Feature / Humour

Busybees recycled furniture & community jobs

employment in Dublin’s inner city in 1995. Sunflower Recycling employs 30 long-term unemployed via the Community Employment Scheme and four people through the Jobs Initiative. The project has also gained recognition for recycling as an option for future job creation and Sunflower’s collection boxes are a familiar

sight in business premises around the city. In relation to Busybees, as Sunflower Recycling manager Bernie Walsh says, “We’re saving the planet one sofa at a time.” For more info: T: 086-833-9684. E: sunflow2@eircom.net W: www. furniturerecyclingdublin.com and www. sunflowerrecycling.ie

Pay Freeze Not too Hot Dear Horace Are CDPs facing a pay freeze and if so how will we sell it to our staff? Yours Therese Yurer, Strapped CDP, Iceland

charge of a banking crisis the whole thing slows down into an orderly queue or waiting list thus preventing any volatile run on the bank. Hard to run when your standing in a long line.

Horace Helps You tell them that working in CDPs is so cool and is a chance to work right at the cutting edge. That way they can’t complain when the edges get cut off the budget and there is nothing cooler than a freeze.

Don’t Worry Be Happy! Dear Horace A wee while ago banks were bursting at the seams with money to lend. Now it seems the banks are just bursting or about to go bust. I’m really confused by all the conflicting financial advice and analysis. Yours Ena Hock, 2 Myeyes, Market Downs, Wall St.

People in Dublin projects who are into Community Development and the environment and want to buy furniture should head for ‘Busybees’, a furniture removal and recycling project in the capital. Busybees opened in 2005 in Summerhill, Dublin 1, selling what they call “pre-loved furniture”. It became popular and they have now opened a second outlet on Bridgefoot Street where they place a special emphasis on retro and vintage furniture, The original transport team of Sharon Ryan and Christopher Grimes (pictured right) both started as Community Employment Scheme participants and they are now employed as transport and logistics managers with Busybees. “We take our furniture quite seriously now as it’s how we make our living and it’s great to see the joy on someone’s face when they receive their furniture,” said Sharon. Busybees was set up – unusually for a business – with a community development ethos. It is an offspring of Sunflower Recycling which was established to create

PPPs are making me sound like a stuttering eejit Help Me Horace Please! Please! Please! What are PPPs? Sincerely Peter Piper, Picked-a-Peck Of Pickled Pepper Horace Helps PPPs are Public Private Partnerships. They are very like any other partnership people enter into. Generally you promise your partner one thing in public and get away with whatever you can in private. at 18.3, our pupil-teacher ratio at primary level is among highest in EU 27

My World is turned upside down! Help Me Horace, My world is all confused and upside down! All the great capitalist countries are doing everything opposite. They are privatising health services and water supplies while nationalising the banks. Please explain what’s happening. Sincerely, Sosha Lizt, Left Bank Arts Project Horace Helps Well if you put the State and its bureaucracy in

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Horace Helps This reminds me of that old saying: If you owe the bank !100,000 and can’t pay then you need to be worried, but if you owe the bank !100 million and can’t pay then they need to be worried ! Now the banks owe !700 billion and can’t pay but no-one needs to worry, the tax payer will look after it.