The JC Decaux signs controversy continues to rumble on and rightly so in my opinion. They look poxy for a start, way to big and uglier than the backside of a bus. I can’t understand how public space can be “sold” by Dublin City Council to a commercial company like this.

The photo above shows an advert currently running on one of the signs on Liffey Street in Dublin. They are impossible to ignore.

But guess what? Adverto isn’t a real magazine. I had to go searching to find out what it was, and found an answer on the Creative Ireland forum.

Anyone seen the bizarre sight around town of the controversial new JC Decaux street billboards now featuring the faces of various ‘personalities’ from media agencies around town? Some made-up (?) magazine called Adverto with these peoples’ mugs on the front cover. Is this JC Decaux sucking up to the media buyers? Must be confusing for the ordinary punter…

Seriously, WTF? Given all the bad press about these ugly billboards, they stick an ad for a fake magazine on to massage the ego’s of media buyers?

Why couldn’t they have done some public service or charity advertising instead?

Dublin City Council aren’t listening to the people on this one. I haven’t heard one good thing said about them.

[Note: There is no truth in the rumour that someone went in to Easons looking for a copy of ‘Adverto’ – no truth in that whatsoever. It’s an Urban Myth]

Boards.ie has a very informative thread on the whole issue too

Bit of a wobbly start, but he gets into it and gives a decent rendition – a plaintive quality to the voice that suits the song.  Eh, sorry – I know, it’s not Taoiseach X Factor – there’s a country to run and an economy needs kick starting and here’s me giving an opinion on Cowen’s singing

Starting to like him now. A man of the paypel.

This was heard originally on Céilí House on RTE.

PS – le craic has a Youtube account now… Any videos you want to share, just make contact.

If you have a blog and are reading this take a look at the man above. That’s Andrii Nikitin with his son Ivan. Andrii is a MySQL support engineer in the Ukraine.

Ivan needs a bone marrow transplant operation. The cost is huge and donations are needed to help pay for a transplant.

This appeal for help is extremely relevant to us bloggers (especially WordPress based ones), as MySql is the database used to store all the words, images and videos on our blogs.

Without MySql and the people like Andrii that work to support it, blogging probably wouldn’t have taken off the way it has.

I know there are so many calls for donations to various charities and money is tight for everyone, but even €1 will help.

Hundreds of thousands of blogs, billions of words – one child. Make a difference now to Ivan and donate what you can.

Thanks.

AJ

Always interesting to read what visitors to our shores think about us. Ellen Creager from the Detroit Free Press recently published a couple of articles about her visit (here and here).

Not surprisingly, rain and prices featured quite a bit. Also, the Ford Focus is apparantly “tiny”. It’s pretty normal sized as far as I’m concerned, but I guess if compared to the gas guzzling monstrosities in the USA ….

I really love the “10 amazing Ireland facts” though, especially

If you are driving, bring CDs. The radio stations outside of Dublin are not, to put it kindly, up to standard; it seems to be all B sides.

and

Ask an Irishman for directions, and he’ll help you — if you can follow him. An actual example: “Go to the small roundabout, then a large roundabout. Take the first left. Then go through another small roundabout and then at the next roundabout, take the second left, then the third left, then you’ll be on the dual carriageway, then follow the signs to Tralee.” He was right.

Cheek. Those directions are perfect.

Men’s bathrooms are called the “Gents” room — and most of them have urinal troughs like at the old Tiger Stadium.

How quaint that Americans still call them bathrooms.

She is dead on about prices though.

Photo owned by ironmanixs and used under the terms of a CC License