The Wee Paper, Buncrana (2026)

29/07/2026

Domination

Lots of memories and painful flashbacks for many people of a certain age, who attended the primary school now being demolished in Buncrana and being replaced at the same time by a brand new school building.

I called it "out with the old and in with the new" but hold on a minute until I tell you what the Christian Brothers told us when we attended their school in Derry.

They said the most important element of a school was the students and in second place was the teachers and in third place came the buildings.

We need more choice when it comes to educating our children, at present we have a very narrow system of education in Buncrana and it does not prepare our young people for the modern world.

A super follower of the Catholic Church and a daily mass goer once said to me, " Nothing that I ever learned down there helped me in my life." This is a damning indictment of any educational system from a loyal supporter.

Buncrana now needs more choice, more diversity; we need an "Educate-together school" or a "Multi-denominational school"

This "one size fits all" is not working for everyone, and many students are "square pegs in round holes" as they are forced to attend schools that, if given the choice, they would not attend.

Let's face it, education in Ireland has been dominated by the Catholic Church for too long, with Clerics playing a major role in how we live our lives as a result.

When I left Buncrana many years ago, I carried a lot of baggage as a result of the educational system that we had here and it took me and my brother years to re-educate ourselves out of some of the antiquated ideas that we picked up at school.

I am glad to hear that Ireland is introducing a new topic into the classroom in secondary schools from September called "Critical Thinking". Hopefully this will be a progressive innovation that will help our young people navigate those who seek to control us and reduce us to mere economic assets.

Tony Grant, July 2024

15/07/2026

Political Butterfly

Our previous article (Electrical Failure June 2026) got 500 views on Facebook, and the article (The Wheels on the Bus) about the swimming pool got 5,000 views.

One was a targeted view of how unfair the recent exams were, and the other was about the long-running saga of the (No) pool in Buncrana.

We have been threatened with legal action if we comment on the "legal heads", vested interests, or the misuse of public voluntary contributions, or any attempt to ask questions about the whole murky saga.

We have been scared off by these powerful interests involved in the pool; they are powerful people who have a first-hand knowledge of the law, and they have threatened to use it against us. It scares me, but we will continue as best we can, have a dialogue with the public.

Our targeted article with only 500 views has gone national, with Cork's 96 FM using our article and including us in a discussion on air. The Minister for Skills, Marian Harkin TD, has called us as well as Liveline on RTE.

In conclusion, all the local interest in reading The Wee Paper on Facebook and on www.theweepaper.ie is not worth a damn if we are not hitting the target and getting to the crux of local problems; many obstacles are being put in place to prevent this from happening.

People will remember the last great public meeting held in Crana College before the last election on the issue of the pool, hosted by Jack Murray, SF

That meeting turned out to be a WAKE for the swimming pool. We should have known that FF were not going to hand over money for a new pool before an election that would hand votes to SF (because Jack was at the helm). He was the kiss of death for that cheque arriving in the post.

We need a politically neutral, a community person, with no party political affiliations, to restart the campaign and to set a target for a Swimming Pool (€10 million) (not a Leisure Centre at €17 million at that time.)

There are plenty of gyms and yoga studios around the area without looking for more. (we already have them and we want them to flourish without more competition from A Leisure Centre.

We should accept that we got it wrong in many ways with the plan that failed to get the €17 million and start again with a more realistic target.

Yes, I am back to targets.

Target what you need, and you are more likely to succeed.

"We are swimming against the tide on this one, folks"

Stay safe in the seawater and enjoy.

Tony Grant, July 2026

06/07/2026

Electrical Failure June 2026

Electrical Apprentices who sat their exams in June 2026 complain that they were examined on material in the exams that they did not cover in class.

As a result, there was a 70% failure rate in one college that I know of, and as apprentices from other colleges are telling me about the same problem, I must assume the results are the same throughout the country.

I contacted Marian Harkin TD and Minister with responsibility for skills, and she is investigating the issue, saying there seems to be an anomaly here.

I am urging all affected apprentices to request a review of their exam paper and record the questions on the paper so that we can substantiate their complaint.

Some lecturers have admitted they did not cover the material in class, and one lecturer said adjustments would be made when marking the exams; this did not happen.

Apprentices who emailed the colleges for a review of their paper are being told to wait until the academic staff return in September and have it out with them. Earlier, the same college in Cork said non-academic staff, in work at present, will facilitate this in two weeks' time upon request.

Come September, the academic staff will have a new batch of apprentices to teach and will have no time to clean up this mess and they may refuse to deal with it as it may be outside their remit to do so.

Also, apprentices are back at work, and some may be out of the country by then.

In the past, this problem occurred at the post-primary level, where sudden changes were made to exams. The problem was solved at the assessment level by adjusting the exam marks to maintain the percentage pass and fail levels of the previous year.

It is acknowledged that the changes in themselves were not wrong, but they should have been introduced gradually so as to give everybody in the system time to adjust to the changes.

The Electrical Union has abandoned their apprentices a long time ago, and no alternative system has been put in place to represent apprentices of all skills, as they navigate their way through their apprenticeship.

We need an Ombudsman for Apprentices to deal with the rights of all apprenticeship skills in the country.

Apprentices are back fending for themselves as they did back in the 1950's. It is the survival of the fittest out there, only now we have a nice new word for it, "neo-liberalism"

Neo-liberalism is the rot within that will destroy our values and our way of life as we know it.

It gives cover to those with economic power to treat others with less power like sheep.

Tony Grant, July 2026

02/07/2026

Empty Vessel

"The Greatest Little Country to do Funny Business" was a headline from the Enda Kenny era. It was a signal to the world and a launchpad for any would be anything to come to Ireland.

We are an open country, bring your ideas, your money, your corporations, good, bad or indifferent, we are a catch-all country, especially for those with money and ambition.

We have welcomed the most toxic of what is rotten in the rest of the world into our country in the name of progress.

We are that empty vessel that can be filled with whatever you are having yourself.

We are a country in moral decline

We have fewer homeless animals in Ireland today than homeless people.

We have more stress and anxiety among our people today since the Great Hunger.

We have the highest age group of young men and women still living at home, unable to start their independent lives as young adults.

We have the highest level of addiction to alcohol, drugs and p**n ever recorded.

This is the state of our country today as we host the Presidency of the EU, the perpetrators of this moral decline.

They are filling our empty vessel with their crap as they turn us into neo-liberal Europeans.

We voted for a different type of Europe, but look what we got.

Be careful what you wish for, folks; it's a big bad world out there.

Try not to make it worse.

Tony Grant, July 2026

27/06/2026

The Wheels on the Bus!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It is great to finally see a group calling for the restoration of the pool facilities in Buncrana. Every support should be afforded to them and the public at large need to become vocal.

However once again the local politicians are dangling the carrot of a leisure centre for Buncrana , for public consumption. The weepaper ,has for ages , been highlighting the scandal of how the first swimming pool was allowed to be mismanaged into nonexistent.
The restoration of that facility has been an ongoing demand for ten plus years an is no closer to revival because of the lack of political will and the application of a practical resolution.
The last application had no chance of success because it overstepped a common sense approach.

The expectancy of 17 million euro being granted to a single project in Buncrana was fairlyland stuff and exposed those involved , as naive and notional .
It’s a swimming pool that is required, “that’s the priority.”

If they had at least approached it with a staged incremental request it might have had some chance of consideration.
Why they are involving the same people who mismanaged its demise in the first place ,beggars belief.

Adding in numerous other facilities into the equation ,albeit admirable, does not help, we need to stick to the task in hand.
And contrary to wishful thinking by some of the delusional public representatives, this is far from “Shovel Ready”.
The old building still stands on the site . This has to be demolished and made ready for construction ,if it were to go forward.
The existing DCC planning would need to be amended to facilitate a realistic approach.
Politicians are once again blowing smoke up the “proverbial or***ce “.

Noel King, June 2026

19/06/2026

Electrical Exam Burnout

Exam Week has just ended for electrical apprentices all over Ireland, and shock and dismay have resulted in burnout for many apprentices and staff in our colleges because of the dysfunction of the exam system being experienced there this year.

Apprentices have been questioned on course material that was never taught in class, and new exam questions have appeared for the first time this June that have never been asked before.

For example, "American Electrical Symbols" have been questioned this year for the first time, without prior notice, and they were not mentioned in classes around the country.

Other more complex questions have been asked that are more likely to be seen on Electrical Engineering exams rather than Electrical Apprenticeship exams were on the paper.

Some lecturers are incensed by the development as they see themselves under scrutiny by higher management for not being up to date with the new changes and for not teaching the new material in class; in other words, they are guilty of not being mind readers.

Our closest college, The Atlantic Technological University, issued a statement in response to the furore, stating:

"Dear Student,

Due to the large number of emails received about the Electrical Apprenticeship.

If any of the learning outcomes were not addressed by your lecturers during your off-the-job training at ATU, then this will be considered when your assessment papers are being corrected. "

I see this as an admission of guilt and an attempt to find a way out of a bad situation. I applaud the very quick response by ATU to close the stable door after the horse has bolted, but nevertheless they are attempting to prevent a bad situation from becoming worse.

I would urge all apprentices who found themselves in this situation to email the college and make a formal complaint specifying the questions that they could not answer because the course material was not covered in class.

There needs to be a student liaison officer in each college and SOLAS Training Centres to look after these blunders and other blunders that apprentices have to put up with daily as they try to navigate their education and careers.

I have spoken to some of these victims, and they are back at work already and unable to represent themselves or to articulate their complaint adequately to save their exam; they just want to keep their heads down and hope for the best.

We seem to half do everything in this country, then we wonder why so many young people emigrate as soon as they graduate.

They have no voice in this country; they are not appreciated here; there is only one way out: emigration.

Tony Grant, June 2026

14/06/2026

Anglo Saxon

Fernhill Park in South Dublin is close to the hills and provides a leisure space for residents of the new house building boom going on there at present. There is no tar or cement in this park; all pathways are made from crushed limestone. It is wild, and it is beautiful. You could say the only thing that this park was trying to mimic is nature itself.

The playground in the picture above is the best I have ever seen, child-friendly without artificial materials.

It could not be more different from Swan Park in Buncrana, with its abundance of tar and cement; you would think it was a tribute to Joe Dolan's hit song "Tar and Cement" and still going ooon.

Is it because we are close to the border with the U.K. that we are hell-bent on mimicking the Anglo-Saxon image of what a Public Park should look like, with our picture postcard design with decorative trees, not native, we still think the foreign one is best.

Perhaps it was designed this way to attract more people to visit from across the border, rather than for the locals.

The insult was compounded last Christmas when thousands of taxpayers' money was paid to a private entity to set up the Festive Village and deny entry to locals without payment of a fee, who used the park every day for rest and recreation.

This is the neo-liberal agenda of one local Buncrana Councillor who arranged the transfer of money from DCC, which ended up as a lockout without payment through a "right of way"

The contrast between what we have to put up with in Buncrana compared to other more enlightened parts of the country is shocking.

Tony Grant, June 2026

06/06/2026

Insurance Scam

Recently, a neighbour had a leak in the plumbing of his house . It had been running under the floor for some time before it reared its ugly head.
I am sure this has happened to others, so in itself , although it was an unmitigated disaster, phoo happens.
However, here is the real clanger concerning house Insurance.
When my neighbour insured the house he insured it at the current estimate value. So when he made the claim he waited for the assessor to arrive. All went well until assessor turned around and in formed him,

“ your property is undervalued “.

This resulted in a 10,000.00 reduction in his claim. After investigation my neighbour discovered that this is a regular ploy utilised by the insurance companies.
These companies through manipulation, write their own narrative to facilitate themselves and are not held accountable.

Here is the thing, when you insurance your home you are not insuring against damages that occurs, but rather ,the value of the house.
So consequently if the value of your house increases this anomaly allows the insurance companies to devalue your claim, because now, you’re undervalued due to the increase in market price of your property.

Once again home owners are victimised. The lack of proper supervision and regulation by government allows these greedy charlatans to exploit the vulnerable and conjure up their own rules.

This technically is theft under the guise of self regulation.
The “executive government” of Ireland once again abandons its citizens in favour of big corporations.
I have the verification of this scam.

Noel King, June 2026

29/05/2026

Dark-side of Dystopia

The amount of fat bellows kids
Throwing tantrums
gorging on Sugar
With headsets and tablets
Is enough to make a Tasmania devil
Spin itself to death.

The egregious nature
of these obese Cretins
Bewilders

Suckled by misguided millennials
Who search to redefine destiny
Enslaved to debt and insensitivity
Abandoning nature's behest
Foster the debacle

Sucking from water bottles
Contaminated by microplastics
Energy drinks
that toxify the brain
Chasing illusions
Crafted in the multiverse
Scrolling like hamsters in a vortex
Mesmerise by candy-crush
Losing the will to live

Where are the Annanuki
When you need them
Where are the camel-mounted kings
With the wisdom of ages
Is the parallel dimension
An option to escape
I need the QR code

Noel King, May 2026

26/05/2026

Sunshine and Sludge

This is what you are greeted with as you bring your children down to the waters edge as the Crana river meets the sea of Lough Swilly.

Millions of euro have been spent in recent years trying to improve the local area, but if we can't get the fundamentals right, like wastewater treatment, we are behaving like a third-world country, waiting for an outbreak of some infection before we act.

Years of neglect in the treatment of our wastewater and the runoff from farms, and a recent appearance in court by a contractor, all add up to failure to solve the problem of protecting the local environment.

Politicians have a lot more sexy ways of spending money than any money spent cleaning up our dirt; their spending converts more readily into votes, and let's face it, that matters more to them.

This impacts badly on us, the public, as politicians are well aware of what gets votes and what doesn't.

That leaves us on a hot summer's day, looking at scum floating on the river's edge and Lady's Bay not being very "ladylike" as you all know, for a number of years now.

Sadly, it is our future as Portsalon lost its Blue Flag for one of its beaches, just two weeks ago.

All this is evidence that we are heading in the wrong direction.

Who is going to shout STOP?

Tony Grant, May 2026

The Wee Paper

29/07/2026

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