Off Topic Thread 5.0

fitz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121200528#Comment_121200528

Very much enjoyed Ahsoka, but I think Andor is the best Star Wars since Empire.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121203415#Comment_121203415

Yes. I prefer Andor to Ahsoka, but Andor was a very different vibe and tone and for a more mature audience. Two episodes set in a very grim prison environment is very much new territory for star wars!

fitz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121203633#Comment_121203633

Absolutely. Personally, I'd like to see more of that style of storytelling set in the SW universe. Andor showed that it's well suited to it.

Dave_The_Sheep

Anyone else getting a lot of Boards just failing to load pages lately? Just saying Oh there's a problem and **** off. Reload fixes it but still.

(As if to make my point my first attempt to post this failed)

Dubinusa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121212256#Comment_121212256

All the time.

pickarooney

Constantly

OldRio

Yup. A constant problem.

Patsy167

Just for a bit of fun - which of the below World Cup Teams would your provincial side beat? (full strength with internationals included)

Is there an AIL side that would beat any of these?

South Africa

France

New Zealand

Ireland

Wales

England

Scotland

Argentina

Australia

Italy

Japan

Fiji

Georgia

Tonga

Namibia

Samoa

Portugal

Chile

Uruguay

Romania

hold my beer

Edit, this is the off topic thread.

Pudsy33

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121223311#Comment_121223311

I'd fancy Terenure or Clontarf to be competitive against Namibia.

Getting my mind off the weekend so decided to ruin two perfectly good pumpkins which randomly grew in the garden, this year...

jacothelad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121247074#Comment_121247074

Damn. Ulster could have signed those two. Probably better than some of the forwards.

jacothelad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opxhh9Oh3rg&list=PL0jp-uZ7a4g_wUzbgU_US9V7h-HR1TyIh&index=2

For people of my generation this is really interesting.

hold my beer

R

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121312945#Comment_121312945

RTE1 playing it now

sydthebeat

https://youtu.be/AW55J2zE3N4

theyve polished it a best as they could but its still a cutting room floor job.

Not as strong as 'free as a bird' or 'Real love' but theres a darkness to it that the other two dont have, which i find appealing.

hold my beer

Shocking what happened earlier in Dublin. Fingers crossed those affected make a full recovery.

The absolute state of those rioting in the City. It's shocking that we don't seem to have enough resources allocated to policing to deal with trouble like this.

Clegg

The Gardai kept telling us the far right wasn't a problem.

Guess what? They're destroying the bloody city.

Dubinusa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121408382#Comment_121408382

Looks to me from the videos that it was the regular shytes! Don't be alarmed lads, I grew up amongst these lads. Very poor to look at. I used to see a lot of this when I was a whelp.

Dubinusa

Looked like the Gardai have their hands tied. When I was a nipper, they used to batter the **** outta feckers like this.

Lord Palmerston

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121413354#Comment_121413354

It definitely was the regular run of the mill scumbags looting the shops etc later on, but to me it was still somewhat surprising just how big of a "far right" turnout there was at the scene of the crime relatively quickly.

There are news clips from journalists at the scene of the crime very shortly after the news had broken and already you've 10's if not 100's of people there shouting highly enlightened things like "foreigners out".

Drew Harris has said multiple times over the past 6 months that the far right aren't gaining a foothold here, but they still seem to be out in larger numbers than I expected. His position looks untenable to me right now (along with the Minister for Justice).

If there was ever a night for a Lansdowne batton charge...

Dubinusa

Lowlife don't need much of a reason to act the bullocks.

In my opinion the justice system in Ireland is soft.

ersatz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121413600#Comment_121413600

The far right have proven time and again that they can turn out gangs of scumbags in Dublin, blocking traffic, burning buildings and tents, etc. it’s happened numerous times and the cops have sat on their hands. It’s not a resources issue, these are poltical choices, if republicans or anarchists were blocking access to the airport or burning buildings there would be no resources problem. Being generous I’d say this stuff doesn’t register w FFG/cops/media because it doesn’t show up in opinion polls, far right have zero electoral base, etc. but it’s been obvious since covid that they can produce chaos en route to building a poltical base.

Dubinusa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121413617#Comment_121413617

Just wondering about the lack of police readiness, is there a shortage? Are they restrained from using force?

phog

Those bastards that organised last night's riot are planning a meet-up again tonight in D4

Be careful up there

https://twitter.com/RobertBohan/status/1728129966892777785?t=v7t-jIxjQvIZYtdUyl_uhQ&s=19

ersatz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121413707#Comment_121413707

There are a couple of dozen far right grifters and a couple of organized but tiny far right political parties that have been steadily organizing under the "Ireland is full" banner for a few years. They franchise into homophobic anti lgtbq stuff around libraries and book shops where the harass staff and have managed to force some libraries to close. This stuff is well documented and well understood by anyone paying attention and it exploits a real issue in Ireland which is that there is a shortage of housing and massive housing inflation which the state is literally refusing to address. For whatever reason the cops have not taken the threat posed by the far right seriously, maybe because they are politically sympathetic or maybe because they don't see the far right as a threat to the state in the same way they see the left and republicanism as a threat to the state. This tolerant attitude extends to the dept of Justice.

At the same time Drew Harris is very unpopular among the rank and file, there was a vote of no confidence in him at the AGSI conference recently, which I think is unprecedented in Ireland. The reasons for his unpopularity include his efforts to restructure the guards which affects OT, scheduling, discipline and other conditions of work stuff that members don't like. Harris is also former RUC and close to brit intelligence/Fine Gael so may have his own particular ideas about the far right and the nature of their threat or their usefulness. Their political targets have been the left (Paul Murphy, etc) and Sinn Fein and I imagine there are vested interests that regard SF and socialists as a far greater threat to the status quo than right wing live streamers going after refugees living in rural B&Bs. But on the Harris question there may be internal Garda politics playing out here, Id say he is under real pressure for his job today, as much as McIntee is under pressure for hers.

I keep hearing that the issue around public safety in Dublin is a Garda resourcing problem but that's an easy answer that doesn't really stack up. It was trotted out when that American tourist was assaulted a few moths ago. That assault happened a few doors fro Store st Garda station, there were probably 50 cops within a couple hundred yards of it. But they don't stand on street corners or walk the streets, they drive around or sit in cars for the most part. And anyway the problem with the riot was not that there weren't police on the street, its that they completely underestimated the threat and misunderstood how the far right mobilize lumpen youth in the city, because they haven't been paying serious attention to it. The reason they were caught flat footed is in that question, not resources but priorities.

Dubinusa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121413791#Comment_121413791

It's a pity there's no center any more. Far left and far right is not good for anyone. I just remember the yobs acting up in Croker in the early 80's and the Guards had no problem dispensing pain. I am aware of the housing crises and the reality is the government and the councils are ineffective. How these people get elected is beyond me. Wishing everyone a safe night in Dublin.

Lost Ormond

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121414408#Comment_121414408

No centre Any more. Well that's totally untrue. They get elected as alternatives overwhelmingly are far worse/or simply unelectable

pickarooney

I was wondering Sunday if Shane McGowan was still alive. Yesterday I checked Wikipedia to if Henry Kissinger was knocking about.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121414408#Comment_121414408

There's centre right and centre left easily available.

There's no far right TDs and our "far left" are barely that. We're a, to date, very centrist country (slightly on the right economically and slightly left socially). Our main issue is neo-liberalism from FG