Classifieds Advertise Archive Subscriptions Family Announcements Photos Digital Editions/Apps
Connect with us

A Different View

Watch out for those fat cats – and heavy hounds

Published

on

Croí’s Karen Maloney (right) is joined by models Michaela O’ Shaughnessy and Mary Lee to launch the inaugural Croí Women At Heart Fashion Show Extravaganza. With an aim to empower women to take control of their own heart health, the show will take place on Thursday, October 23, in the Radisson Blu Hotel at 7.30pm. Tickets are €25 and include a pre-event drinks reception and a goodie-bag for all attendees.

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

It would seem that the feline population are now taking the notion of fat cats a little too literally. Because statistics from the States show that half of all cats and dogs are now obese or overweight and that’s just ten per cent less than the human population itself.

Maybe it’s all that lounging around and shedding of hair on the sofa – and like the rest of us, the problem is that once you get used to that more sedentary lifestyle and pile on the pounds, you’ll find it harder to shift them.

Perhaps it’s that dog owners are too busy for those long, lung-bursting walks anymore – and then again they do say that pets imitate their owners. On that basis, there must be an awful lot of cats and dogs with a passionate interest in the Premiership.

It’s not just the lack of exercise, of course, because we’re now feeding our pets with the same food we eat ourselves. And if it’s making us wider around the switch, then it’s hardly helping Rover or Fluffy to stay lean and fit either.

We’ve all seen those enormous house cats, stretched out across the couch like some sort of furry bean bag – only warmer and with claws.

And there’s the dog whose idea of daily exercise is to sheepishly make their way out the back door last night at night for their ablutions before resuming position in front of the fireplace.

But according to one UK expert – Robert Young, who is Professor of Wildlife Conservation at the University of Salford outside Manchester – this obesity in animals is, well, spreading.

A study published this year showed that more than 40% of elephants in captivity are obese. They are so obese that it is negatively affecting their longevity and fertility.

The serious side of all this is that – in both humans and animals, the consequences of all this for animals include diabetes, cancer, hypertension or heart-disease.

So in the case of pets we are killing them with kindness.

Same thing, as it turns out, with birds because we’re throwing bread out the back door at them instead of the food they have eaten since Adam left the Garden of Eden.

There’s good and bad in this one because the upside for our feathered friends – according to Professor Young who was contributing to the always thought-provoking website called the Conversation – is that it enhances their survival chances during cold winter months but it also reduced clutch sizes.

And whatever about dogs or cats that are too fat to walk, you have a real problem with birds if they’re too fat to fly.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Connacht Tribune

If you don’t know who you are, the door staff have no chance

Published

on

Dave O'Connell

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

The only time in your life that you should ever utter the words: “Do you know who I am?” are if you’ve just had a bang on the head or you are unfortunately suffering from dementia.

Because, otherwise, the phrase ‘do you know who I am’ only serves to make things a whole lot worse.

Normally, the phrase is unleashed towards late night door staff on a wave of alcohol – and never once in the history of time has it produced the result the utterer had intended.

The doorman may well know who you are which is often the very reason you’re not getting into the place in the first instance – or if he doesn’t know who you are, he won’t be unduly influenced when he does, unless you’re a famous movie star or his long-lost cousin.

‘Do you know where I am?’ might often be closer to the phrase you’re looking for, because that would serve you well when you’re looking for a taxi.

‘Do you know who I am?’ is a threatening phrase that in truth wouldn’t frighten the cat. But if you’re anxious to dig the hole a few shovels deeper, you should follow up with ‘I’d like to speak to your manager.’

Managers can be elusive at the best of times, but they’re normally rarer than hen’s teeth when it comes to the small hours of the morning – and even if they’re there, they are most likely watching proceedings on CCTV…just so they know who you are, in case you yourself can’t remember.

‘I’d like to speak to your manager’ suggests that you and he or she are from the one social sphere which is several strata north of the one occupied by door staff.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App

Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.

Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite  HERE.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

 

Continue Reading

Connacht Tribune

Eurovision is just a giant party that could never cause offence

Published

on

Dave O'Connell
Dave O'Connell

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

As it turned out, we were much closer to a Eurovision win than we could ever have imagined – not Ireland, of course, because we’ve now mastered the art of just sending cannon fodder to be blown out in the semi-final.

No, this was just two of us – myself and our eldest – who were lucky enough to be at Anfield for the Reds’ recent win over Brentford, where positioned in the seat right in front of us were four happy lads from Finland.

One of them, we now know, was Käärijä, the singer of the catchiest song at Eurovision, Cha Cha Cha.

But just a week before 7,000 people sung his catchphrase at the Eurovision Arena, he and two his mates – accompanied by an older bloke who had to be either his dad or from the national broadcaster – sat anonymously in the same corner of the lower level of Anfield’s Main Stand.

He was utterly unknown to us as well of course, and the only thing that saw him stand out was his green nail varnish. Live and let live, of course, but it still ensures that you make an impression even if it looks like you were just very late for St Patrick’s Day.

Käärijä may well be Liverpool’s greatest Scandinavian fan, although the bar for that is set fairly high, given that they invade the city in greater numbers every two weeks than the Vikings did just once during the first millennium.

Equally, he may not be a football fan at all – although, as the rest of the week proved, he sure loves a crowd.

Positioned as we were in the corner of the Main Stand, the next section to us, around the corner in the Anfield Road Stand – currently adding a top layer – was occupied by the visiting Brentford supporters.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App

Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.

Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite  HERE.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

 

 

Continue Reading

Connacht Tribune

Tapping is contactless – but it’s soulless too

Published

on

Dave O'Connell
Dave O'Connell

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

Contactless payments reached a record €17.9 billion in Ireland last year – up by 31 per cent on 2021, as people came out from under their Covid shell and appear to have left their cash behind them.

Figures from the Banking & Payments Federation found that – despite the cost-of-living increases – the Irish public made three million contactless payments a day, worth an average of €53 million in the final quarter of 2022.

Given that there are 3.8 million people in Ireland over the age of 18, that means that almost every single one of us tapped the card every day last year.

And again, on the presumption that there are a few who still prefer peeling a fifty off a wad of notes, the true figure may be even higher, as we eschew actual money every time we go into a restaurant, bar or shop.

Then comes the monthly morning of reckoning when you open your statement – electronic of course because, like paper money, banks don’t deal in paper statements anymore either – and your guilty secrets unfurl like a rap sheet before your very eyes.

Five taps of a Friday night in the local, followed by a five-ounce burger meal on the way home.

And just why did you need a family-pack of crisps when a small bag would have done? Was all that beer and wine really for a party, or a night in just for one?

Cash provided plenty of dark corners to ignore your profligacy, but there are no hiding places in the contactless world.

Worse still, until that morning of reckoning arrives, you’ve no clue how much you’ve spent, and handing over the card doesn’t hurt half as much as parting with hard cash.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App

Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.

Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite  HERE.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

 

 

 

Continue Reading

Trending