-Donnacha-
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If some of tthe buildings are to be turned into restaurants / bars / cafes on the street (such as the central bar) it would be nice to see some outdoor seating areas in front of them.
It’s been said numerous times that the design of the National Conference Centre makes reference to the Gasometer.
Is there any truth to this?
@Paul Clerkin wrote:
Last line of this article about the Point Depot
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/1120/1227135219864.html“Its centrepiece, a 40-storey tower, is on hold for at least a year due to the economic downturn.”
According to the Sunday Business Post yesterday, Harry Crosbie has denied that the project is on hold for a year.
Although, I passed there today and it does seem to be fully covered over so maybe he’s disputing the quoted length of the delay rather than the delay itself… anyone heard anything ?
@Angry Rebel wrote:
So, we move to a Yank like system where there are more vested interests than voices of the people!? Right. :rolleyes:
er.I’m not suggesting that they be company sponsored, I’m just suggesting that certain sectors are vastly over-represented in the make up of the Dail and others are grossly under-represented simply because some people have more control over their hours and have more time on their hands than others.
I mean how many engineers, architects, planners, scientists, IT people, nurses, gardai, hospital doctors etc ever make into Leinster House?
From what I can see it’s teachers, who tend to be well-meaning, good at talking rather a lot and not doing all that much. Accountants and legal professionals who tend to be good at tying themselves into knots of red tape and a good smattering of self-employed business types who often seem to follow some very narrow agendas…
I know several TDs and I can assure you it’s not a cake walk of a job. Yes, the money isn’t bad but you are literally on the phone pretty much every waking hour answering constituency queries and have to be nice to every single caller, regardless of how big/small or sensible their query actually is. The work load is mind-blowing. And, before you say that a lot of it is just paying lip service to callers, the reality of our democratic system is that you’re up against up to 4 other sitting TDs on a day-in, day-out basis. So, if you don’t answer the phone, one of your counterparts will.
Your career could be high flying and go on for decades, or it could be a short lived stint on the back benches, particularly if you’re in opposition.
You can cock up as a doctor, an architect, a sales person in Tesco and get fired but as an elected representative you do not have any tenure. You face the electorate every 5 years and there are absolutely no guarantees of keeping your seat. Your career could be over just like that and it’s happened to plenty of good TDs too! It doesn’t even take a cock-up, the electorate can be quite fickle.
The vast majority of TDs get into politics for all the right reasons, i.e. that they’ve a desire to actually do something for their communities. There are a few rotten apples, but the same could be said for any area of life. Unfortunately, they do tend to tarnish the whole world of politics.
The fact that someone has to risk their career / pause it to run a campaign which may or may not be successful and then their career could only last 5 years does mean that they are taking a huge risk. If you’ve a mortgage and kids, it’s often an unacceptably high risk.
I just think that something could be done to make some kind of provision for people to participate in public life. E.g. an ability to take time off / take a career break, even an unpaid one. It would actually be highly beneficial for companies and sectors to get some of ‘their people’ into the political sphere too as it means that their views are represented. So, you’re not talking about something that doesn’t have rewards for companies willing to allow staff members time off to do something like that.
Even if a company could say, ok take 6 months of unpaid leave to run your campaign. If you don’t make it, you can take up your job again. Not many employers would go that far. So, it rules out the possibility of ever running for the vast majority of us and biases the entire system in favour of those with time on their hands i.e. mostly teachers!
Breaking into politics usually means slogging it out as a councillor too, which to be fair, isn’t exactly a very well paid job and often requires almost as much work as a TD puts in (certainly a back bencher).
I really do think that we need to be incentivising the RIGHT people to become more politically involved. As it stands you’re getting teachers, academics, lawyers and people who’ve got politics in the family i.e. they already have the infrastructure behind them and know what is involved.
Incentivising people to get involved could include outreach and education programmes to show people how to go about becoming an elected representative. Encouraging people to actively participate in political life etc.
I don’t think it’s that unreasonable that a company or employer as part of their social responsibility should facilitate someone when they’re basically going out there to serve their community and their country.
It’s the kind of cynical attitude that seems to exist in Ireland (and elsewhere) when it comes to politics that leads to a situation where the entire system is full of people who know how to work the system, rather than those who are the best at the job.
If it were such an attractive career there’d be a lot more people putting themselves forward for election.
@Leesider wrote:
…
Read an article in the examiner recently where the guy was very worried about how the government is run by teachers and solicitors…….while not suggesting there is anything wrong with these professions we need more business people to be involved to get a good over all picture. Michael O’Leary was suggested as one guy that should be enlisted by the government to give his point of view. Makes sense but can’t see it happening!
The problem is that people with big business backgrounds, as well as planning and architectural backgrounds are simply not entering Irish politics. Teachers enter quite simply because they have such short hours and long holidays that they can easily become councillors and then make a jump to being a TD. Schools even hold their jobs open for them while they’re a sitting TD! Traditionally, (although this is rapidly decreasing) Farmers were also massively over-represented in Leinster House. Solicitors and barristers also have relatively large amounts of freedom to partake in political life compared to other professions as they’re usually self-employed, or working in small partnerships. They also tend to have a better understanding of the political system than most as they are engaged in law.
Business people need to put their money where their mouth is and stand!! If Michael O’Leary wants to be involved in government he should stand for election. There’s no point in standing on the sidelines and moaning. There’s no reason why he, or anyone else should or could be appointed to Government without winning an election. It would be just a ‘tad’ undemocratic.
I also reckon that more architects and planners need to consider standing for council, for the senate or for the dail. There may be people on these boards who ought to be considering standing in the local elections next time around!!
Perhaps one way forward would be to make some kind of legal provision where by employers were obliged to allow someone to work part-time or job share if they were entering political life. It’s very difficult to break into politics without a lot of free time on your hands. Although that is unlikely to ever happen as it would weaken the position of existing politicians…
We have quite an open and easily accessible political system, it’s about time that people other than teachers, solicitors, farmers and the odd accountant used it!
Slight problems being
1) Cork Airport’s run by the Dublin Airport Authority
2) Cork Airport’s been landed with an enormous debt which it wasn’t supposed to have.
3) How is FF getting away with this?:confused:I’d certainly agree that the mock georgians were a brave decision on the part of the corportation. It seems a shame that they were much easier for people to stomach knocking down compared to the drab flats in Ringsend which currently close off the vista in Grand Canal docks.
Re: Johnglas’ pedigree – were I from Airdrie or somplace like that I’d claim to be an exotic Glaswegian or perhaps he’s a defender of brutalist modernism and has made “the dear green place” his spiritual home!
@johnglas wrote:
Don’t want to hog this with Glesga stuff, but I’m sure there are 200 detached houses in Partick-/Dowanhill and Kelvindale alone (more or less).
Don’t like to go on and on either, but are you sure you’re from Glasgow?!!! I’ve lived in Clouston St and Muirpark st and know that area really quite well. There are no houses! Even the ones on Kirklee are all flat conversions. Don’t believe me – get on to s1homes and do a search for a detached house in Glasgow – you’ll find yourself in East Renfrewshire. You want to see a detached house in a Scottish city – get the train to Aberdeen!
The figure of detatched houses I gave was related to the ones which still exist as houses – and of course I’m refering to the Glasgow city council area – no Bearsden or Milngavie!
AFAIK the inset beds were generally for children (skivvies did not live onsite) except for the one in kitchen which being the warmest was reserved for the elderly and infirm. They were illegal from 1890 (health issues). It would be interesting to see if they were common in Dublin, they wre very common in country houses
I know the gorbals scene I photographed included the courts, but the combination of that and the tower blocks in the background was one of the most arrestingly hideous scenes I’ve seen in Glasgow – and there’s a few!
I’m not sure you’re compating like with like. In Glasgow the so called tenements were built purposefully to accomodate large numbers of people in apartments, A far cry from sub divided georgian mansions like Henrietta street. What is remarkable about the tenements constructed in Glasgow and elsewhere in Scotland is that they were often built to cater for middle-class families who in Ireland and England would live in suburban semis. The tenement house which Johnglas posted is an example of a middle class flat.
Aparently in Glasgow there’s less than two hundred detached houses – remarkable! But before you get too excited about high density middle class dwelling I thought I’d stick this up!
Sorry, Carrigaline is closer to 13,000
http://www.cso.ie/census/census2006results/volume_2/census_2006_vol_2_tables_14_15.pdf
As for Bus Eireann, its the same with all aspects of that group of companies – a strong national transport regulator is required to kick them into shape – they don’t listen to anyone (elected or not) because there is no clearly legal or political defined basis on which their performance can be judged, or on which they can be made answerable for their actions.
The thing is that there may well be a case for Light Rail in Cork – as I’ve said before here, the City Council were arguing strongly for it as far back as the 1980s (before it was suggested as a real option in Dublin, in fact). Given the size and density of the city, and the likely future development, it is and will be of an appropriate scale for a focussed investment of this type. Clearly, heavy rail would be excessive, and bus may not offer the long term solution – so there’s an initial case, clearly. Thing is, an investment in a much larger bus fleet, and in getting the ‘Green Routes’ established properly, might deal with a lot of these problems for the next 10-15 years.
However, and this harks back to a related thread on boards, the parish pump nature of politics here is such that there will be a marked reluctance in a number of quarters to even consider this type of investment on the basis that once Cork ‘gets it’, Limerick and Galway will feel that they ‘deserve it’ also, despite the fact that Cork is significantly larger than both of those put together (see table above). In other words, the net political outcome would be perceived to be negative, on the basis that the negative reaction from the Wes(h)t would be much stronger than the mild positive reaction from Cork.
The honest and fair solution is to do one tender for 3 feasability studies into light rail, have the same company do the analysis, on the same basis, for all three cities, and then treat the results fairly and rationally.
I was under the impression that all the bridges were to be built to allow double-tracks to be installed later if the situation arose.
That was certainly the case – in fact the designs that were around in the 2001 timeframe were that all of the infrastructure was to be constructed to allow for electrification, desipite the fact that there was no likely way that this would ever be required on that line, but I gather from anecdotal evidence, that the final plans may not be quite so well considered.They have trains that can go anywhere – the real question is if these trains also work as on street trams? Carrigaline is a long way out too – to sustain frequency would require quite a number of trains – which might be viable at a certain scale, but Carrigaline is only 12,000 people.
Essentially, it comes down to what kind of service you want or can afford, if the decision is taken to go with light rail. A mid/low frequency service linking Carrigaline (and Douglas) with the city centre would be one thing, a Luas type system running through the city centre would be another.
From some back of the envelope scribbling, (literally) a Luas line with 26-30 40m trams, running from Douglas to Ballincollig, through the Docklands, Railways Station, UCC, CIT etc, with a P+R at both ends, would cost at least €3-400m (capital costs), and that would only go up if you wanted to extend it to Carrigaline (or the airport). Give that I don’t have access to ridership figures, or likely passenger loadings, its impossible to suggest what IRR a proper CBA would churn out, but I would imagine that the Cork area is probably marginal for a light rail system. Any such system would have to be kept simple first, and allow for upgrading at a later stage.
A good first step might be a proper bus service though.
@weehamster wrote:
Well I’m not calling it the F’n O2. I cant stand corporate naming. Its the Point or Point Depot and always will be. :rolleyes:
They should have called it ‘point o2’
@Rory W wrote:
What’s the deal with calling it a ‘roman amphitheatre’ in that clip – its just an amphitheatre, this ain’t rome and the ancient romans certainly would have made a better fist of the exterior
what about Mansfields Georgian Conference centre.
Check this out:
