How on earth the building pictured below got planning permission is a mystery well beyond me. It opened in 2006 and contains the printing presses which run off the majority of the newspapers owned by Thomas Crosbie Holdings (TCH). This includes the Irish Examiner, and the Evening Echo. In the opening ceremony, Michael Martin, the Enterprise Minister, pressed the button to start the presses.

 The building clearly doesn't compliment the landscape in any way. Instead it interrupts it, it shuts it up mid sentence, and is just simply plain ugly in its surroundings. Any one care to guess how it might have been approved?

The Rochestown Park Hotel is a four star hotel. On Saturday evening as I  was in Cork for the weekend I stopped by there with my bother and sister for a drink. My brother ordered a Murphys, my sister an OJ and for myself, a still water. My sister was buying. She handed me a glass full of ice, the barman assuming I was having ice rather than asking.

   "Could I get a glass without ice?"

A four star service? The barman took the glass back, threw the ice out of it and handed the same glass back, rather than getting a clean one. Mental note: don't come back here in a hurry, clearly either the staff aren't being trained or they just hire dipsticks.