Bangor Council – waving, not drowning.
Disappointing news from the sunshine state that a top-of-the-range 50m swimming pool will not be finished in time for the 2012 Olympic Games.
But fear not, it was never the plan of the council to have the pool ready in time.
From BBC
North Down Borough Council chief executive, Trevor Polley, said it was never just about the Olympics.
“The main thrust of this has always been that there will be a legacy for the people of NI.
“It will the first 50m pool here and it will be useful beyond the Olympics and will available for the commonwealth games.”
Yet only as recently as September last year the council was bigging up its potential.
“With a two-year build programme, the pool will be available for use as a training base by international teams competing at London 2012. It will, of course, also provide a much needed world class sporting facility for local swimmers competing in all aquatic sports.” said Mayor of North Down, Councillor Tony Hill
Well that settles that then…
Sunday Bloody Sunday
(ht to @nicofell)
The best thing about the world cup…
Before Machines new single – Hearts/Runaway
Here’s the impressive debut single from Belfast band Before Machines.
Another great Start Together production and we’ll hopefully see more from the boys in the coming months.
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ASIWYFA exploding on to the European scene…
And So I Watch You From Afar or more like… And So I Watch You Explode From My Car.
Ok, that was rough.
Anyway, ASIWYFA were nearly blown to smithereens during their 3-date stint supporting rock super-group Them Crooked Vultures.
Mental.
ATL Gig Review – Cutaways @ The Empire 3/6/2010
There are three absolute truths in the world of music. You can’t dance to shoe-gaze, second albums almost always define a band and your favourite group will someday split up. And so it was with heavy hearts fans of Belfast band Cutaways arrived at the Empire Music hall for what was to be their last show – ever. Read more…
How careful do you have to be? #whitehaven
BBC Radio 4 has come under criticism after broadcasting the Afternoon Play: Six Impossible Things - just a day after the violent tragedy which unfolded on the Cumbrian coast. Read more…
Cutaways last gig tonight- gutted.
Belfast band Cutaways will be playing their last gig EVER tonight.
RIP Cutaways we hardly knew ye (except for all them gigs you played every week.)
Edit: What a spiffy poster.
Hyperlocal Belfast.
So what is Hyperlocal? Damned if I know – and I just did a presentation on the thing at Barcamp Belfast.
For a definition of Hyperlocal blogging go here, then check out this fantastic resource and finally have a wee read of these two very different examples of how it works.
The very articulate Alan In Belfast helped me host the chat and showed everyone an interview with Nicky Getgood (of Digbeth is Good), about the practicalities and reasons for blogging on a very local-local scale.
Nicky talked briefly about how hyperlocal blogging can really bring communities together… even for the opening of local ATMs:
So the talk was really an introduction to Hyperlocal and also a chance to see if there’s an appetite for such a site in Belfast – which I now think there is.
There is a wealth of content about Belfast being published on the web at the moment. Just look at sites like Lookaly, Secret Belfast and Slugger O’Toole and you start to appreciate how healthy this city’s online community is.
So why don’t we bring this all together. But how – I’m not entirely sure.
One of the things we did was to pass out a handful of Community Telegraphs. I asked everyone to rip out anything they found interesting or useful to get a sense of what people look for in local news.
Out of the 38 articles featured in the North Belfast Community Telegraph (May 19th) there were only 14 which attendees found of interest or value. Less than half of the entire paper.
The top five articles were:
Police Reports – 5 people picked police reports including this one on falling crime figures in Newtownabbey.
Whiteabbey A&E closure – There were 4 clippings for the closure of Whiteabbey Hospital’s A&E department.
‘Students show that they Care about their art work‘ – A story about UU art students showing their wares at a local nursing home piqued the interest of 4 attendees.
Court Reports – ‘Man fined for cutting trees’, a story about a Malone architect who hacked down four defenceless trees in a conservation area, garnered a surprising amount of interest (3 people) from the Barcamp audience.
CT on the grapevine – 3 people chose this reader contributions section which included news about upcoming events, festivals or days of interest in North Belfast (split in to different areas – Antrim Road, N Belfast, Waterworks and N’abbey.)
I’ll talk about hyperlocal more in my next post and about how it might work in Belfast.
The Ice-Cream Man.
Rum and raisin, vanilla, butterscotch, walnut, peach:
You would rhyme off the flavours. That was before
They murdered the ice-cream man on the Lisburn Road
And you bought carnations to lay outside his shop.
I named for you all the wild flowers of the Burren
I had seen in one day: thyme, valerian, loosestrife,
Meadowsweet, tway blade, crowfoot, ling, angelica,
Herb robert, marjoram, cow parsley, sundew, vetch,
Mountain avens, wood sage, ragged robin, stitchwort,
Yarrow, lady’s bedstraw, bindweed, bog pimpernel.
Michael Longley.
Some rights reserved 2009