Spot on! Well observed and well-written. Restrained too I might add. I worked many years ago in the noughties, as a social researcher doing needs analyses for what were termed 'disadvantaged areas', so that community projects' staff could decide how to spend government funding.
I worked in many of the big suburban estates (I'm not even sure they can be termed sub-urban these days, they're just part of the sprawl). My favourite though was working on an integrated youth service for the inner city from Hardwicke Street to The Markets area.
I fell in love with the young people there, who seemed to me, to embody everything that all the old songs about Dublin City appear to convey. It was like they were from a different time, an older time, when community mattered and was of paramount importance to the social fabric.
Then of course, they were decimated by 'progress'. It broke my heart when one young woman told me, crying, that she and her children had been given a swanky apartment at the IFSC area because the flats were being 'renewed' (sigh) but she just wanted to go back to the flats with her mam and her granny because her family had always lived there - all generations (as in any healthy society). She felt lonely in her new place, separated from her family and community and she said the yuppies were the worst. Every Thursday and Friday night, she and her children were kept awake with the 'office drinkers', shouting and vomiting and pissing. One night, she got so sick of them, she poured a bucket of water over their heads from her window 🤣
When I was doing a focus group with early teens in a school near Sheriff Street, they told me that they knew they'd never get a good job no matter how hard they worked because of their address and their accent. Some of them said they were embarrassed by their inner city accent. I told them (genuinely) I'd rather listen to them all day than the mid-Atlantic / MTV accent of school students on the Southside DART.
Their sense of community and place was so instructive to me. It was very humbling. Perhaps that is the very reason they are targetted relentlessly by the (colonial) System that needs to stamp out all traces of community, heritage and culture everywhere it occupies in order to ensure homogeneity and therefore compliance...
Like you, I'm not blind to the unacceptable behaviour but to my mind, when hope is gone, there's nothing left to lose and these young people are sorely lacking hope as is a growing number of Middle Class (if that still exists) young people, faced with the prospect of slavery to the financial system for the rest of their lives...
I've friends from working class Crumlin and Drimnagh that always called scrotes, scrotes. It's not a posh south Dublin "private" school thing. Posh South Dublin private school kids that went to Rockbrook always called scrotes, knackers.
“Ireland’s liberals are vocal about the rights of nearly every marginalised group but silent on the issue of class”
Nail on the head
bang on. really well written.. thanks!
Spot on! Well observed and well-written. Restrained too I might add. I worked many years ago in the noughties, as a social researcher doing needs analyses for what were termed 'disadvantaged areas', so that community projects' staff could decide how to spend government funding.
I worked in many of the big suburban estates (I'm not even sure they can be termed sub-urban these days, they're just part of the sprawl). My favourite though was working on an integrated youth service for the inner city from Hardwicke Street to The Markets area.
I fell in love with the young people there, who seemed to me, to embody everything that all the old songs about Dublin City appear to convey. It was like they were from a different time, an older time, when community mattered and was of paramount importance to the social fabric.
Then of course, they were decimated by 'progress'. It broke my heart when one young woman told me, crying, that she and her children had been given a swanky apartment at the IFSC area because the flats were being 'renewed' (sigh) but she just wanted to go back to the flats with her mam and her granny because her family had always lived there - all generations (as in any healthy society). She felt lonely in her new place, separated from her family and community and she said the yuppies were the worst. Every Thursday and Friday night, she and her children were kept awake with the 'office drinkers', shouting and vomiting and pissing. One night, she got so sick of them, she poured a bucket of water over their heads from her window 🤣
When I was doing a focus group with early teens in a school near Sheriff Street, they told me that they knew they'd never get a good job no matter how hard they worked because of their address and their accent. Some of them said they were embarrassed by their inner city accent. I told them (genuinely) I'd rather listen to them all day than the mid-Atlantic / MTV accent of school students on the Southside DART.
Their sense of community and place was so instructive to me. It was very humbling. Perhaps that is the very reason they are targetted relentlessly by the (colonial) System that needs to stamp out all traces of community, heritage and culture everywhere it occupies in order to ensure homogeneity and therefore compliance...
Like you, I'm not blind to the unacceptable behaviour but to my mind, when hope is gone, there's nothing left to lose and these young people are sorely lacking hope as is a growing number of Middle Class (if that still exists) young people, faced with the prospect of slavery to the financial system for the rest of their lives...
Where are you from , and who did you vote for in the local elections?
I've friends from working class Crumlin and Drimnagh that always called scrotes, scrotes. It's not a posh south Dublin "private" school thing. Posh South Dublin private school kids that went to Rockbrook always called scrotes, knackers.
Some of my best friends are from Drimnagh