Bits n Bobs with Rose

Ballymore Girl Guide Unit
Ballymore Guides resumes after the summer break on Thursday next, the 2nd October at 7.30pm in Scoil Mhuire.

The girls finished up in June on a high note, with a weekend away to the Guide House in Enniskerry. The weekend was a great success, with every moment fun-filled and action packed as the girls completed a range of activities, and each day finished with the much loved 'campfire' singalong with all new guides being enrolled on The Sunday. Many thanks to the leaders, helpers and of course, to the guides themselves for a wonderful weekend!
New Members are always welcome.
If there is anyone with an interest in becoming a leader, please feel free to come along, your input in vital for the continuation of the unit and you will not have to be free on every Thursday as we work a rota system.
(Any students taking part in the Gaisce Awards and would like to do their community service with the Guide unit are also welcome).


Ladies GAA Take the Title!
Well done to the Ballymore Ladies team who defeated Balyna’s 2nd team in the Junior D Championship 2 – 8 to 0 – 10. All the players can take credit for the team’s success with superb performances on the day from Teresa Gorman, Michelle and Sheena Hubbard, Lesley Tutty, Marilena Norton and captain Dawn Murray who was thrilled to accept the cup on behalf of the green and gold girls at Allenwood GAA grounds.

The Ballymore girls got off to a ripping start, quickly clocking up scores to take an early lead but Balyna settled and clawed back the difference, our girls only two points behind at half time , 1 – 5 to 0 - 6. However, Ballymore’s goals and a sterling team effort ensured victory so it was back to Ballymore for the team, to enjoy finger food and celebrations at The Thatch and then over to Paddy’s to display the silverware!

Special thanks to the Ballymore supporters on the day and to all the children who sported Ballymore colours and flags; management team of Simon Murphy, John Hubbard and Joe Piggott were thrilled with the result and the determination of the girls to secure the title. John Hubbard paid tribute to the team’s dedication this season with special mention to Sharon O’D and specials thanks to the team’s sponsors, The Ballymore Inn and The Thatch.

They are a great bunch of women, this team – not including management, of course, they all being male…. They further celebrated last week with a night at the Ballymore Inn and team members, Aisling Rigney, Tracey Clohessy, Gemma Swords and Aisling Hubbard proudly displayed the cup to assembly in Scoil Mhuire recently.

Well done to management and players!

Junior Musical hits the High notes
Ballymore’s Junior Musical Society recently presented High School Musical at The Bandhall to rave reviews by appreciative audiences. Excellent song and dance routines, suprerb props and stage design were praised with wonderful duets from some of the lead singers. Notable performances by Kieva Sammon, Katherine Murphy, Aoife Horan, Beth Doyle, Katelyn Gallagher, Shannon Browne, Gemma Molloy, Ann Marie Kavanagh, Clodagh Barrett and Jackie Stone. Alas, there were many more excellent performers on stage - too many to mention, so well done to all who participated and to the backstage crew and production.

Beware the dangers of Chocolate
It’s official, Chocolate is dangerous, it will turn you into a hairy, great Gorilla and worse still, an aggressive hairy, great Gorilla. Cadbury’s chocolate was always depicted as calming, gently seductive and sexy to women – now it turns a relatively meek ape into an aggressive, heavy metal drummer.

No more Cabbury’s for me, I still have the Menopause to look forward to, I can do without with the added aggression and increased hair growth. Where’s me calorie-free tasteless Ryvita, topped up with full fat Philadelphia……….

Ann Sully, Big Heart, Big Engine!
Congratulations to Anne Sully of Brannockstown, one of the 10 finalists named for Rehab Co Kildare Person of the Year Award. Pictured here on a tractor, this woman means business!! To date, Anne is part of a group who initiated the Vintage Tractor Rally to raise funds for Cancer Research, which includes the Mac and Norman Annual Tractor Run.
Anne is generally considered the backbone of the group, which has raised over €210,000 to date.

You saw some The Hillbillies appear at our festival parade this year and really livened things up; they’ve also appeared at fundraisers throughout the country raising monies for other worthy causes including Kare, Baltinglass Hopsital, Daffodil Day, Crumlin Children’s Hospital, parish runs for Castedermot, Gormanstown, Suncroft, Ballyrugget Old Folks & Parish – the list is endless…..Apart from raising money also for the family of a deceased fisherman in Wexford, Anne looks after hubbie, Peter aka Mac with the mad mop of hair, children Patricia, Martin, Lourdes and Peter plus grandchildren she adores. She has been nominated not only for her fundraising endeavours but also as a good neighbour and community activist, having served on the parent’s council for the local primary school and St Kevin’s Secondary School, helpful to elderly neighbours and her kitchen is open to all.

Best of luck to Anne who is a sister in law of Anne Clarke, Briencan. Leave the wellies at home for the awards night, Anne and for God’s sake, don’t arrive on a Zetor or the Keadeen car park will be full!

Leinster Leader Notes
For inclusion in the Ballymore Eustace weekly notes, please drop notes/news into Rose Barrett O Donoghue or email to rosebarrettod@eircom.net on or before Saturday of each week. Club notes, fundraising events, sporting fixtures or special celebrations



on passing by- again

I suppose by the time you read this we will have had the mother of all budgets. We have been slowly softened up over the last few weeks by supposed “leaks” from those in the know. This tactic used to be a particular favourite of Bertie Ahern. Give them a few good scares before the budget and then when not all of them were actually in the budget we all thought it wasn’t as bad as we expected.
Mr Cowen has been doing an admirable job in lowering expectations for workers and yet we find that the public service, his own “ workforce”, has increased by almost seventy five thousand in the last few years. We are now the proud owners of a public service of over three hundred and twenty thousand people.
Mr Cowen recently gave a speech in which he forecast that we were all going to be subject to severe belt tightening for the foreseeable future. The times of plenty were now well behind us and we were unfortunately going to see lots of pain before a return to any gain. And the effect of this speech?.
The following morning the HSE announced that its top ten staff were going to share over a million euro in bonus’s. This is the HSE which tells women that their cancer checks are all right when they are not all right. This is the HSE whose hospitals are now home to so many bugs and infections that the situation has been called legalised manslaughter. This is the HSE which considers itself unanswerable to anyone but itself and which seems totally incapable of joined up thinking. If they are worth this type of bonus for presiding over an overpriced lack of service can you imagine what they would be getting if they actually gave us a proper, dignified and safe service.

Not wanting to be outdone we then have the Minister for Transport, Noel Dempsey, displaying his usual arrogance and awarding a contract for over a million euro to consultants to help his department find a manager for the new terminal in Dublin Airport. At least that’s what I thought it was when I heard it the first time but its actually a whole lot worse. The contract is actually just for the consultants to tell Mr Dempsey’s department how to go about holding interviews and selecting someone for the job.
Are we seriously to believe that there is no one in the Department of Transport who is capable of interviewing a management candidate?. If we are then the country is in worse condition than I thought.
Then again it may be just Mr Dempsey’s usual ploy. Get someone outside the department to tell you what to do and then if the brown stuff hits the fan you can outsource the blame. Is there no one in this government who is actually willing to say “ the buck stops here” and to take responsibility for the department they are ostensibly in charge of?.

Possibly aghast at the possibility of being left out of the headlines Gormless Gormley decided to throw in his two cents worth of silliness. While the economic crisis worsens and threatens to bankrupt the public finances Gormley decides to appropriate for his own use the mantle of Nero, who you will remember fiddled while Rome burned.
Gormless has apparently fired off a stiff letter to both the Courts Service and senior management at An Garda Siochana. The reason for the missive?. Well it seems the Minister is a little peeved that the Guards are not catching enough people for littering offences. He reckons the time currently spent gathering intelligence on criminals, drug lords and smugglers, arresting same, investigating murders and assaults, road traffic duty, cash convoy escorts and court duty is probably time well spent but not really making any environmental difference so he would like them to be a little more proactive in catching people dropping cigarette butts and sweet papers, and using the full rigours of the law to get them before the judge.
To add insult to injury the Judiciary appear to be somewhat remiss in fining the unscrupulous reprobates and miscreants who do actually get caught. Apparently it has been years since any litterer has been hanged, or even transported to the colonies, and its just not good enough.
With share prices dropping off the scale, the public now saddled with a four hundred billion euro guarantee to the banks, unemployment creeping up and the start of what appears to be a global turndown it’s a real comfort to know that Minister Gormley is so on top of his brief that he can spend his expensive time coming up with guff like this. Would he not be better employed trying to find out why half the country is at risk of poisoning from the lead in the water pipes or the sewage in the water the pipes carry. Surely improving our sewage treatment regime and avoiding massive fines from Brussels would be more suited to his skills, and of more benefit to the environment he so professes to care about. Would it be too much to ask that the Minister actually starts to tackle the real environmental problems facing the country instead of spending his time coming up with idiotic soundbites.

So Michael O’Leary, the bête noir of the E.U., Aer Lingus, British Airways et al, is not a total Europhobe after all. He certainly had no problem accepting almost thirteen thousand euro in R.E.P.S. payments. As the ad says, every little helps!
All for now. Mike Edmonds.