144 thoughts on “Everyone Stay Cool

  1. Panty Christ

    Three men restraining one woman. Job done. Throwing her against a bollard is over the top. Completely.

    1. Clampers Outside!

      Woman runs out to block car. And is quickly and forcibly removed, …very carelessly.

      No one was “restrained”.

      “Throwing her against a bollard is over the top” ….even though it is not visible in the video that she hit the bollard, this is the standard assumption.

      Language used to describe a situation and actually describing what IS visible in the video is very important.

      just sayin’

      1. Mr Burns

        Regardless of whether or not she hit the bollard she was still pushed to the ground. That in itself in undoubtedly an extreme response from the Gardai.

        1. Clampers Outside!

          No, not at all.

          Repeated calls and lots of arm waving by Gardaí to clear the path of the car… she then leaves the footpath and runs out to stop the car… Gardaí remove her, quickly and carelessly.

          When she left the path, she put herself in a precarious situation, that’s her responsibility…. or should we all be allowed run out in front of traffic even when the Gardaí are asking people to move out of the way of motor vehicles…

          If you think that a protest run right and safely is done by allowing participants to willy nilly run out in front of moving vehicles is the way to conduct a civic protest you need to rethink your strategy.

          She did something stupid, she got reprimanded somewhat harshly and carelessly. That’s it. It’s not Garda brutality.

        1. Clampers Outside!

          …maybe…. hopefully we might get a snippet / transcript of her interview on 98FM this morning.

          I still think she acted very stupidly to do what she did and responsibility ultimately lies at her own feet.

    2. Mayor Quimby

      if she’d actually hit the bollard she would have stayed down. The woe is me instinct is pretty funny

      Gardai had to assume there was another numpty behind them so got her out of the path of the car

      1. Sidewinder

        I dunno. You’d be amazed what people can do in the half minute or so after they’ve been injured. You don’t really notice it. Once tore two major tendons in my knee and walked around on it for two minutes before vomiting spectacularly and I only then felt the pain. I’m not saying she was injured or anything just saying you can’t rule it out based on that.

    3. Nigel

      Whatever else you might say about them, I don’t think the Guards are constrained by the idea that they need to keep a fight fair.

    1. Jimmee

      Their main arguments to that point are:

      1. that water is already paid for from general taxation, and
      2. that water is a human right and should be free

      Both those arguments can be discredited because firstly, we’re still borrowing to fund day-to-day public expenditure, water is the next thing on the block. And secondly, the fairies will magically bring unlimited clean water to your taps at no expense to anyone.

        1. Mister Mister

          Do you just have a word document with token replies such as this stored so you can copy and paste them in to place like this ?

          You were peddling the same nonsense, pretty much word for word, last week. The stupidity of such responses haven’t diminished over the period of a week though.

          1. sickofallthisbs

            I am genuinely delighted to see how wound up you are. I don’t do smiley faces but here is one :D I hope that irritates you even more.

            There is a reason why you lot are so despised and it is because of your disgraceful attitude to voters. Is it party policy to call people who comment on online media, stupid? You are a disgrace if that is your attitude to people who don’t agree with your politics (which are what exactly? Lets not be Fianna Fail in name but in policy? Lets support the longest serving, yet most inept TD as Taoiseach?).

            Do you know what a public is? If you do then you will know that a public representative has to serve ALL of the public, not just the closeted narrow-minded blueshirt world you operate in.

            Minion! Go back to your TD!

        1. Rep

          The bondholders were paid long ago and what they were paid was a small fraction of our current debt. The main issue is that our outgoings, such as welfare, health, education, etc far far out-stripe out tax incomings. I actually can’t believe somebody has mentioned the bondholders.

          1. Drogg

            Really so we are not making another payment of 8Billion in January. Thats nice things are coming up Ireland. Also if we closed tax loopholes and made multinationals pay taxes we would be doing ok, last year google put about 90billion through Ireland paying no tax on it, 10% of that would not only fix our water system which they say will cost two billion to repair and update but also pay for a couple of years worth of water treatment. And thats just one company.

          2. Karl Monaghan

            Complete wishful thinking that Google would hand over 9 billion rather than upping sticks to a more tax friendly regime. These companies are extremely mobile (especially the host of financial companies in the IFSC) and have zero loyalty to any country. Even if they did stay, that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t just funnel the funds elsewhere and the government still wouldn’t see a penny.

            The low corporate tax rate is used by the government to attract companies to provide employment (e,g, the 2 thousand odd that Google employ). The fact that we also get a small cut of the global profits is gravy.

            That said a small increase in corporation tax would probably not result in a massive flight and would appease some of our EU partners. It probably wouldn’t take in anything close to 9 billion either (which would be equivalent to 40% of this years income tax take).

          3. smoothlikemurphys

            @Drogg – in 2013, Google’s net income was $12bn (Worldwide). You pay tax on profits, not revenues.

          4. Medium Sized C

            Drogg, the problem with you’re thinking is that you seem to think that we are owed something.

            All the googles and facebooks are here because it suits them, not because they owe us something for doing up the docklands for them.

            All the jobs and money they generate for our economy is basically a house of cards.
            The very moment it becomes less financially advantageous to be here for them (not even for their staff but for the firm) they will check in their code, feck off and find one of the umpteen other countries who will regenerate a part of their capital city for them to all congregate in flashy office buildings.

            They don’t owe us anything, I don’t know why the hell you’d think they’d pay oour debts.

          5. Karl Monaghan

            @Drogg it’s not a case of no taxes for corporations but more to be realistic what can be taken from profits earned abroad. You may as well be planning your own monthly budget based on wining the lotto as thinking you’re going to grab massive chunks of profit earned by multinationals in other jurisdictions.

            It also doesn’t mean higher taxes on workers – employment brings the benefit of not having to pay people the dole, earns extra money in the taxes has great social benefit of not having masses of people with nothing to do.

            We are a small, wet island off the coast of Europe with little in easily accessible natural resources (if you want to talk about oil, first show me a working commercial well off the Irish coast). The low corporation tax is bring a mass of employment for people like myself that would otherwise just emigrate.

        2. Frilly Keane

          We’re borrowing to make payroll
          + increments
          + benchmarked pensions

          That just go up and up and up and

      1. 15 cents

        how was “its already paid for” discredited? by saying we still owe money? nah, you guys have misused the money we paid that you told us was for water. if you’ve spent that on something else, then you’ve lied about what we have been paying it for. so its your fault, we are picking up the bill for your mismanagement anymore.

        1. Ronan

          No, the money collected to date was for water already cleaned, piped to homes and business (and leaked into the ground), drank and flushed down the jacks.

          Future water can be:
          1) Paid for by general taxation (as before)
          2) Partly paid for by individuals, the remainder coming from general taxation, thereby freeing up a few hundred million of general taxation that plugs our deficit.

          The key word is deficit.

          As a household that paid over 40,000 euro in Income tax, PRSI and USC last year, I’m pretty pleased that 300m is being raised through all sources instead of just being lumped on us (a household of 2 adults that contributes ~14 Irish persons worth of our income tax), though I wish they hadn’t just handed back a tax cut, I’d rather see that deficit being plugged more aggressively.

          Those claiming “we already pay for water” are most often paying for a fraction of the services they consume.

      2. Mé Féin

        We are still borrowing to pay the wages of politicians and their staff (you). Could we not get rid of that first?

        1. Jimmee

          I’ve no relationship with politics. Also, I work in the private sector.

          How much would we save by not paying politicians and their staff?

  2. Am I Still on this Island?

    A tax exile and great donor to FG owns the Irish Independent. He’s also making a fortune installing water meters. I think Moriarty questioned his honesty.

      1. Am I Still on this Island?

        You can believe in the fairytale of Dinny not controlling editorial content if you want, but I’ll use my brain.

      1. Manta Rae

        What’s there to spin? He’s making a fortune out of plans to charge ordinary people for water. What I find remarkable is that whenever DOB’s minions such as Fionnan Sheahan etc are on RTE, talking down the protesters, they themselves are never quizzed about their newspaper’s major shareholder’s involvement in this farce. There is an obvious conflict of interest here and not once have I heard this raised with INM hacks.

        1. Mister Mister

          So DOB was out there influencing garda acitons, and ordered the ‘photoshop’ of the brick throwing photograph, as hilariously claimed by that gobshite over the weekend.

          1. Manta Rae

            He’s a billionaire who’s making money out of charging ordinary people for their water. Meanwhile, the newspaper he has a major stake in is continually printing negative pieces about the protesters. There’s nothing to spin.

          2. Mister Mister

            It’s the socialist catchphrase to make them sound down with de peeple.

            I’m an ordinary person, I can’t stand them.

  3. Rep

    After the Joan Bruton debacle, I’d imagine they all got an awful bollocking and were under strict orders to ensure the car did not get stuck. You start acting like a dick to the leaders of the country, the people assigned to mind them are going to start acting like a dick in response.

    1. pixel_pimp

      to be fair the lads (and their managers) in the hi-viz jackets have been acting like dicks for a long time now…. possibly longer than the woman they threw across the road.

  4. Mike

    Bit heavy handed there all right, but the fact remains, had she stayed on the footpath with everyone else nobody would have put hands on her.

  5. GiGi

    If any guard ever harasses you physically or otherwise take an immediate note of his or her shoulder number. Every guard has one. If protestors photograph that you have the identity of the guard who has gone too far. I believe it might be helpful as proof for when a list of guards acting like this is presented to the “acting” Garda Commissioner. Come on guys. Organise your info.

  6. Lazlo Panaflex

    guess who wasn’t thrown into a bollard yesterday,….thats right me. why not you ask, because I was safety at home not interfering with the business of a head of state

  7. Frilly Keane

    D’ya know wha

    All sides need t’ get their act together

    Cause this is going t’ get alot worse

    1. Nigel

      Between out-of-control protestors and Guards lacking either the proper training or the proper instructions for handling them, someone’s going to get hurt. Gotta say, though, the responsibility is on the Guards. Protesters gonna protest, but Guards oughta guard.

      1. ReproBertie

        So if another protestor chucks a brick and it injures a garda you’re saying the responsibility is on the garda?

        1. Nigel

          Not remotely. I’m saying overall responsibility for safety and security on the streets belongs to the Gardai. Protest organisers will have variable control over their members, depending, and they can be held responsible for that, but Guards have to deal with the well-managed and the poorly managed and if they do it well, risk and disruption will be minimised. It’s difficult to carry off, but I wouldn’t have thought it was difficult to understand.

      2. Rob_G

        You’re right – the guards were somewhat lacking protecting Joan Burton in Jobstown the other day; she was hit with a water balloon, which could have as easily been one of the bricks thrown at her that day. Unsurprising that the guards would be a little more pro-active subsequently.

    1. ReproBertie

      I wouldn’t bother now. The whole registration process is changing. Latest media reports are that the DSP are going to take registrations for the allowance instead of people providing IW with PPS numbers. No mention of whether those who already registered with IW will have their PPS numbers deleted or passed on or both.

  8. Starina

    whether or not she was in the road and whether or not she hit the bollard, the police who are in a position to physically handle the public need to do so without endangering them. They flung her to the side. They could have put her arms behind her back and marched her out of the way. She was flung, the Gards stared at her in disgust for a moment and then walked off.

      1. smoothlikemurphys

        Where should people go to learn the fundamentals of self-preservation that it’s a bad idea (In any country) to run out in front of a head of government’s car in an attempt to stop it moving?

          1. smoothlikemurphys

            Ah, now I see. In some strange departure from reality, it appears as though you think that Protestors and Gardai are in some way aligned here.

            The job of the Gardai in this instance is to protect the Taoiseach, and anyone that thinks they can just dart out in front of them screaming blue murder would do well to see what can happen as a result.

            I’m not condoning any type of unnecessary heavy handedness from the Gardai, but for her to think that it’s OK to do what she did and then have people wringing their hands for the ‘poor girl’ is nonsense.

          2. Don Pidgeoni

            “it appears as though you think that Protestors and Gardai are in some way aligned here.”

            Now that’s nonsense

  9. ahyeah

    It’s pretty incredible just how close people can get to senior government members. Am pretty sure that if someone got that close to a prime minister or president’s car in any other country, there’d be repercussions for the police on duty. As for the Tanaiste getting hit on the face in Jobstown [www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYuBbt8wFw8] – makes for humorous viewing, has to be said.

    Is that Garda incompetence? Or the sign of a mature society?

    1. Spaghetti Hoop

      Cameron was ‘bumped’ only 2 weeks ago by a jogger – later re-arrested – but which exposed a weakness in his security team. Should our government go down the same road of employing private security…well, the protests are likely to get eggier and less-watery.

  10. The super

    Disgraceful carry on, long live the revolution, people can no longer continue to make massive amounts of money from this state or her people. The wealth in this country is obscene

      1. Alfred E. Neumann

        “Oh the bricks we’ll throw in Walkinstown this Christmas time.
        The only gift they’ll get round here is eggs.
        Where nothing ever flows
        unmetered, they suppose –
        Tonight thank DOB it’s them instead of you…”

  11. CousinJack

    What would the INM and RTE make of the lad standing in front of teh tanks in Tiananmen Square, if the same thing happen in Ireland
    Civil disobedience, such as sitting on the road and blocking vehicles, is a well established form of peaceful protest – otherwise there would still be segregation in the southern US states

    1. ReproBertie

      And where does beating on a car, screaming abuse and brick-chucking fit into the realm of peaceful protest?

  12. TheDude

    How to easily end all this and save their bacon? Scrap water charges. It seems like the arrogant school teacher insists on learning this lesson the hard way

    1. ReproBertie

      They can’t scrap water charges. Water charges are a part of the deal signed by FF with the IMF. The purpose of the water charges and property tax is to provide a more reliable revenue stream for government than stamp duty.

        1. ReproBertie

          You’re confusing this government’s cack-handed set up of Irish Water with the purpose of the water charges as per the IMF bailout agreement.

          1. ReproBertie

            You’re having a fking laugh mate. Stick ReproBertie in that search box up there and you’ll find a post from at least 2012.

      1. Nigel

        And if they hadn’t made an obscene disgrace of the set-up, then the protests would be restricted largely to the ‘we’re already paying through our taxes’ crowd. But they didn’t. Whether there’s anything constructive to be done now or not, they’re reaping the whirlwind.

      2. Original Cynic

        The Troika also want the tax base widened to include the professionals, e.g. legal and medical. NOTHING has been done by the Government to implement this.

      3. TheDude

        Its all about privatisation Bertie. Pure and simple. It’s the only game in town. Unfortunately the current gov have shown nothing but contempt for their employers\subjects (us) assuming they are stupid and can be placated with a couple of years low tariffs. Either they scrap it outright or amend the constitution that it can’t be handed to the cute whoers in a few years. the troika could be faced with an ungovernable state and far less likely to get their loan shark returns.

        1. ReproBertie

          The setting up of Irish Water may well be about privatisation but the introduction of water charges is a different issue. Water charges were part of the IMF deal. To my knowledge, Irish Water was not. The government have certainly make a mess of the introduction of the charges but the state is signed up to an agreement which includes their introduction. No matter who was in power after the last election we’d be facing this extra charge. They can’t scrap the charge. They can scrap the Irish Water entity though.

          1. deliverancecountry

            We have an agreement with the EU for water metering since 2000, the deadline is 2015.
            In the mean time we crashed the economy into a wall, hence the IMF commitments of 2007.

          2. martco

            what the Govt. could do is start telling the truth to us about where we stand

            if we are in some sort of legally or otherwise intractable scenario then they should state it…go on then show us the paperwork…show us why you won’t ever put a bar on the sale of the water resource into the constitution Kenny

            we saved the Euro and now we’ve been left hanging…well is it a life sentence or isn’t it? tell us now

            mainstream parties could start telling the truth about their agendas and beliefs (and I don’t mean politico nerd civil war historical that I like to read about and watch TV documentaries about, I mean within the modern context of today’s Ireland in the EU) and stand up for them and fall on the sword when it comes to GE time if so be it

  13. martco

    ewww jasus that must have hurt…

    you know the bit in the Titanic movie…when she’s tilted up and going down by the bow and some of the poor creaturs are leaping off the railings at the stern…and one of them pings off one of the exposed propeller blades? that sounded like that boink noise

    hope she isn’t too badly hurt but if she is I hope she posts details of her injuries and plenty of pics

    ze Guards clearly aren’t trained for anything like the developing situation….maybe they’ll get some assistance from across the water

  14. Owen

    And if she was run over? Or her foot was? Then the same shouting and screaming, onto Joe etc. Load of balls. Cuff her and lock her up then people cry about the tax it’s going to cost.

    She got what you deserve for banging on the side of the Taoiseachs car. Any other country she would be locked up or shot. Consider herself lucky. These are not peaceful protests, they are idiots losing their point.

    1. Mé Féin

      Any other country she would be locked up or shot. Consider herself lucky
      North Korea or Russia maybe. But this isn’t either. Stupid comment from another government shill.

      1. Owen

        US, UK, France, ah, I could actually list most countries. Sure the jogger that ran into Cameron a week or two ago was slammed by the cops and arrested. If you did it in the US your be in Guantamamo. There is no excuses for aggressively approaching the Taoiseach, as much as we hate him. She is lucky, not a victim.

        1. Don Pidgeoni

          Arrested yes but not f***ed onto the ground which seems to be the issue. There are ways and means of removing people in relatively safe ways. Outside of a riot, you wouldn’t see a UK cop doing something like that.

          1. Don Pidgeoni

            Sure, cherry-picked an example that wasn’t even beat cops. The Met are hardly perfect, far far far from it. But for one, they are smart enough to not pull crap like this when people are around filming it. And secondly, if that stuff had happened previously, there would have been no way someone would have got close enough to even spit on that car.

          2. ReproBertie

            Your comparison is between the well behaved UK police and one cherry picked example of the gardaí flinging a protestor to the ground.

          3. CousinJack

            UK police are expected to be fit, competent, properly trained and have, for the last couple of decades, very tight independent overwatch. We have the keystone cops, who for many can do no wrong, because there great guys (like all farmers second sons)

          4. Don Pidgeoni

            “Your comparison is between the well behaved UK police and one cherry picked example of the gardaí flinging a protestor to the ground.”

            Its not one example though is it? Its this one, the older woman a few days ago, the rape joke etc. All these little signs of incompetence which I find worrying. I would find the same in the Met worrying (and there are a lot of worries with them) but at least , as CousinJack says, there are higher standards to be met.

          5. ReproBertie

            “And there are a lot of worries with them”.

            So it’s just possible that we would see a UK cop doing something like this. You’re doing a fine job of making nonsense of your own points.

          6. Don Pidgeoni

            My concerns about the Met are more to do with them shooting people, ignoring rage allegations, stop and search and undercover cops having babies with unsuspecting women rather than an inability to be able to remove protesters from an area in a managed and relatively safe way and to be able to effectively manage protests so that this sort of thing doesn’t even happen. So yeah, not the same thing.

      2. Robotnik

        So you think this helps? You think jumping in front of a political motorcade and getting shoved to the ground somehow improves the situation??

  15. Spammer

    Forget the Black & Tans we now have a new form of police state enforcing just as sinister state policies!

  16. Robotnik

    Blocking a political motorcade, what is wrong with these people? What goes through their heads? The politician inside will have a sudden epiphany and reverse their stance?

    1. Ciarán

      Amm..the point is they didn’t do their job efficiently, but rather haphazardly.
      A professional police force would have 1. not let anyone near the head of state 2. if a person broke through, one to two fast acting memebers would neutralise the threat firmly and securely with the most effiicent and safest movements. The protester would be ‘lifted’ to van/pavement by a disciplined action and kept in place, and not flung then disregarded, either being hurt of free to retaliate/follow through. I’ve seen it in action in England and Germany where the have training for public order scenarios.
      This was GAA pitch fracas stuff. And not even Croke park level, but county level.

    1. Ciarán

      “This thread is about inside opening windows, if you want to talk about outside opening windows, please start another thread”

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