Above: Photos from the production. First the Red Road flats in Glasglow, and then the famous Balfron Tower that inspired JG Ballard’s High Rise.. As Ireland scrambles to get to grips with its housing crisis, director Paul Sng turns in a blinding exposée of the deliberate dismantling of social housing in the UK. It’s called Dispossession: The Great Social Housing Swindle. Rashers Tierney caught up with him to hear … Read More
Scratch That Itch.
Above: Patrick O’Brien captures the masked hip-hop crusader in his natural enviroment. From co-founding Galway’s Community Skratch games, being a member of the Vince McMahon scratch super-group to making some seriously innovative music as one half of one man duo Deviant and Naïve Ted, Andy Connolly has been a cornerstone of Irish hip-hop and electronica for over a decade. Martin Leen took the brave step and left Dublin for the … Read More
Another Outpost Gone.
Above: Captured by our man Beggars. The kiosk in all its architectural glory. This tiny hexagonal kiosk out in Ballsbridge is just 37 square feet. It’s about the size of a bathroom in a small gaff. It may be one of Dublin’s smallest buildings, but as Dan Lambert finds out it tells a terrible tale about where our city is going. On the outside it’s undeniably pretty. Sitting neatly on … Read More
A Poverty Of Ambition.
The government strategy on housing is to constantly repeat “spending commitments” and issue estimates for house building projects. Patrick McCusker dons his number crunching glasses and looks behind the headlines of the government’s housing strategy in Budget 2018. Overall spending is up to 1.9 billion in housing, which is a startling 46% increase on the 2017 budget. This figure includes 500m to meet a new target of 50,000 homes … Read More
Bye George!
Above: Illustartion by Mice. That’s next year’s totally inappropriate Halloween mask sorted so. George Hook is a long time Blueshirt supporter who made a good living from greasing the gears of the establishment and the fine craft of being a reactionary wind up merchant on prime time radio. We drafted in Paul Dillon to look at how the Hookie monster eventually fell from grace and the far bigger picture of … Read More
After Repeal – What?
It’s been thirty four years since the eight amendment was added to the constitution, and it looks like 2018 will be the year we may finally get rid of it. What we’ll actually get to vote on remains to be seen. With the repeal movement so giddily high, it’s easy to forget that removing the amendment mightn’t be enough. Cathy Flynn surveyed campaigners across the island to suss out what battles might be on the horizon.
On The Buses.
Above: A placard rests on a fence near Grangegorman during the last Dublin Bus strike. It might have passed you by but 24 Dublin Bus routes have been tendered out by the National Transport Authority (NTA) to British transport giant Go-Ahead. The private operator is taking on routes that serve the outer suburbs. Patrick McCusker has the lowdown on what this signals. Go-Ahead are multinational operating services in Britain, mainland Europe … Read More
Leo, Actually.
Above: This one ended up on our front page. An illustration by Mice that eviscerates our glorious leader. Her best yet? The Blueshirts anointed a new party leader recently and that man is a master of the spin game. Sam Noonan slips on a pair of waders and takes a poke around the slurry pit of our new Taoiseach’s career so far. You’ve heard about the government’s new Strategic Communications unit … Read More
Political Hacks.
Richard Barbrook played a key role devising Corbyn’s radical digital democracy manifesto. He was in town giving a talk at the recent Critical Media Conference. Martin Leen braved Storm Brian and ventured out to leafy ballsbridge for the lowdown on how to hack a general election. You were deeply in involved in Jeremy Corbyn’s recent election campaign, Could you tell us how you hacked the election with all the press against you? … Read More
Like History Repeating.
Above: Making a point about PREP at the last Pride march in 2017. Photo courtesy of Tonie Walsh. New HIV diagnoses are being recorded at one every 18 hours – a record high. The LGBT community has been particularly impacted. Jim Gallagher finds that Ireland’s response to the upsurge in new diagnoses has been piecemeal, patchy and ill-informed. There has been no coordinated national response to the surge in new … Read More