Bye bye Amgen. We all saw it coming.
Amgen have announced today what everyone already knew, that is that they are putting on hold indefinitely their planned plant in Carraigtwohill. Just before the elections back in May it was announced that they were going to delay the project by two years. “But” the local politicians reassured us “It will definitely be going ahead.” “And” screamed those Fianna Fail gobshites Michael Martin and Michael Ahern, “Vote for us because we brought the plant here”.
What most people knew however was that the building contractors were told that they were to revert the groundwork that had already completed back to a green field site. Naturally this news filtered down through the grapevine and became rather public knowledge. The politicians denied this which is natural considering this was their turf and an election was looming. “Vote for us”, “we created 1200 jobs with Amgen and we promise many more.”
Of course the party faithful, gullible souls they are, bought into this hook line and sinker. Blithly ignoring the fact that several multinationals had already pulled out, or were planning to pull out of the area. Including the company I was working for.
Now it has finally happened, Morons Martin and Ahern can go and eat their words from back in May. They will deny it of course but it is obvious that they knew that Amgen had no intention of establishing a manufacturing base here from their announcement back in May.
There is however something good that might come about from this. They might finally get rid of those ridiculous and extremely dangerous traffic lights that were installed right in the middle of a straight section of dual carraigeway. The first time I saw them I was stunned. I couldn’t believe that someone could be so stupid as to consider putting them there, especially since there is a flyover just half a mile up the road. But put them there they did. I had temporarily forgotten that this was Ireland and stupid things like this are par for the course.
To give you an idea of what it would be like: Imagine a two mile stretch of motorway with four lanes of traffic (two going west and two east.) all full of traffic at peak times. Literally bumper to bumper. All traffic moving between 50 and 70mph. The light changes to red and all of a sudden the brakes have to come on. You can imagine the dangers that this would pose! Particularly for someone driving an articulated truck with cargo weighing 38 tons. Some other genius thought that by making the area within a couple of miles either side of the lights a 60kph zone would sort it out!
Thankfully they were never switched on properly. They just flash amber all the time while some people flash past them at 90mph.
Although wait! I’ve just had a brainwave. Maybe they could build some giant retail park on the site because you know, we don’t have enough of them already. That way they could keep their shiny new traffic lights and secure more funding for the Garda Traffic Corp. by ensuring that their plan to kill some of us by switching them on goes ahead. That sounds like a plan.
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Welll Said Bob. Picture suffering 6 months of “roadworks” traveling to the “real capital” everyday full in the knowledge that this was a white elephant
I can imagine!
Isn’t it amazing what politics can do? You can con everyone by breaking ground on a billion euro project and you can con those who believe in you by denying you took bribes and still come up smelling of roses!
For anyones sake I really do hope that they get rid of those traffic lights. Because as sure as anything, lives will be lost there.
Agreed about the traffic lights. I got “brake tested” the other morning. Car in front came up the top of ministers hill, around the corner and saw the lights “flashing amber”. Immediately on the brake and she nearly caught me out to be honest.
They really should turn them off. Who is really making a killing there is the crowd who have the electronic signs rented flashing “lights under test” for the last two months
I had a similar experience on that hill on the way to Cork one morning.
I just came over the brow of the hill to discover two long lines of stopped traffic. There was a bloody Garda checkpoint about 200 yards over the crest. There was a white van on the inside lane beside me and you should have seen the smoke coming off his tyres!
I’ve often wondered about those electronic signs. I can’t remember the name of the company that rents them but every time I see them I start thinking that they must be making a bloody fortune!
That sounds too dangerous!!! Can the locals sign a petition or something and do it soon?
Gaye – since the lights were put there, there has been uproar as the origin plans called for a bridge. But as usual while everyone was pointing out the obvious they just went ahead and did it anyway.
Their attitude was along the lines of “tough shit, they are there now and will stay.”
Hmm we will just have to change that, let’s just start a huge petition!!!! Take photos of the road and the signs, to show how dangerous and send them over to me, via e-mail I will print out and then start getting signatures here. You do the same there maybe more people can join. We can do it! Power to the people! Before someone dies on the road there.
I’m working on it folks.
The positioning of the public lighting here contravenes ESB guidelines on proximity to the overhead networks (220,000 volts of electromagnetic goodness, if you’re interested in that sort of thing).
Under current NRA guidelines, you cannot have main route traffic light control, without minimum spec street lighting in place.
See where I’m coming from?
Another point.
All of the roadworks to date, carried out by contractors Ward & Burke, have been bankrolled by none other than Cork County Council.
You couldn’t make it up.
Nothing that happens here surprises me anymore. I remember heading to the office from the hotel in Vienna and looking over at the opposite side of the dual carriage way and seeing some road works about to begin. There were lines of trucks waiting. 9 hours later and it was done! Just like that. They had resurfaced 4km of road in one working day.
That would take an entire working two months here and probably cost about 100 times as much.
I can imagine all sorts of fun if the electromagnetic field starts to affect the lights. I don’t know what more I can say about it but I just can’t get over how people just don’t think of these things until it’s too late!
Gaye – It’s been on most of the papers down here. Pictures and all. Local councillors in the area have brought it up numerous times. As too have the county councillors. Deaf ears.
With regards to Amgen itself, the follwoing came to me by way of a google alert in my email. I’ve set up an alert to mail me anytime something new with the keyword Youghal gets indexed.
http://sinnfein.ie/news/detail/21017
Granted it is a Sinn Fein councillor but he makes sense nonetheless.
How about the people? Papers, councellors, ok but at the end of the day how about public opinion straight coming from the public in the way of, hm I don’t know faxes by flooding fax machines, e-mails, large scale protests, pages of signed petitions. Personally I would get there to join a protest to get the lights out of there before it causes any deaths or injuries to people. In my opinion it will be too late even if a single person gets hurt because of the dumbness of the politicians and bureucracy.