Comments on: Can I ram raid them now? Pretty Please!!!

By: Dan Sullivan

Dan Sullivan — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:21:05 +0000

There was quite a bit of comment on this decision back when it was made public in early 2007.

http://www.politics.ie/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=16813&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

http://www.archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=5715

By: Dan Sullivan

Dan Sullivan — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:15:08 +0000

I would be less inclined to beat Daithi Doolan up on this one as it was a deal done by the city management with JCDecaux. The councillors were simply not in a position legally to prevent the deal going through. If you want to take it up with someone in particular then the city manager is your man and the only person he is answerable to is the minister for the Environment, by extension we could blame Dick Roche and John Gormley. People for entirely understandable reasons tend to think of the city council – what the councillors are members of – as being the same as the city council which is the vast public service apparatus that actually has most of the decision making power. Cllrs did object and made a big song and dance about this deal, and nothing was done. Councillors are for the most part in office, not in power.

I think we might be best served by finding a new name of the council chamber (call it the assembly or the dead pool, I don’t much care) so that we can apportion blame to the correct body.

By: Adam

Adam — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:15:18 +0000

Amongst the 100 or so problems I have with these signs, I noticed the Henry St. ones yesterday and was enraged by the way they’re installed.

It’s not too long since Henry St. got completely re-paved and it looks quite well all told – that is until these yokes came in, not only visually polluting the street some more but also removing up a few feet of quality (read expensive) paving around them and replacing it with tarmac… Maybe it’s just a temporary measure but I won’t hold my breath.

To say that it brings advertising under the control of the council is stupid. It’s not our fault that the council doesn’t control or get a cut from the existing public advertising but I don’t see how adding more is solving the problem – why couldn’t they change the law that forced all new public ads to give an annual commission to the council? A tax to offset their visual impact on the environment which could be used to pay for “beautification” measures, perhaps.

To compare them to bus shelters, as Doolan did on Liveline is equally obscene – maybe if these were public information stations which featured ads the argument might hold some weight but they serve absolutely no service to the public. (And before anyone says ‘what about the bikes?’ you have to firstly ask ‘what bikes?’ and secondly ask if it’s all that good an idea to make bikes available to rent when they’re only going to be of use to people who don’t cycle regularly and are as a result more likely to be bad at cycling.)