Month: June 2019

The Trade Union Left Forum is hosting a discussion on the impact of the Industrial Relations act on Trade Union activity and organising on Wednesday, 3rd of July from 1:15 pm to 2:30 pm in the Ireland Institute for Historical and Cultural Studies, 27 Pearse Street, Dublin (right near the ICTU conference in Trinity College).

Presentations will be made by:
Gareth Murphy (FSU)
John Douglas (Mandate)
The event is open to members of all trade unions so please come along and have your say.

For more information, please go to the TULF’s event page on Facebook by clicking here.

[Alan] Shatter probably failed to get a fair hearing because the public generally has little sympathy for politicians and assumes, wrongly, that none of them tell the truth. The only person in the Dáil to offer a defence of Shatter when he was being abused from all corners after his resignation was Clare Labour TD and barrister Michael McNamara who wrote: “His lack of deference to his ‘learned friends’ attracted a level of resentment unparalleled since Roger Casement was denied legal representation by the Bar of Ireland. His resignation was greeted with glee in the Law Library with some of Ireland’s finest legal minds punching the air in frenzied scenes of jubilation.” Maybe Shatter should be grateful he wasn’t hanged like Casement.

Hmmm…

These figures suggest that book sales are pretty robust with a small fallback for printed books from £3.11bn in 2017 to £2.95bn in 2018. The demise of print is clearly some way away, and while digital is a significant chunk of the market it remains well well behind print at £653m. Audiobooks are beginning to make an impact but they are even further behind – at £69m per year.

Perhaps very slightly more troubling is this:

“I’m not concerned that this could be a watershed moment for the printed book, we are not there yet,” said Lotinga. “We have not seen a huge shift into subscription services, piracy is low, people still love physical books. It is a trend halt, sales are still up 8% over the last five years.”
Consumer ebook sales continued their slow decline, down 2% to £251m. Sales have fallen 20% since 2014 as rising competition for screen time from services such as Netflix, Facebook and YouTube continues to eat away at the popularity of ebooks and ereaders.

Funny the angst over trailers. As this piece notes social media has brought new factors into the film-making equation – for example panicked responses by film-makers to bad reactions to trailers. Yet this is, in essence, not about craft or art, but about money. The film-makers try, at least in some instances, to avert poor responses from… customers, let’s call them customers, which would impact financially on a film. That caveat about some instances is crucial.

And this social media impact (or not) can take place after the film has aired. For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Last Jedi both critically and in terms of audience response it polled high figures (there’s a distinction there between polling of people who saw it in cinemas and some, though not all, user reviews on Rotten Tomatos and Metacritic as against IMDB). Given a budget of $300m and a box office of $1.333bn it also did absurdly well – despite some in the audience piling on negative user reviews online and attempting to ‘boycott’ it.

What’s interesting is how that response has coloured views of the film subsequently. I’ve mixed feelings about it, but concerns about fan service are not amongst them.

Thanks to Joe Mooney for pointing to this…

With a cast lead by Jim Norton as Arthur Rudolph, one of a number of Nazi rocket scientists who assisted America as they tried to win the space race, new docu-drama #PrisonersOfTheMoon examines Rudolph’s work and alleged involvement in war crimes, & screens as the 50th anniversary of the moon landing approaches. Screenings from June 28 at:

Sligo Omniplex

Carrick Cineplex

Eye Cinema Galway

Irish Film Institute (IFI)

Triskel Arts Centre

Light House Cinema

Crescent Arts Centre

Abbey Arts Centre

Set Theatre Kilkenny

https://www.prisonersofthemoon.com/events

Here’s a first.

The civil and public service will take part in the Dublin parade for the first time, marching under the banner Proud to Work for Ireland.

And:

Joining the parade will be representatives from all Government departments, the Garda Síochána, the Defence Forces, the Central Bank, Revenue and many other agencies of the State.

They will be joined by representatives of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). It will be the first time PSNI officers in uniform have taken part in Dublin Pride. Over the past few years, gardaí have participated in Belfast Pride. The Garda Representative Association is also taking part in the parade for the first time.

And always important to remember the roots of Pride in Dublin,:

Dublin’s first large-scale pride parade was held in June 1983 when about 900 people marched from Liberty Hall to Fairview park.
It followed the death of Declan Flynn (31) who was beaten to death by a gang of five “queer-bashing” teenagers in Fairview Park in 1982. The 1983 march through the city centre is seen as the catalyst for the gay-rights movement in Ireland.

The parade starts at 1PM on O’Connell Street and ends on Merrion Square though as this makes clear opinions are not entirely uniform on the participation of the police.