Very Happy New Year From Thurles

For many, many generations, our local community, which makes up Thurles & its environs, has served a vital role in offering comradeship and vital necessary supports to its local population.

In today world as we attempt to exist within an environment of severe recession, we realise our local community is fast changing in leaderless style, mainly due to what is being forced upon us, namely busy demanding schedules, unjust taxes, modern technology, youth emigration & adult unemployment.

This current scenario makes it harder for each person to feel any real sense of community support, leading to depression, loneliness and a feeling of almost complete segregation. Such feelings eventually will lead to community breakdown through mental illness, substance abuse & increased violence against the individual and the local neighbourhood.

While Irish cities appear presently to be losing the very idea of community support, as recognised by increased crime & violence, rural town communities like Thurles, still remain, for the most part, interactive & still offering positive support to others in our midst.

For 2013 let us all make a few New Year resolutions:-

Join a local social organization or club.
Volunteer, we need your varied talents locally.
Talk to neighbours & friends, especially those of different backgrounds or indeed those with a different perspective other than your own.
Support schools & churches and you will quickly find that both the latter are the cornerstones in any thriving community.
Buy from your local retailers, for here lays your future employment & organizations financial support.

In the words of public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in woman suffrage and world peace, Jane Addams, “The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.”

From all here at Thurles.Info may we wish each one of you, at home & abroad, a very happy & prosperous new year ahead.