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My embarrassing past — 13 Comments

    • I still can't figure out though what business they think they have promoting this idiotic idea?  Unfortunately it's just the kind of crap the gubmint will go for.

  1. I won't comment on your past indiscretion, just to say I am surprised!   :-O 

    I have a rental property split in to four businesses, two shops and two offices and I paid through the nose to the local authority at the planning stage for 'the provision of parking spaces'  outside my premises.  The total came to over €100,000 and then I had to stump up for a contractor to carry out the works. No extra spaces were ever provided by the authority 18 years on. Each and every commercial development has had to provide car parks in accordance with development plans and all at the owners' expense. Now these faceless do gooders, who couldn't  live by their wits for a day,  expect the people to pay twice for it.

    As for the Green party contamination, I reckon those leeches appointed their buddies to top jobs in many state organisations and they are still lurking beneath the surface.

    • In my defence, I should point out that I am referring back to the late sixties/early seventies when An Taisce has an honest remit, and long before they started meddling in politics.

      All I can say now in the defence of An Taisce is that they are just jumping on the prevailing idea that declares that any problem may be solved by screwing the people for more tax,

  2. Can I please put a dissenting opinion here.

    Cork City centre may not be dying but is definitely not busy. There are very many closed down and empty units. If one adds charity shops, the percentage of premises operated by active commercial interests, I would suggest, is less than 50% in some streets.

    It costs €2 to park for an hour (or 2 in some locations) in the city centre if one can find a space. Multi-storey car-parks are not much less.

    The businesses in the city centre are competing with shopping centres in the suburbs where parking is free.

    Cork has two local authorities competing with each other for rates revenue so there are some shopping centres in the county on the periphery of the city. So even if Cork City Council could compel any shopping centre to have paid parking as part of the planning conditions, the county could allow free parking and attract the custom.

    GD I am totally with you with regard to the plethora of taxes that now apply. However, I think that at this stage, the cities need to be protected and custom needs to be encouraged. Some r

    I think the boat may have sailed in that the number of shopping centres that exist with the planning approval of the council are chipping away at the trade in the city centre bit by bit. If time was back to the seventies and eighties again, a condition such as paid parking might not have led to such a deterioration in the city.

    I admit to my bias of being a city dweller for almost my entire life. I like a busy centre (I can walk to centre so that probably helps).

    If pay parking is introduced, it may stall the decline of the city centre somewhat but I suspect that more action is required – a lot more concentrated action – if cities are to remain as commercial centres

    • But the decline in city centre retail can be blamed on decisions by  sucessive  town planners/ local politicians to banish parking and traffic in town. They have spent years driving out traffic and now are wondering where everyone is gone!

        • First of all you have to ask yourself why people have abandoned town/city centres in favour of shopping centres.  Is it purely because of the cost of city parking or is it the convenience of having all your shopping needs in one spot?  I would suspect the latter plays a larger part.  Imposing yet another tax on the beleaguered shopper is not going to drive them back into the cities – it will just be yet another tax which they will have to bear.

          I am all for the revitalisation of towns and cities but that is not going to happen without a decent public transport system and/or decent free [or very cheap] parking facilities, and even then it will be one hell of an uphill struggle.  Certainly lumping yet another tax will have no effect whatsoever.

  3. Something called Hybrid Transport was mentioned in your post. Does this refer to going back to the horse-and-trap, which modus transportandi faded away in the early Sixties as farmers and others saved enough money to buy sputtering Austin Sevens and other classic models, now endowed with the celebratory appelation vintage cars? And to be truly hybrid wouldn't the animal involved have to be a crossbreed, something like a cross between a donkey and a Connemara pony? (called a conass, I suppose) Transport hybridity could also be applied to nonanimate mobility concepts – a two-stroke lawnmower engine welded on to a three-wheeled bicycle that could carry two passengers for instance. In India I have travelled city streets in bicycle taxis, and the famous black-and-amber scooter taxis, probably invented by a colonial official from Kilkenny. Yep, I'm all for the development of hybrid transport as long as it doesn't have to be funded by a hybrid transport tax.

    • What's needed is something with strength and stamina combined with speed.

      How about crossing an elephant and a greyhound?

      An elephound?

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