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If you rely on Dublin Bikes to get around the country's capital city, you may want to consider investing in your very own two-wheeler because we mightn't have the service for very much longer.

According to councillor Mannix Flynn, who is a member of the transport committee, the service, which was launched in Dublin in 2009, "is hugely in danger of collapsing" for two specific reasons.

In addition to not having the means to extend the service, objections have been made to the addition of metropoles in the city centre.

According to the councillor, the service, which has previously been considered one of the most successful bike sharing schemes in the world, is currently making a loss.

Outlining the severity of the issue, he explained that the service is haemorrhaging almost €400,000 per year, and is "beginning to creak at the seams".

 

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Handing in your notice can be a nerve-wracking moment.

Unless you despised your position with every fibre of your being, most of us want to leave our job on a high note, and ensure we don't burn any bridges in the process.

And while some of us are incredibly pragmatic when it comes to the whole procedure, others tend to get a little more creative when saying goodbye to their current position.

Take this Reddit user, for example.

Upon deciding to quit his job, he came to the conclusion that his employer's loss was bigger than his own, and chose to illustrate as much by opting for a sympathy card.

Containing the words 'Even though you knew this time would come, there's no way to prepare your heart for such a loss," Alex signed off the card with the day's date and a brief '2-week's notice' finisher.

I just quit my job the best way I know how.

And the internet is absolutely loving it.

"I like the cut of your jib" wrote one Reddit user while another revealed: "I'm planning on putting in my notice on Friday. I've been trying to figure out what to say. This is great inspiration!"

Hmmm, we don't know about that one…

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So, it doesn't exactly sound like the Suicide Squad cast fully nailed it in the performance stakes, but when it came to the aesthetic for the highly-anticipated superhero flick, it looks like those guys gave it their all.

Having to share the vast majority of her screen-time with a pair of miniscule hot pants, Margot Robbie dedicated herself to a work-out regime which anyone can recreate…as long as they have three hours a day to spare.

According to Margot's trainer, Andie Hecker, in the run-up to a scene which shows her in little more than a bra and fishnets, the Aussie actress exercised for a staggering three hours per day.

Opting for a Pilates-based routine as opposed to high-intensity interval training, Margot worked herself into the shape which has gotten movie-goers talking since the first sneak peeks of the film leaked earlier this year.

In addition to incorporating extra reps into a standard Pilates routine, Margot's trainer also included swimming sessions as well as a ballet-inspired jumping circuit which saw Margot perform ballet jumps, jump rope, and make use of a rebounder trampoline.

Acknowledging that the actress was not required to prioritise any one body part over another, Andie told Cosmopolitan: "It was very important to me to keep her regiment well-rounded in order to condition the entire body and not overwork any one muscle group."

Between Margot's regime and Gigi Hadid's dedication to the gym mat, we can just FEEL our motivation increasing…well, ya know, kinda.

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If you – like millions others – blame your little handheld device for being unable to concentrate on a book for more than ten minutes these days, you may want to try a little bit harder… for the good of your health.

While so many of us can happily devote 12 hours to a Netflix binge, the thoughts of spending an hour alone with a book while our phone charges in another room is enough to bring an embarrassing number of us out in a cold sweat.

But in addition to all the standard benefits associated with reading, experts have recently established that those who read tend to live longer lives than those who don't.

In a study of more than 3,500 individuals over the age of 50, scientists discovered that those who read for up to 3.5 hours a week were 17% less likely to die in the following 12 years while those who read more than that were 23% less likely.

Commenting on the findings, Becca R. Levy, a professor of epidemiology at Yale University said: "People who report as little as a half-hour a day of book reading had a significant survival advantage over those who did not read."

Researchers established that, on average, regular readers tend to live two years longer than those who don't.

Ladies, it's time to attack that book pile by the bed.

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There are people who, following a well-intentioned trip back to the parents’ homestead, leave feeling drained, mildly irritated, with an acute awareness of their family’s numerous shortcomings.

And then there are liars.

Because even those who step back over the threshold of their childhood home with the best of intentions (and a desire to talk to people who don't take photos of their dinner) ultimately find themselves questioning how they ever lived with these humans for a prolonged period of time.

A trip home is like viewing adulthood through the eyes of a child.

It looks great, it sounds great… and then you get there.

And it’s more stressful, more exhausting and has a lot less ice cream than you were promised.

Returning to the family home for a weekend feels like a balancing act – one where you’re on fire, the tightrope is on fire, and the person holding the extinguisher won’t help because ‘aren’t you doing a grand job looking after yourself’.

Chores you were tasked with as a teen are now apparently beyond your capabilities because things have changed since you flew the nest.

“Don’t give him the purple dish, for Jaysus sake. That cat won’t eat out of the purple dish,” you'll be told as you watch the cat eat happily out the purple dish – zero f*cks given.

And tasks which you’d gladly forego for two days – because you spend half your life doing them now – are heaped upon you at every available opportunity.

“Help your dad with the washing, good woman. He won’t use the dishwasher because it made an extra beep last February and he thinks we’ll be burned in our beds.”

Moving out of the family home also gives your parents the distinct impression that your general interests have drastically changed.

You’ll follow your mother around the garden as she points out every item she’s painted since you last visited and you’ll shadow your father as he guides you through the latest additions to his stash of old-fashioned stationary, and this is because they genuinely think it’s now your thing.

Oh, you were a self-obsessed gobshite when you lived there – cared about nothing but yourself, the WiFi router and the contents of the freezer – but now you’re different.

Now, apparently, you want to talk dado rails, dustbusters, funerals and the fact the neighbour’s house looks the absolute biz with those hanging baskets.

And this is because when your parents try to do it with each other, they may as well be shouting into the abyss.

Whether you tuned their conversations out when you actually lived with them (that’ll be the self-obsessed part) or this bizarre conversational quirk is an entirely new development, a trip home will act as a reminder that most couples – after a certain age – possess the ability to conduct two separate conversations… at the same time.

Refereeing a conversation between your parents the morning after your mother plied you with red wine – something which she refused to do years previously –  is as welcome a notion as a baby at a Donald Trump rally, and yet it's your principle role on your return home.

Oh, you know it’s only couple of days, you know you’re being a bit of a d*ck, but you can’t help yourself.

Progress outside the family home; regress inside the family home.

At best, you berate yourself for your lack of patience and, at worst, you actually begin to care about dado rails.

So you take a deep breath, mentally wipe the slate clean, show some interest in the new curtains, and then give up… until next time, that is.

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There have been more times than we care to admit where we've had to be convinced by loved ones to remove our pyjamas and properly dress ourselves before leaving the house for some much-needed joe.

Whether we're hungover and need a grande Americano to settle our nerves or sideways with exhaustion and need a quick Espresso to sort us out, much of our desire for coffee comes when we're rocking a dressing gown.

And you know where you can wear a dressing gown with very few people seeing you? That's right, the safety of your own car.

So, we are PUMPED that Starbucks has decided to open its first-ever drive-thru store in Ireland, but we're a little less pumped that it might just take a few hours to get there…

Set to open in Belfast at the beginning of next year, you're going to have to decide whether your need for caffeine without being seen is as strong as you have always maintained it is.

"The decision by Starbucks to choose Connswater as its first location in Northern Ireland for a drive-through store demonstrates the confidence that retailers have in the scheme and its strategic location in east Belfast,"  said Laura McCarthy of Killultagh Estates.

Asset manager for the company which has signed a deal with the global coffee chain, Laura added: "With such positive activity taking place we believe that now is the right time to invest in the wider project."

OK, so it's not as close as we'd like, but with a little enthusiasm it'll hit the capital in no time, right?
 

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If you've found yourself questioning how easy it would be to accidentally-on-purpose forget to scan an item or two when using the self-service check-outs in your local supermarket, you're most definitely not alone.

Whether it comes down to sheer fury that you've tried and failed to scan a particular item or you harbour a niggling desire to beat the system, the introduction of self-service tills has reportedly had a profound effect on consumers' moral compasses.

According to research from the University of Leicester, the availability of self-service devices has seen an increase in the level of theft experienced by supermarkets, with figures indicating a 122% increase when items are self-scanned.

The data which harnessed information from a staggering 12 million shopping trips across four countries do much to highlight the inadequacies of the system.

While retailers can invest less in staff and technology, and customers are seduced by the convenience of the service, the downsides are numerous.

Commenting on the results of the study, Professor Adrian Beck of the Department of Criminology explained that the negative implications of supermarket self-service are being acknowledged more and more by retailers.

"Retailers are becoming aware of these problems and introducing ways of 'amplifying' risk in the mobile scan and pay environment, trying to ensure that all that ends up in the basket also makes it onto the receipt."

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When I was nine, I was called a ‘slut’ by a boy about a year older than me.

I was making my way past him and his equally gormless friend when he said it.

“Sluh”, he hissed.

I remember pausing momentarily and looking at him in bewilderment before abruptly continuing towards the playing field at the side of the school.

I didn’t tell anyone – for no other reason than I didn’t deem it interesting enough – but I did mull it over for a few days.

And another 20 years.

I remember wondering what it was that made him say it to me.

Did he know what it meant?

Did I even know what it meant?

Who was he repeating and wasn’t he scared he’d get in trouble if a teacher heard him?

At the age of nine, I had – unsurprisingly – no experience of boys except in a platonic sense, so eventually I came to the conclusion that his decision to utter that particular word came down to one of two things.

It was either what I was wearing – a pair of navy Umbro shorts and a vest top.

Or how I was walking – I had recently heard Geri Halliwell use the word ‘strut’ so I was attempting – and no doubt failing – to embody my ginger idol.

I spent the rest of the day pulling at the hem of my shorts and berating myself for not choosing longer ones that morning.

At the age of nine and coming to the end of third class, my understanding of the word slut was unsurprisingly limited.

What I had gleaned, however, was that it worked as a way to describe girls who strayed outside the lines.

If we're talking colouring books, these ladies were total Mavericks.

I had, further to this, established that certain clothes were off-limits to me and particular behaviour was off-limits to girls in general.

So, with the benefits of third class Maths and less than a decade on this planet, I put two and two together, and came to the conclusion that I had overstepped the mark in one of these two ways.

Hand-me-downs from girls my age or older – which often found their way into our home in a black bin liner which signalled more excitement than Christmas morning –  were often scrutinised,  and regularly deemed ‘unsuitable’ for me.

Too short. Too grown-up. Too strappy.

And there were things that the boys in my family could do which simply weren’t an option for us girls.

The summer before, I had spent a fortnight abroad with my family, and inspired by both the sickening heat and the boys I was playing with, I decided to bite the bullet and ditch my top.

Positioning my elbows into the hem of my Snoopy T-shirt, I hoisted it upwards only to be told that ‘little girls keep their tops on with their shorts’.

Oh, it’s grand for the boys, but the girls were going to have to spontaneously combust before they could get away with it.

In the grand scheme of things, I was treated the same as my brother and male classmates, but I was aware – on some level – that there was an onus on girls, from a very young age, to consider how they were perceived by the outside world.

Certain clothes and behaviour were indicative of how you might come across to others, but from what I could see – and here is the important part – this only applied if you were female.

I have no memory of my brother’s wardrobe being the subject of debate in my family home, nor do I ever recall him being prevented from doing something because it wasn’t gentlemanly.

He was a young lad, he didn’t need to be gentlemanly; he was just having the craic, sure.

But have too much craic as a girl, and you teeter perilously close to the realm of the unladylike.

At nine, I knew the word ‘slut’ wasn’t a good thing.

I knew it was used as an insult, and I knew there wasn’t a hope of that boy getting the Friday Taz bar if I bothered pulling on a jacket sleeve and spilling all to a teacher.

And yet, despite knowing all of this, I questioned myself instead of questioning him.

My thought process focussed far too much on my culpability and far too little on his.

What had I done to trigger that remark instead of what had he been taught of girls to consider it acceptable.

What had I been thinking opting for those shorts instead of what had he been thinking singling me out to road-test a word reserved solely for girls.

Why had I thought it was OK to ‘spice girl strut’ instead of why had he thought it was OK to single me out?

But sure look, what did I know?

I was nine-years-old with more than a passing resemblance to Meg from Family Guy, and very little life experience from which to mould my perspective.

It was 20 years ago, I was a primary school student, and thankfully we've all moved on so much since then.

Oh, wait.
 

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The vast majority of us check if a bar has WiFi before we go trawling through Facebook for the best shot of our latest Tinder date, and if they're a no-go on that front, we simply resort to 3G – no biggie.

Unfortunately for patrons of The Gin Tub in the UK, this is no longer an option as the bar's owner, Steve Tyler, has made the decision to cut off his customers' internet connection in an effort to re-ignite traditional pub culture.

By applying silver foil and copper mesh to the walls his bar in Hove, Steve headed his customers off at the pass by preventing them from using 3G when they realised Wi-Fi wasn't an option.

"I just wanted people to enjoy a night out in my bar, without being interrupted by their phones," he told Sky News. "So rather than asking them not to use their phones, I stopped the phones working."

And while electronic jamming devices are illegal, Steve's approach to reception interference is based on a method by physicist Michael Faraday, and is somewhat of a legal grey area.

Commenting on The Gin Tub's unique approach to patrons spending the night staring at their phones, a spokesperson for Ofocm said:" Unlike jammers, Faraday cages don’t proactively cause interference, although they do interfere with mobile reception."

According to a report in The Metro, The Gin Tub's experiment is going down a treat with customers, and those who are in dire need for a quick surf on the world wide web simply step outside if necessary.

You go, Gin Club…we think.
 

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It’s no secret that that the renting situation in Ireland – and most specifically Dublin – is a total nightmare right now, but most of us like to think that once we finally secure a place, we’re away in a hack.

Unfortunately, however, that hasn’t been the case for a staggering 60 percent of renters in Ireland.

According to a survey conducted by the Union of Students in Ireland in association with Red C, more than half of tenants surveyed claimed they experienced difficulties when seeking the return of their deposit from respective landlords.

And, unfortunately for third-level students, it appears they are easy targets for landlords who have failed to register with the Private Residential Tenancies Board.

While acknowledging that this isn’t the case across the board, President of the Union of Students of Ireland Annie Hoey did highlight the various way landlords have attempted to manipulate the system.

“I think we find sometimes unscrupulous landlords who don't register with the PRTB, that target students and then … say oh this is broken or did you not know there was a cleaning charge,” she explained.

“Very often students are transient groups and they don't have time to be staying around, waiting for this deposit to be returned, as they go off to work, on J1's.”

Commenting on the results of the survey, Fintan McNamara of the Residential Landlords Association has condemned the behaviour of a small number of landlords, but fears the results of the survey will see the introduction of a ‘custodial deposit scheme’ where a deposit is paid to an independent body.

Insisting that these schemes have failed when implemented in the UK, Mr. McNamara  has instead argued for the imposition of fines for landlords found to be withholding deposits.

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Hovering near the scales – also known as The Sad Step – before gingerly stepping onboard often signals the beginning of a fitness and nutrition plan which you SWEAR you're going to stick to this time.

And while experts are blue in the face reminding us not to get hung up on a single number and focus instead on dress size, muscle mass and measuring tapes, many of can't bring ourselves to ignore that scales completely.

Reminding her followers that weight gain doesn't equate with failure, one fitness blogger took to Instagram to share a snap which shows her at three different weights.

Despite a difference of just 5lbs between her original weight and current size, it's clear the blogger's body has undergone an incredible transformation.

"When I first started #bbg I was 8 weeks post partum and 145 lbs," she wrote.  "I weighed 130 before getting pregnant, so based on nothing besides my own warped perception, I decided my "goal weight" should be 122 and to fit into my skinniest jeans."

 
After reaching that goal, the blogger explains that she then gained 18 lbs and began changing her perspective on weight, writing: "I finally learned to start measuring my progress by things that matter — strength, ability, endurance, health, and HAPPINESS."

"Take progress photos and videos," she advises. "Record how many push-ups you can do, ect. And if you can, your BFP — there is only a 5 lb difference between my starting and current weight, but my body composition has changed COMPLETELY."

 "And if I didn't say #screwthescale long ago, I would have gave up on my journey," she admits. "So to the little teeny tiny voice in the back of my head that still said "wtf is this- not 140!?" last week when I stepped on the scale, I say SCREW. YOU."

This girl is our new fantasy BFF.

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Love them or loathe them, tattoos are almost as common a body modification as ear piercing or self-tanning, but according to recent research getting inked carries far more risks than many people realise.

In research which was conducted by the European Chemicals Agency, there exist a number of potential health risks when choosing certain colours for your tat of choice.

According to The Independent, scientists have established that the composition of certain tattoo ink can make them more toxic than others.

"Many reports show significant concerns for public health stemming from the composition of inks used for tattooing," experts asserted ahead of the study's publication.

"The most severe concerns are allergies caused by the substances in the inks and possible carcinogenic, mutagenic or reproductively toxic effects," scientists explained.

Research concluded that red ink has been linked to dermatitis due to the presence of mercury sulphide while blue, green and purple ink are known to cause granulomas – which are characterised as little ridges or bumps on the skin.

Further to this research, the NHS in the UK have issued a warning regarding the use of black or neutral henna, saying: "If you see a shop or stall offering to paint black tattoos onto your skin, don’t be tempted to get one."

"It could leave you scarred for life and put you at risk of a life-threatening allergic reaction," they added.

As it stands, inks are not currently regulated within the EU, and if considered harmful will be banned.

Confirming the position, a spokesperson for the European Chemicals Agency said: "If it is found that a restriction is needed, a formal proposal to restrict the substances will be submitted within one year to initiate the process."

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