One Berkley court -132m Tower

[Smithfield Resi]

Brenda has an interesting 'take' on travellers here. Pot/Kettle Brenda? Snobbery?

Irish edition of The Times on Sunday December 14, 2008
Brenda Power: Travellers are their own worst enemy
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article5337445.ece

Snobbery flourished during the boom years because the sight of common labourers driving around in luxury cars, building enormous homes, sending their children to private schools and jetting off to Val d’Isere on skiing holidays was terribly unsettling.

"I took my three older children skiing earlier this year"

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article740201.ece

Brenda Power, the mother of five children, doesn't approve of SUVs in town - "just vulgar, " she says - but points out that her seven-seater people carrier is a 1.9-litre vehicle and so won't be hit by the new charges.

https://www.tribune.ie/archive/article/2007/jan/28/suv-or-not-suv-that-is-the-question/

The days of cheap airline travel are coming to an end ...

...everything suggests that the golden age of €5 flights, continental mini-breaks and trans-Atlantic shopping trips will soon be the stuff of misty-eyed reminiscence....

....And thank God for that. Because for a while there, airline travel had ceased to be the reliable barometer of class it once was. In the days when the term “jet set” was coined, and a sun-tan was a mark of means and taste rather than a streaky job from a bottle of Fake Bake, air travel firmly separated the wheat from the chaff.

Wealthy folk flew to the sun for their holidays and to Paris for a romantic weekend. The lower-middle and working classes spent their annual fortnights in a caravan in Wexford.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article4640790.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1



More seriously, I'm shocked that a qualified barrister has such a dim view of planning law. Is she seriously suggesting that ABP should have just ignored the development plan?

[PVC King]

I am surprised at the lack of grace from some quarters in the vindication of your stance in this decision. A developer buys two hotels at the height of a property boom applies for development consent which is subsequently turned over on foot of planning objections. Where is the need to get personal or to attack a journalist who questions the wisdom of the decision on a number of unrelated grounds. If it were me I'd simply bask in the knowledge of calling the result correctly; I am happy to say I didn't make any predictions on this one either way for the very good reason that it was going to be ugly either in planning terms or financial terms as a first time application.

I've known Brenda Power very slightly for about 15 years and have always found her to be able to build a credible link between an opinion and a number of factors that at a first glance do not seem obviously linked. Her real strength is being able to maintain a good level of intellectual rigour with a very down to earth philosophy.

As for Sean Dunne I have a sneaking admiration for him; he played a key role in the construction of phase of 1 Canada Square Canary Wharf in the Reichman days. He took a few chances didn't rest on his Luarels and built some more projects and kept trying to grow his portfolio. I hope this doesn't ruin him as anyone who takes their holidays building homes in a township is obviously not quite as aloof from the rest of the population as their Sindo persona might suggest.

When it gets personal you don't have an argument and there will be plenty more discussion of this site over the coming years so stick to the facts.

[hutton]

Eh PVC have you seen Brenda Powers article from yesterday? Charming allusions of elder people with "mature vegetation" - classy stuff altogether - up there with Mary Ellen Synon's and Kevin Myers' uglier moments... It's her who has got personal with oap objectors - clicky linky if you havent seen it before http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article5683041.ece

[lostexpectation]

brenda power is trashy tabloid populist alarmist, nothing more

[goneill]

. I hope this doesn't ruin him as anyone who takes their holidays building homes in a township is obviously not quite as aloof from the rest of the population as their Sindo persona might suggest.

.

I was wondering how long it would be before the townships trip would be used -by someone-to enhance Mr Dunne's reputation. I don't recall any newspaper coverage of his involvement before the Pembroke Road application - which is not to suggest he hasn't been going there for years

[alonso]

building gaffs in the 3rd world, correct me if i' wrong, is not a valid planning consideration. I know i'm going out on a ledge here bnut i'm quite sure.

His reaction to the decision has been appalling. When are DCC gonna be investgated?

[hutton]

when Are Dcc Gonna Be Investigated?

+ 1

[gunter]

When are DCC gonna be investgated?

They're being investigated already, DCC are doing it themselves, just to be sure that it's being done properly

Actually there's no point in investigating this planning decision, what are you going to find out? . . that Kieran Rose loves Los Angeles! . . that the Development Plan is a general guide not a operating manual . . . that well paid architects are capable of justifying anything to anyone . . . we know all of this already!

To move on from where we are with this, someone needs to sit down and work out what the essence of Ballsbridge is. When that's done, and properly bought into by the people fortunate enough to live and work there, it should be easier to figure out if a proposed development either enhances this essence, or damages it. As long as there are competing assessments of what Ballsbridge is, and therefore competing visions for what it should become, we going to see property developers attempting to fill the vacuum with whatever they think they just might get away with.

If Ballsbridge is an 'urban village' as repeatedly denied by Sean Dunne, then it's also up to the people who believe that this is the case to accept that the regeneration of an 'urban village' demands urban scale first and hanging baskets second.

If Ballsbridge is a 'national centre', as repeatedly asserted by Dunne, what happened to Dublin?

Rose wouldn't have been fooled by the 'national centre' argument, but the scary thing is that he probably saw this mega-proposal as just the start; today Ballsbridge, tomorrow Thomas Street.

[alonso]

the essence of Ballsbridge .

ah sorry, that was cruel

fair points though Gunter

[trace]

Cruel indeed! Who can it be that is just off-camera (left) that all the guys seem to be taking their cue from? Isn't that Ulrik Raysse, Henning Larsen's design architect just behind the lady? And David Browne of RKD wearing the glasses? Anybody know who the others are?

[what?]

Can we not bring this conversation back on track?

Brenda Power should be taken out onto the street by a bloodthirsty lynch mob and made ‘bite the kerb’ in a manner akin to American History X.

Her contradictory/ sensationalist/ ill-informed style of ‘journalism’ can but enrage all but the most dim-witted/ thoughtless/ forgetful in our society.

[gunter]

Brenda Power. . . her contradictory/ sensationalist/ ill-informed style of ‘journalism’ can but enrage all but the most dim-witted/ thoughtless/ forgetful in our society.

Don't let yourself get enraged what?!

. . . just think of her as Kevin Myers with tits.

No, second thoughts, don't do that . . . . that's not working

o god I feel ill

[shanekeane]

I think she's got a talk show on Newstalk and she becomes a snarling beast when anybody rings up to criticize her. So I'm seriously suggesting that everybody on this forum jam the switchboards of her show tomorrow to tell her what a moron she is.

[PVC King]

Eh PVC have you seen Brenda Powers article from yesterday? Charming allusions of elder people with "mature vegetation" - classy stuff altogether - up there with Mary Ellen Synon's and Kevin Myers' uglier moments... It's her who has got personal with oap objectors - clicky linky if you havent seen it before http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article5683041.ece“Mature vegetation,” according to An Bord Pleanala, also stood in the way of the plan, which hardly came as a surprise to anybody who saw those eloquent images of elderly D4 residents recoiling in horror from the scale model of the planned development, as though even the tiny replica stank of new money

The the mature vegitation remark is in fairness attributed to ABP which was further clearly seperated from the residents who were said to recoil from the scale model which was stated to stink of new money; which in comparison to the design style being quite planned in an American way and funded by Scottish Banks couldn't have seemed to be a very new chapter in the history of Ballsbridge.

I think the article cannot be treated as one on planning but expresses a very valid sociological observation which I fully agree with; namely that South Dubliners are in comparison to other urban popultations snobs and have an air odfdisdain that is only surpassed by privately educated country folk who reside in the same place.

On the Val D'Isere remark totally true an example I would use I was at conference in Barcelona about 18 months ago with members of our various European office and we adjourned to Peurto Olympico at about 11pm when up came a hen party dressed as prison officer (Hen) and chain gang (party). The lengths the members of the Dublin office went to describe the Ballyfermot area and why it was such a surprise that these people were there was incredible.

As someone that went to one of the two mentioned schools and have a lot of freinds that went to the other I can say with certainty that the attitude she describes is very real and the way it was applied to Sean Dunne is symptomatic of the way people in D4 and more recently D6 think. Ask yourselves when you see someone in a Toyota Pick Up truck and a pin striped suit what are your thoughts?

Would I want to live opposite a scheme of the scale? No; if I owned a house close to it would I throw the kitchen sink at it? Probably

But would I descend to personal attacks on its promoter having a go to get around Dublins interpretive planning code or was Brenda Power's article infactual or did it contain perceptions that were unfounded? No chance

[Devin]

To move on from where we are with this, someone needs to sit down and work out what the essence of Ballsbridge is.

Well this was done - and quite well too - in the Draft Ballsbridge LAP. But an articulate and well mobilised umbrella group of residents' assocs. in the area lobbied councillors to reject the LAP because of its provision for height, and they did.

[ctesiphon]

Well this was done - and quite well too - in the Draft Ballsbridge LAP.

It's a while since I looked at it, but if I remember correctly, it seemed like a bit of a rush job. There were some good ideas, but the feeling that it was just a Jury's/Berkeley Court LAP with a few bits tacked on was hard to shake. I should dig it out for another read- perhaps I'm being unfair.

As someone that went to one of the two mentioned schools

Hmmm... Gonzaga?

[wearnicehats]

whilst I have always been in favour of the scheme in principle, one of the madder aspects of this plan was to suggest that all the trees along lansdowne road could be relocated. Trees can be moved but these are too big in reality. I was actually really surprised that the LA never conditioned their retention in any report

These trees are part of the original botanic gardens and I was looking for a plan of the site prior to Jurys being built - does anyone have a copy?

[jamie]

This was supposed to get started in 2009 in Glasgow.

[CC105]

and backed by a Mr Dunne no doubt !:D

[gunter]

johnglas will be able to interpret this one one for us, but I'm guessing it's a metaphor:

The giant salmon cutlet is Alex Salmond and the cage is the union with England!
am I right?

Returning to Ballsbridge, did anyone notice the invasion-of-the-glass-slabs proposal for the AIB site opposite the RDS?


Reg. no. 3788/09 ''demolition of the existing front blocks and replacement by six 7 - 9 storey slab blocks'' that I suspect will not look anything like the pristine ice sheets depicted in the model.

[alonso]

what the jaysus????

Someone could sneeze by an open window and the man in the next block over would say 'bless you'

[trace]

Why demolish only the forward pavilions/blocks and leave any of Andy Devane's design standing?

[gunter]

[jdivision]

Why demolish only the forward pavilions/blocks and leave any of Andy Devane's design standing?

Different owners

[Smithfield Resi]

Is it really 2009? One year since Lehman Brothers and NAMA looming....??

Best check my calender - thought I'd slipped into a wormhole back to 2007.