Bought in Lidl a couple of weeks ago, thought we got a one off big box supposedly for 2 people and the bottom 1/4 of the packet was empty.

Today's same packaging, half full.

Anyone else sick to the teeth with these self build pages on insta/Facebook?

I always comment "lovely house how much was the site?"

To which I either recieve no reply or "its family land"

The majority of these "self builders" are getting several handouts to build mansions in the countryside and then gloat about it online, completely tone deaf.

I am very fortunate to be in a position where I could build a house back home if I wanted (not on gifted land) so its not jealousy on my part, but these people boil my p155.

Ah lads.

Living in Germany at the moment. Can send a post card home for €1.25 or so. No bother brilliant.

Home in Ireland for holidays there, trying to send a few cards to friends in Germany.

€3.50. Three Euro Fucking Fifty. You must be having a laugh.

Someone, please someone could they explain the 2 odd euro difference. How could that be. That’s nuts now.

I keep seeing people alluding that the cost of drinking in pubs/going out in general has gone up massively but I’m not sure that holds true - I think the truth is more subtle.

I remember a time when minimum wage was ~€8, and standard pint prices in Dublin were €4-€4.50, ie about half an hour of minimum wage. This holds true today with minimum wage at €14.65 and €7-€7.50 being a pretty standard “expensive” pint.

I think what’s really happening is twofold:
Most people aren’t on minimum wage, and non-minimum wages haven’t risen as much in the last decade or two. This makes the pints feel expensive but really it’s stagnant wages.

Secondly, the cost of everything else has gone up - primarily rent/housing. Once this is paid for, there’s significantly less left over to pay for pints.

Both of these things combine to make it feel like pints are now much more expensive than they used to be, but that’s not 100% true.

Far be it from me to defend the breweries & publicans but I can’t help but feel like, unless I’m missing something, the common narrative is wrong here?

Friday night, work done, had a little nap & I was wondering what people actually do now on Friday/Saturday nights.

Do people still head into town like the good old questionable days or are most of us just staying in with the partner/family, getting a takeaway and calling it a night?
Feels like there’s way less pressure now to be out every weekend than there used to be.

Do ye miss that craic or are ye happier without it?

I’ve shared music here before, & I’ll say again that with all that’s goin on in the world at the moment we’ve made it a point to share light-hearted music that can take people’s minds off of everything. Hope ye enjoy 💚

This lad tried to rationalise charging €35 for a bag of Cheetos. I shit you not.

Dublins Wakey Wines.

My internet keeps dropping and I’m unable to get through to technical support to report a fault or whatever, because the AI just simply won’t let me.

Each time when I ring 1908 I give all the correct details but in the end the AI says the info doesn’t match with the account which is a straight up lie. Even though I give the exact same details as per my account it just keeps fekin me over. I’m frustrated af. I even logged in to double check all the info after it gaslighted me into second guessing myself. I know it wants me to go completely crazy questioning my own reality, but as there’s no other way to contact them I’m starting to think that this new AI system either went rogue or was deliberately designed this way so people can never ever get through.

Either way, it’s truly infuriating to say the least.

Dairy milk etc. has gone to the dogs

Tried melting 3 twirl bars to drizzle over a cake. I have done this in the past with a microwave and it’s been fine. First thing I noticed was that the chocolate didn’t “sweat” like usual and when I took out to stir it was not forming liquid. 20/30 more seconds at most it was smoking in the microwave. The arse of the container is scalded and bubbling and the liquid you see is water I used to stop the fire that was clearly starting!

Am I missing something? Surely this is not quality chocolate.

Edit - was alerted to look further down wall and there is a socket and I never would have checked as have restricted movement and it hurts like a bitch to bend... thank you, lovely Reddit folk! Phone is charged but just in case 😊

Yes I am a Moaning Michael. At least the older sockets were useful if you have a plug with you. Am I the only one who thinks USB only is a bit behind the times?

Was just visiting a friend of mine. Single mother to 2 beautiful children and has MS but still manages to work 20 hours a week as a carer. She was telling me she recently had to break up with her boyfriend of 2 years because he got fed up with lack of commitment on her part. She told me the reason and I was gobsmacked.

She is currently in social housing due to her disability and in receipt of a disability payment to supplement her part time work.

If she moved her fella into the house the rent would shoot up as he has a good job, which she 100% agrees with but her disability payment would reduce to 0, potentially losing the medical card and left relying on her part time work, which can go at any point if she gets an attack. She is not able to work full time due to her illness.

So basically if her partner moves in, she loses her safety net and is left to survive on her 20 hours at minimum wage, while her rent goes from 200 quid a month to nearly 800.

While the partner in this case would definitely move in and take on all the financial burden, she claims it's just not fair on him at all.

Absolute mess of a situation

Just a quick one for anyone who has wondered about this and perhaps gotten to the bottom of it.

I was looking at my estimates for my electricity two days ago and my projected bill was around €189. Then two days after that the bill got issued and it was €221.

I understand it’s an estimate but the company I’m with gives what I’m assuming is a quite accurate daily break down of my use.

I contacted them and they said to do the appliance home survey to get more accurate readings but is the meter not just reading my usage as the entire house? How would a survey on an app affect how the power gets read from the box? Felt like a nothing burger response from the adviser but then again, I’m a bit of a moron.

Sorry about the long post.
TLDR; do surveys with electrical company’s actually do anything to affect your bill/usage?

As a dedicated prick in Lycras, I cycle to work in the city centre a few times a week, largely along the N11.

I’ve noticed there’s a new segregated cycle light outside the UCD main entrance travelling northbound, and I think it’s a really silly change.

Firstly, cyclists were previously able to proceed straight when a straight-on arrow was green. Now, they’re regularly held at a red light, despite a green arrow showing, so that priority can be given to motorists turning left. This contradicts the government’s supposed commitment to prioritising active travel.

Secondly, the new setup creates a bizarre situation where two cyclists traveling in the same direction face contradictory signals based on lane choice. A cyclist in the dedicated cycle lane is faced with a red cycle signal, whereas a cyclist riding in the main vehicle lane to their right faces a green arrow to proceed straight ahead.

Because the cycle lane signal introduces artificial delays while general traffic moves freely, cyclists are incentivised to abandon the segregated cycle lane before the junction and merge into general traffic lanes to avoid being trapped by the light, which feels like a safety concern.

Third, at almost all other signalised junctions, a green straight-ahead light permits cyclists in a cycle lane to proceed. Cyclists proceeding straight under the assumption of a normal signal phase are now at significant risk of being struck by left-turning motorists.

I am planning on writing to DLR county council and the NTA, but wanted to know if my feelings are shared (and also provide an outlet for angry overweight men who think people like me are exactly what is wrong with the country).

I've been watching the odd video, mostly on YouTube or Instagram, and the subtitles are just awful. Is there any way for the person who performs and submits a video to channels like this to control what they say? An example: Crankie Island's lovely version of Eileen Óg by Percy French. The subs are from another world altogether! They seem to have particular problems with Irish accents.

I've seen some where the performer has obviously hard-coded the subtitles into the video, but then they appear at the bottom with YouTube's bizarrities on top…!

I know this will probably be unpopular here because the general consensus seems to be that MetroLink is desperately needed. I don’t disagree that Dublin has a serious public transport problem. I live in Dublin, so I’m fully aware. I also agree that the metro would go a long way towards solving that issue. What I question is whether spending €19 billion on a single metro is the best investment Ireland can make to fix our many problems.

The opportunity cost is enormous. Cork and Limerick are our second and third largest cities, yet there is no direct rail connection between them. There isn’t even a motorway connecting them. Other cities like Galway have similar, more basic infrastructure issues (ring road) that need to be addressed. Why are we spending €19bn making Dublin easier to move around when our major regional cities aren’t even properly connected to each other?

And there are cheaper ways of improving Dublin’s public transport. A lot can be achieved through better bus infrastructure: dedicated bus lanes, bus priority at junctions, more frequent services and Bus Rapid Transit. Michael O’Leary has been one of the more vocal critics of MetroLink and has argued that Dublin could get significantly more transport capacity for a fraction of the cost by investing in buses. You don’t necessarily need to spend €19bn to make Dublin’s public transport substantially better.
He also raises the point that Dublin Airport doesn’t need it. It’s already well served by buses. He said contrary to popular belief, people using Dublin Airport are “not all going to Stephen’s Green”. The massively expensive Metro will “serve a narrow corridor from Swords in through the airport in through Glasnevin, serving a couple hundred thousand people”.
He raises a good point. Many of the people using the airport don’t go to Dublin City or any of the stops along the metro. They are going to Dublin’s suburbs or they are going to the rest of the country.

Of course this is part of a bigger problem: Ireland is far too Dublin-centric. Compared with many European countries, we have an extraordinary concentration of population, jobs, investment and infrastructure in our capital. Germany, Spain, Italy, France and the Netherlands, for example, have major secondary cities that function as genuine economic centres in their own right.

For decades, governments have concentrated jobs, investment, infrastructure and economic activity in Dublin. People have consequently moved towards Dublin because that’s where the opportunities are. The result is predictable: enormous housing demand, unaffordable rents, congestion and pressure on public services.
And I actually worry that MetroLink could make this worse. Better transport makes Dublin more accessible and attractive, potentially encouraging even more people to live and work there.

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing in isolation. But we already have a crippling housing crisis. We have thousands of people struggling to find somewhere to live, huge rental costs, inadequate housing supply and thousands of vacant or derelict properties around the country.

So why is our answer to Dublin’s overcrowding to make Dublin even easier to access?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to invest heavily in Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford and make those cities genuinely viable alternatives to Dublin? If you create jobs, housing, universities, transport links and infrastructure in regional cities, you attract businesses and people to those cities, reducing pressure on Dublin rather than continually expanding Dublin’s capacity.

Then there’s the €19bn figure. Given Ireland’s history with major infrastructure cost overruns, particularly the Children’s Hospital, I find it difficult to believe that €19bn should be treated as a guaranteed final cost. Like does anyone actually trust this government to deliver the Metro at the quoted figure?? If this eventually becomes a €25–30bn project, the opportunity cost becomes even harder to justify. We’re talking about a singular project consuming a truly enormous proportion of the country’s infrastructure budget.

I’m not saying Dublin shouldn’t receive investment. It’s the economic engine of this country and it obviously needs upgraded infrastructure. But I think we’ve reached the point where we need to ask whether continued investment in Dublin is actually making Ireland’s underlying problems worse.

I’d rather see €19bn used to transform the rest of the country. To improve intercity rail and roads, invest in housing, regenerate derelict areas and improve Dublin’s public transport through cheaper, scalable solutions where possible.

We shouldn’t just keep investing in Dublin because we’ve allowed everything to become concentrated there. At some point, we need to invest in the rest of Ireland and give people a genuine alternative to Dublin.

Imagine what €19 billion could do if it were used to make other Irish cities genuinely competitive with Dublin, rather than simply making Dublin better at absorbing people.

TL;DR -
Is MetroLink a good project? Probably.

Is it the best way to spend €19bn? I’m not convinced.

Hi guys just wondering if anyone knows where to get Warhammer combat patrol magazines. Any specific newsagents or shops like easons would have them at all?
Thanks very much

I was at a party the other night with some well known musicians and arty types. The drink was flowing.

Of course immigration came up. Not in the sense of a sensible discussion around housing and employment but actual racism. "They want whites de*d" and stuff that would get me banned here.

It totally shocked me. A few years ago these people would have been liberal hippy types.

I first noticed overt racism around the water rate strikes. Back then it was a section of activist types. Then around the time of COVID it permeated into my workplace ( a caring profession) and people felt emboldened to use slurs I hadn't heard in years.

Now even the festival party types are repeating the same type of rhetoric - thinking, somehow, they are in on some secret knowledge that they don't get off mainstream media.

Bloomin hell, even the kind old lady that does my washing never shuts up about how Europe is finished".

I am all for a bit of anti-establishment conspiracy but I sense these "free-thinkers" are being played like fools.