Galway Christmas Programme in the works on announcement of the Cancellation of the Christmas Market

By Fiona Lee

It was recently announced that the Galway Christmas Market will not be going ahead this year.

The market usually runs from early November to the end of December and attracts thousands of visitors from around the country and abroad.

Many have criticised the early announcement of the cancellation, including the organisers of the market, Milestone Inventive, who believe the decision should have been delayed.

Owen Hanley, a Social Democrat Councillor in Galway City, understands it’s disappointing but sees it as unavoidable.

“I think some people were surprised that the decision was taken so far in advance. The decision around granting licences in public spaces has to be made around 6 weeks in advance, so a decision

By Mary Raftery

Many NUIG students are missing their pit stop at Smokey’s for their takeaway coffee before a morning lecture. However, if you are fortunate enough to live within a 2km radius of Tesco Oranmore, you have the option of getting your coffee delivered in minutes – by drone!

Manna Drone Delivery Service have partnered up with Tesco Oranmore, along with various other businesses in the locality, to provide local residents with a choice of almost 20,000 different products. If you are already in the festive mood, you can even order Christmas lights from Woodies! was needed. The view of the executive of the council was that it wasn’t feasible to put on the market. Anyone who has been through the Galway Christmas Market knows it is cramped at the best of times”.

The council has a vision for a socially distant Christmas and is working on a programme for the city’s festive activities.

“What I’ve requested, and I think it’s really important, is that we don’t just put out bad news. We are putting a plan together about what Christmas in Galway can look like that abides by restrictions and guidelines. We are putting together a list of programmes that people can look forward to because there’s not enough good news out there”.

The council’s focus this year is on supporting local communities and businesses in light of the financial struggles of Covid-19.

“Over the summer, there was a summer festival event with socially distant tents.

Photo: Galway Independent

Tesco store manager Catherine Swift spoke of her excitement to be on board with this innovative project.

“We’re really excited about this partnership and delighted that our store in Oranmore is involved in this trial.”, she said.

Oranmore is one of the first locations in the world to have a service like this. Minister of State at the Department of Transport, Hildegarde Naughton TD, has spoken about Ireland and innovative companies like Manna leading in the drone delivery industry,

“I’m heartened to see Ireland leading in the highly valuable drone delivery industry. It is a testament to Ireland’s indigenous technology industry, and to That is something we could be looking at. The Council will be fully funding the Christmas lights too. Some other things are up in the air, but I’m hoping we will have things going on, especially for local people, because things like the Christmas Market are really geared towards tourists. We have a market here in Galway that runs all year round! I’ve requested that we put in support for them so they can run during the Christmas period because they support the local economy”.

“Part of the decision was taken because we have local businesses that have weathered difficult times this year. They are our focus. Hopefully, the Christmas Market comes back next year but right now, we want to support our own local market and our local businesses”.

The city’s Christmas lights are set to be turned on in November to begin the

Usually a festive fixture in Galway City, the Christmas Market is the latest event to fall foul of the Covid-19 Pandemic. Christmas celebrations. the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) for their long-term vision on drones and the benefits that they can bring to our society.” The trial service began delivering groceries, pharmacy items, hardware, medications and hot meals on Wednesday 21st of October, and it will run into mid 2021. If the initiative proves to be successful in the coming months, there will be plans to extend it further. Manna trialled this service in Moneygall and it proved to be a huge success. Operating Manager Naomi Cullen reflected on this successful trial and said, “We were honoured to be able to help the community in Moneygall get vital supplies during the lockdown, we saw the commu-

How Writers Soc Have Been Coping with Lockdown

By Niamh Casey

Societies week this year took place online through virtual booths and meetings. If there is one thing all societies can now relate to, it is the abundance of technical struggles that came with the shift to a solely digital presence. Many societies that had been strictly practical, or even just had a very small online presence, are now adapting to the new status quo in order to gain new members. Eadaoin Counihan, the secretary of Writers Soc, spoke about these new challenges and about how societies week went this year.

“For a while we all honestly thought we’d be back on campus, so we weren’t fully prepared. The Socs Box did send out emails and had video conference calls on how to set up the virtual booths. I was the one hosting the virtual booth for Writers Soc but unfortunately my connection was terrible. The Socs Box helped me a lot though. They moved us into a virtual room, which fair play to them, they worked so hard to understand my terrible connection and help give us access to YourSpace, which is where you could enter the virtual socs week. Thankfully now if you go into any of the society dashboards there’s videos on how to use YourSpace, because everything is done through that system, and it’s actually easy enough to use once you have good connection.”

Usually socs weeks draw a lot of people in , particularly first years, and the hall is laid out so that people get a chance to discover societies that they mightn’t have known about. Naturally, the numbers recruited were lower this year and there were much less people visiting the virtual booths than in previous years than would have been visiting the physical ones. As Eadaoin pointed out, Writers Soc begins with a ‘W’, so it falls towards the bottom of the list of societies and you would have to be searching for it in order to know it was there. The virtual booths were not what many expected when they clicked into them; “ A lot of people just expect nity really embrace the project and enjoy having deliveries made by drone.”

The 8,000 residents in proximity to the drone hub can place an order online using their EirCode. The drone takes off from the roof of Tesco and travels at a speed of 80km an hour.

The delivery journey takes 3 minutes, but time is added to this to prepare and package the order. The order can be tracked in real time and when the drone arrives at the delivery location, it lowers the order down to the ground, by a biodegradable thread, at a height of 15 metres.

Certain aerospace-grade components of the Manna drones have been made by Éire Composites – an Irish company spea video when you click into the virtual booths, just talking about the society. But they’re actually brought into a chatroom with us, and you have to say their names so that they know that you know they’re there, and it makes some people feel more welcome. It does catch a lot of people off guard though.”

Eadaoin did however find that first years are now more involved with Writers Soc. As she pointed out, first year students had to use the YourSpace platform for their orientation week, so they were much more familiar with how it worked when it came to Socs Week. Also, it’s understandable that this year many students would turn to societies as a way of meeting people who they might share interests with. “ Especially if they feel like they haven’t clicked with anyone yet. It’s definitely harder this year for first years.”

Society members get emailed the link to enter the virtual weekly meetings and attendance has been pretty good for Writers Soc. “We’re luckier than other societies because we actually can do a bit, even though before we never did anything online. We had our EGM because we needed committee members and they’re all really enthusiastic. It’s just really nice to see. Last week we had our first official meeting, and we played a prompts game and a word association game. We tend to do fun activities like that. It worked out really well.”

Eadaoin also talked about the society’s plans to do something for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which is in November, and she also hopes to start up workshops and monthly poetry writing competitions. Writers Soc are really adjusted well to the new ways of doing things. Their discord chat room is working well and is a big part of the weekly meetings and is super welcoming, with options that allow you to choose your preferred pronouns.

They’re still developing their online presence too. People are welcome to join societies at any time in the year and writers soc love to see new faces, and all that

Oranmore Drones Deliver Flying Flat Whites

is required to join is a passion for writing. Image: The Irish Times

cialising in high reliability components for rockets and commercial aircraft. The drone carries a package the size of a shoebox, not exceeding 2kg.

Manna are already giving back to the community during these unprecedented and challenging times. They have implemented a corporate responsibility strategy by providing delivery to frontline workers free of charge. Manna will also waive the pharmacy delivery fee for the elderly.

TRUMP TO GET TRUMPED BY BIDEN — US election analysis with Larry Donnelly

By Aaron Deering

With the US election taking place within days on November 3rd , SIN spoke to Larry Donnelly an NUI Galway Law Lecturer, Boston Attorney and political columnist with the Journal. ie to get a proper insight into how this US election will unfold. This US election has seemed to grip the world’s attention compared to recent US elections even more than the 2016 US election, with all eyes firmly fixed to November 3rd to see if Donald Trump can pull off a David vs Goliath comeback to win a second term as US President.

Asked if there has ever been a more important election in US history than Trump’s November showdown with Obama’s former Vice-President. Larry said; ‘People almost say this every four years, that this is a hugely significant election, I think it probably is. I think that because of Trump’s Presidency which has been unprecedented in so many ways that the eyes of the world are on America. I think the pandemic and the administration’s arguable mishandling of the pandemic adds another significant element to it so there’s no doubt that it is a very important election. I think a lot of people are watching to see if America is going to continue down the path Trump has set, or whether it’s going to revert to form.”

An outsider looking in would see that America seems to be almost split as a nation into two different camps. When asked if the most important task the next US president will face is to heal the nation Donnelly thinks that Joe Biden is the only one of the two candidates to be able to do this;

‘I think if Biden is elected president that will be part of the work that he has to do but if Donald Trump is re-elected, I don’t think that will happen, I think that arguably some of these divisions might grow greater.”

“I think it’s worth looking back to when Donald Trump was first elected the reality is some of the things, he said in the campaign that he was going to do were actually unifying themes. Things like not starting any more foreign military entanglements, most Americans agreed with that, or rebuilding American infrastructure again most Americans agreed with that but those kind of unifying themes have been overwhelmed by a lot of his other rhetoric whether it’s about immigration or about some of the far-right groups in the United States

so in many ways some of the things he said he was going to do he either hasn’t done or have been downplayed in favour of more divisive rhetoric, which I think has been a real shame.”, he said.

Asked if the final debate had changed many voter’s minds or if the public’s mind has already been made up Donnelly’s inkling is that most people’s minds were already made up. ‘My suspicion is that most people’s minds have been made up. The Trump campaign and his allies really thought that the story about Hunter Biden and the emails on this laptop of dubious province would take hold. That this idea that Hunter Biden was using his position to make money that by virtue of being the then vice-president’s son that he was using that role to make money, that his father was in on the gig etc. I don’t think that story really got any traction and I think most Americans have discounted that in the current circumstances.”

“Really, Biden needed to avoid making any big mistakes in the debates. He didn’t make any big mistakes. Some people are saying that his comments about oil and fossil fuel may cost him support in Pennsylvania and other battlegrounds that maybe the case but I’m not so sure but by in large I think that most people in the United States have their minds made up. What’s more 50 million people had already voted in early voting by the time the debate happened.”

One thing Donald Trump has been doing over the course of the campaign has been playing to his support base, but sometimes he’s over played it and has risked alienating the middle voter who took a chance on him in 2016, which Donnelly described as his biggest fault; “I think that’s been his biggest fault at least in the past two years even going back before the pandemic broke out. He’s been governing and politicking as if he only needs his base, as if that 40% of Americans that are going to vote for him come hell or high water are all that he needs. It seems as if he has forgotten the reality of the 2016 election and there were two groupings, I would say who helped extend his support to the level he needed to win. Those two groupings in the first instance were people who just absolutely despised Hillary Clinton and there is a lot of them, many millions of Americans for whatever reason just never warmed to her. That group voted for Donald Trump not as an endorsement for him but in order to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House.

“The second grouping I think were an awful lot of women. Donald Trump won the demographic of white women which might surprise readers. I think the main reason he did was because these were typically middle-class and in some cases upper-class people who might not have liked Donald Trump’s persona or the things that he said but when it came to tax policies,

“He’s forgotten about the soft Trump supporters and he’s gone after the base, and in doing so playing to the base he’s arguably alienated those soft Trump supporters, so I think he’s made a big, big mistake in that regard.”, he added,

The polls got it very wrong in 2016 and didn’t predict the secret Trump vote, but Donnelly doesn’t predict that this will happen again. He urged people not to pay attention to national polls. ‘I have no doubt that there is a secret Trump vote. I’ve a number of friends who are going to be voting for Donald Trump but would never say it in a professional or even in some social settings because they know the repercussions it could have for them. There certainly is a silent Trump vote, the extent of it though is what I wonder about.”

I believe there is some that they’re missing but I’m just not sure that the polls could be that wide off the mark. What I would say to readers is number one in the context of an American Presidential election, please don’t pay much attention to national polls. National polls actually don’t mean that much because when you look at an American presidential election it maybe one country but it’s actually fifty separate winner takes all elections. What are much more important is polling in the battleground states and when you look at the battleground states I would encourage people to not to look at any single poll but instead go to RealClearPolitics.com which is a non-partisan aggregator of all polling data to account for outlining polls and to base any analysis that they’re going to make on that data’.

The NUI Galway lecturer pointed particularly to the states of Florida and Pennsylvania as crucial to the dynamic of the election;

“The game doesn’t change, the dynamics of this campaign are unprecedented in many respects, but the game doesn’t change. As a first point I don’t see any path to victory for Donald Trump unless he again wins the state of Florida. If Trump doesn’t

win Florida, I believe the election is over. I also think it is very worth while paying attention to Pennsylvania. If Joe Biden were to lose Pennsylvania, then this thing takes on a whole new life.

“A lot of our predictions and a lot of those of us that think Biden is going to win is very much predicated on the fact that he’ll win Pennsylvania a state that Donald Trump took by a tiny margin last time around..”

After backing Hillary Clinton in 2016 Donnelly is hesitant to predict a winner this time around because of the element of uncertainty you get with Donald Trump but ultimately thinks that Biden will come out on top; ‘Look I think all of us are reticent to make predictions. Last time around I predicted pretty strenuously that Hillary Clinton would win the election. This time around my suspicion is that Biden will win. I think over the last four years for a key segment of Americans which we talked about earlier those soft Trump voters or people who may have voted against Hillary but never thought Trump was as bad as his enemies portrayed him to be I think in their minds after four years of toxic tweets, distinctly unpresidential behaviour, of downplaying and minimising the pandemic. I think enough of them voters are going to say they’ve had enough of this and we’re going to want to move on so to that extent my guess is that it’ll be Joe Biden, but I certainly wouldn’t rule Donald Trump out’.