The Spike

Dampsquid

Driving in to work this morning, and with it being dull, i could see the stupid red light on top of the Spike.

I thought that when they built it that the top 11 meters was suppose to be lite up. How many months is it up there now and its still not finished.
Does anyone know whats going on with it?

Trebor

AFAIK

they need to get in the biggest crane in europe in order to get that thing off the top and it has been booked for the next while.

also they need to agree to a opening day ceremony day

Silent Bob

Originally posted by Dampsquid
Driving in to work this morning, and with it being dull, i could see the stupid red light on top of the Spike.

I thought that when they built it that the top 11 meters was suppose to be lite up. How many months is it up there now and its still not finished.
Does anyone know whats going on with it?

I've seen it completely lit up (couple of weeks ago, can't remember exactly when). There were a dose of lights up the top and 4 lights in the middle, shining down each street.

It was all rather subdued, not really impressive at all...

Peace

hmmmm,

healthcare underfunded, education underfunded , crime on the rise and not enough guards on the street and they build that piece if sh1t in the middle of the city.

Seriously, who voted for these guys....??

GuanYin

Originally posted by Peace
hmmmm,

healthcare underfunded, education underfunded , crime on the rise and not enough guards on the street and they build that piece if sh1t in the middle of the city.

Seriously, who voted for these guys....??

But...but...but... it raises the moral of the city dwelling folk!

Thats what its there for..... and it works too, every time I see it I forget about that homeless 15 year old girl that I see on the quays every day or the state of some of the patients I see at the hospital and smile, thinking, "wasn't that 4 million well spent!"

</sarcasm>

gogo

Originally posted by Peace


Seriously, who voted for these guys....??

I did ,and I hang my head in shame every day. every single day...

Darth Waylander

i can thankfully say SOOO not guilty of that,my votes went to that dude in blackrock,cos when they were canvasing,he had hot women doing my street,and i swung a couple of dates with one of them.A real hellion,actually.

(i know,wasted votes,but lets face it,its as good a way as any other,and if the americans had done it,we wouldt have to put up with Bush)

ThenComesDudley

hmm complaining that its 4 mil well spent.
well then 4 million split between education and health care.Its not gonna be much

GuanYin

Originally posted by ThenComesDudley
hmm complaining that its 4 mil well spent.
well then 4 million split between education and health care.Its not gonna be much

Really?
Funny coz I think there has only been 7.3 million spent on health this year. I'd have thought an over 50% increase would be a "much"...

Dampsquid

Really?
Funny coz I think there has only been 7.3 million spent on health this year. I'd have thought an over 50% increase would be a "much"...

Emm, I think that was 7.3 Billion!!

GuanYin

ooops my bad.

oneweb

What's with all that jazz at the bottom of it. You know, the bits that look like it was a cheap paintjob and it's all peeling away. Is it supposed to look like that? The shinier silver looks much better than the matted effect. (The whole spike looks like it's transposed onto the view, no matter where you look at it from, no matter how sunny it is, no matter how sober you are - does anyone else think the same?)

well then 4 million split between education and health care.Its not gonna be much

It's a number of hospital beds left open at the very least. It's a few weeks off a patient's waiting list. It's a proper classroom for Jimmy Óg. It makes a difference.

Anyway, as someone somewhere said, it's neither big enough, bright enough nor finished enough to be anything to go 'wow' or 'ooh' about.

(I can't find Gordon's deadly "graffitti" pisstake of it, will search later...)

oneweb

The Gopher

Oneweb that is some of the funniest sh1t I have seen in ages:D Well worth taking a look lads.


However if this were really Dublin there would be a speech bubble saying"Oi stuck dis up Antos mas hole".

Gordon

lol, I forgot about that picture!

p.pete

It would be cool if 4 million could be used to keep just 1 bed open. Money has a great habit of disappearing in this country. I think the figure spent on B+B spaces for homeless people recently is about 60 or 80 million. (feel free to correct me, could be higher)

Most of these space aren't actually being used - it's a great idea for people to register as homeless so that they get preference in housing schemes. Also it's cozy for the people who run the B+B's to get a nice tidy sum from the government to let a bed to someone who is probably staying at home with their parents with this pretence of being homeless.

As for the hospitals, I only heard yesterday of the millions that are being lost on the E111 scheme. We are paying out to other countries who claim back the expense they went to to treat Irish people abroad. This is despite the fact that we have a waiver with a lot of these countries and are not actually required to pay them anything.

The double negative side to this is that we are not claiming back the expenses that our health system accrues by treating people from other European countries with E111. This non claiming by us is happening regardless of whether there is a waiver in place with the respecitive country or not.

No doubt we will soon see an Irish solution to this one. They will add an extra layer of pen pushers to the hospitals administration further reducing the funds available for things like doctors, nurses, beds and operations.

The fact that we managed to build the Spike for only 4m I think is a great achievement. Don't think its a particularly great piece of architecture but it does change the landscape and may have some small amount of appeal if they ever finish it.

ballooba

Originally posted by Peace
hmmmm,

healthcare underfunded, education underfunded , crime on the rise and not enough guards on the street and they build that piece if sh1t in the middle of the city.

Seriously, who voted for these guys....??

**** like that makes me sick.

Maybe i won't paint my house this year and give the money I save to charity. Actually i don't think i'll buy clothes either, that should be an extra few quid for the homeless.

GuanYin

Originally posted by ballooba
**** like that makes me sick.

Maybe i won't paint my house this year and give the money I save to charity. Actually i don't think i'll buy clothes either, that should be an extra few quid for the homeless.

What has personal charity got to do with ensuring representation for all the citizens the government has a responsability to?

Do you think that because someone is poor, homeless, ill or a combination of any of the above that they don't deserve to be supported adequately by the government? Of do you think that they should only get exactly what you get?

Coz your posting is slim to anorexic on sense.....

Elmo

they need to get in the biggest crane in europe in order to get that thing off the top and it has been booked for the next while

I love that, that's class. "It's been booked for the next while lol.


I you look with a building in front of it, It looks like the buliding has and extra arial.

ballooba

Name me one place in the world where there are no homeless people?

Why should we stop spending money on the beautification of our city just because there are a few problems in the country. We are not a third world country.

There will always be homeless people, people will always complain that some sector is underfunded. As someone quite correctly mentioned, 4 million would do very little in the health sector or education. It is a small percentage of government speniding. Even if you were personally on the breadline you would still spend some money on yourself.

I'll tell you what, 6 or 7 people here have posted saying that they disgree with money being spent on the 'Spire of Dublin'. You can take 7 Euro out of my tax this year and spend it on healthcare, unemployment benefit and policing. I'm not going to need it anyway.

Cabaal

Well I gota agree, its a waste of money and it kinda looks out of place to be honest,

One question.....why????

p.pete

I think New Zealand is quite low on homeless people. Think I heard that anyway. Either way we have a nack of doing things arseways in this country.

The idea of putting some kind of a sculpture on O'Connell street, redeveloping the place and giving it a bit of focus appeals to me. I am not convinced that the Spike is a particularly good choice for the purposes, but it is not the worst and we may grow to appreciate it (someday).

A couple of million out of a budget of billions is not a waste, and the Spike compares well to the other tenders that were put forward for the same project.

As for the state of our hospitals and funding for education and the homeless problem etc. the situation is chronic. Not through a lack of funds I think, but more through poor governmental decisisions and departmental spending etc. Money just disappears in this country unfortunately.

ballooba

This is a large part of the explanation for the spire's existence::
http://www.dublin.ie/pdf/4_%20tourism.pdf

Government Spending in 2002 was ::
26,345,000,000

Spire cost::
4,000,000

Cost of Spire as a percentage of Government Spending:
0.015%

Peace

Some of you have kinda taken what i said up wrongly...

Do i think the money spent on the spike is a complete waste?

Hella yeah.

Do i think if we spent that 4 mill on something else like healthcare or education would it solve the countries problem.

Hell no. This countries got more problems than anyone of us could ever know about.

Do i think the government are a total bunch of muppets who are better at drawing up a manifesto than actually running a country?

OMG Yes. I mean wtf have these guys actually done to better the country when they were in office. During their last term wasn't there 500million spent on a stadium that didn't get built? Thats half way to a billion euro that could have been spent on education. What sort of difference do you think half a billion euro would have done for schools around ireland?

Berty and his mates are simple power hungry money grabbing fools. The people we need in governemnt are people who represent the national interest and have the convictions to take action on what they believe in, and not what they believe will keep them in power. This is what my fuc**** point was.

Later
Peace

ferdi

i dont give a toss what it cost, i just think it looks sh!te and out of place.

p.pete

Peace, I agree with the points your making - but people who have convictions also have very short political careers. The world is run by money, companies have the money and politicians pander to the people who have the money.

They don't pander to idealistic notions of a working health system and other well meaning things like that.

Do you have any ideas' how to get the right people into power? I'm sure there are plenty of them out there.

ballooba

Look at the state of the eiffel tower ferdi. Not many giant sculptures scattered around paris for that to fit in with either.

Peace wasn't that 500 million (or part of it) spent on the national aquatic centre?

Peace

Not sure about the aquatic centre figure, but i remember the figure of 500mill being thrown around when the plans for the nation stadium were scraped?..

As regarding getting good leaders into power - at the last election i voted for an independant. Even though i knew the guy had no chance of getting into power it was a whole lot better than voting for berty and his mates.

The answer is that i don't have the answer unfortunately. But it would be nice if someone did and came forward with it?

Later

p.pete

As far as getting good politicians into power there is lots of problems. I don't think it is due to a shortage.

- They can seem honest, but their lying through their teeth.
- They may actually start out honest, but get corupted along the way.
- They may be an excellent voice for the people, but that voice is going to get drowned out because it is going against the grain.
- They can be very well intentioned but complete idiots. We may actually have a lot of these in power.

I don't really have the time to make a longer list. I'm sure I could if I tried, it's very easy to have a negative political outlook unfortunately.:(

ferdi

the eiffel tower fits in in paris as there are buildings round it of a similar era, the spike does not fit in on o'connells street, it could be cool and futuristic if it were near those big glass financial buildins on the queys, but not there, there are just too many old buildings for it to fit in.

Damian

I may be stating the obvious, but the Eiffel tower was brand spanding new when it was built.

There was major protests agains it at the time, parisians felt that it was a modern monstrosity and was not in keeping with old Paris.


Sound familiar.........

p.pete

Originally posted by ferdi
the eiffel tower fits in in paris as there are buildings round it of a similar era, the spike does not fit in on o'connells street, it could be cool and futuristic if it were near those big glass financial buildins on the queys, but not there, there are just too many old buildings for it to fit in.

Erm, not sure I see your logic on that one. Thats kind of like saying a Jack B Yeats painting fits in snugly next to a picasso painting just because they were painted within 10 years of each other.

Within a given time period there is lots of different styles of Art and architecture. I don't know too much about Parisian architecture, or even their sculpture at the time that it was installed. What I do know is that the Eiffel tower was given to them by the Yanks, so is unlikey to bear to much of a cultural relationship with anything that was going on in Paris at that time.

Originally posted by Damian
There was major protests agains it at the time, parisians felt that it was a modern monstrosity and was not in keeping with old Paris.

Thats interesting. I do not doubt that we will grow to like it eventually, shame it's not something that you can get more involved with though. At least with the Eiffel tower you can go up it, enjoy the view and have a cup of coffee.

Damian

I couldn't agree more. I'm a big fan of monuments you can climb!

The Eiffel tower wouldn't be worth a visit, if it wasn't for the views.

I was very dissapointed when the Corpo selected a monument that couldn't be climbed.

p.pete

Elevators are good too, its nice to have the choice:cool:
The stupid radio towers in most German cities are better tourist attractions than the spike. Good views and elevators! They do however look fairly ugly on the skyline.

As a piece of art I am not totally against the spike - it just had the potential for more.

Trebor

i miss the wh0re in the sewer

p.pete

She's been moved, hasn't she? Does anyone know what has become of our most cherished icon?

Trojan

I'm happy to say that I voted for every single muppet on the ballet sheet except the party who actually won. At least that leaves my consience clear. Although I am seriously disappointed in my fellow voters, all 1 million of them (get out and vote you lazy fsckers).

If the current government were management of a private company, they would have been fired months ago.

Al.

Imposter

Originally posted by Damian
I couldn't agree more. I'm a big fan of monuments you can climb!
I was very dissapointed when the Corpo selected a monument that couldn't be climbed.

I'm sure with a bit of planning it'd be possible to climb the spike!:D

Damian

Yes, I've given it some thought and I reckon that it could be done.

All you need is a pair of rubber soled shoes and a lenght of rope.

TacT

I have a great idea, let's put a GIANT SYRINGE in the sky and give the young people of Ireland something they can aspire to.

Or we could build skateparks in every town and county in the country, put up a few community centres, help some addicts, god knows, I'd rather see that 4million go ANYWHERE but towards that big steaming piece of pi$$ in the sky...

It's ugly, it looks out of place and anytime I'm walking by I'm guaranteed to hear someone nearby saying "What a waste/what a POS/what a this that and the other"
I'm still waiting on a positive comment to come from anyone about this thing, apart from the tourism aspect of it, which seems more like a petty excuse to spend the money on something so ****

I hate the thing! :mad:

If they wanted to build it for tourism purposes, maybe they should have made it climb worthy, then at least we're insured we'll get 100+ people into the country looking to climb it THUS helping our tourism industry, have you ever heard of a metal pole/Gigantic lampost in the sky attracting tourists to a country?
Maybe they could even have made it the worlds 5th biggest bungee jump or something.....

ballooba

Originally posted by TacT
I have a great idea, let's put a GIANT SYRINGE in the sky and give the young people of Ireland something they can aspire to.

Intelligent comment, I like it.

The Spire of Dublin represents the Spire of an imaginary underground multi-denominational cathedral. It refelects the multi-cultural nature of Ireland in the times we live and the economic prosperity that has enabled us to support this multi-cultural society.

Originally posted by TacT

I'm still waiting on a positive comment to come from anyone about this thing, apart from the tourism aspect of it, which seems more like a petty excuse to spend the money on something so ****

I think it is a striking symbol and I can't wait for the rest of the street to be completed around it so that we can move away from the dull and mundane streets of Dublin.

Fabritzo

I haven't been down that part the city lately..or if I have I haven't looked up, has the aviation light been removed yet?

Damian

I kinda like it!

p.pete

Originally posted by TacT
I'm still waiting on a positive comment to come from anyone about this thing,

Its very nice:D

Trebor

Originally posted by ballooba
..I can't wait for the rest of the street to be completed around it so that we can move away from the dull and mundane streets of Dublin.

Sorry your going to have to.

from the Irish independent:

Revamp of O'Connell street is €25m over budget and the city council hasn't got the money to pay for it.
some parts of it will be completed but the 200 tress, widening of footpats, new lighting, retail kiosks, street seating, cycling lanes and two new traffic lanes (how are they going to widen the footpaths and give new lanes?) will have to be put on hild until they get get the money

p.pete

Originally posted by Trebor
Sorry your going to have to.

from the Irish independent:

Revamp of O'Connell street is €25m over budget and the city council hasn't got the money to pay for it.
some parts of it will be completed but the 200 tress, widening of footpats, new lighting, retail kiosks, street seating, cycling lanes and two new traffic lanes (how are they going to widen the footpaths and give new lanes?) will have to be put on hild until they get get the money

Surely the cost of the whole project is well over 25m, are they going to continue working until they reach their budget or more likely are they going to scratch themselves until they have the entire budget - by which time you can add another 25mil onto the cost?

Trebor

they have the money to finish what they started up till now but they will not be able to go on to the next phase until they come up with more money.

it said that they will proably have to cut back on some other projects and jokingly refferred to charging the government rent for the use of buildings.

p.pete

Why don't they just take the money from the health budget

Trebor

this is the Dublin city council paying for this not the govrnment (they only paid for the spike) so they can't get money from the gorvernment.

they can ask but i don't think Mr McCreevy would be willing to give money. he seems to be saving it all up for the last two years of term so that they can dazzle the electorite with all the money he will spend coming up to the next elections.

p.pete

Originally posted by Trebor
this is the Dublin city council paying for this not the govrnment (they only paid for the spike) so they can't get money from the gorvernment.

they can ask but i don't think Mr McCreevy would be willing to give money. he seems to be saving it all up for the last two years of term so that they can dazzle the electorite with all the money he will spend coming up to the next elections.

That sounds about right (thanks for pointing out that it is council budget and not governmental - didn't consider that:) )

What I'm wondering about is how they will manage to change the fact that we are the most expensive country in Europe? No doubt we will all be dazled by the spending and the promise of model health and education systems, but hopefully it will be tougher for them next time out to fool the electorate.

Trebor

Originally posted by p.pete
What I'm wondering about is how they will manage to change the fact that we are the most expensive country in Europe?

IIRC, i heard that ireland is more dependant on oil for our economy than Saudi Arabia, they could start by cutting down this dependancy by using biomass for generating electricity.

and if you look at this thread , if we where to legalise Cannibis or rather hemp which grows very fast and can be used for serveral things such as paper, clothes, biomass, etc. it would also help our struggling farming community when the EU gets rid of the CAP