Funny, you should bring this up Griffin, was only giving out about this today. There really has been a noticeable disimprovment in the amount of scum dealing in broad daylight, muggings/pickpockets, and other defined misdemeanours by our justice system, on Aston Quay. The drug problem in this city is rampant, there is no getting away from it. The Gardai claim that the best way of handling the problem is to catch the big guys, 1-2year detective operations. Reality is when one of these go, someone will replace them, so long as there is demand. I am sure none of us have personally been affected by drug barrens, but have instead found ourselves encountering these low life / low time scum that the guards claim (supposedly rightly as the state won't incarcerate them) they can do nothing about (I'm not trying to lessen their criminal burdon or stand up for drug barrons in any way - just making a point). I would much rather see the guards, even if they can't get these people of the streets (which they really should be able), making the lives of these drug dealers more difficult than it is now, at least give them some sort of challenge. We are living in a city that has (or at least did have) a good reputation among tourists. We have all witnesses tourists and joe-soap Dubliners been caught up in incidents with this sort of scum, and for all those visitors that have not been caught up in it, how many have heard of it, worse still, seen it. How quickly will any of these people return to a place where drug deals occur just off the main street of the city in broad daylight, on the edge of the most marketed areas of our capital, Temple Bar, the tourist hotspot.

The reality is that druggies have been made gods of, its a career choice for most of them. They are a social disease that we keep feeding because "sure what can you do" and if you don't feed it you'll have do-gooders on Prime Time moaning about civil liberties and how unfortunate some people are to be born where they are. Why should it be the civil liberties of everyday people that are taken away, the non-criminal element of our city. Why should it be that men cannot go about there daily work in safety, and that the majority of us here can't feel safe while at a main terminal point in OUR city. We are all given a brain, and for most of us, thank god, the ability to walk, work and make ourselves useful. We were all given the right to an education and it is not true that going to an inner city, underprivalaged school means you can't do well. There should be no excuses, the state should be there for all, but not in its current laxidasical way. Everyone should contribute, even if its only to give you children a better chance than you were given. They should be no rewards for keeping the cycle going.

I have watched many do-gooders talk about civil liberties and freedom and people's rights and how the state should always protect them no matter how such an individual will flaunt the right not to obey the state or somebody elses human rights. Reality is that our state is social, we are providing much better than others (prime example the US), but it might be time for US style punishments to be brought into this country (they don't work in the US because not everyone is given a chance - there has to be a discouragement to crime). Going to the joy is a holiday. Some US states have also shown how prisons can also pay their way back to society, and I'm sure the prison bill can be reduced when all these 'privalages' are taken out of it. Do you know accomodation with free meals, friends and family, lax rule keepers, pool/snooker, televisions, unlimited drugs isn't somewhere that's too bad to unwind for 6 months.

I know this is a bit of a rant, far away from the usual bus interest that I usually post and I apologise for that, but the reality is that it is the bus service that has been caught up in the underbelly of social ignorance that is the scum that plague our city streets. Sure most have bus passes, and some are notable travelling certain routes all day 'doing their business'. The reality is, move the buses, the scum will follow. There is a reason that they are at the 78A stop, and less obvious at the 27 stops in Talbot Street, the 39 stops at the screen and the Ulster Bank stops on Dame Street, the list is endless. Even if these people are not associated with the areas served by these routes there is obviously a reason that such stops are the heart of a lot of anti-social loitering in the city. Such criminal (so called anti-social) behaviour is also most obvious aboard city buses, and the cameras that catch such acts in broad daylight are obviously ignored by the relevant authorites. Remove these problems off the city buses, and people will come back. We do not have enough buses on the streets to cope with the potential custom, the traffic in the city is a testament to that, we just need to sort out these issues. The soft hand has petted these problems for too long and the problem has got worse, what we need now is the iron fist.

Edited 1 time by cberry20b 05/01/2009 23:12:46.