Dublinphobia?

Well Brian, this is an architectural site so I think that this thread may have passed the limits of the discussion as described in the faq but however since it is here, and before it is locked:

Clearly Dublin is too big relative to the size of the country, and Dubliners seem to think that the public purse is theirs for the taking. Why are the people of the west paying for the DART, for instance, or even for the city bus service? These are local services and should be paid for by local taxes. There are plenty other examples. All of which encourage growth in dublin at the expense of the regions.

If the US had followed the policy of keeping the administrative and economic center in New York alone , and had New York grown to have the same percentage of the US’s population as Dublin has of the Republics, it would now have a population size of about 100 million people.

That to me would be a sick urban entity – though New Yorkers may well prefer it to the boondocks of Montana.

i hold these beliefs – despite the fact that I see you have salted your adversaries with the same “backward” brush – despite being atheistic and not really that fond of the GAA – mostly a soccer man myself.

Nice to see the Dublin 4 mentality is alive and well ( I noticed the “only in Ireland” sneer in the last thread as well) and your liberal worldview does not tend to an appreciation of the indigenous culture outside of the pale – the nasty aboriginals are described as being “Godzilla nothing more than a shower of post-modernist rosary bead mauling GAA types who want their Magdalene Laundries, contraceptive bans and fair maidens dancing at the crossroads back”. Not that that sentence makes much sense gramatically, but we get the drift.

Agh no. We just want Dublin to be smaller and a proper distribution of resources in the country. Let me finish – in the nature of the ad hominems above – by calling you and your class a a shower of self hating, post colonial sleeveens who hate your Irishness and anything that makes ireland different from the rest of the world – which is of course a product of the totally colonized mind. This country needs an Edward Said.

As an aside : though I never played GAA, I think that people who like a Munster hurling final are fair in their judgement of a great game, but some of us are pluralist and can like GAA and Rugby and Soccer. I even like cricket and baseball.

I think its even possible to hate the GAA, be anti-Catholic, and still believe Dublin is too big. Dubliners increasingly think so. So less of the non-sequitors…

By the way, anti-Dublin sentiment is not helped by the nature of the way you sophisticated urbanites tends to conduct your debate , is it?

Originally posted by asdasd
Why are the people of the west paying for the DART, for instance, or even for the city bus service? These are local services and should be paid for by local taxes.

Are they? I would contend that rural Ireland is uneconomic and that Dublin more than pays for the DART and other services; Dublin Bus actually makes a profit but Bus Eireann doesn’t.

As a Dubliner by birth, brought to like in Kildare at the age of 12 and forced to move to Mullingar at the age of 25 by the price of houses, I would love to be able to get a decent paying job in my profession (accountancy) anywhere in the Midlands but because of the Dublin centric policy of the State, that hasn’t happened and is unlikely to.

To add….’Dublin airport is to clear the debts of Shannon and Cork airports’.
Brian Hanson is right by the way.
Dublin’s grand architecture suffered greatly in the past at the hands of culchie TD’s who were ignorant of art and architecture, urban and city living and who were appointed for the running of the city, hence thay ran it into the ground.
Dublin to them was viewed depisedly as a Brit city with all the trappings and a Jackeen population, yet Dublin’s sons and daughters produced a Rising in 1916 that was a turning point for the history of the country whilst most culchies were hiding under their beds, po on heads.
Thus when such culchie politicians got a little bit of power in their hands the capital city of Ireland and it’s people suffered enormously. Hence the mass unemployment, rampant dereliction, and the drugs ridden city it became….See today the broken people in the inner city of such hard times. (The chronic situation of the ecomony of the country being a major factor also, but how was the country ever to succeed when it’s power house ‘Dublin’ was so neglected).
As the auld saying goes too Dublin is the city that most rural folk flock to ‘to get a job’ yet a lot of them view it with such disdain.
Yet Dublin set’s the precedent for the rest of the country….whether it be architecture, social living or even crime.

There’s a definite sense that it’s an “us” and “them” kind of thing. The Cancerous Dublin versus the Country Yockels. If for example you look at recent referenda – the Vote is almost always carried by Dublin and Cork Cities (or to be more specific – the affluent suburban areas if these places) while the opposing vote then is carried by what seems to be the rest of the entire (i.e. mostly Rural) country!
Dublin’s sprawl is an obvious problem – but in my opinion it is no more worse than sprawl in Co Galway or Kerry – which lead to worse headaches for Local Authorities, and the Utilities

Brian, while i don’t disagree with your main point (anger at development in Dublin from people in rural areas) I find your tone to be very patronising. It may come as a shock to you, but there are many educated, forward-thinking, liberal people living outside of Dublin. Perhaps if you visiited these areas and met these people instead of basing your opinion on stereotypes it would open your eyes a little. These people are largely upset at Dublin’s development because they believe it’s taking place at the expense of their own towns, not because they want the country to remain stagnant and poorly developed.