The Irish aviation industry recently launched a campaign to tackle unruly passenger behaviour in airports and on flights. All Irish airlines and airports, An Garda Síochána, the Irish Aviation Authority, AirNav Ireland, ground handlers and international aviation organisations have all come together to tackle the issue.

It sets out how the aviation industry aims to combat the issue of unruly behaviour on flights. It plans to boost its ability to ban passengers through no-fly lists, ensure Gardaí are informed of all criminal activity, enhance training for cabin crew and improve communication to passengers to prevent unruly behaviour.

They acknowledge that while the vast majority of people have the highest regard for fellow passengers, there is a small minority whose behaviour at airports or on aircraft can have a significant impact on the experience and safety of other passengers or flight crew.

I think that’s a good move and not before time but maybe they should consider going a step further. A few years ago, there was a poll on whether there should be a ban on selling alcohol in airports before 10am. The result was very close with 49.2% saying no and 48.6% saying yes and the remainder had no opinion either way.

Until recently, it’s not something I thought about too much to be honest because it wouldn’t really bother me whether alcohol was available or not. I rarely drink in an airport or during a flight simply because I find travelling tough enough on the body at the best of times without adding drink to the mix. I prefer to keep myself hydrated with water but that’s just me.

There was a time when I used to catch a 6.30am flight out of Dublin which meant I had to be in the airport around 4.30am. It wasn’t unusual to see guys drinking pints at that hour and there’s nothing wrong with having a drink before a flight to kick start the holiday if that’s your thing. Lots of people do it sensibly and the best of luck to them.

Some nervous fliers find a pre-flight drink helps to calm the nerves and that’s ok too. The problems start though when the drinking becomes excessive. Drunk passengers can cause a variety of issues that not only affect them but can also impact other travellers through delayed or diverted flights and I reckon that’s becoming more of an issue. There are many examples of this.

A woman was charged with public order offences after gardaí removed a group of “disruptive” passengers from a flight headed for Ibiza. Passengers onboard a Ryanair flight from Dublin Airport to Ibiza experienced delays in taking off over the disturbance.

In another example, a group of seven people were escorted by police off a Bristol flight to Malaga after they became disruptive. The pilot was forced to stop the plane shortly before take-off and return to its stand while the group were removed from the aircraft. The flight was further delayed while the passenger’s luggage was offloaded.

A flight from Glasgow was forced to make an emergency landing due to a disruptive “drunken” passenger on board, causing a delay of over 5 hours for hundreds of passengers. These stories made the news, but many other examples never made the headlines.

I was travelling through Gatwick Airport in London recently and I called into a bar/restaurant for some breakfast. It was about 9.30am and the airport was busy and so was the pub. There were six guys in their mid to late twenties sitting around a table and the drink was flowing.  They were surrounded on all sides by families with young children.

To say they were loud would be an understatement and while I was there, they became even louder. They were playing drinking games while noisily cheering and roaring each other on. Their behaviour was way over the top. Thankfully there was an absence of Irish accents which was some consolation.

It’s fair to assume they were catching a flight and I wondered about the condition these guys were likely to be in by the time they were due to board. They were in a bad state when I saw them and that was unlikely to improve, so the future wasn’t looking too bright for their fellow travellers. That flight was about to become a lot more tiresome for the other passengers.

Having a ban on the sale of alcohol before 10am might have been useful in this instance but would have little effect on unruly passengers taking afternoon or evening flights. Some sort of sobriety check prior to boarding might be a better weapon but this would probably be difficult to enforce except in cases where the drunkenness is obvious.

Back in the pub, I expected a member of staff to approach these guys and advise them to calm down. I was there for about 45 miniutes and I didn’t see that happen, but they were served with more alcohol when it was obvious they had enough. Surely the bar staff have a responsibility there.

And what about the responsibility of airline staff? Drunk passengers must present their passport and boarding pass at the boarding gate along with everyone else. Should staff there assess the condition of drunk passengers and question their fitness to travel?

It would seem reasonable to carry out a risk assessment at that point under health and safety regulations given the potential implications for the airline, its crew and the other travellers.

But apart from the safety aspect, the comfort of the remaining passengers should also be given consideration. They paid for their seats and are entitled to a peaceful journey. The entitlement of the many to enjoy a pleasant flight should take precedence over the right of the few to drink themselves silly.

I was out and about recently when I came across an old black Mercedes. It was probably around my own vintage, from the fifties or maybe even older. Unfortunately, the owner wasn’t around so I couldn’t find out anything about its history, but I imagine it would have had a few stories to tell.

It was a beautiful looking car but as I got closer to it, I could see evidence of age. There were gaps in the doors which werenl’t closing properly and on closer inspection there were signs of home-made repairs where fillers had been used. They were rough and ready, and the patches had been hand-painted. That didn’t spoil the sense of history attached to it though. Signs of a life well lived. It was still being driven too so the engine was obviously in good nick.

It kind of reminded me of myself. A bit of mileage on the clock, some bits removed over the years and some other bits added with a few scars prove it. But the engine is ok for the moment and all the moving parts are kept in order with various pills and potions.

I’ve been very fortunate with the professionalism of my surgeons, but things might have been different if I had been born in the 19th century when Robert Liston was practising medicine. 

His career has been well documented on the Internet and he was known as the fastest surgeon of his era, not necessarily the best though.

Before the discovery of general anaesthesia, surgery was a horrific prospect with the patient fully conscious and suffering unspeakable agony with a significant risk of death. In those days surgeons had to get creative in an attempt to save lives while minimizing a patient’s pain. One of the most effective ways was to perform the surgery as quickly as possible, sometimes in under five minutes.

There was an upside to this method. The less time a surgery took, the less likely the patient was to bleed out and the less they would suffer. However, there was also a downside as accuracy would often be sacrificed in favour of speed.

Perhaps the fastest surgeon of this period was Robert Liston, who was often referred to as the “fastest knife in the west end”. He received his medical education at the University of Edinburgh, where he developed a reputation for being a very difficult individual with a caustic and arrogant personality.

He was particularly interested in anatomy and quickly built a reputation as a fast and highly skilled surgeon. He was widely disliked by his peers, and many wanted him banned from the wards because of his unpleasant attitude. Following a series of disagreements with his colleagues, he left Scotland and moved to London.

Standing six feet two inches tall, Liston was an imposing figure who was famously strong and spoke with a loud and brusque voice that would often intimidate both his students and patients. He was unusual at the time in that he would wash his hands and remove his frock coat and put on an apron to operate. Proper surgical antisepsis would not be widely accepted until the late 1800’s.

Before performing an operation, Liston would stride boldly into the surgical theatre, which was frequently packed out with spectators including visiting surgeons, all eager to witness his unparalleled surgical technique. With the presence of a true showman, he would then nod to the medical students present with their pocket watches in hand and announce, “Time me, gentlemen!”

A typical amputation would take approximately two to three minutes to perform, with his fastest amputation being reported to be an astonishing 28 seconds. 

A handkerchief would be placed in the patient’s mouth to mask his screams, a medical student would be asked to hold the limb that was being removed, and two other students would keep the patient still. Liston would then cut through the flesh with a scalpel, saw through the bone and suture the wound. Despite the speed with which he performed these procedures, his results were excellent for the time.

Between 1835 and 1840, Liston performed 66 amputations and only 10 died, a mortality rate of less than 1 in 6. The average mortality rate for amputations was 1 in 4.

In addition to his record-breaking 28-second leg amputation, Liston is infamous for some particularly remarkable cases. In another leg amputation that took a comparatively slow two and a half minutes, Liston accidentally also removed the patient’s testicles. In a more successful operation involving the testes, he removed of a 45-pound scrotal tumour, that the patient had to carry around in a wheelbarrow, in just four minutes.

Perhaps Liston’s most famous case, however, is the only operation in history with a 300% mortality rate. Robert Liston was performing a leg amputation on a patient who was lying flat on his table. As he brought down his knife, he was so focused on his speed that he took his surgical assistant’s fingers off along with the patient’s leg. As he swung the knife back up, it clipped a spectator’s coattails who collapsed and died. Unknown to Liston at the time, this death was only the first of three. The second and third deaths came a few days later, but still due to the operation. It later became apparent that the equipment Dr. Liston used was infected and not sanitized. The assistant’s finger and the patient’s amputated leg became infected, developed gangrene and both died from their wounds. The spectator who collapsed was later discovered to have died of fright.

Liston, without doubt, made a significant contribution to the field of surgery in the pre-anaesthetic era. Years later, when anaesthesia was invented, he became the first surgeon to operate using it, and his surgery was a success.

About ten years ago my wife and I went to visit our daughter Vicki, and her partner – now husband- Ian, when they were in Australia. They spent a few years there, came home, had a family of three boys and just recently returned to Oz for another stint.

On our visit we were based in Brisbane. My son Colin, and my mother came with us. There was no shortage of beautiful sandy beaches in the area so the gang of us stopped off at one of them one day for a picnic.

It was a quiet spot and as far as I can remember we were the only people there. I noticed a small pleasure boat anchored about two hundred metres offshore and apart from that there was no sign of life. It was a hot day too, so I decided to go for a swim. As I was swimming around, Buddy their dog was running back and forth along the shoreline barking and enjoying himself.

After the swim I went for a small walk and when I returned, the gang couldn’t wait to tell me they had a visitor. Apparently, the guy in the pleasure craft got into a smaller boat and came ashore to speak to them. He told them to be careful in the water because a few sharks had been circling his boat for some time.

I’m not sure how my legs supported me at that stage because they turned to jelly. All sorts of scenarios ran through my head and most of them involved me in a pool of blood minus a few limbs. The theme music for Jaws was ringing in my ears and for the rest of my time in that country, I refused to go into the water.

Many tried to convince me of how safe most of the beaches were and how some even had nets spread across the water to prevent sharks entering the bathing area. I didn’t care. I had been swimming in close proximity to sharks and survived that near death experience with my body intact and I had no intention of exposing it to the risk of further harm.

The experts tell us there are many varieties of shark, some more dangerous than others, but as far as I’m concerned, a shark is a shark and I never want to be close to one again. Makes no difference to me how cuddly it is. If it has a fin, I’m off.

That creates a slight problem though because I’m heading to that part of the world again at the end of the year thanks to my daughter’s migration. I’m supposed to swim regularly for my back issue, so I need a plan. One thought I had, was to take one of the grandsons to the beach with me and keep him close while in the water. At the first sign of a shark, I could offer him as a sacrifice and go like the clappers to save myself.

My daughter, selfishly in my opinion, has an issue with that idea so as an alternative I decided to educate myself on how best to deal with sharks from a defensive perspective. The first thing I discovered is that you don’t need to go to the southern hemisphere to find sharks because approximately 35 shark species have been found in the waters around Ireland, including the second largest fish in the sea, the basking shark. I didn’t know that.

Travel + Leisure magazine offer some advice on how to keep safe from sharks while swimming in the ocean. They tell us that while these creatures have been painted as heartless predators on the hunt for human blood, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Sharks are intelligent and curious animals who are likely just as intimidated by you as you are of them. If you ever run into one, the success of your interaction largely depends on you — it’s up to you to convey that you are a predator, not prey.

They suggest that while keeping cool when nose to nose with a shark may seem impossible, it isn’t. You just need to know a little about shark behaviour and have a plan for how to react should you come across one while swimming.

The colour of your clothing matters. Sharks have monochromatic vision, so it would be smart to avoid colours like white, yellow, or neon when swimming or diving because those may stand out more brightly in a blue ocean. Sticking to darker colours, like black and blue, can minimize unwanted attention from sharks.

When you see a shark, your instinct may be to swim as fast as you can in the other direction, but this could communicate that you are prey and should be chased. When you spot a shark in the ocean, your goal is to let them know that you, too, are a predator. To do this, you must acknowledge the shark by using eye contact.

But don’t get too locked in because if there’s one shark, there could be others. So, after you make initial eye contact, look around you. Again, the key is to show the shark or sharks that you are aware of them and not prey.

The reason you want to act like a predator in the water is to tell the shark that you are not on their menu. Splashing, screaming, and causing a scene at the surface might make them think you are a sick or injured bird or fish.

Maybe so, but in my case, I’m pretty certain that staring into the eyes of a shark to intimidate him is not going to happen. Splashing, screaming and causing a scene is much more likely so maybe I’ll just have to find a swimming pool.

If you want to experience what it’s like to live in a coastal town, you could do worse than spend some time in Cobh. It’s a great spot, full of history and like any place surrounded by water, it has seen its fair share of tragedies. But plenty of good times too.

The sea has always played a large part in our family life. My mother was born and raised on Spike Island and her father worked on the Department of Defence boats operating around Cork Harbour. My grandmother was a midwife based on Spike and she, like all the other inhabitants, had to rely on a launch to get to Cobh. When labour called, she had to travel in all hours of the day and night and in all types of weather.

When the weather was too bad, travel was impossible, and the islanders had to sit tight. A teacher travelled to the island every day from the mainland to run the little school. I remember my mother telling me that she often prayed for a storm when she didn’t feel like going to school because the teacher would be stranded, and the kids would have a day off.

The family left Spike Island and moved to Cobh in the early forties which was in reality changing one island for another. They settled in a terraced house on top of a hill on the eastern part of the town with unrestricted views of the harbour and that’s the house I grew up in.

In those days there was very little light to be seen around the harbour at night. Street lighting was practically non-existent so the surrounding areas of Whitegate, Spike Island, and Haulbowline were really dark. As a child, I can remember the trawlers coming into port as darkness fell and they looked sinister with their black sails, and I imagined we were being invaded by pirates.

When I got older, my friends and I used to play down by the seashore. We would pick periwinkles at low tide and fill potato sacks which we kept submerged in the water to keep the winkles fresh until the guy came to collect them in his van. He had a weighing scale and would give us a few pence per stone in weight.

We’d bring some home to the parents too and they would boil them in a pot of water and drain them into a bowl. The winkles would be picked out of their shell with a pin and straight into the mouth. They didn’t last long.

There was no shortage of fish either. Word would spread when the mackerel were breaking and everyone charged to the seashore, armed with fishing rods or a line of feathers. Fresh fish were always welcome at home and when the spoils were good, the neighbours were looked after too.

As we got older, we had a punt, a small rowboat, and we would spin around the harbour during the summer holidays. On a good day we’d have money to put petrol into the outboard engine, failing that we had to use elbow grease and pull the oars. That was ok when rowing with the tide but a much different story when pulling against it. Progress was slow.

We had no fear of the sea. We were all competent swimmers which was just as well because I’m sure we didn’t have a single life jacket between us. But in those days, there was lots of activity around the harbour and always plenty of people to keep an eye on us. They were great carefree times.

Sometimes when you’ve grown up in a place, it takes an outsider to remind you of what you have on your doorstep like IrishCentral, an Irish website in North America which spreads news of all things Irish.

It reminds us that if you claim Irish descent there is a good chance that your ancestors left Ireland through Cobh. It was the departure point for 2.5 million of the six million Irish people who emigrated to North America between 1848 and 1950.

Like Annie Moore, the first immigrant to pass through the Ellis Island immigration facility in New York Harbour on Jan 1, 1892. A statue of her and her two brothers stands outside the Heritage Centre and that centre is a must see for any visitor to the town. You can learn about the arrival of the railway in Cobh in 1862 that facilitated the mass emigration of people from Cork Harbour.

It’s well known by now the Titanic’s last port of call was Cobh and a visit to the Titanic Experience is essential. On April 11, 1912, that ship dropped anchor off Roche’s Point at the entrance to Cork Harbour and picked up 123 passengers who were brought to the ship from Cobh. Four days later it struck an iceberg and almost 1500 souls were lost.

In 1915, the Lusitania was sunk off the Cork coast by a torpedo fired by a German U-boat. 1,198 people perished and that tragedy also had a connection with the people in Cobh as the dead, injured and bereaved were brought to the town. Of the 289 bodies that were recovered, 169 were buried in the Old Church Cemetery just outside the town. 

These days, sea farers visit the town in happier times. Thousands of passengers from over one hundred cruise ships disembark in Cobh every year and they bring a lot of life to the town as do the visitors from around the country who come to see the liners.

The scenery changes every day when you live on the coast and there’s something very relaxing about watching the slow-moving activity of the various boats moving about the harbour. There’s always something new to see.

The island of Cyprus is a rest stop for songbirds as they migrate between Europe, Africa and the Middle East. A place where they can rest up and catch their breath before continuing on their journey. It hasn’t always been a happy haven for them though. Many have found themselves on the menu in Cypriot restaurants instead.

For centuries, Cypriots have trapped and eaten migrating songbirds, as part of their normal diet. But over recent decades, the consumption of them became a lucrative commercial business and the level of slaughter reached industrial levels.

Millions of birds were killed each year as trappers employed new technologies to attract and capture them. The methods used by the trappers are illegal under both Cypriot and EU law and in the last few years, both the Cypriot authorities and environmental groups have been fighting back, dramatically reducing the number of birds being trapped.

I came across bird trapping for the first time while I was serving in that country with the United Nations in 2014. Part of our duty involved the prevention of this activity and in the course of that work I encountered many bird traps. They weren’t hard to find once you knew what to look for.

The trappers basically used two methods, glue sticks and netting. Glue sticks were very basic. They simply made a paste from the berries of a local tree and put the glue-like substance on thin sticks which were then placed on the branches of trees. Any birds that perched on them were stuck there until the trappers returned.

The trappers removed the sticks, detached their prey, then replaced the sticks for the next feathered visitors. Netting was more sophisticated. Metal poles were placed strategically around the trees and light netting was then attached to the poles. When the unsuspecting birds came into land, they got tangled up in the netting.

Some systems used electronic recording devices attached to speakers to lure the birds with mating calls. These took time and money to arrange but were very effective. The trapped birds were stuck there until they were recovered by their captors.

The birds were considered a delicacy and could fetch serious money on the black market. They were plucked, boiled and eaten whole, bones and all. While it doesn’t sound particularly appetising to me, it was, and maybe still is, a popular dish here.

Diners were prepared to pay well for the privilege of eating these miniature creatures. The dish was called ambelopouli and it would never appear officially on a menu, so diners had to know where it was available and who to ask for it.  

BirdLife Cyprus had a report on its website in 2020 describing trapping as the indiscriminate and large-scale killing of thousands of birds every year, with the worst year, since their records began, being 2014 with an estimated 2.5 million birds killed. That was the year I was working there so maybe I saw the worst of it.

Cyprus’s Game and Fauna Service, in charge of the fight against poaching, says the illegal trade is worth about 15 million euros a year. The campaign against illegal bird trapping is one of their most important long-term activities and the problem will only stop with a ‘zero tolerance’ approach. BirdLife Cyprus is determined to carry on fighting, but they have their work cut out for them.

When we came across bird traps, the protocol required us to report the finds to the authorities but in my experience, the police had little interest in getting involved. We dismantled the traps ourselves and made sure they could never be used again. It didn’t stop the trappers though. They simply replaced the equipment and headed for new ground.

It was a game of cat and mouse and occasionally we could see the trappers observing our activity from a distance. They had their side of the story too. Trappers defended their activity as traditional Cypriot food gathering and an important source of protein for the natives for thousands of years. 

Historically, trapped birds were a food supplement for the mostly poor island inhabitants living off the land. Trapping in Cyprus has been recorded in historical documents from the Middle Ages and even earlier times, but things are changing.

Last year, Cyprus Mail reported that bird trapping with nets had almost halved in Cyprus when comparing autumn 2022 with the previous year. The figures reveal a 49 per cent reduction in bird trapping with nets between autumn 2022 and autumn 2021, while the numbers since 2002 showed a 91 per cent decrease.

This encouraging decrease is due to the ongoing collaboration between environmental organisations and the competent authorities. High fines from €2,000 up have also helped.

The problem persists in certain areas across Cyprus, where large-scale organised trappers continue unhindered in the absence of the effective action of the Cyprus police anti-poaching unit, which was disbanded in November 2019.

The relaxation in fines from €2,000 to €200 for the killing of up to 50 birds using lime sticks, make penalties neither punitive nor deterrent. According to BirdLife Cyprus this has indirectly decriminalised this trapping method and has resulted in an increase in lime stick use recently.

Environmental groups have called on the government to reinstate the anti-poaching unit. They have also called for a change to the law, returning the fines to €2,000 for all birds, regardless of killing method or bird species. Only then, according to the experts, will Cyprus be able to deliver the final blow to the scourge of illegal bird trapping.

On the other hand, a recent demonstration organised by “Active Citizens Movement of United Cyprus Hunters” urged the government to lower the fines and to legalise spring hunting and bird trapping. So, this story is far from over.

I was out walking recently on a promenade. It was a beautiful sunny day with a bit of a breeze and my nostrils detected the smell of smoke. I looked around and sure enough, there was a guy behind me smoking a cigarette. He wasn’t that close to me either, so it surprised me that even in the open air I was able to catch it because there was a time when I wouldn’t have noticed it unless I was on fire.

Smoking was so common back in the seventies and eighties that it was difficult to draw a breath of uncontaminated air at times. I often wonder how we survived at all because most of us lived in a nicotine fuelled smog, and we thought nothing of it. Hard to believe now but nearly everyone smoked back then.

Seems incredible in these health-conscious times but it wasn’t unusual to have a bunch of smokers puffing away in the confined space of a car or an office. Pubs were so smoke filled that the ceilings were yellow, and our clothes smelled like dirty ashtrays, but it didn’t bother us. In our ignorance, we didn’t care but we do now.

The Tobacco-Free Life Organization is a group with a mission to save lives by ending worldwide disease, damage and death caused by tobacco. Their website details the long history of tobacco and tobacco-related products.

In 1492, Columbus was warmly greeted by the Native American tribes he encountered when he first set foot on the new continent. He received gifts of fruit, food, spears, and more and among those gifts were dried up leaves of the tobacco plant. As they were not edible and had a distinct smell to them, those leaves, which the Native Americans had been smoking for over 2 millennia for medicinal and religious purposes, were thrown overboard.

Columbus soon realized though that dried tobacco leaves were a prized possession among the natives. By the end of the 16th century, tobacco plant and use of tobacco were introduced to virtually every country in Europe. Tobacco was snuffed or smoked, depending on the preference and some doctors even claimed it had medicinal properties.

Sir Walter Raleigh is credited with bringing it to England from Virginia and one legend tells of how Sir Walter’s servant, seeing him smoking a pipe for the first time, threw water over him, afraid he might go up in flames.

In 1604, King James 1 wrote ‘A Counter blast to Tobacco’, in which he described smoking as a ‘custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black and stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.’

Bob Newhart, the American comedian had a sketch where he played the part of the head of the West Indies Company in England in an imaginary phone call with Sir Walter Raleigh who tries to convince him that a load of leaves he loaded onto his ship in the American colonies, would be worth buying.

You can only hear Newhart’s side of the conversation and he is incredulous as Raleigh explains how the tobacco leaves are used. He tells Newhart how the leaves are rolled in paper, put between the lips and then set fire to. He said you could also put it up your nose and snuff it and it would make you sneeze.  Newhart in fits of laughter replies, “I imagine it would Walt.” It’s available on YouTube and well worth a listen.

As daft as that sounded though, smoking caught on and cigarettes came to the height of their popularity during the First and the Second World War. Tobacco companies sent millions of packs of cigarettes to soldiers on the front lines, creating hundreds of thousands of faithful and addicted consumers in the process. Cigarettes were even included into soldiers’ C-rations – which contained mostly food and supplements, along with cigarettes.

In Great Britain, snuff users were warned about dangers of nose cancer as early as 1761 while German doctors started warning pipe smokers about the possibility of developing lip cancer in 1795. In the 1930s, American doctors started linking tobacco use to lung cancer and General Surgeon’s report from 1964 definitely states that smoking causes lung cancer in men.

We know a lot more now. According to the Irish Cancer Society, smoking is the single biggest risk factor for lung cancer and a contributory risk factor in a number of other cancers. It also damages the heart and causes hardening and narrowing of the arteries and smokers are more likely to have a stroke than non-smokers.

It’s responsible for a multitude of other health issues too so with all this knowledge available to us you’d wonder why the habit remains so popular. Even more confusing is why anyone would deliberately set out to defend it.

The Irish Examiner reported recently that pro-smoking campaigners have vowed to fight government plans to raise the legal age for buying cigarettes and tobacco from 18 to 21.

Smokers’ rights group Forest (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco) said it would challenge what it called “creeping prohibition” following confirmation that the Health Minister plans to seek government approval for the move.

Simon Clark, the director of Forest, claimed the proposal to raise the age of sale will drive young adults into the arms of criminal gangs and illicit traders.  “If you can drive a car, join the army, purchase alcohol and vote when you are legally an adult at 18, you should also be allowed to buy cigarettes and other tobacco products,” he said.

I’m all in favour of democracy, free speech and freedom of choice but it’s hard to support their argument in this case.

According to a report on RTE, anti-social behaviour on public transport is out of control. An exasperated frontline transport worker told RTÉ Investigates he is simply sick and tired of dealing with the abuse he gets every day and doesn’t see an end in sight.

“There’s just groups and groups of young teens, young adults going around, not having a care in the world, just being aggressive, being like little sh**es, excuse my language, to everybody that they encounter,” he said.

Over several weeks, RTÉ Investigates travelled on most forms of public transport to see first-hand what the daily commute was really like. Using hidden cameras, the researchers witnessed a wide variety of anti-social activity including begging, substance abuse, unruly individuals, and gangs, and even threats of violence.

Teenagers travelling in gangs is an increasing problem on the public transport system and many passengers described a sense of menace when travelling close to these gangs. Drinking and drug-taking are also adding to the anti-social behaviour and the sense of fear experienced by the travelling public.

Frequently, they witnessed people drinking alcohol on board Luas trams, and the DART. Some passengers were also seen rolling joints, and consuming pills taken from bags concealed in their socks.

It seems things have deteriorated since I was a regular user of the Cork to Dublin train back in the early eighties. At one stage I travelled up and down that route almost every week and while there was no fear of intimidation, there certainly was discomfort, especially in the winter.

It wasn’t unusual to be without heat or light, or both at times, and you wouldn’t want to be wearing your best bib and tucker as the seats weren’t the cleanest. It wasn’t unusual either to have standing room only, especially if you travelled on a Friday evening.

Overcrowding was common and there were always complaints about the lack of carriages which is something I still hear commuters grumbling about today. Iarnród Éireann say they have improved their stock since then and they now provide the option of a quieter carriage on their Heuston to Cork services too. 

That’s good news because the only threats we were subjected to in those days came from the irritating announcements over the public address system. As soon as you settled into your seat, a loud monotone voice addressed passengers to inform us where we were going, and which stations would be serviced along the route.

I never knew why we needed to be told this. You’d imagine that before buying the ticket, passengers would have worked out the train’s destination. But in case we hadn’t, the voice named every stop between Cork and Dublin, and repeated the whole thing again in Irish for those who didn’t understand English.

The same rigamarole was repeated every time the train pulled into a station, making a snooze almost impossible. I don’t know if that still happens, but I learned on my travels abroad that, as I expected, there’s no need for it.

Last summer, my wife told me she wanted to visit Italy. She said it was on her bucket list so off she went and arranged everything. Before I knew it, we were standing in Pisa in the middle of August, admiring the famous wonky Tower. Later we left Pisa and headed for Cinque Terre which is about an hour and a half away on the train and it was on this journey that I noticed something – it was peaceful.

There were no announcements because the Italians have come up with a better idea. On each platform they have a digital notice board displaying the names of the various stops and the time you will arrive at each one. So, all you need to do when boarding the train is look for your destination and note the time of your expected arrival. After that, just keep an eye on the watch.

They also have onboard information screens to keep you updated which eliminates the need for noisy recordings and the system seems to work well.

It sounds simple but of course for that to work, the trains have to run on time which might be an issue here. They also operate an honour system which might be another problem for us. You purchase your ticket online and validate it online before you board the train.

They don’t have an issue with free loaders because the tickets are cheap and also because of the reputation of Italian rail inspectors. They don’t mess about.

A few years ago, an Italian train conductor was sacked for issuing passengers with too many fines. He was accused of “terrorising” passengers by overzealously handing out a record number of 5,000 fines within the space of a couple of years.

He was let go in 2017 after the company received a deluge of complaints from unhappy customers, costing it about €10,000 in reimbursements for fines the company argued had been issued arbitrarily and for mistaken sums. The inspector had fined passengers for various infractions, such as boarding a train without a ticket, failing to date-stamp it or for travelling on incorrect routes.

He sued the rail company for wrongful dismissal and a court ruled in his favour. The court described the conductor as someone who worked with “uncommon zeal” and was “inflexible”. However, it ruled he was only doing his job, albeit in an “extremely meticulous way”, and did not seek to profit personally.

With reports of bad behaviour on public transport here, we could do with a worker with “uncommon zeal.” The ill-mannered passengers putting their feet on the seats or placing their bags on the seat next to them and refusing to make room for other passengers could do with some “inflexibility” too. Maybe we should employ some Italians.

When I was a young lad, there was a guy who often passed by close to our house at night on his way home from the pub. I thought he was an old man at the time, but he was probably only in his fifties. He would stop at the corner of our terrace before tackling the next stage of his journey and with nobody else in sight he would launch into a tirade of abuse.

This involved lots of cursing and swearing but I’m not sure if anyone knew exactly who it was aimed at. Or even if there was meant to be someone on the receiving end. It may have been intended for the community as a whole.

The outbursts never made any sense to me. I couldn’t understand a word except for the expletives and maybe they didn’t even make much sense to himself. He was a peculiar character. A quiet man by day who lived on his own and whenever I met him, which was always during the daytime, he would say hello.

This was back in the sixties and maybe if he had been born in the modern era he may have been diagnosed as being on the spectrum and with some of the care that’s available today, he might have turned out differently. He wasn’t the only one. There was always a character like that in the town as I suppose there was in every locality. Usually classed as odd but harmless.

Shouting obscenities at the world was as daft as howling at the moon but it was tolerated as long as nobody was offended. I worked in a locality back in the eighties and I can remember a similar character whose antics sometimes overstepped the mark of what was acceptable and when they amounted to a breach of the peace, he ended up in the garda station.

Generally speaking, these people were harmless but that’s changing now. Public expressions of anger and intolerance have reached new levels, the likes of which I have never experienced. The worrying part is that much of it seems to be going unchallenged.

There was video footage shared on social media recently of Leo Varadkar sitting outside a café in the sunshine minding his own business. A male and a female voice could be heard shouting at him from a car which had stopped nearby. The vitriol that spewed from those people was outrageous. They directed disgusting comments from the top of their voices at Varadkar and were so proud of their actions that they recorded the incident and uploaded it to social media for all to see.

Another clip doing the rounds showed a guy who turned up for work in Newtownmountkennedy at a site earmarked to accommodate international protection applicants. He was met by a small group of protesters but one guy in particular lost the plot completely. He was hyper aggressive, insulting, threatening and abusive and looked as if he was close to lashing out.

What surprised me, apart from the small-man antics, was that nobody else present made any attempt to calm this character down. They were passively supporting him which emboldened him even further which probably sums up in a nutshell where Irish society is today in relation to these far-right activists.

They’re bad news, we know that, but we’re standing back, reluctant to tackle them in case we inflame the situation and further their cause.

It’s time to stand against these people but the lead must be taken by An Garda Siochana. They are the lawful arm of the State, but they are hesitant. Speaking in Dublin Castle recently, Commissioner Harris said that the Gardaí are taking a ‘long-term view’ on the far-right.

“There’s two bits of their playbook that we can see that they want to achieve.” he said. “One, they want to act on local fears, local concerns and, in effect, gather up a crowd. They’ve been successful on occasion and other occasions they’ve been completely refuted. The other piece, and it’s a classic part of their playbook, is an over-response by the authorities of the State, i.e. An Garda Síochána. We are not going to fall into that trap.”

We’re all familiar with the far-right tactics. They stick camera phones into the faces of the gardai while screaming obscenities and aggressively pushing the boundaries of public order, hoping for a response.

At the mere hint of a finger on one of the agitators there is a dramatic tumble to the ground accompanied by screams of police brutality for added effect. The videos are then uploaded to social media as examples of police violence and used to recruit more misguided souls.

They are becoming more aggressive and more emboldened as recent attacks on the homes of politicians have demonstrated. They wrap themselves in the tricolour and claim to be patriots justifying their behaviour as defenders of the State.

It’s time for change. The softly, softly approach isn’t working. The argument that it prevents escalation of unrest and reduces the possibility of propaganda videos doesn’t hold water. These people are running rough shod over the authority of the State and it’s time they were dealt with using whatever force is necessary to achieve that end and bring them before the courts to face justice.

Commissioner Harris is concerned about “an over response by the authorities of the State” and how that might be perceived. But as long as the response is lawful and proportionate what’s the problem?

Ireland is changing. There is an element in society now intent on causing disruption. They have no boundaries, no respect, and they’re full of hate. They’re growing in number too. There is plenty of legislation available to deal with them, all that’s required now is the backbone to use it.

Baltimore promotes itself as a village of some 400 permanent inhabitants whose numbers are swelled by visitors in the summer months. It lies about 60 miles west of Cork city in the region known as West Cork, one of the most beautiful parts of Ireland and the final stop on the 2,500 km (1,500 mile) Wild Atlantic Way.

The climate is mild thanks to the nearby Atlantic and the influence of the Gulf Stream. Baltimore’s large natural harbour is formed partly by islands of the archipelago known as Carbery’s Hundred Isles and around the pier, charter boats and pleasure craft jostle with fishing vessels and ferries serving the main islands.

The oldest part of the village with its castle and rows of fishermen’s cottages is spread along the eastern shore of the harbour. At its heart is the village ‘Square’ around which are clustered bars and restaurants looking west over sea and islands towards the ‘Land’s End’ of Ireland, Mizen Head.

Sounds idyllic. A nice place to visit or maybe even a place to spend some time for a holiday with the family…or would it? Would you be safe sitting outside the local pub with your pint admiring the view of the harbour or could your kids be hauled off by some marauding pirates to a foreign land, never to be seen again? “That’s impossible,” you say but can you be certain? Afterall, it happened before.

Granted, it was some time ago, 1631 in fact when much of the local population was carried off by pirates, during an event known as the Sack of Baltimore. I can’t believe I’m only finding out about this now. I bought a book by Des Ekin,- The Stolen Village: Baltimore and the Barbary Pirates- and after talking to a few buddies about it, it seems that I’m the last person to hear about this amazing story.

Barbary pirates from North Africa led by a Dutch captain-turned pirate, known as Murad Reis the Younger raided Baltimore. The attack was quick and unexpected with the inhabitants taken completely by surprise. More than 200 armed pirates landed in the Cove, torching the thatched roofs of the houses and carried off with them ‘young and old out of their beds’.

It started on 19 June 1631 when the raiders gathered off the Old Head of Kinsale. They had already captured two fishing-boats from Dungarvan, one captained by John Hackett, the other by Thomas Carew, both containing five-man crews. The two twelve-ton boats, now manned by pirates, joined the little flotilla, which continued westward.

Aboard the lead vessel Captain Morat Rais, a Dutchman with extensive experience in the North Sea, demanded that Hackett pilot them into Kinsale. Perhaps aware of the presence of the Fifth Lion’s Whelp, under the command of Captain Hooke of the Royal Navy, in the harbour, Hackett allegedly persuaded Rais to continue on to Baltimore.

About 10 o’clock on the night of 19th June, the ships anchored east of the mouth of Baltimore harbour. At 2am on the morning of 20^th, some 230 men, armed with muskets, landed at the Cove. Quickly and silently spreading out, they divided up and waited at the doors of the 26 cottages along the shoreline.

At a given signal, brandishing iron bars to break the doors and firebrands to torch the buildings, they launched a simultaneous attack on the sleeping inhabitants. The terror of the population can only be imagined as they were dragged from their beds by strange men speaking a foreign language.

The marauders entered 40 houses, rifled 37 of them and captured more victims. William Harris was disturbed by the noise and quickly established what was happening. He grabbed his musket and ran to a wooded area from where he fired shots into the air to alert the remainder of the villagers. Another of the inhabitants grabbed his drum, ran to join Harris and began beating the drum.

Rais realised that the element of surprise had been lost and he thought soldiers were on the way to challenge them. The pirates retreated quickly to the Cove and returned to their anchored ships.  They had captured twenty men, 33 women and 54 children and youths, to add to the crews of the Dartmouth ship and the Dungarvan fishing-boats.

That was the end of the raid but by then more than 100 men, women and children had been taken from the coves of West Cork and forced into slavery. Some were destined to live out their days as galley slaves, which was often a brutal and short life. They would be starved and beaten by slave drivers and forced to work half naked as they powered the ship to their own doom.

They were sometimes worked until they dropped dead at which point their bodies were dumped into the sea. The destination was a huge slave market in Algiers, where white European slaves were highly sought after.

Most women were put to work as domestic slaves while others became concubines of the Ottoman Sultan in Constantinople. Many of the younger women would spend long years in the seclusion of the Sultan’s harem or within the walls of the Sultan’s palace as labourers.

In his book, Ekin explained that some of the female slaves converted to Islam and got married. They would have had a relatively pleasant life, living with their husbands and families in Algiers, which was a civilised city for the era. A decade and a half after the slaves had been captured, the British government paid their ransom and planned to bring them home.

An envoy was sent to Algiers to repay the slave owners the money they spent at the slave market. However, only two out of the 105 slaves wanted to return home. The rest were happy to stay.

Jane is a student at Trinity College Dublin, where she is in her second year, studying, of all things, English. Writing in the Irish Examiner recently she asked a few questions about the way we deal with the English language on social media.

“What’s the deal with all these full stops in texts? We’re just texting; why do you need to act like we’re negotiating a contract? What’s the need for all this formality? Quite frankly, the full stops feel a little aggressive. It’s just so blunt. Such a definite end to a text message. It makes me feel like I’m back in school again, and I’ve served my time.” 

“Sure, when it comes from someone over the age of 30, I’ll take their full stop with a pinch of salt. I assume they just don’t know that those went out of fashion around the same time as MySpace and capris. But if one of my friends were to hit me with a ‘Hello.’ over text, I’d start sweating. Essentially, a text like that is grounds for me to assume that I am involved in a serious argument with said friend. That’s just not how we text.”

Well, as someone who recently qualified for free travel and sadly misses the Ford Capri, it’s safe to assume Jane and I see things differently. I learned not too long ago that the thumbs up emoji and the smiley face were gone out of fashion, and nobody told me. My friends still use these but then we’re old.

Another thing I discovered accidently is that if you send a thumbs-up emoji to an iPhone from a poor man’s regular smart phone, it translates to a question mark. I found this out when a friend was trying to arrange a meeting and suggested a time and place. He was confused when he kept receiving question marks from me, so he repeated the message a couple of times before he realised, I was still operating in the Dark Ages. Nobody was offended though.

Now things are getting even more complicated because Jane and her buddies want to eliminate punctuation from text messages completely. Punctuation is causing millennials and Gen Z people a lot of stress and it’s wasting valuable time for them on social media, so they want to sabotage it.

Jane says, “There’s a fairly strict rubric that all Gen Zer’s follow when they’re texting. Instead of using full stops, we tend to send multiple short messages. Each message is a bit like a sentence, but with poor structure. We’re not looking for a Nobel Prize in literature here. Clear, quick communication. Remove all full stops from phone keyboards. We can expand from there.” 

Another columnist wrote, “Older people – do you realise that ending a sentence with a full stop comes across as sort of abrupt and unfriendly to younger people in an email/chat? Genuinely curious.”

Well, no I didn’t and if it comes across that way let me suggest you need to get over yourselves because I have no intention of corrupting the English language to suit your sensitive nature. Genuinely.

Emma Day, a freelance journalist and a lecturer in journalism in the UK took this antipathy towards the full stop a step further. She wrote that a full stop at the end of a sentence on WhatsApp, social media or text message is an unfriendly sign of aggression.

She stated that the Generation Z people who grew up with smartphones, the internet and social media, find the full stop intimidating when used in written messages.

These are the same people who can identify as a glow worm if it takes their fancy, throw paint at priceless art on a whim, glue their tongues to a motorway and cancel anyone who offends their sensibilities, which is very simply done by the way because they are easily offended.

They want to dismantle the English language because they feel threatened by an aggressive dot. “It’s upsetting” they say so let’s dump it. Constructing a sentence properly with the appropriate punctuation is too much trouble so their solution is to write badly instead.

The real reason behind this of course is pure laziness. It’s as easy to construct a sentence correctly as it is to butcher it but what do I know? I was born in the fifties.

I like to use the English language as it was intended and as I was taught and I’m not going to change. Punctuation has an important role to play and without it, understanding the written word would be more difficult. Bad grammar doesn’t help either but unfortunately, that’s becoming more common.  

‘I seen’ and ‘I done’ are in everyday use now and seem to be considered acceptable. Unless the writer has a medical condition that precludes them from understanding the difference, then that’s laziness too and nothing less.

My mother didn’t have much formal education, but she was a big reader. She also had a love of the English language, and she encouraged me to read from a very young age. Thanks to her, I have been a book worm all my life and reading has given me endless pleasure.

She used to love spelling difficult words too and often challenged me. To this day when I write an article, I usually run it through spell check and if it detects an incorrectly spelled word, I am annoyed with myself. That is something Gen Z-ers and millennials won’t understand.

Punctuation exists for a reason that is seemingly lost on the younger generation. When one employer pointed out to a Gen Z-er that their email was grammatically incorrect, and asked if they had checked the spelling they replied, “Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?”

It’s not limiting, it’s just sad.