The PC and Perpetually Offended Brigade

[astfgyl]

The kite flying for the Far Right began long before these protests got going on the island. In fact if you look around european press about the rise of the far right you might almost get the impression that suddenly the press were thinking that a lot of people were suddenly going to start swinging that way from the centre or even left leaning positions. Now why would that kite be flown, I wonder? Could it be that government-sponsored press outlets all over europe were running pre-emptive cover for what their governments were about to do?

Anyway none of that matters now because the RTE story should see all the Coolock stuff disappear into the aether of buried news stories. It will be left to a few eejits on the twitter to earn their dole money by trying to keep it going but as we all know, once the news cycle moves on it is well and truly over and becomes as a half-forgotten dream or nightmare. See Covid being replacedby Ukraine as a prime example and Gaza replacing Ukraine as the same so I guess it's hard luck little far right boys and back on the gear for you all now for your kicks

[astfgyl]

Also, how come Migrant Rights Protesters aren't campaigning against the lads being housed in the asbestos-ridden old Crown Paints factory? Also it's sort of funny that the plantation is going into the Crown factory, given our history.

[astfgyl]

I've had a bit of a thought around an element of the current issues in Coolock: So I read rumours that there are some PSNI officers drafted into the area to help mop up The Troubles there. Now, I am not saying there is any truth in that because let's be fair we all know 90% or maybe more of all things that are said are bullshit and provably so from all sides of all arguments.

But it got me thinking: If it did turn out to be true, how would you lads here feel about that?

Would it be justified in efforts to protect Nigerian and Georgian (_{for example. I'm picking the largest groups outside of Ukrainians, who are obviously immune to any contempt whatsoever even if they were already living in other European countries and even in the likes of Canada but come here for the better deal to the first safe country they entered}) men from the wrath of the Filthy Irish Shitehawk Contingent (_{of whom the consensus about among us educated folk has long since been galvanised}), to accept Crown Forces policing in the republic on behalf of foreign interests(_{just when it's something us educated folk share consensus on})?

OR

Is it another tentative step on the road towards an All-Ireland approach to national sovereignty and as such should be welcomed, given that it might lead us to the promised land after all this time?

Now I'm going to say that didn't happen (even though there is a clear legal instrument allowing that to happen), but if it did, what would any of ye lads think of having Crown Forces expand their influence on Irish soil beyond the 6 counties that were left behind after the war?

[astfgyl]

https://x.com/BowesChay/status/1815915866137190881

This lad sounds rather unhappy but I think he isn't alone. I drove through Dublin a couple of weeks ago at about that time and I couldn't believe the place. It was like a ghost town and I went all the way through town from the Old Ballymun Road to John's road and I only saw one person on the street. Funnily enough I had the window down and the single person I saw said Howya in the window to me. It was actually that dead about the place. I used to live there back in the day and the difference is stark indeed. But the difference in a town in Tipp like where I am is just as stark.

I must come back to this tomorrow because I can lay out a few reasons why it's like this but for once I just can't be arsed this minute

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Well, won't be following that account    In fairness, he admits later on in the video, in the middle of his tedious morass of a political rant, that he's in the "best part of the city" and it's a Tuesday night outside of term time well after normal midweek closing hours. Plenty of well-to-do areas of London and Paris that are honestly just that dead late at night midweek, to answer his question about "what other capital city?"

But geographically skewed lens aside, do folk who live there or go there often find Dublin's deader at night compared to, say, 20 years ago? Must put the question to my couple of mates who still session as much as they did 20 years ago 

[astfgyl]

I'm no fan of that lad at all but even a stopped clock and all that. It's not the migrants though he's wrong about that. It's the exact same here where I am, town of about 10k in Tipp. 20 years ago after the two nightclubs closed, the square would be full of people on a Thursday Friday Saturday and Sunday and you'd be half an hour trying to get to the counter of one of the many takeaways for the Bad Burger^tm, but now half of the pubs are gone, there's one nightclub with about 20 stragglers, all the taxis are gone and the takeaways don't bother staying open after hours.

It wasn't the antisocial element, and it wasn't immigrants. It's just a plain fact that the towns are now dead. A lot of it is that the Irish between 20 and 35 are gone to Canada Australia and The Middle East and they are the folks who would have been out on those nights. Then there's the crash of 08 and then the covid era and even though we have plenty of population between 20 and 35, they don't go to the pub. The eastern europeans don't go, the islam lads don't go and the africans don't go and the price of pints is fucking cat so now the irish lads don't go either.

It's not like he's making out - that the streets are no-go because of immigrants or any of that, although the immigration has played its' part as I explained. What he describes there though about how dead it is, is everywhere.

[Trev]

But geographically skewed lens aside, do folk who live there or go there often find Dublin's deader at night compared to, say, 20 years ago? Must put the question to my couple of mates who still session as much as they did 20 years ago 

It's definitely deader. I very rarely head into town for pints now, but when I do there's nowhere near as much buzz around the place. Used to be the more popular places ye'd be crammed in, if you could even make it through the door, now you can find a spot wherever you like

Probably a few reasons, price is gone mental, even for cheaper pubs you're still looking at €7.50 a pint. Decades of shit city planning strangling any life or culture out of the place and replacing it with hotels. And the lack of any sort of garda presence and rise of junkies and scrotes makes the whole place somewhere worth avoiding really

[Trev]

I'm no fan of that lad at all but even a stopped clock and all that. It's not the migrants though he's wrong about that. It's the exact same here where I am, town of about 10k in Tipp. 20 years ago after the two nightclubs closed, the square would be full of people on a Thursday Friday Saturday and Sunday and you'd be half an hour trying to get to the counter of one of the many takeaways for the Bad Burger^tm, but now half of the pubs are gone, there's one nightclub with about 20 stragglers, all the taxis are gone and the takeaways don't bother staying open after hours.

It wasn't the antisocial element, and it wasn't immigrants. It's just a plain fact that the towns are now dead. A lot of it is that the Irish between 20 and 35 are gone to Canada Australia and The Middle East and they are the folks who would have been out on those nights. Then there's the crash of 08 and then the covid era and even though we have plenty of population between 20 and 35, they don't go to the pub. The eastern europeans don't go, the islam lads don't go and the africans don't go and the price of pints is fucking cat so now the irish lads don't go either.

Good point that. The missus is from Enniscorthy, the one late bar closed down last year, si there's nowhere to get a pint past midnight. Not that it really matters since there's only one taxi in the place, not one company, but one single taxi

For a town of 25k people that's fucking crazy

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Cheers Trev.

Rural/suburban town evolutions are always different to proper cities, so much so that I'm not sure they can really be compared. Like the one late bar/club in Greystones closed down years and years ago and that instantly changed the entire night life landscape of the town. Same way that one factory or industry shutting down can sometimes kill an entire rural community. But when the nightlife atmosphere of an entire major city shifts, there's definitely something deeper going on.

From what you've said about Dublin, plus that video (plus what my last standing party-life mates said  ) it sounds like things have progressively gotten more expensive than ever while simultaneously, on the security side of things (the city feeling rough, unsafe, etc.) it's regressed to something closer to where it was in the 80s. The opposed symptoms of an ever-widening social divide? Seems like that should be a focus!   

Also, to go back to yer man's video, this is why I find it particularly frustrating when people mix everything all up together, so at the end it's just mud instead of a set of clearly analyzable conditions. Like the EU is highly criticizable, von der Leyen especially, but they've got nothing to do with, for example, Dublin's exorbitant housing prices or drinks prices or any of that.

[The Great Cull]

Towns and cities are dead because young people don't socialise the way we used to. Pubs are an outdated and expensive option when you could be communicating online and spending the saved beer money on your appearance to in turn make you look better online.

The volume of younger people happy to not leave the house is staggering. They don't want the hassle, aren't interested in driving/being independent/having their own place but oddly also don't like being told what to do. They are able to get off their tits at home for a fiver with some cheaper illegal substances. Many prefer to live stream stuff as opposed to actually going out too.

A funny thing is though that in the 90s we drank so much we had a problem, and now that the pubs are empty it's also a problem.

[mickO)))]

The main reason pubs are empty is because people are fed up at being ripped off. What went on during the pandemic with the payments from the Government etc., asking people for vaccine certs to enter and the whole €10 for a soggy piece of beard thing rubbed a lot of people the wrong way then ever since things got back to normal the prices just keep going up and up.

Where I live Friday and Saturday nights would be packed then you would get decent crowds out on Thursday and Sunday. Now the nightclubs don't even open on Thursday or Sunday anymore. Most Saturdays are now what Thursdays were pre-pandemic. Pubs have been shooting themselves in the foot being too greedy and it is coming back to bite them in the ass now.

If they ever get around to bringing in this 6am thing that has been talked about for years now that might bring some new life back into things but they have missed the opportunity again this year as something like this should be brought in just as summer begins with the good weather and students being off for 3 months.

[Ollkiller]

Price of pints is why the pubs are fucked. My local back home in castlebar has Guinness for a fiver and gets a great crowd. Guinness is fucking awesome there as well (the cobweb if you're ever in castlebar)

[astfgyl]

All of the things said in the last few posts there are true. It's sad to see in a way but I rarely go out other than to someone's house myself these days either.

We also can't ignore the effect that the construction of the motorways has had on the towns that would have been on the National Primary Roads but are now unfortunately on the road to nowhere so that means closure of small local businesses of all sorts due to no passing through customers like there used to be.

The government was actually going to attempt to address this back in the mid 2000s with the decentralisation plan that was much talked about in the civil service back when I used to be in it, but the minute the crash happened, all that was stopped before it really got going, which is why you have odd government departments in nowhere places for no particular reason but back then it was a real plan to spread the wealth and opportunities around the country. A very much missed opportunity which we can probably than the bould Troika for, given that they insisted on cutting the shit out of things for the taxpayers but allowing the tax-spenders to still be little fucking rich bollixes after nearly ruining us all.

Then the Hitler Huts (Lidl and Aldi) got the foot in the door and fucking stamped the final jackboot into the faces of the little independent shops at the exact time it was all falling to shit, and lo and behold there were all the mortgage holders in negative equity channelling their pittance into multinationals instead of back into local economies, because they could no longer afford the extra few pence in the difference of shopping local and aiding any actual recovery of the suddenly smashed to pieces local economies. It was every man and woman for themselves and their own at that stage when the very roof over their heads was being threatened.

Then came the initial Great Wealth Transfer of the 21st Century, when the likes of NAMA bought up all of the bad debt properties from the small to medium sized developers who suddenly found that their credit lines had suddenly dried up and instantly folded, lucky to get away with anything other than bankruptcy. And what did NAMA then do with all those properties? Well of course they sold them to developers and vulture funds who were big enough to not have died in the crash, thus feeding the hungry multinational wolves some more and further squashing local enterprise under the thumb of International funding.

Well that was just the 2008 crash, and the recovery from that hadn't actually got going in earnest and here we fucking go - Covid. 44 Billion unaccountably spent and nothing to the taxpayer except some free vaccines that the pharma companies got paid for, thus facilitating the 2nd Great Wealth Transfer of the 21st Century, which I can't be arsed with this minute but needless to say you will all have that one fresh in the mind.

Now we have empty streets where once-thriving communities and cities have had the life literally fucking strangled out of them and we can all stay in our houses, ready for the digital-prison future.

Happy Days!!!

Re Ollkiller's price of pint thing, I still think a fiver is way too much for a single pint of beer, but you're right that is massive in terms of the pub footfall. Overall though, the towns in general are not thriving. Of course the knobs keep making it more expensive instead of getting more spent by making it cheaper the greedy shites too as if it isn't tough enough. You'd swear the thick cunts never played a game of Sim City....

[Carnage]

Similar to astfgyl above: town of around 8,000, add another few thousand for the catchment area. I can remember 27 pubs in the place, now there's 12 if you include the 2 hotels. Had 3 nightclubs, all closed now bar 1 that opens for the odd kiddie disco or bank holiday. Motorway bypassed the town about 15 years back, most of the big employers have closed (factories and a sizeable psychiatric hospital that employed a couple of thousand plus). Nobody's got money and, while the pubs kept the prices low for as long as they could, they couldn't absorb the prices hikes forever - pint of Guinness is €5.30 in most places, lager +50c, fuck knows what cider is now.

Add to that, the pubs that are still standing are mainly family owned & run, so no crippling mortgages or leases on top of their overheads, but they're pubs for oul' lads, nowhere for the young crowd to go really. Taxis are down in number, the one 'firm' that's left hiked their prices as they're the only game in town. Fuck them. And the same story with the chippers, most close at 10 or 11 even on the weekend.

It's a dead town with limited resources and infrastructure - so where better to dump 60 Ukrainian familes when there's no employment, no school places, no doctor availability, no facilities in general? Didn't need planning permission for those modular homes either.

[astfgyl]

Imagine what would happen at 3 quid a pint