Digest – Sept 28 2010

I had this scheduled to go up earlier;

HOME

Leo Varadkar does some data analysis on his working time.

Nama bizarroworld continues to expand as Sunday Business Post reveals AIB pension fund controls Nama SPV.

Cian Ginty; another hack to recognise and put the potential of EIR requests.

Ken Foxe on the €21,500 hotel bill and Mary McAleese’s €3,198 room.

A junior suite for the then-Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was also booked and cost €1,650.

The delegation travelled by government jet from Dublin on 7 April 2005 and returned to Ireland the following day, logbooks from the Department of Defence show.

Rooms were also booked for nearly a dozen advisors and senior civil servants including Wally Young, Mandy Johnston, Olive Melvin and Dermot McCarthy.

Those rooms cost a minimum of €740 for the “standard” package and up to €1,200 a night in some cases.

Such was the size of the bill, civil servants were querying details of it as if the prices agreed had originally been smaller. You can see the actual documents below.

These bills and hundreds of other previously unpublished documents form the basis of my book Snouts in the Trough, which will be available in bookshops this week.

Lovely photo from Cork by Venividi – a great aul’ photographer (available for event work, I’m told, Corkonians!) – of the river Lee reflecting on the street.

ScraperWiki is coming to Dublin; where hacks meet hackers, technology meets journalism (without becoming technology journalism) and both sides learn what they can do for one another. I’m gonna get me some hacker to scrape me some CRO website, methinks.

WORLD

Photographs of child labour being used in the preparations for the Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

More American contractors [read; mercenaries and construction workers] die in Afghanistan and Iraq than soldiers. More Afghans and Iraqis die than both combined, I’d guess.

Queen tried to use poverty fund to pay for palace heating bill.

Amazing photographs from China. Image 38.

Video: Theirry Henry injures opposition goalkeeper while the game is stopped. Foolish stuff, brah. Love how even US ‘Sahkarr’ commentators talk about the need for accountability.

OTHER

Dying to live in South Korea.

Dying To Live from Matthew Allard on Vimeo.