You are browsing archives for

Category: Uncategorized

Dublin Christmas Light Proceedings – Odd from start to finish!

14 November 2014Written by Joerg Steegmueller

I don’t know where to start! There are so many weird and outright odd things about the Dublin Christmas Light Proceedings that I could write pages and pages.

But let’s start with the barriers in our city first. No, I am not talking about physical walls, they would be easy to take down. Instead I am talking about political, commercial and social walls! And they are here to stay!

Dublin City has THREE not one Christmas Lights event. Why? Because Northsiders can’t with Southsiders and vice versa and the traders organisation “Dublin Town” can’t do it with Dublin City and vice versa. So as a result there was a Switching on of Christmas Lights in Grafton Street on Thursday 13 November, one in Henry Street on Sunday 16 November and then there is the Christmas Tree in O’Connell Street, which will be switched on two weeks later on 30 November.
Doesn’t make sense in the slightest, but, hey, it is three mini festivals for people to go on the street, so I guess we shouldn’t complain.
Apart from that, the Christmas Tree Lighting is the main job of the year for the Lord Mayor and why would we need a powerless Lord Mayor if it wasn’t for switching on the Christmas Tree!?

They could press ONE button in the middle of O’Connell Bridge, but it seems that we are happy with the walls we have. – Oh, and I better shut up about the SEPARATE Christmas Lighting event just a stone-throw from the City Centre, at Smithfield, right?

The next odd thing is the timing and I am not growing tired from pointing this out year after year:
Bringing the Christmas Lights so much forward to mid-November can only be driven by the wish or hope to extend the Christmas buying period through this “trick.” The thinking must be that if people start buying two weeks earlier, they will spend more money throughout the 6 weeks up to Christmas. But is that really the case? I don’t know about you, but I still buy the initially intended number and type of presents for the people I need to get presents for. As it all culminates in that one event, there is no “buying more”. Even if the Christmas Shopping period (as defined by the lights) ran for 4 months, I would still buy the same number of presents. So a longer Shopping Period makes absolutely no sense from a commercial point of view with regards to present buying.

Where it might make sense is for people who come to the City and who normally wouldn’t come. No, this is not the country folk, this is tourists…in a few years time! Until last year Dublin City was void of a good Christmas Market. This year a new approach is taken and the Christmas Stall Row (It is one long row along St. Stephen’s Green, not a market in the usual sense.) still has to prove itself, but it could work and if it does, that’s a great thing. Mind you, though, visitors won’t know about it for a while because traditionally Dublin is void of good Christmas market and that is the reputation we have.

Will 600,000 additional visitors come to Dublin because of the Christmas market as Dublin Town claims? And will these 600k people leave EUR 20mio behind in shops, restaurants and hotels? Maybe in a few years time if the Dublin Christmas Market manages to become as good as the Nürnberg or Vienna Christmas Market, but until then, these figures are total nonsense.

BUT…Christmas is a great time of the year, so let’s enjoy it and let’s hope that the Christmas Market will be a big success!

Dublin, Odd, Society, Uncategorized Christmas Market, dublin

Retirement Home in Phoenix Park

28 October 2011Written by Joerg Steegmueller

2 Comments

Based on the preliminary indications, Michael D Higgins will be the Irish president for the next 7 years. This was not my preference, but I am not dismayed. In the end the president can’t do much anyway and i am sure Higgins will do an ok job.

However, I was hoping that Aras an Uachterain would not just a retirement home for a has-been politician and unfortunately that’s what it most likely will be.

Higgins might have been a strong and convincing politician in his younger years, but recently he is more known for citing poetry and for speaking in Irish.

The two previous presidents (Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese) had the same limited ability to achieve anything of substance, but they did push the boundaries a little. I expect that Higgins will not push anything.

He won’t screw up anything either, so no progress was made, no step forward and nothing beneficial to expect, but his probably election is no terrible disaster. …just a bit of a disappointment.

Considering that he is already too old for the role, we can be quite certain that he won’t stay longer in it than 7 years.

Elections, Politics, Uncategorized Mary McAleese, Mary Robinson, Michael D Higgins

Role of President in Ireland

21 October 2011Written by Joerg Steegmueller

1 Comment

In a few days the next Irish president will be elected and the news have been full with reports about all the good intentions the candidates have for turning around the country. The only problem is that the Irish President has no influence over any day-to-day politics. His/her role is purely ceremonial with a very small and very controlled and limited political brief.

Many argued in the last few weeks that the role should be abolished, that Ireland doesn’t need a president and that the money for keeping the role is wasted.

I don’t agree with that. I think it is necessary and appropriate to have a superior power in a republic that is independent from politics. Someone who can represent the country without representing a certain political direction. Yes, there are cost involved, but it is a well justifiable luxury. ..better justifiable than the huge number of 160 TDs (members of parliament) for a tiny country like Ireland. (Germany has 622 members of parliament for 81 mio inhabitants, that’s 7.68 per 1 million people. Would a similar ratio apply to Ireland, Ireland would have approx. 35 members of parliament instead of 160!)

But back to the President:
Having a president makes sense, but it seems that the 7 candidates (and their interviewers) are not really clear on the role of a president.

A few months ago I was at an event where Mary McAleese, the current Irish President was expected as well. Because a junior minister of the Irish Government was speaking first, Mary McAleese was not allowed to be present until the junior minister had finished his speech. As a president she has to stand over party politics and I would understand if she isn’t allowed to agree or disagree with the opinion of a member of the government, but protocol prescribes that she is not even allowed to be in the same room with a publicly speaking politician. That is just crazy! Are a president’s ears so sensitive that we must protect them from the political waffle?

If a president is not even allowed to be present when a politician speaks, is it then really thinkable that a president will be able to create jobs or has ANY other political influence?

And if he/she doesn’t why don’t we stop asking the stupid questions about their intentions and goals (i.e their political program) as a president?

The new president is there to visit countries, shake hands and smile for the camera. There is no other role!

Elections, Politics, President, Uncategorized Election, Mary McAleese, President

People’s Festival Cancellation

26 August 2011Written by Joerg Steegmueller

1 Comment

Everybody was surprised, many were disappointed and some were even shocked and angry, when we found out last weekend just a few hours before the start of the People’s Festival that it got unexpectedly cancelled.

I found out (Thanks to Darragh Doyle!) at midnight on Friday, having just suggested to everyone a few hours earlier to come to the festival. At that time I had to decide if I would send 9400 more mails to let you all know, but I decided to post the change on the Facebook page for the Dublin Event Guide instead. The cancellation happened less than 14 hours before the start of the festival and everyone was keen to find out why it didn’t go ahead, but unfortunately no full explanation has been provided by this morning (Fri 26 Aug), despite promises for a full statement already last Saturday. Because it can’t be too complicated to explain what happened, this might indicate that there will not be an official explanation!?

So let me put the facts and some speculation together to at least attempt an explanation. I wasn’t involved in any way, but I think a lot of people are left wondering.

It all started when the Festival of World Culture (FOWC) was cancelled. This was partially because of the high cost and the cost overrun, but many think the FOWC was seen by the Councillors in Dun Laoghaire as a nuisance and they wanted to get rid of it. After the FOWC cancellation thousands of people were seriously disappointed (me included!) and a number thought about if and how it would be possible to run an alternative festival. I looked into it too, but around the same time a group in Dun Laoghaire got together and decided to work towards running a “People’s Festival”. The name surprised initially, because the FOWC was as well for the people, so it was a bit strange to stress the “People” element, but it then emerged that at least at some stage the people behind the festival had not only cultural but as well a political motivation and saw the People’s Festival as opposition to the establishment/authority. In how far this is still the case with the group that finally ran the planning for the festival is not clear to me. But either way, the result is that unfortunately the authorities and NOT the People “won”.

It seemed that the organiser did a good job, got lots of bands on board and ran some fund raising events. The word about the People’s Festival was spreading, but many thought it was a successor of the FOWC. This was never planned and the organisers stressed that from the beginning, but because the People’s Festival was filling the gap that the FOWC left, it is not surprising that this was assumed by many.

A pre-announcement of the date indicated that the 20+21 Aug 2011 was the targeted weekend, but the final announcement took another while. Nevertheless, the People’s Festival had developped a momentum that seemed to surprise the organisers. (I remember a Facebook Event Page message where they were surprised about 800 people having declared that they would attend.)

Around that time my estimate was that up to 10,000 people could arrive in Dun Laoghaire for that weekend and you can imagine that 10,000 people somehow need to be looked after with Stewards, Garda, food, drink etc.

The venues were just three pubs, but there were two outdoor stages announced and that would have taken the pressure off the indoor venues.

Unfortunately it was exactly these outdoor stages that caused the whole festival to fail, it seems. It turns out that the organisers had assumed that the venues had the required licenses for live music indoors and outdoors. And while this might have been a little too naive and should have checked early on, I can understand that an assumption was made that the pubs were either licensed or would look after all these requirements.

Only on Friday afternoon the organisers found out that the licenses were not held when someone from the Garda checked what was planned for the weekend.

At around 19:00 a statement was released that all events would now have to be moved indoors and that the outdoor stages will NOT be available. That doesn’t sound tooo serious, but when you start wondering how possibly 10,000 people will fit into 3 pubs and who will look after the more than 8000 people who might be stranded outside, you realise that there were bigger problems that JUST the license.

Clearly Dun Laoghaire didn’t want the People’s Festival and the People’s Festival organisers didn’t want Dun Laoghaire, so there was seemingly no dialogue from very early on, which could maybe have sorted some of the issues.

I don’t know what happened between 19:00 and 21:58 on Friday evening when finally the cancellation was announced, but analysing all aspects, I am not surprised that the ONLY option was to cancel the event completely.

Just think about all the bands that were meant to play outside and now were not allowed to. They could NOT have accommodated on additional stages inside so quickly, so they would have been VERY upset. Their fans even more! Thousands of people could not have been let into the pubs with Off-licenses as the best available alternative AND on top of that, I dare to guess that the gardai were not prepared for the event and that the organisers might not have had the appropriate number of stewards. So public orders issues were another threat.

So, what was the probably reason for the while disaster? I would say, that it was (understandable) inexperience combined with the fact that the authorities and the organisers didn’t work together but maybe even against each other.

The stage based element of the event was seemingly very well prepared and organised because the gigs did then go ahead in some shape and form on Saturday and Sunday in three venues in the Dublin City Centre (Stags Head, Button Factory, Sweeney’s Mongrel).

I would say the organisers learned a hell of a lot in a very very short time frame ;-) and if they will go for it again next year, it will be a success. I would recommend to leave the ideological or political element to one side, but only the future will show if that is possible.

Interestingly, the newspapers were extremely ignorant and wrote articles without having done and research, but even more interesting is that a Dun Laoghaire councillor claimed that they were involved in planning the People’s Festival. Odd councillor! See the article here:

www.independent.ie/national-news/festival-pulled-over-time-constraints-2854200.html

Uncategorized