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Angry journalist suggests tourists in Dublin should go home!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Angry journalist suggests tourists in Dublin should go home!

The Irish Independent published an article on Thursday 17 November, in which Ita O’Kelly, an angry and seemingly narrow-minded journalist suggests that Dublin is chocked by too many tourists and therefore the tourists should go home.

Oddly the whole article doesn’t contain one strong argument that supports her opinion. She claims that it is the fault of all the tourists that Dublin has way too many coffee shops and totally ignores that the many coffee shops have queues out the door every single day of employees on their lunch breaks (tourists don’t wear suits!). Then she has an issue with “falling over” people reading maps when she just wants to go from A to B. Somehow she also blames tourists for the fact that a “vast number of people are begging on the streets”. But there is absolutely no correlation between these two and no evidence is provided how tourists (who in most cases are a lot less “generous” than Irish people when it comes to beggars) have put these beggars in the street. Street “entertainer” (the “” are put in by her) are allegedly also only there for the tourists and the nonsensical (and factually incorrect) sentence “When the city hosts free music events for its citizens, it’s virtually impossible to get a seat as the tickets have been snagged by the tourists.” just crowns a rubbish article. (Most free music events that “the city hosts” are not ticketed and are certainly not intended exclusively for its citizens. And if tickets have to be pre-booked or if they are available at the venue, tourists would never get priority over non-tourists.

Ita O’Kelly, who also seems to be angry about the impertinence of people preferring gluten-free food even if the have no medical condition, wants her Dublin back with no ice-cream parlours, no coffee shops and with a few billion Euro less per year (the money made from tourists in whole Ireland is 7bn per year). She doesn’t say “Make Dublin great again!”, but her thinking seems to be as open minded as Trump’s who wants to “Make America great again”

The oddest part about this rubbish is that the Irish Independent published it and most likely even paid for it!

Dublin is a cool place and visitors as well as inhabitants from all over the world are very very welcome!

Dublin, Irish, Odd, Society, Tourism, ,

Pay Demands – The start of an unstable and damaging period?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Pay Demands – The start of an unstable and damaging period?

It started all with the LUAS Drivers who demanded a crazy increase in their salaries. They didn’t get what they wanted, but they got an increase. Next were the Dublin Bus Drivers, then the Gardai and in the meantime the TDs got also a nice increase of about 9,000 per year. Then the teachers. And they will all get less than they want, but importantly, they will get SOME increase.

With all this, is it a surprise that suddenly EVERYONE in the public sector wants more money? But is it justified? Or justifiable?On Friday FIVE (!!!) more unions announced that they will be looking for pay increases as the Irish Times reported here.

Many think that some of the pay increase demands are totally out of control, but in other areas it might make more sense. The problem however is that once the unions smell “blood” they will go after pay increases like a bloodhound. Justified or not!

Keep in mind that NOBODY needs a union unless there is a dispute, so it is very much in their interest to create a dispute! It justifies their existence and keep the union bosses in a very well paid job.

Any type of unrest is bad for the competitiveness of a country and damages the reputation. So it is in the interest of Ireland to sort out all unrest as fast as possible. An unstable period would be severely damaging in the context of attracting new investment from abroad. But it also doesn’t make sense to give in all cases. Where the salaries are too low, they should be increased, but where unions demand unjustifiable increases, the government should have the courage to refuse ANY increase.

Economy, Politics, Society, Unions, ,

8th Amendment – Avoidance at all cost?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
8th Amendment – Avoidance at all cost?

The 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution guarantees the equal right to life of the mother and the unborn and makes abortion illegal, but also puts doctors in a very tricky situation if they expect that they can only safe the life of one of the two in disastrous circumstances. The clause was added to the Irish constitution after a referendum in 1983 and many people think that a lot has happened in these 33 years and that the 8th amendment should be repealed (deleted from the constitution.

The supporters of the clause are not overly interested in a referendum because there is the possibility that the opponents will win the referendum. The opponents want to have a referendum as soon as possible to stop the odd situation that women need to travel to the UK to get an abortion that is illegal in Ireland.

So how could we find out what the majority of citizens in Ireland really wants? Let me think? Hmmmm?? Maybe put the head in the sand and pretend that there is no issue? – That seems to be the government’s approach once again! Enda Kenny and his gang are not the most decisive crowd at best of times.

In a true democracy, you would give the citizens a chance to voice their opinion and you would run a referendum if there is evidence that the public opinion could have changed drastically. There is no guarantee that the 8th amendment will be repealed if a referendum happens, but at least we would know then.

Last week the alliance of Anti Austerity Alliance and People Before Profit (AAA-PBP) has asked the government to run a referendum, but that was rejected and the government explains that in the usual way and I will paraphrase VERY VERY freely here:

“We will not ask for the real opinion of the people because we have put in place an artificial structure of a Citizens Assembly that will allow us to delay any decision as long as possible. We gave them loads ot time until half way through 2017 and we hope that they will take that time. Then this Citizen Assembly will come back to us with an opinion. We secretly hope that they will say that no referendum is needed, because then we can blame them. But if they tell us we should hold a referendum, then we will first need to discuss that and at some time later vote on it. Because once the Citizen Assembly comes back with an opinion we will first give that opinion to a Special Oireachtas Committee as this will give us a chance to delay the process further. That Special Oireachtas Committee will be also given six months to decide. So it will be well over a year before we even think about a referendum and we hope that the Irish citizens will have forgotten by then! If the Special Oireachtas Committee ALSO says we should have a referendum then we will CONSIDER to have one and will schedule it for as far away from today as we can. because we are extremely afraid of the outcome and hope that we have won the next election by then so that that referendum will not screw our chances. All in all, we don’t care about the opinion of the Irish Citizens anyway. We only care about our position in power and to maintain that we will do whatever possible to block and delay anything that interfere with our power in the slightest way.”

So with that in mind – and I stress that this is MY interpretation of the situation, but it is based on the government’s official statement as you can find it through this Tweet – there won’t be a referendum for the next 2.5 – 3 years AT LEAST!

In the last 33 years, the opinion in large parts of the population certainly has changed and they have a right to ask for a new vote. Keep in mind that neither side has a guarantee that they will win or lose and that’s not what this opinion here is about. Sure I have an opinion about the 8th amendment, but my opinion is so irrelevant (I am not even allowed to vote in a referendum!) that I just want to focus on the undemocratic-ness of the government’s decision.

We don’t need a Citizens Assembly or a Special Oireachtas Committee! We have clear evidence that there is a ground swell that could indicate that the opinion has changed. That should be enough to ask for the opinion again!

Irish, Justice, Politics, Society, , , ,

Gaeltacht not viable!? Is that really a surprise?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Gaeltacht not viable!? Is that really a surprise?

As a foreigner, I don’t speak Irish and have never learned it in school. I did make an attempt many years ago to learn it and bought a book and a few cassette tapes (it is THAT long ago!), but I don’t think I made it beyond the first lesson.

Why did I want to learn it? Well, if you move to a country where there is a different language than your own, you at least make an attempt and in addition there is this romanticised idea that it will come in handy somewhere.

But then you realise that ONLY English is needed in Ireland and that apart from some politically inspired publications, there is not even a proper newspaper available in Irish, which is a clear indication to me that the language has been given up.

Is it a terrible thing to give up language that is not useful anymore? Not at all! Otherwise we would all talk in Shakespearian English. Languages change and move, disappear and appear and even if there is history of a language, it does not mean that it HAS to be kept alive. On the other hand, there is NOTHING wrong with keeping it alive if there is sufficient interest and if people want to use it.

The “Oireachtas Standing Joint Committee on the Irish Language, the Gaeltacht and the Islands” was now told last Wednesday by Dr Brian Ó Curnáin from the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies that the number of Irish speakers is decreasing, that young people’s competence in the language even in the Gaeltacht is declining and that the Gaeltacht in its current state is not viable.

This has been reported by RTE.ie here.

It can’t really come as a surprise! Money is spent on Gaeltacht and on Irish language initiatives and the forced language teaching in Irish schools is still in place. But all this seems (to a non-involved observer) more like state-prescribed or forced programmes and not at all like genuine enthusiasm for the Irish language.

It seems that the language enthusiasm in Wales (for Welsh) is much bigger than in Ireland (for Gaelic). And considering that Welsh only became official language of Wales in 2011, that is some achievement. I am not sure what exactly was done in Wales to get there, but the system used in Ireland is clearly failing, so now the strategy needs to be changed OR maybe it should be considered to let Irish die?

Education, Irish, Politics, Society,

It is “country” not “jurisdiction”!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
It is “country” not “jurisdiction”!

Language is a an odd thing! There seems to a sheep effect sometimes when someone uses a term that we think we SHOULD use. Years ago it was the term “non-national”. It was used initially in a misguided effort to be more inclusive by avoiding words like “foreigner” or “alien”. Not the term “non-national” made no sense whatsoever because nearly all “non-nationals” were very much nationals, just not nationals of Ireland, but of other countries. Oddly “non-nationals” was usually only used for non-Irish-nationals from outside the EU. So, it seems we had different classes of “non-nationals”. Luckily the term is hardly used anymore, which is a good thing.

But there are many other words that are used in odd circumstances. “Jurisdiction” is one of them!

Last week, the Irish Independent wrote “A slump in Sterling against the euro prompted hordes of shoppers in this jurisdiction to head across the Border for their pre-Christmas shopping.”

And it quoted Ash Ireland chairman Dr Patrick Doorley, who said “[…] There are many examples of jurisdictions where tobacco price has been increased for health reasons and smuggling simultaneously tackled and reduced – such as Australia, New Zealand and Spain.”

Why is the word “jurisdiction” used in this case and not the word “country”. Every country is a different jurisdiction by definition of sovereignty. The only difference is where a big country, e.g. the USA, can have different laws in different parts (states). In Ireland we don’t have different laws in different parts of the country, so the use of “jurisdiction” makes absolutely no sense.

And just in case “jurisdiction” is used by some to avoid having to call Northern Ireland a different country than the Republic of Ireland: No matter what your opinion is about the political divisions on this island in the future, currently the Republic of Ireland is a completely different country than Northern Ireland and until that changes, the hordes of shoppers in this COUNTRY headed across the border (there is a big hint in this word!!).

Irish, Odd, Politics, Society,
 
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