A Nation at War with its Capital City?
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I think we all basically agree with the same general point. The issue here is that the 7 decade long cultural and political war against Dublin by the rural elite has resulted Cork, Limerick and Galway cities by default being the biggest losers of all in terms of their growth and development. This is why Limerick and Navan get nothing from Transport21, while Cork a commmuter rail service they properly planned and were waiting 25 years to get. This is why you have an applling teachers to pupil ration in Dublin and practically a ono-on-one education experiance for children in rural Ireland. Who is really being disadvantaged here?
It’s a culturally entrenced hatred of urban life among the Irish esthablishment and an elevation of rural culture to what represents real Irishness which is a major part of much of this country’s issues since the formation of the state.
I disagree about the urban/rural struggle being the same in all countries. Show me one other country in world were the capital city and main economic center was left to die (and dismantled) the way Dublin was, and not by a foreign occupying force, but by politicans from the countryside? In terms of the Irish experience under Dev it is perhaps most compareble to Cambodia under Pol Pot, (without the Khmer Rouge genocide of course), than to the situation in France – Paris thrived because they had a local goverment, Dublin died because gombeenmen from Donegal and Mayo were the city fathers. Sure the PolPot comparision to Dev is a bit OTT. Dev was not evil. But the same psycholgical undercurrent applies, the distrust of urban dwellers and the need to reform them by converting them into rural peaseants. In European terms I think this is unique to Ireland. City dwellers and townies were and still to a extent today were Ireland “unpersons” as Orwell put it.
Should be interesting to see how these new immigrants change Ireland. I personally think it’ll be for the better and I can’t see any of them wanting to live in a one-off, driving their kids 20 miles to GAA practice and so on.
They will fill our towns and cities. You see this already happening around the country and it’s briliant to watch. Most towns are filling up with immigrants who want an easy, on their doorstep civic life, while the Irish are moving into one-offs on the side of a mountains and then calling up the local radio stations complaing about how far the school and shops are, and the how “the Dublin government” has to do something about the poor postal service around here and the price of petrol.
What a pity they have been brainwashed to accept a Barefoot Deception at the Crossroads, their lives would have been so much easier if they lived in a town or city.
@Frank Taylor wrote:
Rural areas have more community spirit than urban areas.
Places like Ballymun, Fnglas, Ballyfermot and many of the traditional working class neighbourhoods in Dublin have fantastic community spirt and I am sure the same in true in parts of Cork and Limerick cities as well.
As for rural community spirit and involvement. You take the GAA and Catholic Church out of rural Ireland and your left with nothing to being people together. All the other groups are in the towns.
Rural Ireland is on many levels an unsustainable wasteland of drunk drivers and social isolation if you are neither a GAA supporter or filling your bottle with holy water at Knock. Rural Ireland never really worked and never will except for people who have a vested interest in being there. It is highly vunerable when things go wrong. How many died in the famine and how many emigrated from rural Ireland? Cities and towns are more secure in times of economic downturn. Safety in numbers.
If the petrol stopped arriving at North Wall tomorrow, what’s “Plan B” for the one-offers in rural Ireland? Answer, there is none. They are completely screwed.
Actually, asdasd, you’re wrong on a few points which you have made.
Firstly, you say that Dublin has the most people in it in relation to the national population in the world. Referring to my The Economist: Pocket World in Figures, 2006 Edition, Dublin is 20th in the world with 25.7% of the nation’s population. In first comes Singapore City with 100% of the population.
Secondly, you’re point about TDs(Teachta Dáil, not Trachta Dáil as you said), since they represent Ireland as a whole, the focus should lie on where the most of Irish people live. Since Dun Laoghaire, Tallaght and Swords have larger populations than whole counties elsewhere in the republic, then these places should get the same focus as these counties on the basis of having the same number of citizens.
Thirdly I address your focus on the corrpution of county councillors and TDs. Charlie Haughey may have represented North Dublin but was born in the country so therefore the ‘blame’ should lie between both Dublin and the country. In fact I do not think that inept managers of a city are a slur on the place they represent as many can lie and confuse otherwise good voters in that locality. Equally the fact that there are simply more TDs and councillors in Dublin does heighten the risk of corrupt official due to mathematical probability.
Futhermore, your contention that Ireland is the most centralised nation in Europe, I refer you to Luxembourg, the Vatican, France, Malta and Iceland in which the capital is much more of a centre than Dublin. In fact, Greece, twice the size of Ireland and spread over hundreds of islands has a larger proportion of its nation’s populace living in the sight of the Acropolis.
And in finality, you lectire GregF on his use of derogative language yet you seem perfectly entitled to label Dublin councillors and TDs as ‘corrupt’ and Dubliners ourselves ‘whiners’.
Show me one other country in world were the capital city and main economic center was left to die (and dismantled) the way Dublin was, and not by a foreign occupying force, but by politicans from the countryside
An important point, but slightly skewed. I don’t think it was entirely an ‘anti Dublin’ bias that was perpetrated but an anti progress one. Since the cities were where ‘progress’, or at least progressive forces were concentrated, they felt the effects the most. Progressive influences were also stamped out in the countryside, but since they were less prevalent and less visible, the effect was less noticeable. The Pol Pot reference is obviously extreme, but not far off in terms of general intent, if not extent. The reasons behind it are complex but I think other posters have captured it well; a mix of nationalistic, regressive, cowardly and jealous motives. In many ways our electoral and constitutional systems have exacerbated this in the manner in which they establish the primacy of the local in supposedly national politics.
I wouldn’t term it a “7 decade war” either, it was never a ‘war’, and was only focussed in a meaningful sense between the years 1932 and 1959, but the consequences of it are very obvious. Our cities (plural) heve never regained their status as corporate or political entities in their own right, and have never been able to plan themselves, or their hinterlands, properly. Corks partially successful attempts are noticeable by the areas in which they haven’t worked – in the timely delivery of public transport.
(puts soapbox away for the day)
@Cute Panda wrote:
I think we all basically agree with the same general point. The issue here is that the 7 decade long cultural and political war against Dublin by the rural elite has resulted Cork, Limerick and Galway cities by default being the biggest losers of all in terms of their growth and development.
Nope, I doubt many people agree with this point. Give us some examples of this war (apart from the WRC). Dublin elects a proportion of TDs relative to its population and they work on Dublin and national issues. Bad planning in Dublin, sprawl etc was created by Dubliners – not with malice they just screwed up. Yes Dublin pays more tax per capita than the country but then we earn more money because cities are more economically viable places.
Because people live closer together in the city, a euro spent here goes further in providing services than in the country. Rural areas will always have crap services compared to the cities no matter how much is spent on them.Places like Ballymun, Fnglas, Ballyfermot and many of the traditional working class neighbourhoods in Dublin have fantastic community spirt and I am sure the same in true in parts of Cork and Limerick cities as well.
Well, this is certainly true. Poorer areas have better community spirit because of reduced mobility from lack of cash, jobs and cars. It’s amazing to see the difference between street life in a housing estate in Clondalkin versus one in Dalkey. Of course there are more obvious social problems too.
I think a lot of middle class Dubliners have zero interest in what country people do or how they live and certainly don’t see themselves as oppressed by them. Their traditional hatred is aimed towards working class areas, usually on the basis that they receive too much money from the government (housing and welfare) and that they are responsible for crime and drugs. This attitude doesn’t seem a million miles away from yours.
I doubt the culchie poor mouth stuff works too well in Dublin, given that we are past masters of the art form as shown in Europe.
@Frank Taylor wrote:
I think a lot of middle class Dubliners have zero interest in what country people do or how they live and certainly don’t see themselves as oppressed by them. Their traditional hatred is aimed towards working class areas
Most middle class Dubliners until the Celtic Tiger were almost exclusively from rural familes no more than one or two generations back. They came up to Dublin to work in the civil service, semi-states, Garda and teaching and took their bias towards “commoners” with them. Likewise their ancestors would have looked down on poor people in rural Ireland with equal distain. They just transplanted their “peeking through the lace curtains” mentality with them to the capital.
The came, the saw, they hated and took the train back to Mammy and Mass on the weekends until they got a “site” in Drumcondra and Dundrum and became middle class. This is also why Dublin never had a communter rail network until the 1980’s – the railways were only needed to take the “middles classes” back to Mayo and Clare on friday evenings. The working classes (translation “native Dubliners”) were tranplanted out of sightand mind to refugee camps in Tallaght, Mulhuddart etc.
I fully accept that my post is flirting dangerously with hyperbole and generalisation (even though they are essentially correct).
Looking at the point vilage thread and keeping the docklands in mind i’m thinking maybe it’s STW that are at war with the Capital;)
@Cute Panda wrote:
Most middle class Dubliners until the Celtic Tiger were almost exclusively from rural familes no more than one or two generations back.
Well this is true in the case of any middle class Dubliners born in the 1930s/1940s that I know – but that’s a very small sample size!
Anyhow you may consider joining the CCP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T54TU8bsj8All development of cities and towns halted in favour of suburbanisation around 40-50 years ago. Developers would happily have made more cash from building terraced streets at higher densities so we can only blame policy. So I would say that this has been the major obstacle to urban development.
Most middle class Dubliners until the Celtic Tiger were almost exclusively from rural families no more than one or two generations back
That is nonsense. Dublin 4 is a self serving oligarchy – and the snootiest group in the country – with roots going back generations to the Old Norman town. People born in Dublin are Dubliners, anyway, and blaming their antecedents in the countryside is contemptuous nonsense, and typical of the parochial nature of small minded Dubliners ( not other “cosmopolitan city” harks back to the rural antecedents of it’s denizens – which is true, going back the generations, of most). This Dublin “nativism” is pathetic drivel.
Let me re-iterate. The problems with Dublin – which are systemic – are caused by Dubliners: Dublin incompetence, Dublin gombeenism, Dublin corruption. Redmond, Burke, Haughey and more. Dublin Corporation is responsible for Dublin’s failure as a city, not the national government ( despite the mass recent subsidies), and has supplied the National Parliament with most of the corrupt politicos of the last few years.
I associate the accent of Dublin – particularly the northside – with incompetence, insouciance, and contempt. It is the accent of the bad tradesman, the surly busdriver, the unconcerned public official, the street lout, the gombeen taxi-driver: and so on. Country accents in the city are – for obvious reasons – more educated ( as the non-educated stay in their towns or villages or migrate to the nearest large town or city) but nevertheless and despite the advantage or myriad Third Level institutions Dubliners are class for class less educated, less civic minded and more contemptuous of their surrounding environment.
Dublin is a mess, not because of Culchies but Dubliners.
I refer you to Luxembourg, the Vatican, France, Malta and Iceland in which the capital is much more of a centre than Dublin. In fact, Greece, twice the size of Ireland and spread over hundreds of islands has a larger proportion of its nation’s populace living in the sight of the Acropolis.
Luxembourg, Malta, Iceland have populations less than a million, so I am going to count them out, I am afraid as exemplers for larger sized countries ( compare with Denmark, or Scotland, about our size). Think I’ll count out city States too, which by their nature, would be 100% of the country ( one assumes you dont want Dublint o sprawl that much?). France has a population of 61 million and greater Paris is – in the largest estimate of the metropolitan area – 11 million ( but 2 million in the city “proper”). Which is way too high, but one sixth. And yes, about 30% of Greeks live near Athens, Dublins nearest competitor in relative size in Europe, and , of course, the world’s most succesful city.
Not.
@asdasd wrote:
Dublin is a mess, not because of Culchies but Dubliners.
Dublin (and Cork, Galway, Limerick) are a mess because of an ingrained distained of urban living in this country fostered and implemented by the rural elite through the trappings of the state and the civil service. You see it mirrored in many ways to this day. For instance, the government pours millions every year into the playgrounds of the rural elite in the form of golf courses and horse racing, but real playgrounds for urban children hardly exsist. There are countless other examples from terrible public transport in Irish cities to educational disadvatage. There are people today driving 3 hours to work and back in this country as a result of this anti-urban culture.
This “strong rural bias” has damaged the entire country both urban and rural. Have you ever read the transcripts of some of Dev’s radio speeches on his social engineering? He makes is clear that the town and city dweller has no place in Irish society. He got his way too and the whole nation suffered.
You have to admit that Liam Lawlor and Ray Burke, both Dubliners, are prime examples of destructive forces towards Dublin that can’t be blamed on anti-urban bias.
@dev wrote:
That Ireland that we dreamed of would be… a land whose countryside would be
bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the
sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contests of athletic
youths, the laughter of comely maidens, whose firesides would be the forums for the
wisdom of serene old age. Eamonn DeValera, The Irish Times, 18 March 1943Ha ha ha.
Ireland was a much more rural society in 1943. Cities were plagued with heavy industryAnyone remember John Major saying this about England:
the country of “long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and – as George Orwell said ‘old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist’.
Not very different from Dev’s rubbish. Just some sentimental stuff for the voters. I wouldn’t read anything into it. Anyhow CutePanda, you missed decentralisation where the government attempts to move 10,000 jobs to their constituencies over 5 years, while 50,000 jobs are being created in Dublin each year. Har har.
@Frank Taylor wrote:
You have to admit that Liam Lawlor and Ray Burke, both Dubliners, are prime examples of destructive forces towards Dublin that can’t be blamed on anti-urban bias.
Absolutely. But perhaps the prevailing anti-urban cultural landscape allowed them to do this? They did not go down to Kerry and Mayo and knock farm buildings the way TDs from Donegal went up to Dublin and demolished part of Fitzwilliam Street.
The John Major speech is a hardly relevant as it was just a bit of typical election waffle. The difference is that a whole nation and society was create on Dev’s waffle. Britain was not built in John Major’s image, but Ireland was most certainly was built on Dev’s.
I have mixed feelings on De-centalisation as I am not sure how it will work out. In this day and age with technology it is more manageble than it would have been in the past. So who knows, it’s a political scam of course, but I am still not sure if it’ll be a good or a bad thing in the long run.
Dublin needed the 50,000 jobs per-annum more than “Parlon Country” needed a re-election tactic. That’s for sure.
As the saying goes: Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice
So country people are working as secret agents to destroy Dublin. You have to wonder though, if the culchies are destroying the cities, then who’s destroying the towns and villages and rural beautyspots? The jews?
@Frank Taylor wrote:
As the saying goes: Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice
So country people are working as secret agents to destroy Dublin. You have to wonder though, if the culchies are destroying the cities, then who’s destroying the towns and villages and rural beautyspots? The jews?
I invoke Godwin’s Law.
ha ha
anyhow I reckon the real enemy is suburbanisation
@asdasd wrote:
…………Let me re-iterate. The problems with Dublin – which are systemic – are caused by Dubliners: Dublin incompetence, Dublin gombeenism, Dublin corruption. Redmond, Burke, Haughey and more. Dublin Corporation is responsible for Dublin’s failure as a city, not the national government ( despite the mass recent subsidies), and has supplied the National Parliament with most of the corrupt politicos of the last few years.
I associate the accent of Dublin – particularly the northside – with incompetence, insouciance, and contempt. It is the accent of the bad tradesman, the surly busdriver, the unconcerned public official, the street lout, the gombeen taxi-driver: and so on. Country accents in the city are – for obvious reasons – more educated……………
you asdasd are an idiot
The main problem with ireland is suburbanism and more importantly anti-urban attitudes
The association of urban areas with crime grafitti etc, the notion that if you live in a house with a garden you
are better than apartment dwellers.
Our town centres and city centres are not being expanded properly, most new developements close to towns and
city centres must be high density and not just large towns even the smallest of towns have to expand their centres
with high density housing, and that means no real gardens and a minimum of parks
Any developments ideally shpuld be planned around public transport and the pedestrian(in a perfect world!)@Frank Taylor wrote:
Give us some examples of this war (apart from the WRC).
I agree with not mis-assigning responsibility for local authority functions. But I think there is a question about assignment of resources which fall to central government. Those decisions do show an anti-Dublin bias which, on occasion, seemed to justify any act of vandalism.
One example is the many botched and costly moves of central government offices to rural locations, for example the Legal Aid Board to Cahirciveen. Also picture the synergies that might have been created if the Garda Training College had been located in a University city instead of Templemore.
Another is the whole area of airport provision. Dublin’s runway was deliberately kept too short to take fully laden cargo aircraft for fear of drawing business away from Shannon. On the other hand, the West coast is dotted with airports as if the expectation is that every town from Charlestown up is capable of being a hub. (Anticipating the ritual ‘tremendous success’ talk about Knock, its necessary to reflect on the extent to which its scheduled flights depend on emigrants visiting folks at home and vice versa. Knock’s ‘success’, such as it is, is ironically a product of the failed county jersey approach to regional development.)
In the area of health services, the actual objective of providing health care takes second place to keeping open underutilised facilities in every county.
To make it clear, I do support that general idea that many here are advocating of a regional policy based on cities. There is a need for the regional cities to clearly join in on this agenda, as so many times they allow the agenda to be seen in Dublin vs the rest terms. We here a lot of local action committees of the ‘save our crap local hospital’ type. We need to here the occasional Cork/Limerick/Galway City voice pointing out that this is just not the best approach for meaningful regional development. Dublin focussed rhetoric litters this type of discussion, and its largely misdirected.
you asdasd are an idiot
I couldn’t agree more. Most people would be embarrassed to disclose such bigotry. I simply cannot imaging anyone proudly announcing that they associated “country accents”, for example, with backwardness, xenophobia, priest-riden religosity, sexual repression, kiddy fiddling, drink-driving, political strokism, illegal rubbish dumps, etc. yet asdasd is seemingly proud to express similar prejudices against those with a Dublin accent. Asdasd should get out more and meet more different people instead of working themselves into a lather of seething distaste and hatred for anyone with a different accent or having suffered the accident of being born in a particular geographic location. What a nasty person.
By the way, I’m not from Dublin.
sounds like the above could also apply to cute panda
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