62 thoughts on “Passing The Baton

    1. Joe

      I was in East Germany a few times before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, trust me on this one. Having a handful of Gardai on the street is like 0% of how East Germany was then.

      1. millie bobby brownie

        People who compare Ireland to ‘a police state’ or something of that ilk generally have no idea of what living in a police state is actually like.

        1. Bitnboxy

          Not to mention the fact that those who crow about “freedoms” and “police state” are the very ones who dream of taking away rights and freedoms from groups they don’t like. Look at creepy and twisted Hermann Kelly (Nigel Farage’s ex-lapdog and fluffer) low born “founder” of the hilariously-styled outfit “Irish Freedom Party”. Then we have “Health Freedom Ireland”, another motley crew of far-right neer-do-wells and “medics” dreaming of becoming Ireland’s Lucashenka.

    2. Micko

      Well, as I’ve said before, while probably not what we think of as a police state.

      A police state is on a sliding scale. And there is no single definition of when exactly a society is seen to have slipped into a police state.

      So yes there are elements of the governments behaviour of late that are very much with what we’d traditionally call a police state.

          1. Daisy Chainsaw

            That’s hardly what you’d “traditionally call a police state”. It’s happened in every democracy in the world.

          2. Micko

            I’m not aware of that.

            Have other European countries police assaulted young people out drinking?

          3. Daisy Chainsaw

            Yep. Last week for the Champion’s League final, the year before that too.

          4. Micko

            I had a look there and the only vids I could find of that were of football fans kicking the living crappola out if each other.

            I’d say that fair game, If the fans are assaulting people then police should step in.

            The videos from last night show Guards assaulting kids that were just standing there.

            I don’t think the two are comparable to be honest. If you have any others I’d watch them.

            But, I would say that police assaulting anyone who isn’t causing trouble is troubling – no matter what country it’s in.

          5. Micko

            I had a look there and those football lads were knocking the heads off each other in the middle of traffic in some cases.

            I don’t have a problem with them being dispersed.

            I don’t think the two are comparable with what happened in town last night.

          6. SOQ

            Are you the troll who was hounding Marcus De Brun on twitter with the same name?

            Y/N?

          7. Daisy Chainsaw

            I have better things to be doing than hounding attention seeking, internet cranks.

            How about you Y/N?

        1. f_lawless

          A good example is the manner in which An Garda Siochana’s special powers (ie. the powers to arrest and detain citizens who don’t comply with Covid-19 guidelines, confine people to their homes, restrict travel, set up checkpoints, shut down businesses, etc) were recently extended by the Houses of the Oireachtas. It made a mockery of Irish democracy – rushed through as a foregone conclusion. No review carried out of the government’s Covid measures to date despite the ample amount of time to do so. No meaningful debate held.

        1. Micko

          Incredibly, Wikipedia agrees with me – for once :0)

          “ Because there are different political perspectives as to what an appropriate balance is between individual freedom and national security, there are no objective standards defining a police state.

          This concept can be viewed as a balance or SCALE. Along this spectrum, any law that has the effect of removing liberty is seen as moving towards a police state while any law that limits government oversight of the populace is seen as moving towards a free state.”

          1. ce

            That’s some serious college science level research skills right there – almost as good as your recent peer reviewed conclusive mask research project.

            Beware Millie – the Pandora’s box has been opened – you’re about to have your mind blown Matrix style… with his expert views on both the dangers of scarfs and totalitarian systems.

            I was converted yesterday, so no need for me to be exposed to more learning…I’m going to make chips… enjoy

          2. Micko

            Hey ce

            You seem to be a bit wound up about yesterday.

            You doing ok?

            I think we both let it get a bit out of hand.

            As I said to Nigel earlier, we’re not really communicating, we’re just trying to outdo each other.

            Let’s not do that. Cool?

          3. Micko

            Honestly GP, I looked back last night and I spent about 4 hours arguing on here with Nigel & ce.

            For what? Neither of any of us learned anything off each other and the whole thing was completely pointless.

            The only thing we did is alienate each other even more and make ourselves look like dopes by trying to outdo each other.

            We’re literally doing nothing to help anyone and I’m tired of doing that.

          4. millie bobby brownie

            Very interesting. Thanks for that. That’ll probably send me down the Wikipedia rabbit hole for the evening.

          5. Nigel

            I thought we were communicating fine. I learned a lot about your point of view. I got less and less impressed with it as I went on, and I did my best to counter it, what’s wrong with that? That you claim you don’t learn anything is weird, but then again you do keep asking the same questions over and over again and never reading the answers you get.

          6. Nigel

            Let’s at least agree to try to avoid thrashing out the same thing over and over again.

          7. Micko

            I dunno what else we’ll talk about, but that’s cool.

            Ummm… seen any good films lately ;)

          8. Unreal

            Nigel is a horrendous bully and troll and a worse blight on this site in my opinion than the idiot fake English guy ever was, permanent ban is the only answer, but I fear what else he would put his miserable time in at if deprived of this pressure valve

        2. SOQ

          @ Millie- you are clearly a carature like Salmon- do you actually live in Ireland? Y/N

  1. Janet, dreams of an alternate universe

    I genuinely hope the police don’t become like the police in France, that’s not going to work out for anyone …not even the cops, suicide is rife in French cops

    1. millie bobby brownie

      In what way Janet? I didn’t realise there were problems of that scale in the French police. Sounds dire.

      1. Janet, dreams of an alternate universe

        there is a real us and them mentality, there’s a lot of violence and misery, worth a much longer answer but I’m stretched here :)

        1. millie bobby brownie

          Of course. I completely understand. I appreciate the answer anyways.

          I’ll have a read up on it and maybe we’ll have the opportunity to get into it another time.

          Hope the sunny girl is thriving, my dear x

          1. Lilly

            Even as a schoolgirl, I was shocked at the cold, authoritarian stance of the gendarmes in Paris.

          2. Janet, dreams of an alternate universe

            sorry didn’t mean to be short there,
            unfortunately the French police well I speak for Paris and Marseille have a deserved reputation for violence, at the same time they are up against a whole different scale of retaliation, in most society you are generally shunned once people know what you do an a real keep it in the community atmosphere is created, bref it’s fupped up

  2. Bitnboxy

    Ugh. The pavements look so grimy. And this is supposed to be the “nice” part of town. City looks so grim at the moment and the kids just add to the general low level squalor. Surely there are other options for these kids than South William Street? Could something not be organised in the Phoenix Park for them? I do feel sorry for the business folks though – the bad headlines have kept punters away.

  3. Anton Chigurh

    All the young pups pulled out of Templemore way too early getting blooded on the mean streets of the “inner city”. At least the South William hipster man buns give the probationers a handy grab point while applying the attitude adjuster.

  4. The Dude

    Why are there no numbers on the police as is normally the case? Is this to be another new development?

    The chaos now happening in town is completely due to the outright failure by the authorities to plan ahead.

    What capital city in the EU is worse run?

  5. SOQ

    OMG.

    The contents of Dundrum shopping centre have been let loose on South William Street and are being beaten down by the fascist Garda Síochána pigs.

    All we need now is Sinéad O’Connor marching through doing a pro Muslim gay music video thing where everyone raises their right fists in support of BLM.

    *blinks*

    1. Unreal

      You’re an offensive person
      Up here looking for condolences one minute
      Making racist hate filled statement the next
      Disgusting pig

  6. K. Cavan

    Ireland & the UK have long been outliers in terms of policing by consent being the norm. That’s not the case in most of the EU, not in France, for sure. The contract between the police & public has been broken in the UK, it will also be broken here. Our governments, at the behest of globalism, have a multitude of agendas to force through, none of them beneficial to their citizens. Propaganda only gets you so far, eventually heads need to be cracked. The Irish will mostly go quiet into the night, not much fight in them but what there is will be met with force, even when it’s just perfectly normal behaviour like kids socialising while the State is trying to keep the pandemic show on the road. The same actual Right Wingers on here who deny any resemblance to a police state always start off denying any State-sponsored repression, later they’ll switch to excusing it. The rest of you know this.

  7. Micko

    Yikes.

    I was looking at The Journal and how they’re covering this story.

    There’s a comment along the lines of “I’m just sorry the Guards didn’t hit them harder. Good work Gardai“

    That comment currently has 2200 likes :-0

    2200!!!

    I think we’re a lot more chilled out here on BS than we give ourselves credit for.

    1. Janet, dreams of an alternate universe

      never underestimate the ugly in human nature Micko, took my optimistic think the best of people nature a long time to see the reality of that, the worst part is ugly is fueled by knee jerk uninformed bull and personal frustrations usually, anyway I’m off to bed

    2. Unreal

      You should stay over there Micko
      It’s the correct level of discourse for you
      Stop trying to pretend that you belong here – actually feel pity for you at times

  8. Nigel

    Y’know I was resigned to FG and maybe FF possibly getting an electoral bounce for managing the pandemic response – I don’t want to say competently but, let’s say, better than Trump and Johnson did. This heavy-handed policing is them potentiallly fecking all that away, unless the reactionary ‘why don’t we let police shoot skangers dead in the streets’ vote is really enormous.

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