The one thing protest.

lalababa

This might have been tried before but here goes...there are many people complaining about many things on many forums....so why don't they decide on just ONE thing and plan a big protest.
Can one of the more techie types put up a vote pie chart to decide on what area the one thing will be in. Once the area is voted on then we will have another vote to get the one thing.
Then we vote on a date and march on RTE not the parliament , because I think it would be more effective and something different as well.
Then we drum up support for the protest on forums, Facebook, Snapchat, at work, at home etc.

Suggested areas.

1. Environment (green issues, energy etc.)

2.Housing (affordability, availability, height restrictions in cities, etc.)

3.Wefare state ( types of payments, council housing, etc.)

4. Insurance ( starting a national car insurance system,pay out culture, litigation costs, court system, etc.)

5.law and order ( revolving door, bail, previous convictions, lack of Gardai/punishment , etc.)

Actually Let's keep it to these 5 or we will never stop.

kneemos

Wouldn't be confident of a big turnout by the looks of it.

Forget marching on RTE, I would bulldoze the place.

Collie D

Are we marching for or against the things on that list? For example I could be swayed to join you on the law and order issue but I'd be against the revolving door system

hatrickpatrick

It won't work, because there will always be some absolute scumbags (Eirigí I'm looking at ye :mad:) who will try to hijack any protest and (a) broaden its scope to the point of incomprehension, and even worse (b) break off from the main organised protest in order to blockade the junctions North and South of O'Connell bridge and therefore piss the entire city off while robbing the genuine protesters of the publicity they deserve for organising their march.

What the solution is, I'm honestly not sure. It's like clockwork that these f*ckers screw up every single large protest anyone tries to hold in Dublin City. I was a member of Save Our Seafront in Sandycove-Dun Laoghaire throughout my teen years and I honestly believe that one of the reasons we were successful in garnering local support and ultimately killing the council's high rise privatisation plans was because our protests were always civilised - we agreed a route beforehand with the Gardaí, they closed particular roads for the duration of the march, and then we finished up in a public green space or the pavement outside the town hall, away from traffic, to have our speeches and megaphone rally.

Not once did any scumbags decide that the proper way to protest was to, for example, sit down on the crossroads between Marine Road and Crofton Road, thereby blocking the 46A bus route for literally the entirety of Dublin. That element simply wasn't involved. If it had been, I have little doubt that the movement would have petered out because more people were pissed off about being late for college or work on account of Dublin's largest bus route being shut down for the day than were pissed off about the actual subject of the protest.

If one were to be entirely cynical, it wouldn't be a huge stretch to imagine that some of these Eirigí scumbags are paid off by the establishment to deliberately destroy protest movements and prevent them from gaining any traction. It's happened multiple times in the past right across Western society with various different protest movements - the truly militant and unpleasant element was "planted" there with the explicit intention of damaging the movement's brand. However, there are enough genuine scumbags in Dublin that Occam's Razor would lean towards these people just being out and out pr!cks.

Either way, this is sadly why I don't see a protest like this working out.

OldMrBrennan83

You're only lessening the importance of the other four by lumping them in with something as irrelevant as environment.

Patww79

Patww79 wrote: »

You're only lessening the importance of the other four by lumping them in with something as irrelevant as environment.

What about the environment you go fishing in, like this one for instance.

OldMrBrennan83

[Deleted User] wrote: »

What about the environment you go fishing in, like this one for instance.

I don't fish, either in reality or in the way you're saying but not saying for some reason. It's only fishing if you're saying something you don't firmly believe.

super_furry

Bring back square t-bags and/or Bear in the Big Blue House bacon snacks.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Well, travellers obviously.

NO one seems to give a **** about anything else any more

Roger Hassenforder

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

Well, travellers obviously.

NO one seems to give a **** about anything else any more

Its only a matter of time before some angry rural peasant brings travellers into a thread.

PopePalpatine

Patww79 wrote: »

You're only lessening the importance of the other four by lumping them in with something as irrelevant as environment.

Did some hippy pour soy sauce on your gammon?

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Roger Hassenforder wrote: »

Its only a matter of time before some angry rural peasant brings travellers into a thread.

Obviously not a reference to me considering I',m neither angry not rural. The peasant thing is open to debate, admittedly.

Anyway. question was asked, question as answered. If you can't contrubute anything worthwhile, I'd suggest you don't.

OldMrBrennan83

PopePalpatine wrote: »

Did some hippy pour soy sauce on your gammon?

You're the second one now. Why do all you huggers speak in code?

Roger Hassenforder

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

Obviously not a reference to me considering I',m neither angry not rural. The peasant thing is open to debate, admittedly.

Anyway. question was asked, question as answered. If you can't contrubute anything worthwhile, I'd suggest you don't.

Theres a traveller thread in full swing. No need for traveller creep into more!

_Brian

The overwhelming truth is Irish people just don’t protest to any scale at all, it’s jist not in us as a nation.

Plus life in Ireland is actually very good, yea there’s stuff I’d love to see done better but in general it’s a good country to live in.
There’s plenty of decent paying work, of you bother to educate yourself or get a decent skill then it’s easy to earn enough to have a decent life.

I think the two biggest problems are housing and healthcare.

For housing people on social welfare looking to stay on state supplied houses need to forget about being housed in busy urban areas, push them out into regional towns where there is more space at less cost to the tax payer, let them start new lives there and if they want to better themselves let them find paying work.

Healthcare and indeed public sector in general, I’ve no problem with wage levels, what the public services needs is proper accountability. There needs to be repercussions for mistakes and poor performance.

Lastly direct provision is a stain on the country. Make decisions on asylum seekers, either let them stay and life lives or deny their asylum and send them back to their origin country. Racking and stacking them for decades in privately skein centres is disgusting behaviour, we are capable of better.

sKeith

Roger Hassenforder wrote: »

Its only a matter of time before some angry rural peasant brings travellers into a thread.

Is that Hassenforder's law?

green shoots

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

I was a member of Save Our Seafront in Sandycove-Dun Laoghaire throughout my teen years and I honestly believe that one of the reasons we were successful in garnering local support and ultimately killing the council's high rise privatisation plans was because our protests were always civilised - we agreed a route beforehand with the Gardaí, they closed particular roads for the duration of the march, and then we finished up in a public green space or the pavement outside the town hall, away from traffic, to have our speeches and megaphone rally.(

The affluence of the area had nothing to do with the scrapping of the plans then?

green shoots

Patww79 wrote: »

You're only lessening the importance of the other four by lumping them in with something as irrelevant as environment.

How is environment irrelevant?

OldMrBrennan83

green shoots wrote: »

How is environment irrelevant?

Because I'll be long gone before it's an issue, and all the rubbish around environment now is inconvenient to me.

OldMrBrennan83

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Pat searching for a shovel...

Can none of you just come out and say something, you're never very convincing with the stupid little coded jabs.

Patww79

Patww79 wrote: »

Because I'll be long gone before it's an issue, and all the rubbish around environment now is inconvenient to me.

It's already an issue, unless you live in a cave.

P_1

Patww79 wrote: »

Because I'll be long gone before it's an issue, and all the rubbish around environment now is inconvenient to me.

Charming.

Self centered and entitled.

OldMrBrennan83

[Deleted User] wrote: »

It's already an issue, unless you live in a cave.

It's not though. The pandemonium around it is the issue.

wexie

Deleted User wrote: »

It's already an issue, unless you live in a cave.

Tell me that it would surprise you if he did?

wexie

wexie wrote: »

Tell me that it would surprise you if he did?

Mongo like candy.

OldMrBrennan83

P_1 wrote: »

Charming.

Self centered and entitled.

Self centered, yes.
Entitled, no.
Charming, if you say so.

green shoots

Patww79 wrote: »

It's not though. The pandemonium around it is the issue.

Pandemonium? It's being TOTALLY ignored. 60% of all wildlife have been wiped out since the 70s, totally ignored by our government and all governments really. We need tough policies put in place if we have any hope of saving our environment. It's not going to happen because greed and money rules all, so don't worry, our environment is going to get a lot worse which will probably make you happy.

OldMrBrennan83

green shoots wrote: »

Pandemonium? It's being TOTALLY ignored. 60% of all wildlife have been wiped out since the 70s, totally ignored by our government and all governments really. We need tough policies put in place if we have any hope of saving our environment. It's not going to happen because greed and money rules all, so don't worry, our environment is going to get a lot worse which will probably make you happy.

There's a big difference between being happy and not caring so you can remove that one from your decks Mr spinmaster.

super_furry

Patww79 wrote: »

Because I'll be long gone before it's an issue, and all the rubbish around environment now is inconvenient to me.

Feel free to speed it up.


Mod-Banned

OldMrBrennan83

super_furry wrote: »

Feel free to speed it up.

This is an excellent post for me to see if this forum is moderated with an agenda or not. Cheers.

somefeen

PopePalpatine wrote: »

Did some hippy pour soy sauce on your gammon?

Aww man I'd be so pissed off if that happened to me.

green shoots

Patww79 wrote: »

There's a big difference between being happy and not caring so you can remove that one from your decks Mr spinmaster.

Well at least we know someone like you probably wont be adding children to our unsustainable population

OldMrBrennan83

green shoots wrote: »

Well at least we know someone like you probably wont be adding children to our unsustainable population

Hardly. I'd care then.

green shoots

Patww79 wrote: »

Hardly. I'd care then.

I wont even bother you're just a miserable git.

Anesthetize

This has echos of the 'Boiling Frog' story.

Roger Hassenforder

sKeith wrote: »

Is that Hassenforder's law?

Might make that my sig!!

sKeith

Roger Hassenforder wrote: »

Might make that my sig!!

Hassenforder's law (or Hassenforder's rule of traveller analogies) is a After Hours adage asserting that "As an After Hours discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving travellers approaches 1"; that is, if an After Hours discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to travellers or their deeds, the point at which effectively the discussion or thread often ends.

oneilla

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

.

. I was a member of Save Our Seafront in Sandycove-Dun Laoghaire throughout my teen years and I honestly believe that one of the reasons we were successful in garnering local support and ultimately killing the council's high rise privatisation plans was because our protests were always civilised - we agreed a route beforehand with the Gardathey closed particular roads for the duration of the march, and then we finished up in a public green space or the pavement outside the town hall, away from traffic, to have our speeches and megaphone rally.

(

Was Richard Boyd Barret not involved with that?

hatrickpatrick

green shoots wrote: »

The affluence of the area had nothing to do with the scrapping of the plans then?

The affluence of the area was what drove the plans into being created in the first place. The council saw big bags of cash when they envisioned building a sprawling, private apartment complex on filled-in foreshore and selling it on the private market. The plans failed because the protests against them were astronomically large given the size of the area (10,000 people came to the biggest one IIRC), and probably to a lesser extent because prominent celebrities such as Ronnie Drew and Christy Moore got involved.

My point is though, if the earliest protests against the plan - when hardly anyone had heard of it and we were lucky to get a few hundred people marching - had descended into the kind of deliberately antagonistic "ruin everyone's day for some cheap publicity" bullsh!t and downright scumbaggery which almost every large protest in the city centre turns into once the "blockade all the traffic crossing the Liffey" crowd gets involved, I guarantee you that the movement would never have grown beyond those initial few hundred die hard supporters who were there from the start. People rightly don't want to get involved in that kind of utter toxicity, and I don't blame them for a second. If Save Our Seafront had emerged into the media with initial headlines of "TRAVEL CHAOS FOR STUDENTS AND PENSIONERS AS PROTESTERS SHUT DOWN DUBLIN'S BUSIEST BUS ROUTE", many, many of the ordinary concerned citizens who showed up to subsequent marches wouldn't have touched the campaign with a ten foot barge pole.

Some might say that it's unfair that a minority of scumbags have the power to discredit a much bigger legitimate protest movement in this way - it only takes a few dozen people to shut down a traffic thoroughfare - but rightly or wrongly, that's just the way it is. This problem needs to be addressed in some way before large scale protests in Dublin City Centre can become successful beyond the truly exception cases such as the water protests.

This is just my opinion, obviously. But I'd wager that many people feel this way. The simple and indisputable face that these militant traffic blockades steal the media spotlight from the main protest and turn it to the fallout for city workers and students is surely a big enough problem in and of itself - protests only work when the media reports on them, after all.

lalababa

Any tech minded person around for the vote thingy?