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PRINCE WILLIAM CO-PILOTED a helicopter during today’s search and rescue mission in the Irish Sea.
The Duke of Cambridge, who serves in the Royal Air Force (RAF), was part of the initial response team deployed after a cargo vessel got into trouble off the Welsh coast in the early hours of the morning.
The Prince’s crew was responsible for the rescue of two seamen, the Ministry of Defence told TheJournal.ie. They were both airlifted to safety and transferred to a local hospital.
The rescued men were two of eight Russian crew aboard the ship when it sank off the coast of north-west Wales overnight. One man has been found and confirmed dead. Five remain missing, the BBC reports.
The alarm was raised at about 2am when the ship’s hull reportedly broke and started letting in water.
Although the search for five missing crewmen continues, William and the rest of his Sea King helicopter team have returned to their base at RAF Valley, a spokesperson for the Ministry said.
The Dublin Coast Guard is assisting the Holyhead Coast Guard in the search. An Irish Air Corps aircraft and naval service ship have also been deployed to the scene.
Prince William joined the RAF in 2009 and last year completed his training to become a full-time co-pilot with the Search and Rescue Force.
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Groundbreaking study? Are you kidding me, not so common, common sense.
Let’s face it. Nobody at the top cares or listens. We have a government that never takes into consideration what people demand. They either nod there head or laugh. Then they get privately transported the other way to down an expensive bottle of wine.
Not a surprise with the current state of this country the youth always get it in the neck in these situations
Hickies or love bites as we use to call them? Sorry bad joke but the fact is everyone is getting it in the neck except banks, bankers, hedge funders, lobbyists and politicians.
Leo Varadkar quoted only yesterday “Actually when you look at the statistics – I’m starting to become a bit of a statistics nerd in this Department – interestingly enough if you take the poorest 10pc in Irish society – the lowest decile – virtually none of those are pensioners.
“They’re almost all people with disabilities, carers and those on lower incomes than pensioners.”
Coupled with this? FG are positioning themselves to try to cut pensions, would be my guess.
Lazy entitled millennials should stop playing with their phones and do a bit of work and they will be fine.
Or the educational system needs to be improved greatly so they can actually pick and choose their interests. From what I remember the leaving cert was nothing but a boring memory test. We are so far behind it’s no wonder kids are getting stupider. So little on offer yet plenty distractions.
That’s what university is for or trades. High school is just the foundation to build. And there is (no) picking and choosing interests. Or are you totally oblivious of our brain drain due to no opportunities?
Anyone who thinks we have a poor quality of life here in Ireland, by international standards, would seriously want to gain a bit of perspective.
Why? If you take out third world options so you can at least compare apples to apples, then the quality of life here is quite low.
Even the quality of life index highlights some interesting thoughts.
1 Denmark
2 Switzerland
3 Australia
4 New Zealand
5 Germany
6 Austria
7 Netherlands
8 Spain
9 Finland
10 United States
11 Portugal
12 Sweden
13 United Kingdom
14 Norway
15 Canada
16 Japan
17 France
18 Estonia
19 Ireland
Portugal, for instance, where my car insurance is 139 Euro over 1400 I am paying here and where a fantastic house costs me only 196k, and that is the Algarve. Even the roads are in exceptional condition, and the crossing is even smart. That is just a little face value, don’t even get me started on the most expensive countries where some subjectiveness can come into the equation.
I never understand when people make that statement. The fact that there are worse dumps in the world doesn’t negate the feeling of uselessness and isolation that comes with being jobless/broke all the time.
If you were paralysed from the waist down, would you just think “ah sure it could be worse, remember poor oul Christopher Reeves”?
Here’s another up-to-date survey where Ireland ranks 6th out of 161:
http://uk.businessinsider.com/nationalities-with-the-best-quality-of-life-2016-6
Sure, anyone can wish they were better off in terms of life quality (and it could be argued that it’s human nature to always aspire for more), but as I said it’s all a matter of perspective. Like it or not we are part of the planet’s 5% most privileged.
Using your logic Bigus, people will conversely always feel that they’re badly off as there will always be people doing better than them.
The one I used is mid-2016 Avina, http://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp
So by your thinking Avina, as a country, we should not try and improve people’s quality of life as there is always people worse off. Instead of the undeniable huge gap in the quality of life in Ireland. In fact, if a developing country like Portugal has cities far more advanced in many aspects, better roads, cheaper insurance, food, et al. and is in the EU we should not be bothered by that.
If the 95% bother you, then become a volunteer and help the poor in those countries otherwise, you are just paying lip service.
So what you are saying is Ireland is inside the top 20 countries in the world to live. I’ll take that.
Of course we should always try and improve peoples’ quality of life wherever possible Padraig – where did I suggest otherwise? My point is that we’re already doing pretty well for quality of life compared to the vast majority of the planet’s population.
Totally irrelevant – apples to apples, as mentioned – tell that to the homeless here, the people losing houses – the unemployed – the business owners closing down – just one huge non-sequitur argument – MOOT
Padraig, obviously quality of life indeces are averaged and some people are far worse off than others. You can’t just cherry-pick, say, homeless people and use that to try and make the point that our quality of life is far worse than that in another country, especially if you want to make an issue of comparing apples with apples.
Did not just say homeless people – do wish you would use actual context Avina, but learning that is not how you like to play ball.
If you read my comment I used homeless people as an example, but there’s no denying that you cherry-picked the most disadvantaged in our society to try and support your point. Ironic that you try and bring up context when you deliberately ignore the point that quality of life indeces are based on averages.
So how is the broad demographic of people that lost and losing houses the “most disadvantaged of society” how is business owners closing/going broke from the market collapse the “most disadvantaged” how is the brain drain of people with third level education the “most disadvantaged” – Need I continue, Avina? Maybe I could highlight the escalating housing crisis, the inability to gain mortgages. The examples are widening, across demographics and yet you try “like the other night’ to shoehorn in a point that in fact, not a point at all but another loss in the debate.
I’m not sure if you’ve quite grasped how averages work Padraig. If Ireland is such an awful place to live for so many people, how is in that it consistently ranks reasonably favourably in various quality of life surveys?
Perhaps Oscar Wilde was right – “No-one in Ireland will be happy until everyone has more than everyone else”.
So you are back to the poor usage of ad hominin verbosity – how nice – maybe the reason Ireland is so far down that list is due to the averages and falling, Avina. However, you seem to walk around in a circle in this debate.
We will not in any short time see an equality across the population although it would be nice for people not to be battling the bread line.
Or are you just oblivious to the quagmire that the biggest percentage of Irish families are in?
As was the case the other night, you have caused me great boredom again, so I bid you good afternoon.
No use of ad hominem verbosity there Padraig – just a legitimate questioning of you cherry-picking certain demographics (which of course exist – I’m not oblivious to that) to try and validate your argument, whilst ignoring anything else which serves to counter it.
Unlike yourself, the various calculations used to create a quality of life index do not cherry-pick data but take an overview of a society as a whole, and as I said, Ireland consistently ranks reasonably favourably.
Young people today have it to easy, dont know the meaning of hard times….when i were lad we used to get up 6 o clock in morning, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!
House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!
You were lucky to have a ROOM! *We* used to have to live in a corridor!
Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin’ in a corridor! Woulda’ been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.
Well when I say “house” it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpolin, but it was a house to US.
We were evicted from *our* hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake!
You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.
Cardboard box?
Aye.
You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o’clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!
Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o’clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!
Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o’clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o’clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, (pause for laughter), eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing “Hallelujah.”
But you try and tell the young people today that… and they won’t believe ya’.
Nope, nope..
Stewart Lee piece?
Monty Python @ Shane -
Some places were like that 30 years ago here… At least you weren’t making clothes or runners at 7 years old as they do now around the world?
The next generation won’t thank us for the way we left the Country .GREED GREED GREED , property developers, bankers ,politicians (FF,FG,LAB) these people dragged this Country under and left it with nothing but a massive bill for our children and grandchildren. I have yet to see anyone in Jail it just seems the law differs for a lot of people . I remember my Son in College had a student loan out and I asked him had he paid it back because if he ever decided to return to Ire his credit would be no good so I made him pay it I look back on that now and wonder what about all these guys that went Bankrupt
and owed millions a lot of these people are back in the game how do they credit ?
Increased incidence of poor health is more prevalent in a group of over 70s than the in a group of under 30s. That certainly is groundbreaking.
Look at society, the more the ones in charge pat themselves on their own backs the more society falls apart. I do wonder if a lack of a spiritual belief amongst each generation makes people feel there is no consequences to their actions as the judical and legal systems do not provide justice.
People feel the T.D’s do not listen to them and some feel society is falling apart, society is turning into America each day as TV, Music and culture is American, the language is becoming Americanised. So Irish culture now is between the English and American, so is fashion, art and food. It is becoming a selfish culture where the self is more important, it is consumerism with mental overload, with the media as in news and newspapers take political and social agendas, so everything is put to tell people what to believe, what to do and how to think and believe. Ireland is drowning in hypocracy, E.U. rulings and laws, being swept with what others think and believe.
On top of growing up in too much protection from their parents as well as being given what they want when they want it that when they leave the home nest they can’t cope with rejection then.
Being told no as a child never happens and then they watch porn and youtube and play violent computer games which is as good as Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Saying nothing about the groups of people they hang out with which can influence what they believe and do then as can the media with crime and suicide with a promise of 15 minutes of fame taught by Big Brother and its ike?
Society is on a path of self destruction because people rather blend in than have the confidence to say no to all this, they watch films and TV and get inspired by fiction as if it was real, they copy so called celebs and what they do and how they dress but to be a celeb these days all you have to be willing to do is show your big bum in a photo while having a few million dollars helps. People live more in fantasy these days than they have ever done and then they wonder why reality is so hard to cope with then, I could be wrong but that is how I see part of society, but no wonder parents these days uses the TV and multimedia like another parent and parents can’t cope in teaching no to a child because of the stress of society with its costs as children now seem to blackmail their parents now on so many levels?
It also depends on where you live and on your social background?
Poor snowflakes, they should compare themselves with those who grew up in the 50s, 60s and 70s.
Is there an App for doing that?
Well they probably couldn’t do it without one…….:-)
They could afford to buy houses, we can’t.
Who is responsible for that Tara? We all struggled to buy houses.
The house price bubble was created by rampant greed by mainly younger people buying second houses and houses to let and borrowing way beyond their means.
It’s a simple life rule that being satisfied with little rather than always aspiring to have what you don’t have is a surer path to hapiness. Material wellbeing is a state of mind as is quality of life.
Something said by poor people to make them feel happier about their lives. Money, they say, does not buy happiness, however, it sure as hell buys the boat next door. I hear few people arguing because all their bills are paid.
It’s actually true. But in these wealthy and material goods saturated times, people have lost all sense of what is actually enough to live well by. Our times are proof that wealth does not equal happiness, and I thought you’d have more sense than to equate ‘little’ with genuine poverty.
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