Month: August 2024

I went to Spain for the first time back in the mid-seventies and I was made to feel very welcome. The locals were happy to have me and even happier to take my pesetas. I was glad to accept their hospitality and their sangria but in recent times, their attitude seems to be changing.

Residents in some of the holiday spots around Europe have become less tolerant of tourists. Anti-tourism protests have been a common sight this summer, with demonstrations taking place in several countries such as Spain, Netherlands, Greece and others. In July, protesters marched through areas of Barcelona spraying visitors with water pistols while chanting “tourists go home.”

More recently, thousands protested on the island of Mallorca, with locals bemoaning the lack of affordable housing, which they blame on short-term rentals, and overcrowding caused by the cruise ship industry.

Protests have erupted in the Canary Islands, Menorca and Malaga too. Amsterdam plans to ban cruise stops at its main terminal by 2035 and has also blocked new hotel development.

Tens of thousands of people also protested across the Canary Islands demanding a freeze on visitor numbers, because they say life is becoming unaffordable for residents. Authorities in Mt. Fuji, Japan have introduced a daily visitor cap and charges hikers a toll for some trails. Bali charges a “tourist levy” and in Iceland, the national government has reinstated its tourist tax.

Back in 2021 Venice took a decision to ban ships weighing over 25,000 tonnes from entering certain areas because the heavy-weight ships were causing damage to the ecosystem and eroding the old foundations of the palaces and the streets of Venice. The city was struggling to cope with the thousands of passengers crowding into Venice’s narrow streets. 

Santorini also has an issue with hordes of visitors invading the island and authorities there have joined in calling for a cap on visitors. They say the growing number of foreign tourists is putting pressure on its outdated infrastructure and is pricing islanders out of the housing market.

Many residents complained about the noise levels, the clogged roads and the pollution from the never-ending busloads of tourists. Armed with selfie sticks and phones, the tourists flood in from everywhere to watch the island’s famed sunset and many of Santorini’s 20,000 permanent residents, have had enough.

I can understand that to a certain extent. My wife and I spent a couple of weeks in Cinque Tierra in Italy last year. It was during August, peak holiday season, and the place was thronged with tourists. At times it was difficult to walk around in comfort, especially when the cruise ships pulled into the small port.

It was uncomfortably busy on those occasions, and it must be irritating for the locals who still have to go about their daily business. Many of them though make a direct living from tourism and the area benefits too so there needs to be a balance. 

Thankfully, we don’t have that problem in Cork yet. The natives still have a very healthy attitude towards cruise ships, particularly in Cobh which is just as well because we play host to most of them. There will be over one hundred liners paying a visit to the harbour town this season alone.

Port of Cork announced its Cruise Liner Schedule for 2024 earlier this year which showed an increase of 23% more vessels expected to visit the Cork and Cobh terminals. An impressive 116 cruise vessels will call between April and November, surpassing the 2023 figure of 94 ships that brought 180,000 passengers to the region. 

It is estimated that cruise tourism contributes €17 million to the local economy and Toddy Stafford, President of Cobh & Harbour Chamber, shared his anticipation for the busy year ahead and said the increase in cruise calls this year is testament to the collaboration between Port of Cork and local stakeholders and businesses.

“We eagerly anticipate another successful season that will not only boost local trade and tourism through the influx of passengers and crew but also bring a wave of visitors to Cobh to view these majestic cruise ships in Cork Harbour.“   

He’s right of course to be enthusiastic. We are unlikely to suffer from overtourism in Cobh so we’ll happily take all the visitors we can get. Most of these liners carry thousands of passengers and on a sunny day, there is always an atmosphere in the town with tourists and locals mingling and enjoying the outdoor music.

Apart from the flow of passengers, the liners also attract other visitors to the town. The massive ships are an attraction in their own right and everyone is certainly made to feel welcome. As the ships leave the port in the evening, the Cobh Confraternity Band usually gives a recital on the quayside to give the passengers a good send off.

Is there a downside? Of course there is, but nothing that’s insurmountable. On days when the liners are visiting, parking around the town is a bit of a problem but that’s not unusual. Parking in Cobh is a pain at the best of times. A bigger issue is the amount of traffic getting on and off the island.

Thousands of passengers leave the cruise ships at the quayside to be ferried by busses to other tourist spots in the region. As they navigate a path through our infrastructure, they must pass over the island’s only bridge at Belvelly which is several hundred years old and must be feeling the pressure. We still have only one road into Cobh, so it doesn’t take much to create a blockage.

We’re still happy to see the liners though and the local economy would take a hit if they stopped coming. Countries involved in over-tourism protests should be careful what they wish for.

In the aftermath of the recent riots in the United Kingdom, the judiciary showed their teeth when it came to dealing with the offenders in court. Justice was swift and caught everyone by surprise. The effect was immediate and the one hundred or so riots predicted to take place over the following few days never materialised.

Sir Kier Starmer, Prime Minister of the UK and former Director of Public Prosecutions is being credited with the crack down. As an experienced prosecutor, he knows how to use the law, but his predecessors in the Middle Ages were no slouches either when it came to punishment.

In medieval times an accused person could lose their head, literally, on the whim of a disgruntled magistrate. The death penalty was a possibility for a relatively minor offence and a stint in prison wasn’t much easier if what I read of medieval gaols is accurate.

I’m reading the Shardlake series of novels at the moment. They’re described as historical mystery novels set in 16th century Tudor England. The main character, barrister Matthew Shardlake, solves crime while trying hard to avoid the wrath of Henry VIII.

The stories contain many descriptions of what it was like to be a prisoner in medieval times in stone walled dungeons with straw on the floor that was changed so infrequently it often stank. Full of fleas, the cells were damp with no fresh air and were regularly overcrowded. Men, women and children were often kept together with hardened criminals mixing with first time offenders.

The quality of care often depended on what money was available from relatives or friends on the outside to bribe the prison guards. A few pence in the right hands could ensure clean straw or an extra helping of gruel. Not much of a treat, but it did help to keep them alive.

According to Digitalponoptican.org, many eighteenth-century statutes specified death as the penalty for minor property offences which meant people tried at the Old Bailey could be sentenced to hang for as little as stealing a handkerchief or a sheep.

Felonies were originally punishable by hanging, but those found guilty of lesser crimes were sentenced to other punishment such as the stocks, imprisonment, whipping and fines. Execution was a public spectacle, and convicts were drawn in a cart through the streets to the gallows, where they were given a chance to speak to the crowd to confess their sins.

Women who claimed they were pregnant when they were sentenced to death could “plead their belly”. Such women were then examined by other women present in the courtroom, and, if found to be “quick with child” – if movement could show signs of life – their punishment was delayed until after the baby was born.

In principle, the punishment could then be carried out, but in practice sympathy for the newborn child or concern for the cost of caring for it meant that the mother was often pardoned.

By the 1840s, the death penalty was abolished for all offences except for murder and High Treason. Women found guilty of either treason or petty treason were sentenced to be “burned alive at the stake”, though executioners usually strangled women with a cord before lighting the fire.

Men found guilty of treason were sentenced to be “hanged, cut down while still alive, and then disembowelled, castrated, beheaded and quartered”. The bodies of those found guilty of murder and hanged were either delivered to the surgeons to be “dissected and anatomised” or “hung in chains”.

Some convicted of lesser crimes were punished publicly in the stocks as a way of destroying their reputations. Stocks were set up in busy streets where crowds could easily gather, and the culprit would be placed on a platform with his arms and head secured through holes in the wooden structure.

The stocks rotated so that crowds on all sides could get a good view and could express their disapproval of the offence by pelting the offender with rotten eggs and vegetables, blood and guts from slaughterhouses, dead cats, mud and excrement, and even bricks and stones.

Those days are long gone and maybe that’s a pity. Leniency seems to be the order of the day in our courtrooms and respect for the officers of the court is disappearing. There was a time when disrespectful behaviour wasn’t tolerated, certainly not by some of the judges I knew. Things change.

The Irish Examiner reported on a bail application being considered by a judge in Cork District Court. During the hearing, gardaí became aware that a young woman had texted another person telling her to pretend she was a relative of the man in the dock if gardaí rang to check if the defendant would be welcome to stay at her address.

The judge said this information effectively scuppered the bail application for the accused person who then stood up in the dock and said loudly, “Just leave it off — I am sick of this shit.” The judge then told the young woman to leave the courtroom immediately.

In other cases, a serving soldier who beat a woman unconscious in a random street attack, and boasted about it on social media, walked free from court after being given a fully suspended sentence which the victim described as “not justice”.

And a former GAA star avoided a criminal conviction for assault after paying compensation to two men who were punched by him in what was described as an unprovoked attack. He pleaded guilty to assaulting the men and the judge stressed to the defendant that such behaviour would “not be tolerated”. He still walked free though.

I wonder how much of that bad behaviour would improve if the stocks were still available to the courts. But then, would judges use them.

I had a nostalgic moment recently while reading the latest issue of Siochain magazine, a publication for retired members of An Garda Siochana. There was a photograph of a young Garda Moses. P. Maguire, in full uniform taken around 1960. It took me back because he was my first sergeant when I went to Blackrock in Dublin in May 1980.

M.P. Maguire was widely respected with a reputation for being a decent and competent policeman. Looking at the photo I was reminded how quickly time passes. The 5^th of December this year will mark 45 years since I first walked through the gates of the Training Centre in Templemore and a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. That photograph set me off on a journey down memory lane.

I was a twenty-one-year-old recruit and came from a background of self-employment, working with my father who was a small-time building contractor. Suddenly I was in a disciplined organisation with a membership of about 12,000.

There was a specific chain of command and I soon realised I was at the very bottom of it. Being told when to go to bed, when to get up and when to get your hair cut took a bit of getting used to. My plan was to keep the head down during training and follow orders but that didn’t last long.

We had our meals in a large mess hall. There were a few hundred recruits there at the time plus a large staff so cooking for that amount of people must have had its challenges. Most of the time the food was ok but there was an occasion when stew was added to the menu, and it wasn’t going down well – literally.

It had a peculiar taste. Not nasty, just unusual and it appeared on the menu three days of the week. Usually, we had a choice of two main courses, but the alternative course was always snapped up by those at the head of the queue leaving the stew for the rest of us. Everyone was moaning about it.

In the classroom one day I happened to mention it to our training sergeant, Dan Corrigan, an experienced man who put many recruits through his hands over the years. He told me to lodge a complaint. I immediately regretted opening my mouth, but I was committed now. He showed me how to compile an official written report which he countersigned and sent to the staff office.  

A few days later while sitting in the classroom, there was an announcement over the tannoy system instructing me to present myself at that same office. This is it, I thought to myself. This is where my short life in An Garda Siochana comes to an abrupt end.

I’m about to be dismissed for daring to question authority. The commissioner himself would probably take a personal interest in the matter. What would my parents think? I had brought shame on the family. I would have to change my name and I was mentally going through the various countries that might grant me asylum.

Surprisingly, there was no drama. I received a cordial reception, presented my case and the stew disappeared. I was the new hero.

I survived the training period and was sent to Blackrock in Dublin in 1980 where I met Sgt M.P. Maguire for the first time. He showed me the ropes and we got on well until later that year when there was an incident that could easily have ended our relationship.

We were working the night shift, and there was a plan to have a dinner in the early hours of the morning when things had quietened down around the city. I don’t remember what the occasion was, but all the food had been prepared in the kitchen and it was just a matter of cooking it up.

At the briefing before going on duty, the sergeant reminded us about the meal and arranged the breaks accordingly. He also advised us that it would be useful if we could avoid filling the cells with prisoners as that would only complicate things. That made sense.

I was on beat duty in the Stillorgan area, and the night was relatively quiet. In the early hours, when the pubs and clubs had closed, I made my way back to the station. I strolled along casually, looking forward to my dinner.

As I passed the South County Hotel, I heard a commotion. It sounded like raised voices, but I pretended not to hear and quickened my step. The thought of getting involved in an incident and returning to the station with a prisoner had me in a panic. Suddenly a man appeared in front of me. He was excited and pointing in the direction of the hotel entrance.

What was unfolding in front of me was not good. There was a guy, completely off his head, dancing on the roof of a taxi. He was shouting and roaring and threatening to beat the world. There was no reasoning with him, and it was obvious there was only one course of action to be taken. I called for a patrol car, arrested him and conveyed him to the station.

He caused havoc when we were placing him in the cell, and it didn’t end there. Not long before we were due to have the grub, the prisoner acted up in the cell. He stripped naked and urinated everywhere. Sgt. Maguire entered the cell area and duly ended up on the floor having been knocked by the prisoner. His clothes were in a bit of a state.

I don’t remember much about the dinner after that. I think I spent the entire time going over the asylum application in my head.

I heard a conversation on the radio recently about reverse aging. The panel were discussing the need some people have to look younger than they really are. My first thought was why would anybody even bother? What’s the point in trying to look like a forty-year-old if you are sixty years of age, after all, you can’t fool your body clock. And who cares anyway?

The wrinkles and lines we have are earned from the lives we’ve lived. They’re signs of experience, but many people prefer to be without them, opting instead for cosmetic surgery which I’m sure doesn’t come cheap. It doesn’t come pain free either.

A facelift is one method but from what I’ve seen, trying to cod Mother Nature can often backfire. Research suggests that 76% of people look younger than they did before the operation but that means 24% could end up with a face like a trout. They also say that 21% of facelifts relapse after five and a half years so the whole business seems to be a bit of a gamble.

This procedure is not as common in men because it can be harder to achieve a natural appearance after surgery, due to the hair we have in front of our ears. Men are more prone to bleeding after a facelift too apparently so that’s that for me then.

They say there are two certainties in life, death and taxes, and whatever about dodging the Revenue, there’s no escaping the Grim Reaper. We’re only here for a short time and I can think of better ways to spend it than trying to roll back the years on my appearance, but it is a big deal for some.

Anyway, back to the radio programme where an expert on skincare suggested that there was a much easier to way to have better skin and fewer wrinkles. Just use sun block from an early age and avoid exposure to direct sunshine, simple. You would imagine that wouldn’t be such a big job for those of us living in Ireland but apparently, we are just as much at risk here as they are in sunnier climes.

I like nothing better than feeling the heat of the sun on my bones, but I’m not much of a sunbather. I get bored when I lie in a sun lounger for too long and I always had an aversion to suncream, especially when it mixed with sweat and dripped into my eyes. I have improved in recent times though mainly due to medical advice.

We know the sun’s rays can take a toll on our skin in the short-term in the form of sunburn, but there can also be long-term consequences lurking within the skin, even if we don’t experience a burn.

According to Yale Medicine, the sun prematurely ages the skin, called photoaging, and this can lead to skin cancer. It happens when ultraviolet (UV) light hits skin unprotected by sunscreen, causing DNA changes at a cellular level. Because photodamage happens in the deepest layers of the skin, it can take years before the damage surfaces and becomes visible.

Ultraviolet light from the sun and/or tanning beds permanently damages the skin’s structure too. To see the difference between chronological aging and photoaging, compare skin on an area of your body that is not exposed to the sun with the skin on your face.  

Everyone is susceptible to photoaging, but how much damage you sustain depends on things like how much unprotected sun exposure you’ve had over time and your skin type. In general, lighter skin is more susceptible to photoaging and skin cancer.

Knowing this, you would have to wonder about using sunbeds at all. The Irish Cancer Society tell us using sunbeds is not a safe way to get a tan because of the increased risk of skin cancer, the fastest growing cancer in Ireland.

There are over 13,000 new cases of skin cancer diagnosed each year and by not using sunbeds and taking care when outdoors, most of these cases could be prevented. The UV rays from sunbeds can be fifteen times stronger than the midday Mediterranean sun.

The World Health Organisation has some frightening statistics. They tell us that even one sunbed session can increase your risk of developing squamous cell skin cancer by 67% and basal cell skin cancer by 29%. If you have ever used a sunbed your risk of melanoma increases by 20%. Using it before the age of 35 increases your risk by almost 60%.

Some people are at greater risk than others and should not use a sunbed under any circumstances such as those with fair or freckled skin, or those who have a lot of moles. People with a family member who has had skin cancer should avoid sunbeds too.

If you’re still concerned about wrinkles and premature aging though, don’t panic, help is on the way. The search for the secret of eternal youth is big business. CNN reported that in Boston labs, old, blind mice have regained their eyesight, developed smarter, younger brains and built healthier muscle and kidney tissue.

The experiments show aging is a reversible process. Some experts believe a loss in the cell’s ability to read its original DNA causes cells to forget how to function in much the same way an old computer may develop corrupted software. Now scientists believe they are getting closer to finding the switch to reverse that.

Billions of dollars are being spent on anti-aging research trying to find a method to turn back the clock. I don’t expect to see it in my lifetime and I’m not sure I would want to either. I get a bit squeamish at the thought of messing with our DNA. That’s how we ended up with the Incredible Hulk.