that tackles Global Warming. In Ireland this may bring warmer drier summers and milder rainy winters. It may also have contributed to the storms to our shores last January, and contributed to flooding in our rivers in recent years. 

 

On Grafton Street Trevor Sargent addressed the shoppers under a giant weather balloon globe that symbolised the fragility of our planet

Going up

This model was on display in the County Hall of Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council on the Marine Road in Dún Laoghaire. It shows a Planning Application for the MJ Flood site next to the Luas Terminus in the Sandyford Industrial Estate.

It seems like only a few years ago that I went on a site visit with the Architectural Association of Ireland to view the newly completed MJ Flood Offices. I remember being impressed with the sharp 45 degree angles corners and curtain walling of the existing building. That must be 15 years ago.

It doesn't seem like the worst site for a tall building. It would be adjacent to public transport and overlooks the reservoir. Plus it brings residents into an area that's the legacy of Le Corbusier's mono-functional view of planning. Now if only we had a carefully considered policy for high rise buildings locations within the County...