The Limerick Blogger: latest Limerick news and Limerick events

Up to 15 houses were evacuated last night in Castleconnell for a time as a result of a car hitting a gas main. The incident happened near Charcos pub in Castleconnell in the early hours of the morning and houses nearby had to be evacuated for a time as the people from Bord Gais and the fire brigade did their stuff and helped fix the pipe. How a gas main could be located in a postition that it could be damaged by a car is a bit suprising. Thankfully no one was injured and nothing blew up!

Maeve O’Donovan is still there at the Helix in the You’re A Star competition.

For the past two weeks hers was the last name to be called, so here is hoping she stays on until week 7

And the Elton John performance:

In a change to the elimination rules, the two acts with the least number of votes will have to perform again. The judges will decide which of the two will be eliminated at the end of their performances.

Maeve is through to week 7.

Andy Bennet and 21 Demands were the two acts which had to compete for the final slot in next week’s show.

It was down to Linda Martin to choose who should stay, and she decided to save 21 Demands. Andy Bennet was sent home.

The shortlist for the 2nd Irish Blog Awards is due to be released at 1800 hrs today, according to the awards website.

There is a whole hose of Limerick bloggers on the long list, so there will be many eyes watching from these parts to see who made it.

Good luck to everyone!

The Shortlist is out, and we are still in!

Of the Limerick bloggers who made it are Fustar, who was shortlisted in the best Arts/Culture blog, as well as best designed blog. Fustar’s World Cup blog managed to be shortlisted for best Sports and recreation blog.

Bock The Robber made it into the Best Politics blog category.

The Limerick Blogger has been shortlisted for Best News/Current events blog and Style Treaty has been shortlisted for best newcomer

Sticking with the MySpace theme, another Limerick musical act on MySpace is Burning Embers.

The group currently have two albums out, the well known “Songs from the Ashes” was inspired by Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes autobiography, and their second album Sarsfield’s Children.

You can also hear some of the songs from both albums on their site.

This can be found here.

They are blogging, podcasting and youtubing, but now the White House Poets, based at the White House bar, have launched a MySpace Music page.

On the page it is now possible to listen to their Open Mic sessions from their poetry revival nights.

The Poetry revival nights have been running at the venue for the past four years and have featured both local and internationally renowned poets.

You can visit their MySpace page by clicking here.

The construction of a private hospital on the site of the Mid-Western Regional hospital will be to the detriment to plans to move the Regional Maternity and Orthopaedic hospitals into the Dooradoyle location. That is according to Limerick East Sinn Fein candidate, Maurice Quinlivan.

He is calling on Health minister Mary Harney to scrap plans for the hospital. Tenders are due to go out in March for the construction of the hospital, and a consortium is likely to have been selected and contracts signed by May of this year.

This process must stop now before the State becomes bound by these legal contracts, which will be signed once tenders are accepted. This is a disgraceful plan aimed at massively subsidising the Private healthcare industry by providing land at a public hospital site at the possible expense of the proposed move of the Maternity and Orthopaedic services for the Mid West region to the site. This plan pours money into the pockets of millionaires at the expense of ordinary taxpayers, public hospital patients and staff alike. This public money should be spent in the public system only, on services that are available to all based on need alone. As I have said before if there is excess space in the grounds of the Mid Western Regional Hospital why isn’t it used for Public Nursing Home Spaces. This could then be used as a step down facility which would lead to the freeing up of much needed hospitals beds in the public system.�

The Progressive Democrats believe that the creation of private hospital beds will help to free up public one, but according to Mr. Quinlivan, this proposal for the Mid West Hospital does not have popular support..

“The Government has no mandate or popular support for this plan as it was never put before the people in an election manifesto by either the PDs or Fianna Fail. It was not in the National Health Strategy and didn’t appear in the Programme for Government. All opposition parties have now come out against this plan. However, as the Governments term of office comes to an end Mary Harney seems determined to force this plan through without a mandate. She must scrap this plan immediatelyâ€?

While the fact being trumpeted by Live 95FM that they are number 1 in Limerick City and County, there should be some cause for concern at the station as the JNLR figures released this week showed a small drop in both their market share and population reach.

The station was reported by the JNLR book of figures to have a weekday reach of 62%, down 2%.

The fall in weekday share figures, those recorded between 0700 and 1900 hrs is a lot steeper. They now stand at 46.5%, that is down 7.2%

Figures for the weekly reach, however, are a little better for the station. These stand at 87% which is an increase of 2%.

Full details of the JNLR can be found at the Broadcasting Commission website.

Whilst doing a search for things Limerick in google blog search, I came accross this.

Devin is an a young lady from Limerick currently living in Washington DC. Her blog, The Hanger Queen can be found here.

It will also be added to our list of Limerick Blogs.

If you know of or run a blog that has a connection with Limerick, let us know, our address is limerickblogger@gmail.com

Limerick’s criminal community are starting to display a fondness for civics, Honda Civics to be precise. Ten of them have been stolen so far in 2007 rom parts of East Limerick and Tipperary.

The car has become popular with boy-racers, however, spare parts for the cars are hard to come by, and this has created a demand which a Limerick Based crime gang are happy to fill.

The Honda Civic: Targeted by thieves

Cars are stolen and are disassembled. The parts are then sold on to people who wish to modify their cars.

Owners of Honda Civics are being advised by Gardai to be extra vigilant with securing their cars.

The plan to build a three storey glass building on the grounds of St. Michael’s Church next to the People’s Park have been scrapped, according to the Limerick Post

In order for Michael Healy’s plan for the development to go ahead, a 3/4 vote from the 17 members of the City Council would have been required to allow the land the building was to be located on to be rezoned.

As too many councillors had a problem with the development, rezoning was not likely to happen.

Some councillors had problems with the removal of trees from the people’s Park, these concerns were voiced at a behind-closed-doors meeting at City Hall during the week.

So the ambience, or what is left of it after the apartments on the Yellow Road were built, will remain intact until another day.