Simon McGarr

🇪🇺🚨 TODAY is do or die: Will the EU majority SUPPORT suspicionless mass scanning of your private chats?
Every call, every email counts right now!
Use this updated message to MEPs: ✍️
👉 https://fightchatcontrol.eu/#contact-tool #ChatControl
If you care, they will.

Plan to bypass ministers in bid to cut red tape and speed up major infrastructure projects Ministers will be bypassed for major infrastructure projects under new planning rules aimed at cutting red tape and shortening the delivery time by 20 weeks.

Good news for Ministers who will no longer be even nominally responsible for another politically hot issue.

www.independent.ie/irish-news/p...

Be grand, say dying Irish people literally having a heart attack.

My Dublin Inquirer arrived today with a truly astonishing long-form investigation piece on Tusla’s contracted service providers.

Ignore the smears: I was never a close friend of Peter Mandelson. And I fully understand the lessons we must learn Wes Streeting

This is the funniest headline I seen in a long time. And bravo to whoever underlined the desperation with the juxtaposed link.

Big Tech spent €151 million lobbying the EU last year.

That’s 890 lobbyists — more than elected MEPs.

Now key digital rights like GDPR and the AI Act are being quietly rolled back.

We looked at who’s really influencing EU tech rules — and what’s happening behind closed doors. 👇

Judgment WhatsApp Ireland v European Data Protection Board explained - C-97/23 Protection of personal data - Action for annulment

🎥 💬 Vice-President von Danwitz explains with subtitles available in all EU languages 👉 curia.europa.eu/site/jcms/12...
📰 PR 👉 curia.europa.eu/site/upload/...

#CJEU #EUlaw #GDPR

Today is Safer Internet Day.

Still no sign of a Garda visit to the grok child abuse factory.

BBC News headlines: Education School caterers 'confident' of meat Missing children data 'worrying'

Happy 13th anniversary to this pair of matching news headlines.

In my view the Commission argument against regularisation is unfounded as the law now stands. Here's Article 6.4 of the Returns Directive, which allows Member States to regularise the status of irregular migrants. eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-conten...

NOPE!

C-97/23 P - WhatsApp Ireland v EDPB

GDPR: the action brought by WhatsApp Ireland against Binding Decision 1/2021 of the European Data Protection Board is admissibl

This follows the sort of decision structure I would expect from the company. My favourite bit is when a civil engineer tells the artist he doesn’t like her choice of colours for her piece and tells her which ones she should use instead.

A man in a red coat walks through streaming rain in front of colourful but ill kept buildings

The Walk
2026

In Boston ICE randomly pulled over this huge white Irish guy with a Mass drivers license, 20 years in the states, legal status, pending green card and have held him for 5 months, his citizen wife paid a $4k bond that was ignored(!) ICE forged his signature on deportation agreement, no appeal

‘Absolute hell’: Irishman with valid US work permit held by Ice since September Seamus Culleton has been in a detention facility in Texas for nearly five months despite having no criminal record

And here is my story: ‘Absolute hell’: Irishman with valid US work permit held by Ice since September

www.irishtimes.com/world/us/202...

The opening sentence is Death.

Gene Simmons @genesimmons · 5 Feb My personal philosophy re Bitcoin is to hold (HODL). I firmly believe in the future. You need to do your own research and make your own decisions. MidnightRider @pilky0001 Man you’re 80 years old fuck you hodling anything for? I wouldn’t buy green bananas if I were you

😐

A very eye-opening follow-up: the account owner openly admits they were posting hateful content simply to develop, and monetise, a big TikTok account bsky.app/profile/jim....

Stop a Canadian corporation harvesting huge forests of seaweed from the west coast There should be a public consultation on this plan opening soon but lets gather signatures to demonstrate the fact that up and down the west coast, thousands of people don't want our seaweed rights gi...

This cause is close to my heart - please sign: my.uplift.ie/petitions/st... @uplift.ie

I have never gone skiing and I know that, if I did, I would just be Kevin.

Yeah, a deep of us noticed too

Partners Restaurant Description - CaféPhone Number - 01 4931771Location - 2nd FloorWebsite Email Opening HoursMonday 8.30am – 6pmTuesday 8.30am – 6pmWednesday 8.30am – 6pmThursday 8.30am – 6pmFriday 8.30am – 6pmSaturday ...

Partners, upstairs in the Rathfarnham shopping centre, played a major role in my childhood imaginative landscape as one of only two places where I had ever seen a knickerbocker glory being offered for sale.

www.rathfarnhamshoppingcentre.com/post/partner...

Governments hate juries.

❗️BREAKING -- Palestine Action protesters found not guilty of burglary at Elbit weapons factory in Bristol.

The six activists were also not convicted of other charges, having spent 18 months in jail awaiting trial.

realmedia.press/filton-verdi...

Home Office @ukhomeoffice Follow Illegal migrants living in hotels have been banned from using taxpayer-funded taxis for medical appointments. Under new rules, taxi use for medical journeys will be restricted to individuals with physical disabilities and serious or chronic illnesses. ... TP + ILLEGAL MIGRANTS BANNED FROM USING TAXIS FOR MEDICAL APPOINTMENTS

Home Offi... @ukhomeoffi... • Feb 6 The largest number of illegal migrants and foreign criminals have been removed or deported off British soil in a decade. - NEARLY - 60000 ILLEGAL MIGRANTS CRIMINALS REMOVED OR DEPORTED

Any time I look to see what the Labour government is up to in the UK it turns out to be things like making posters that Alfonso Cuarón put in the background of the long tracking shot that opens “Children of Men”.

The world heard JD Vance being booed at the Olympics. Except for viewers in the US | Bryan Armen Graham The real risk for American broadcasters is not that dissent will be visible. It is that audiences will start assuming anything they do not show is being hidden

The world heard JD Vance being booed at the Olympics. Except for viewers in the US | Bryan Armen Graham

cc #speirgorm Google continues to distribute the twitter/x/grok apps on its play store, which continue to distribute/generate csam and porn deepfakes