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‘Anti-homeless’ spikes from Wexford company, Kent Stainless

Very important objects (The New Yorker)

Kent Stainless

Previously: Roughing It

Related: Remove the anti-homeless spikes (Change.org)

H/T: Ciaran Cuffe

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53 thoughts on “Spike It

  1. Odis

    “Good for high traffic pedestrian areas” – until you trip and maybe fall on one – in which case I would think them potentially lethal. Have they not considered the Product Liability aspect of making such a ridiculous claim?

    1. Parky Mark

      If people are walking on your window sills and wall tops, and then they trip and fall, they would have a harder time trying to apportion blame to the property owner. Use your brain. Just because they are intended for high traffic pedestrian areas doesn’t mean they are to be used on the ground where said pedestrians are walking.

      1. Odis

        I am using my brain. Its a legal point. Though I’m not a lawyer. I understand If you make a claim about a product which is false, misleading or dangerous, you may be held liable for injuries or damage that your product has caused.

        Indeed many companies nowadays carry “Product Liability Insurance” to cover them against any unforeseen claims in Tort, which might be made against them.

        High traffic pedestrian means people walking (from the Latin ped for foot). How else do you suppose pedestrians get around?

        1. Parky Mark

          It’s not about how they get around, it’s where they get around. These are designed for use in these areas. Street lights can be designed for high traffic areas. By your logic it’s the fault of the manufacturer if someone climbs the light and jumps off the top.

  2. mark

    Perhaps we could discuss a more comprehensive solution to homelessness than simply making the street less uncomfortable?

    1. Hosanna in the Hiace

      Meh, homeless people in tourist areas damages jobs and harms the economy. Doesn’t really help the homeless does it?

  3. Disasta

    Great idea, wish I’d thought of them. Now if only you could retract them for during the day so customers could use the entrance to your business and extend them at night to prevent people using your property entrance as a house.

    1. Parky Mark

      Read the description again. They are designed for wall tops and window sills. Not many shops use walls and windows as entrances. At least not here in Dublin.

      1. Disasta

        Hence suggesting the modification for use in doorways there Mensa, where most junkies seen to sleep in out fair cities.

        1. Parky Mark

          There’s plenty of things that can be modified to be used in doorways to prevent people sleeping in them.

  4. Mick

    It´s my building!! Even though there is plenty of room to sit and it makes no difference to ANYONE, you can´t sit there. Go away. You smell.

    1. All the good ones fly south for winter

      Exactly, expect to see hen party members bobbing up and down on these like corks are sea.

  5. Michelle

    I actually think it’s a pretty viable idea. It’s all well and good saying that “oh, our homelessness situation is out of control, we must do something blah blah blah” but the sad reality is that the number of homeless who choose that lifestyle for themselves is rather high. And so what if these spikes are *cough* erected on private property? It’s private property and its owners can do whatever the hell they like as long as it’s within the confines of the law. Get down off yer high horses.

    1. Mysterymeat

      ‘Rather high’. Can you provide any kind of percentage or hard numbers for that, or is it indeed you that is ‘rather high’?

    2. Starina

      when it’s a business they’d be better spending the money on providing food and improving local shelters to be safer and cleaner rather then pricey spikes. The long-term effect would be far better — actually help the homeless not to be homeless anymore rather than just moving them on to the another area.

      1. Hosanna in the Hiace

        Have you a cost benefit analysis for that?

        The spikes are a once off, feeding the homeless isn’t.

        A pity they can’t live on do gooder hand-wringing

        1. Starina

          Oh, sorry, I forgot that capitalism is king.

          The benefit is for society and humanity in general, Hosanna. Company profit isn’t everything. However, a bit of charitable do-gooding goes a long way towards giving a company positive marketing, if you want to look at it that way.

    3. Barry the Hatchet

      “the number of homeless who choose that lifestyle for themselves is rather high”

      Ha! Data please. Saying it doesn’t make it so.

      1. Jack Aranda

        That really was one of the more spectacularly deranged comments I’ve read on here. Bravo, Michelle!

        1. jungleman

          I wouldn’t say it was deranged. Maybe slightly inaccurate. But there is no doubt that many people choose the street for various reasons. The problem is primarily drugs, homelessness is the symptom.

    4. jeremy kyle

      You’re right they all brought it on themselves, fupp ’em if they can stand up straight 24 hours a day or float in the river as long as we don’t have to look at them.

    5. Michelle

      Keyboard warriors assemble! Let’s attack any right of centre viewpoint. Please, spare me. The point I’m making is that if someone wants to put these spikes on their own property, then that’s their decision to make and, I believe, their right to do so. As for my saying that it is choice for a good number (high relative to the number most would consider), I stick by that. That man murdered in Phoenix Park last year had €130K in a bank account. You think homelessness wasn’t a choice for him? No, you’re right, he probably was forced onto the streets.

      1. Mani

        You are. So. Stupid.
        Seriously.
        I can only hope very house you move into is child proofed. Other wise it’s the domestos express for you.

        1. Michelle

          Why – am { I ? so , stupid? Is it because I punctuate a sentence unnecessarily with full stops? Oh, wait…

          Where does the child-proofing come into it? Your reply made zero sense to me. Then, again, I am. So. Stupid.

          1. Mani

            Acceptance is the first step, they say. However that’s for grief not stupidity so you’re pretty much as dumb as you were before you admitted it.

      2. jeremy kyle

        So, you’re somehow not a “keyboard warrior”?

        You’re right though that single example you just gave there is definitive proof that homelessness is just a lifestyle choice.

      3. Tucker Done

        I wouldn’t attack your viewpoint, more the complete lack of any evidence to support your viewpoint apart from a questionable anecdote and a commitment to stand by your ‘good number’ relative to some other number. Pre-school debating team stuff there.

          1. jeremy kyle

            Nobody is denying that happened, but you say the “number of homeless who choose that lifestyle for themselves is rather high” and justify with a single story about one person.

          2. Mani

            It’s depressingly amazing that technology is now so user friendly that someone with the intelligence of an irradiated turnip, such as you, can use it.

  6. Hosanna in the Hiace

    Ciaran Cuffe could spend some of his unearned millions on the homeless instead of haranguing legitimate businesses. Wealth tax on trust fund babies anyone?

    BTW how are the Skakels, Ciaran?

  7. Dan

    Primark cargo pants too, made in Rana Plaza Bangladesh. Some good Irish representation in the V&A these days.

  8. Hosanna in the Hiace

    “The Kent Spike Stud is used to deter people from unwanted sitting areas such as window sills and wall tops”

    I didn’t realise homeless people slept on Window Sills and Wall tops.

    1. All the good ones fly south for winter

      Slowly they morph into pigeons. Nature will always find a way.

    1. jeremy kyle

      I believe the homeless should be rounded up and reduced into a thick paste that we can used as a fertilizer for growing our crops and feeding our livestock.

  9. YourNan

    they should do the entire Custom House river front with these, it’s like Calcutta, highly entertaining though.

  10. Paul Davis

    You know that the problem is not going away when the spikes are made from marine grade stainless.

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