It Occurs To Me: Dumping in Bruckless and beyond as well as a prophetic warning

Some years ago, while driving from Culmore to Derry City, the traffic had slowed down before the entrance to Ballynagard Estate and, as I looked to my left, I noticed a BMW sitting in a small parking zone. 

To my astonishment, the female driver – local, well off, ‘respectable’ etc – was unloading black plastic bags from the boot and horsing them over a wall near the Thornhill Convent grounds. I rolled down the window, shouted ‘Hi!’ and gesticulated to the driver, which caused her to jump in the car and attempt to drive away.

The driver in front of me had noticed the dumping too, and rather than let her emerge on the busy main road, honked his horn and waved an admonishing finger at her as well. I followed suit and noted that her embarrassed head was nearly sunk in her steering wheel. As I moved on, someone eventually let her out but that episode stayed with me. 

Imagine my surprise when I encountered her and the hubby a few nights later in the ‘local’… her surprise was even greater, as she grabbed him by the elbow and quickly oxtered him out the door! As regards the rubbish, it mysteriously disappeared when a neighbour subsequently checked behind the offending wall.

Meanwhile, a landowner in Inishowen had uncovered an epidemic of dumping on his land over a period of time. 

A forensic search found an envelope with a name and address on it so your man headed to the culprit in Derry, dumped the lot on his doorstep, rang the bell and warned the occupant what would happen should the dumping resume! I was reminded of these episodes recently when I saw the dumping (as per accompanying photo) in the historic St Conall’s Holy Well site in Bruckless.

Dumping at St Conall’s Holy Well in Bruckless

As Helen Gallagher, Administrator of the excellent Facebook page, Belong to Bruckless and Neighbouring Parishes, wrote:  “Hi Folks, this is absolutely disgusting. The people who dumped this on the ruins of an old church and holy well that many local people still use should be fined heavily for this.

“Photos of this and the materials in them have been taken note of… The police and the council will be informed tomorrow, we will leave it up to them to decide where this material has come from. I have been sent these photos by concerned locals and asked to let everyone know what has happened. The people who did this have not an iota of respect for the local people. They should be ashamed of themselves.” And so say all of us!

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As it happens, earlier this year, Bruckless native Cllr Michael Boyle took to social media saying: “It’s an absolute disgrace what’s going all over in every forest, but this is what we came across this morning at Altcor on the Ardaghy to Ardara Road.

“We tried to take some of it out but with the heat and the stench of nappies etc it was impossible. I’ve been in contact with the litter warden and we are going to examine these bags and hope we can find out who is responsible for this illegal dumping.”

It’s happening throughout the county and the law should come down like a hammer on the perpetrators.

A tale of two contests

As far back as May 2008, I was writing a piece entitled ‘The Eurovision Debacle’ in which I said: “As a matter of principle, I have refused to watch the Eurovision for some years but I was babysitting my niece last week and she was glued to it. God, it’s horribly addictive… it’s a bit like resolving only to suck a boiled sweet but being compelled to crunch it half way through. Even Terry Wogan has lost faith in the farce and summed up the feelings of many when he called for an end to the charade.” 

When RTÉ decided to send Dustin the Turkey, I thought – it can’t get any worse… but it did. I’m delighted to see that we’re no longer participants, and while I’m 100% empathetic as regards the decision hinging on Israel being part of it, we should have pulled the plug years ago!

Why? Because it morphed into a loud garish extravaganza of pure crap, totally devoid of any modicum of real ‘songwriting’, as exemplified by Charlie McGettigan and others.

Fair play to Charlie who didn’t mince his words: “I am happy that RTÉ has decided to take a stand on this particular issue. And they did consider it several months ago and they decided to stick to their guns. We are registering our protest with Eurovision if Israel is taking part. I am happy that they have done this. And I have been on this issue quite a bit for the last number of years.

 “Who knows where we will be this time next year, perhaps regarding injustices being carried out, perhaps action will have been taken. A year is a long time. I don’t think we are gone forever. I hope not. 

“I love Eurovision as much as anyone and have been watching it since the 1960s when it was in black and white. I am a fan and I think it is a lovely celebration of cultures around Europe and Australia. But it is a small sacrifice to make when you consider 70,000 deaths.”

An investigation by Spotlight EBU (a collaborative network by the EBU for fact-checking) found that the Israeli government had used “cross-platform advertising and used state social media accounts” to encourage the public to vote for them. Israel came second as a result last year.

The other ‘contest’ was the vomit-inducing cringefest that was the 2025 World Cup Draw.

As writer and musician Michael Jochum bluntly put it: “Let’s take a moment, just a brief breath before the nausea kicks in, to marvel at the grotesque spectacle of Donald J. Trump, the self-proclaimed ‘peace president,’ strutting around the Kennedy Center with a fake peace prize draped around his turkey neck like a third-place ribbon from a county fair hog show. 

“Yes, in a moment so tacky it should’ve come with a complementary spray tan and a coupon for hush money, FIFA’s Gianni Infantino presented Trump with an award that is not only fake, but professionally, institutionally, internationally fake, handcrafted for one purpose only: to keep the world’s most fragile ego inflated long enough to cash another check on behalf of his billionaire buddies. Infantino, groveling like a man who’d barter his spine for a seat at the grown-ups’ table.”

A prophetic warning from Dorothy

In June 1939, Time magazine named journalist Dorothy Thompson one of the most influential women in America, and equally as influential as Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1931, Dorothy achieved what most thought impossible — a one-on-one interview with Adolf Hitler… she was granted just three questions. One of them went to the heart of the matter: “When you come to power, will you abolish the German Republic’s constitution?”

 “I will get into power legally,” he replied. “Then I will abolish parliament and the constitution afterward. I will found an authority-state — from the lowest cell to the highest instance; responsibility and authority above, discipline and obedience below.”

“It took about fifty seconds to measure his startling insignificance,” she later wrote. “He is the very prototype of the Little Man.”

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After their encounter, she published I Saw Hitler (1932), warning that he was a fanatic driven by racial hatred. Yet she doubted Germany would ever hand him real power.

Within a year, she was proven tragically wrong. When Hitler rose to power in 1933, Thompson became one of his fiercest critics abroad. Her reports described a nation slipping into terror — neighbours disappearing overnight, fear replacing freedom.

Her writing was so effective that Hitler reportedly ordered his staff to translate every one of her articles.

In 1934, the Nazi government expelled her — making Thompson the first American journalist banned from Germany.

“My offense,” she wrote in The New York Times, “was to think that Hitler is just an ordinary man. That is a crime against the reigning cult which says he is a Messiah sent by God to save Germany.”

“Tonight I listened to words taken straight from Hitler’s mouth,” she once said.

“It can happen here. No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He always represents himself as the instrument of the national will. When our dictator turns up, you can depend on it — he will be one of the boys.”