The Wee Paper, Buncrana (2026)

12/09/2026

Losers
The decision to increase fares by arguing it is a “crucial step” to expand capacity in our public transport system was highly criticised by observers.
When asked the Taoiseach said: “Government is not in the position to fund everything forever”.

Climate and Transport Minister Darragh O’Brien and Taoiseach Micheál Martin were described as “losers this week for hiking public transport fares in the midst of both a climate and cost of living crisis. Both O’Brien and Martin justified the decision to increase fares by arguing it is a “crucial step” to expand capacity in our public transport system.

Once again, this pathetic excuse for a “ government” has let the people down and continues to govern in a destructive
and dishonest way.

It would be more important and productive to encourage people to use public transport for climate issues and also to keep oil imports at a minimum.

Noel King, September 2026

09/09/2026

Tony (the Chef)

Tony aka Anthony Bourdain, Celebrity Chef and author of his autobiography, Kitchen Confidential.

He opened a Mitchillian Star restaurant in New York and had a Netflix series.
And finally a film about his life is showing in the Buncrana Cinema this week.
I enjoyed the film as an insight into his life and perhaps the root cause of his unhappiness. His mother was a narcissist, and his father could not cope; his parents were well-healed, which seemed to make things worse for Anthony.
He became a narcissist himself to survive and fell in with a bad crowd in the subculture world of kitchens and drugs to overcome the effects of the chaotic lifestyle.

The whole package of his life on screen and in print is a fascinating exposure of a very intelligent person who could have achieved great things, had it not been for the lack of love in his early upbringing.

He resorted to lying instead of authenticity, and this dragged him down.

Now that he is gone, his life is wide open to examination from us who might like to learn something from his mistakes or to celebrate his life. RIP
Tony Grant, September 2026

16/08/2026

Peace OR Control?

The Peace Process rolls on in Northern Ireland and is thankfully saving lives daily. We are indeed grateful for that and long may it continue.

The Peace Process is a series of talks, meetings and agreements that are ongoing in Northern Ireland and beyond in an effort to end the violence there.

The Peace Process is not PEACE. Organisations involved never said they believe in peace; they say that they "signed up to the peace process"; that is a completely different thing.

I hope in the future that all sides will say that they believe in peace and that they will renounce violence as a way of solving problems and convert to peace as a way of life.

It is well known that the peace was bought by the UK, Ireland, the EU, the US and Canada, and they all continue to pay into that fund to keep "The Peace Process" going. It is a gravy train for most of the protagonists, but tensions still prevail all through that society.

The question remains: Is it peace or is it control?

Is Northern Ireland "boxed in" by the other five participants of the peace process, and is that the real reason why the violence has stopped?

I do not believe that enough is being done to foster peace and understanding on both sides of the border.

We proposed to Donegal County Council to turn "The Old Garda Station" in Buncrana into a Peace and Reconciliation Centre as well as a genuine Community Centre and much more, BUT they decided to hand it over to "the business interests" of Inishowen instead.

"When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn" by Peter, Paul and Mary.

Recent news of a bomb being driven towards the border by a young female student must send shivers down the spines of anyone with memories of what it was like during the recent thirty-year war here.

We need to continue to "lance the boil" and engage with those with hate in their hearts and the willingness and ability to bring us back to "the bad old days" of bombs and bullets.

We need "peace talks" in every town in Ireland, not just in Dublin, Belfast and London.

How do we find "real peace" and how do we escape "control" in our everyday lives?

Is there such a thing as "A Radical Peace"?

I hope you will join us in person this winter to start a discussion of these issues.

Tony Grant, August 2026

10/08/2026

FF Consumer Protection

A large "information poster" is on display in the Library in Buncrana, as Ireland is hosting the Presidency of the EU for the next six months.

It proudly displays Michael McGrath, FF, as European Commissioner for Democracy, Justice, the Rule of Law and Consumer Protection.

The EU guarantees consumer protection to its citizens for raw materials originating in the EU that are used to manufacture products within the EU and are purchased by consumers within the EU if they are shown to be defective.

This protection was not afforded to the people of Donegal as citizens of the EU.

This protection was afforded to other citizens in North County Dublin when their homes were destroyed by pyrite.

Why is Michael McGrath not treating all the citizens of Ireland equally?

Why are the people of Donegal being discriminated against?

Why are the people of Donegal so loyal to the FF party and not to each other?

Tony Grant, August 2026

06/08/2026

The 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 natures 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 Anunnaki
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, August 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

The Wee Paper

12/09/2026

09/09/2026

16/08/2026

10/08/2026

06/08/2026

29/07/2026

15/07/2026

06/07/2026

02/07/2026

27/06/2026

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