Rory W

@J. Seerski wrote:

3. An Interconnector will make Heuston obsolete – why on earth would you travel from Galway/Cork to Heuston when you could go to Stephens Green?

I would assume it will still work as a terminus for intercity trains in the same way that Connolly does (i.e. You can’t get the Belfast train to Pearse but you can change at Connolly) and commuter/Darts would use the interconnector.

I welcome the reopening of Broadstone as something but (and lets face it) Phibsborough is hardly going to become a destination overnight for commuters in the same way that the Tara, Connolly, Pearse and Grand Canal Dock serve the CBD. Therefore the onward journey must be considered.

Personally I think it would be better served as a hub for Luas where lines from Blanchardstown (serving Grangegorman DIT), Finglas and the airport (via DCU/Ballymun) could meet before linking up with a single line to Marlborough Steet (via Western way and Dominic Street) which inturn would link into the green line via Hawkins Street. However to facilitate 2 of these Luas lines you would need to use the old track reservation as far as Liffey junction (where the Navan line could terminate).

Or you could actually do something about the anti-social element and give the city centre back to civilised folk rather than letting the anti-social element have the run of the place

@phil wrote:

At least they are prepared to cover it. There has been barely anything about it in other papers as far as I am aware. My bets are on a deluge of letters to the various papers once these things are actually put in place.

It’s been in all the newspapers – just a long time ago Phil

I couldn’t give a flying fuck about dog skeletons or Vincent Salifa – what I care about is the fact that a pointless motorway is being built that will only increase the sprawl of Dublin. This road is being built to facilitate developers (check who owns landbanks on the route) who will further spoilt the landscape (with it’s historical associations) throw in thousands of houses without facilities in the usual unplanned manner and who’s attendent increase in traffic lead to a further deterioration in the quality of life of those commuters who travel in to Dublin from Navan and Kells and grind to a halt when they reach Blanchardstown anyway.

Sue if you can come up with reasonable answers to the issues highlighted above and not glib postings that cut and paste the ridiculous arguments from either side, please post them.

Whilst I’d gladly give everyone in the DAA a good hiding for their ineptitude and the fact that they are more interested in running a fucking shopping centre than an airport (“You can take your time” – bollocks to that I went to get a flight not a side of salmon) the buck stops with the Minister for Transport. Given that Brennan was sacrificed on the alter to appease the unions and that buffoon Cullen was brought in to dither and procrastinate whilst the airport became like something out of the black hole of Calcutta just goes to show how out of touch these people really are. It’s a pity you cant throw out the DAA along with the minister.

God almighty anything to do with infrastructure they completely fuck up in this country

Silence is golden eh?

@Frank Taylor wrote:

Stephen’s Green to O’Connell Bridge is 800m. So the maximum walk to a station if you find yourself between these stops is 400m or 5 minutes. nobody minds a 5 minute walk (length of Grafton Street). Adding extra stops increases journey times overall and increases build costs..

to you or I a 5 minute walk but what about the eldery or mothers with kids – anyway its a real pain in the arse getting off at the green centre to go to somewhere like Temple bar – make the service practical, build the extra stop and hang the cost!

Shop signs have never been uglier. A stroll down the high street has turned into optical torture

Charlie Brooker
Monday April 23, 2007
The Guardian

I live in a town you may have heard of. It is called London. In many ways, it is a great place – excellent local amenities, a giant ferris wheel, and more than a few famous faces (Toby Anstis lives here, as does that woman off Holby City – you know, the nursey one). But there is a downside, too. London – like many other places – has a cancer; an unwelcome phenomenon that has been gradually spreading over the past decade, and is now reaching saturation point. I am talking, of course, about modern laser-printed uPVC retail signage.

Shop fronts have never been uglier. I am not talking about the big chains here – they have spent millions designing their logos. They tend to look crisp and clean and, occasionally, even demure. I have got nothing against, say, Nando’s. No, I am annoyed by the little guy – the pound shops, the cheapo grocers, the off-licences and the takeaways with their horrid, shrieking signs. Frankly, I could not give a toss if Tesco bulldozed the lot of them and turned the entire nation into one huge supermarket. At least there would be some typographic consistency.

A few years ago, shopkeepers had three basic options: 1) paint the store front yourself; 2) hire a professional to paint it for you; 3) buy some metal or plastic lettering and screw it over the door. Now, there is a fourth option: get a bunch of clueless, cut-price bastards to design a banner on a computer in six minutes flat, stretch it to fit and print it out using some hideous modern laserjet device filled with waterproof inks the colour of sick.

As a result, we live in a cluttered optical hell of carelessly stretched-and-squashed typefaces and colour schemes that clash so violently they give you vertigo. Stroll down the average high street and it is like being assailed by gaudy pop-ups on the internet. It makes your eyes want to spin inward and puke down their own sockets.

As if thoughtless font abuse were not enough, some signs even incorporate scanned photographs; a garish snap of some glistening meat surrounded by a yellow Photoshop “haze” effect, hovering over an electric blue background, flanked by the words KEBAB DUNGEON in bright red, foot-high Comic Sans crushed to 75% of its usual width. Jesus. Why not just punch me in the face and have done with it?

The overall effect is depressing and disorientating. One computer-assisted eyesore after another, jostling for position, kicking good taste in the nuts. Surely this is more than the human mind can process? I would not be at all surprised to discover that the local crime rate rises each time one of these poxy signs go up. It is enough to put almost anyone in a bad mood.

That is not just idle speculation. Well, all right, it is. But there is little doubt that environment affects mood. That is why we tend to paint our bedroom walls soothing, neutral, off-white shades as opposed to frantic lime green with Day-Glo orange swastikas. When I walk the streets of the tiny Oxfordshire village in which I grew up, my mind feels clearer. I can concentrate in a way that simply isn’t possible in London, where my subconscious is too busy trying to filter out the billboards and the lettering and the POUNDLAND ANY ITEM £1 OR LESS.

Laser-printed uPVC shop signs are an atrocity. A sanctioned act of vandalism. They should be outlawed or, at the very least, be put through some kind of approval process in which a panel of graphic designers inspects each proposed sign, rejecting those with squashed typography or obnoxious colour schemes.

Something has got to be done because it is only going to get worse. You know what will be coming next: animated shop signs with moving “wallpaper” backgrounds. Storefronts resembling god-awful homepages from 1998. Row upon row of them. Visual bedlam wherever you turn. Two months of that and our cities are going to be over-run with screaming maniac gangs; hitherto law-abiding citizens driven insane without knowing why, like the demented hordes from 28 Days Later.

It is your fault, shopkeepers. It is your ugly font-abusing fault.

They just want more tickets & a corporate suite (they have one of the tudor style pavillions adjoining the west stand) – Boo to Wanderers I say for holding things up

Mind you they are finally on site for the National Conference centre – saw the Auger out there yesterday