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Tag Archives: Irish Water
They put their left foot in.
In a provocative act of senseless dance thuggery.
The women of Donaghmede, Dublin 13 doing the Irish Water/GMC Sierra hokey cokey this morning.
More as we get it.
Via Cilian
Protesters in Donaghmede, Dublin yesterday (top) Dr Rory Hearne, a lecturer in political and economic geography at National University of Ireland, Maynooth
Dr Rory Hearne spoke to Keelin Shanley on Today With Sean O’Rourke this morning about the protests that have taken place since the Fine Gael and Labour coalition were elected into Government in February 2011.
Keelin Shanley: “Rory, how do you explain the way in which the protests have grown and, you know, the apparent lack of understanding from the Government and the establishment of what’s driving them?”
Dr Rory Hearne: “Well, I think that the protesters have emerged as a result of a cumulative impact of austerity. And, you know, we can’t get away from this and, you know, Enda Kenny is right when he says, they’re [the protests] not about water. To a certain extent, they’re not because people are saying, you can hear there in the interviews with people who are protesting, they can’t take anymore. And I think it’s, the narrative that came out, when the Troika left was, ‘well, we’re now in recovery’ and, for the majority of people, they’re not seeing any recovery. And if we look at, you know, there’s structural problems within the Irish economy – things like low wages, housing crisis, mortgage arrears, child poverty, these have not gone away, they’re still there and they’re going to, the likelihood is they will get worse.
And, essentially, and I’ve been analysing this for a number of years now, there was this idea that the Irish people didn’t protest during the crisis and it’s not actually true. There was a number of protests that emerged after the Labour/Fine Gael government was elected in and that is significant. I think that was a significant moment. When Labour and Fine Gael were elected, on the promise of a democratic revolution and this idea that they were going to radically reform the State, that bondholders would be burned, that the recovery, and you know that it was the end of the way that politics was done, there was a sense that this was a new republic but they absolutely failed to do that.
And so people, in response to that started protesting. We’d a small group in Cork, called the Ballyhea Says No, who were protesting about the bondholder bailouts and the Anglo debt. There was the groups that protested against the sell-off of the forests who were actually successful in that, there was a lot of community groups and disadvantaged areas who have been, where their communities have been disproportionately affected by cuts. And there was a number of protests that were growing, and then of course we had the household charge campaign and we must remember that 50%, half the population, refused to pay that charge initially, that was a significant protest. And, obviously, that was defeated, when the Revenue Commissioners came in and I think it’s also interesting that when people comment about when, you know, what happened in Ireland during the austerity, why wasn’t there, you know, protests, and Lenihan went over to Europe and ministers in Europe were asking, ‘how are you doing all these adjustments and people aren’t protesting?’
And similarly, Enda Kenny was on the front of Time magazine, saying ‘I’ve got us through all this austerity, we’ve made vast adjustments and there hasn’t been protests’. And to a certain extent, I think people were holding back. They were holding back on the basis of shock, of collective guilt and a fear, and a sense of powerlessness and now that’s all changed. People feel now that they have a power to stop these water charges, that they can actually do it. And they also see that they’ve been through the worst, they can’t get any worse for most of these people. And there’s also an injustice, there is an injustice that’s lingering about the bailout of the banks and the role in which Ireland played in bailing out the European financial system and the fact that we were left with the highest cost, €64billion, of any other European country. And while the government tries to say that, ‘well that’s not significant’, well, it is for people. They feel the pain of it everyday and I think what’s happening is that you could describe this as a fracturing of the social contract of the Republic. The Republic was, since independence, was based on the idea of, you know, we’re all in it together, that there’s no real divisions – whereas that’s completely…”
Shanley: “That’s been broken at this point…”
Hearne: “That is broken and I think that we’re seeing the emergence of a new type of politics, of people feeling that they can’t rely on the political system, they have to take action themselves and with the water charges protests, you can see that they’re right – they’ve achieved more with these protests than electing a government.”
Listen back in full here
Earlier: Are You In The Sinister Fringe
(Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland)
Le Tosseur
at
Hello you.
Bewildered Student writes:
Spotted that strange, unidentified brick chucker on a Sunday World video of Saturday’s protests [in Jobstown, Tallaght, Dublin]. This is him [in red] within a pebble’s throw of gardai, some undercover, before he launched his now famous vessel of hate… As you say: hmmm.
He’s a cheeky monkey.
Make no mistake.
Watch here (scroll down) or below>
Previously: Who Threw That?
Tap Dancing
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So if you were to take away Irish Water and it’s contractors backed by Ireland’s favourite non-resident billionaire, why should we pay for water separately?
The folks over at Public Policy (a neo liberal think tank backed by Atlantic Philanthropies) produced this infographic with their arguments.
*lobs water balloon*
Around 400 anti-water charge protesters gather outside Sligo hotel where Taoiseach is due at Fine Gael meeting pic.twitter.com/zNGy1DTeLm
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) November 17, 2014
Paul Murphy TD (sitting second right) during protests in Jobstown on Saturday
The Tallaght protests.
Joan Burton was not ‘Trapped’, ‘Under Siege’, ‘Held Against Her Will’ or ‘Kidnapped’. This was an old fashioned, down and dirty, power struggle between politicians fighting over the same territory. The true factual position is that one elected TD blocked a road on another elected TD.
This is no slide into fascism, no rise of a sinister fringe. This is cynical main stream politics hijacking a largely non political, classless popular people’s movement against the daylight robbery of their water.
If Joan wanted out of the situation she put herself in, Gardai would have obliged as they have done on numerous other occasions to enforce the instillation of water meters. The only thing ‘holding’ Joan Burton was her own fear of bad press if the Gardai beat a path through peaceful protesters to facilitate her exit. It is ridiculous to seriously claim that Gardai are incapable of breaking up 100 protesters.
“But Joan was hit by a water balloon, maybe even an egg, that’s violent protest” we are lectured. Food as protest tool has a long history, the first recorded food protest took place in 63 A.D. 18th-century texts recorded an act of egg-throwing to persecute Methodists on the Isle of Man.On the campaign trail for governor of California, in 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger was hit with an egg. (He brushed it off like a boss.) In 2011, Afghan demonstrators threw eggs at the Iranian consulate to protest a blockade of fuel tanks that caused prices to skyrocket. Dutch King Willem-Alexander was on the receiving end of some very angry tomatoes in Moscow. A New York Times article from 1883 discusses John Ritchie, an actor who was “demoralized by tomatoes” after an underwhelming performance.
In August 2013 French farmers took to the streets, breaking 100,000 oeufs a day to protest low prices set in place by the European Union. The throwing of food (even water balloons) is a time honoured act of non-violent protest. It’s objective is the same as circus performers throwing custard pies, to make one look foolish like a clown.
Indiscriminate use of pepper spray against women and children is not an act on non-violence. It is an act of aggression. It’s Labour’s way or pepper spray enforced on a community where Labour’s way means children going to school hungry, jobsbridge slavery and rising poverty for the working poor who see their standard of living reducing month on month despite their hardworking efforts. Working families in Jobstown face the same struggle as working families in areas perceived to be more affluent. They are all running flat out and still going backwards.
If you find yourself thinking “Your protest offends me more than your children going to school hungry does” or if you’re more outraged at a protest than structural violence inflicted by austerity, maybe you should lay down the MSM newspaper that’s flogging these lies to you.
Judging Jobstown (RamsHornRepublic.com)
During the riots here in Stockholm last year, more people were injured in the rush to condemn the violence than were ever in danger from the riots themselves.
Such condemnation serves nothing but the ego of the politician or journalist already well-served by the democracy they claim to be upholding – the one that depends on the votes and the purchases of working-class people, and then abandons them as soon as power is secured.
The kind of people who live in places like Jobstown, Neilstown, Coolock, Ballymun and Darndale. The kind of people who voted for Joan Burton – who sat in that car – and then saw her completely betray the mandate they had given her.
If you want a real story about the collapse of democracy, it was sitting in the car, not rocking it or shouting at it.That story is how an unelected four-person “economic management council” has, with the support and full active participation of Labour, set aside Ireland’s parliamentary democracy until further notice.
No, the only thing that ran riot in Dublin yesterday was the middle-class sensibilities of journalists and politicians confronted by the dawning realisation that it is too late, and the proles have had enough.
For the hacks, there is no point back-pedalling now.
So do not start with your own answers and then tailor the facts to fit, as currently seems to be best practice at the Irish Water Meter and on Water Meter FM.
Instead, put aside your pointless pontificating, go back to your basic journalistic training and ask the five Ws and one H that we all learned on our first day in class.
And of all those questions you should be asking, right now “why?” is the most important.
And from what I’ve seen in this morning’s papers and online, not one of you has asked it yet.
For your betters, brow-beating beats being there (Philip O’Connor, OurManInStockholm)
Finance Minister Michael Noonan
Just being trolled at this stage.
“I don’t know, it is very hard to estimate, I mean some people are protesting because they don’t want to pay at all. But we govern for the centre, we govern for the reasonable people, and reasonable people were upset by the way in which this [protests in Tallaght on Saturday] was handled.”
Finance Minister Michael Noonan today.
Thanks for clarifying that.
Noonan: We govern for the reasonable people (BreakingNews.ie)
Earlier: Meanwhile, In Limerick
Jobstown on Saturday.
Irish Independent photographer Tony Gavin writes:
Anti Water Charges protestors have made allegations that I digitally altered a photo of a man throwing a brick at Gardai during a protest in Jobstown where Tanaiste Joan Burton was held captive in her car on Saturday. Above is the sequence of photos as I took them….
Meanwhile..
Bob Allen Peters writes:
It has been now confirmed to me by a friend of a serving Garda member, stationed in Tallaght, that the person involved in the brick throwing incident was a serving Garda Detective based in another Dublin City Garda Station. The Garda member was shown the images of the person throwing the brick and stated that the blue garment under the persons red jacket is a Garda issue Stab Vest, he had no doubts about that fact….
Hmm.
Anyone?
Earlier: Everyone Stay Cool