Southern trees still bear bitter fruit, nowhere it seems more so than in the State of Georgia, USA. It is with a very heavy heart and a deep sense of outrage that I let you know that the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles voted to deny clemency to Troy Davis. This means that very little is now standing in the way of the state of Georgia executing a potentially innocent man this Wednesday, September 21 st at 7pm.
The actions of the Board are astounding in the face of so much doubt in the case against Troy Davis. However, we should not be prepared to accept the decision and let anyone with the power to stop the execution off the hook. Join Amnesty in calling on the Board to reconsider its decision, and on the Chatham County (Savannah) District Attorney Larry Chisolm to do the right thing. They have until the final moments before Troy's scheduled execution to put the brakes on this runaway justice system.
“I am writing to urge you to seek a withdrawal of the death warrant against Troy Davis. He has been denied clemency by the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles despite the fact that significant doubts continue to plague his conviction. Executions when there are still substantial doubts about guilt should never be permitted to proceed, and the responsibility rests with you to ensure that does not happen in this case.
It would significantly undermine the credibility of the Georgia system of justice if an execution were carried out under such a persistent cloud of doubts about guilt. It would show a callous disregard for the very real possibility of putting an innocent person to death, and public faith in Georgia’s commitment to a fair justice system would be shattered.
You have it in your power to prevent this affront to justice from happening. I urge you to call for a withdrawal of Troy Davis’ death warrant without delay.”
Troy Davis was convicted on the basis of witness testimony – seven of the nine original witnesses have since recanted or changed their testimony. He has survived three previous execution dates, because people like you kept the justice system in check! Let Georgia authorities know you oppose the death penalty for Troy Davis!
NOTE: Due to high volume of supporters, please keep trying to sign this petition if your initial attempt does not succeed.
Or try contacting the Chatham County's District Attorney's office by phone/fax: Telephone: 912-652-7308 Fax: 912-652-7328.
Davis was given the death sentence for the August 1989 murder of Mark MacPhail, a police officer from Savannah who was shot and killed while trying to help a homeless man who was being beaten up in a restaurant car park. Davis was present at the scene, but has always insisted that another man, Sylvester Coles, attacked the homeless man and shot MacPhail when he intervened.
Davis was convicted at a 1991 trial almost exclusively on the basis of nine witnesses – including Coles himself – who all said they had seen him carry out the shooting. The murder weapon was never found, and there was no DNA or other forensic evidence. In the years since the trial, seven of the nine witnesses have come forward and recanted their evidence, saying they were put under pressure to implicate Davis by the investigating police. Other witnesses have come forward to say that they had heard Coles confess to killing the police officer.
The parole board heard from one of the jurors who originally recommended the death penalty for Davis. Brenda Forrest told the panel that she no longer trusted the verdict or sentence: "I feel, emphatically, that Mr Davis cannot be executed under these circumstances," she said, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The execution of Troy Davis, a Georgia death row inmate scheduled to die in less than a week, should be halted because of "pervasive, persistent doubts" about his guilt, said William S. Sessions, a former federal district judge in Texas and FBI director under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, in a sharply-worded editorial on Thursday.
"Serious questions about Mr. Davis' guilt, highlighted by witness recantations, allegations of police coercion, and a lack of relevant physical evidence, continue to plague his conviction," Sessions wrote. He urged a state pardons board to commute the sentence to life in prison.
Bob Barr, a former federal prosecutor and four-term Republican congressman from Georgia, urged the board to grant clemency for Davis in an editorial published in the Savannah Morning News on Wednesday. In 2007, the five-member board pledged that "it will not allow an execution to proceed in this state unless and until its members are convinced there is no doubt as to the guilt of the accused," Barr noted in the editorial.
"I am a longtime supporter of the death penalty. I make no judgment as to whether Davis is guilty or innocent. And surely the citizens of Savannah and the state of Georgia want justice served on behalf of Officer MacPhail," Barr wrote. "But imposing an irreversible sentence of death on the skimpiest of evidence will not serve the interest of justice."
Troy Davis has three major strikes against him. First, he is an African American man. Second, he was charged with killing a white police officer. And third, he is in Georgia.
More than a century ago, the legendary muckraking journalist Ida B Wells risked her life when she began reporting on the epidemic of lynching in the Deep South. She published Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All its Phases in 1892 and followed up with The Red Record in 1895, detailing hundreds of lynchings. She wrote:
"In Brooks County, Georgia, 23 December, while this Christian country was preparing for Christmas celebration, seven Negroes were lynched in 24 hours because they refused, or were unable to tell the whereabouts of a coloured man named Pike, who killed a white man … Georgia heads the list of lynching states."
The planned execution of Davis will not be at the hands of an unruly mob, but in the sterile, fluorescently lit confines of Georgia diagnostic and classification prison in Butts County, near the town of Jackson. The state doesn't intend to hang Troy Davis from a tree with a rope or a chain – to hang, as Billie Holiday sang, like a strange fruit:
>"Southern trees bear a strange fruit Blood on the leaves and blood at the root Black body swinging in the Southern breeze Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees."
The mouth of the River Fleet where it joins the Thames at Blackfriars Bridge
The subterranean or underground rivers of London are the tributaries of the River Thames and River Lea that were built over during the growth of the metropolis of London. Since it is difficult to stop water from flowing downhill, the rivers now flow through underground culverts.
The Fleet was a clear sparkling river that for centuries ran from its source at Hampstead Heath to the Thames. Now its banks are found in a series of labyrinthine sewer tunnels, deep underground, for the brave and hardy to explore.
Royal procession in 1869 under the new Holborn Viaduct which crosses the valley of the Fleet River
The River Fleet is the largest of London's subterranean rivers. Its two headwaters are two streams on Hampstead Heath; each is now dammed into a series of ponds made in the 18th century, the Hampstead Ponds and the Highgate Ponds. At the south edge of Hampstead Heath these two streams flow underground as sewers which join in Camden Town. From the ponds the water flows underground for 4 miles (6.4 km) to join the River Thames.
The Fleet flows from two underground springs in Hampstead Heath on each side of Parliament hill. The western source starts at the Hampstead Ponds, and the old course of the river just to the south is marked by Fleet Road. The second source is in the northern edge of the park, on the grounds of Kenwood House. A longer series of ponds, the Highgate ponds, show where this spring flows along the eastern side of the park. The two springs united just north of Camden Town. In 1826, it was recorded that the river at this point was 65 feet wide. The Fleet had always one of London’s bigger rivers—the name itself is thought to have been derived from a word meaning, basically, “big enough to float a large boat”
The Fleet River was commonly known as the Fleet Ditch, and it was notoriously filthy. In this romanticised view the Bridewell Footbridge that crosses it gives the scene a Venetian air. The different river craft include lighters moored along the quay of the River Fleet and two sprit-rigged sailing barges. The vessels in the Thames include three West Country barges, a sprit-rigged sailing barge, and wherries carrying passengers and cargoes. The Fleet River was covered over from Holborn to Fleet Street in 1737, and from Fleet Street to the Thames in 1869 when Blackfriars Bridge was under construction. The river survives today as a sewer under New Bridge Street.
The reality - The "Fleet Ditch" in 1844
The River Fleet's long and fascinating history goes all the way back to Roman times, when it was a major river and contained one of the oldest tidal mills in the world. Later on, in Anglo-Saxon times, the river was a dock for shipping at the point where it joined the Thames in a marshy tidal basin 100 yards wide. You can still see iron hoops that may have been used to tie up ships to the banks. At one time, gaily dressed women with parasols and men in their top hats promenaded in nearby gardens.
They partook of the 'healing' waters at spas along the Fleet's upper route — such as those in Bagnigge, a famous well. Further into London, however, it was a different story. As industry inexorably made London its headquarters, the River Fleet declined into a mishmash of sewage and garbage. Even old carcasses were thrown into it.
The development of the Regent's Canal and urban growth covered the river in King's Cross and Camden from 1812. The 'Fleet Market' was closed during the 1860s with the construction of Farringdon Road and Farringdon Street as a highway to the north and the Metropolitan Railway, while the final upper section of the river was covered when Hampstead was expanded in the 1870s. The Fleet played a very important part in the construction of the Metropolitan Line, the world's first Underground Metro, which gave its name to all underground railways.
The Underground Railway was the brainchild of Charles Pearson, Solicitor to the Corporation was an early advocate of a railway into the city and the terrible slums of Clerkenwell along the valley of the river Fleet being rebuilt in the process. As the line neared completion in June 1862 the Fleet sewer, which had been diverted into a brick culvert, burst near Farringdon and flooded the line back to Kings Cross to a depth of ten feet. The railway was also dogged by funding problems due to the delays and the Crimean War which was then taking place.
The bifurcation chamber under Camden Town where the two streams which rise on Hampstead Heath join to form the River Fleet
Due to the Great Stink of 1858, when sewage made the smell of London unbearable, 70% of all of the city's river networks were covered. You can guess where they were, however, by the road names. Water closets were adopted by the more affluent households of London in the early 19th century, in place of privies and cess pits. As a result, sewers originally intended to take rain water into the Thames now carried raw sewage - which was then extracted by the water companies to be drunk by their customers. The Metropolitan Commission of Sewers had responsibility for the situation, but didn't have the power to impose sufficient taxes to solve the problem.
In the 'Great Stink' of London such was the overpowering smell from the Thames, that the curtains of the Commons were soaked in chloride of lime in a vain attempt to protect the sensitivities of MPs. It is no surprise that a bill was rushed through Parliament and became law in 18 days, to provide more money to construct a massive new sewer scheme for London, and to build the Embankment along the Thames in order to improve the flow of water and of traffic.
In London with the expansion of the city in the early C19th the Thames was an open sewer and cholera was a constant problem, but it wasn't until the 'Great Stink' of 1858 that any serious action was taken. The great Victorian engineer Joseph Bazalgette solved the problem by building the great system of sewers, pumping stations and treatment works which still operate to this day. It also led to the building of the Victoria and Albert Embankments along the Thames changing the face of London and the River Thames to this day.
Although few ever saw it, Bazalgette’s sewer system was one of the engineering marvels of its day. Round brick tunnels ranging from six to twelve feet in diameter hold mainline sewers, as well as rivers like the Fleet that had become so polluted that they were best put underground. Round tunnels flow into even vaster tunnels shaped like an upside-down horseshoe, with gently concave floors. Smaller channels were often oval or egg-shaped. (With the smaller end of the egg’s profile pointed downward, this shape keeps sewage flowing faster even when it’s low flow, and that helps reduce silt build-up.) These were built not only for sewage and wastewater, but also to drain the city of rain or snowmelt. Because of this, the tunnels often seem needlessly huge.
When Bazalgette designed the sewer system, one of the most important things he did was create a system of five “interceptor” sewers, which ran parallel to the Thames at various distances and intercepted the water from the north- and south-flowing sewers to carry the sewage to a treatment plant. Previously, the sewage had flowed directly into the Thames, near where drinking water for the city was withdrawn. Bazalgette’s new system probably saved an incalculable number of lives from disease.
Fleet Street is still one of the most famous streets in London, known for its past use by newspaper companies. The Fleet can be heard through a grating in Ray Street, Clerkenwell in front of the Coach and Horses pub. The position of the river can still be seen in the surrounding streetscape with Ray Street and its continuation Warner Street lying in a valley where the river once flowed. It can also be heard through a grid in the centre of Charterhouse Street where it joins Farringdon Road (on the Smithfield side of the junction). In wet weather, the murky Fleet can be seen gushing into the Thames at a right angle on a very low tide from the Thameswalk exit of Blackfriars station, immediately under the Blackfriars Bridge. Look for a ladder that descends into the water. (The picture shows the right location but it can be seen much more clearly when standing over it.)
The final chamber of the Fleet Sewer.The huge metal doors are the floodgates onto the Thames and the circular objects are one way valves which open when the tide on the Thames is out to release the chambers contents into the river
The Fleet is now largely invisible underground but many ghosts remain. These include the many people who earned a living in its dank, smelly waters. So-called mudlarks and toshers scavenged items of value there, including bits of coal that had dropped off barges. Often these people were small children trying to eke out a living underground. It is part of the history of London going back to Roman Times waiting to see the light of day again.
London’s underground rivers;
River Thames - North Bank
The River Tyburn in Central London, it flows under Buckingham Palace and "Brook Street" in Mayfair is named after it
The Walbrook The River Fleet, the largest The Tyburn The Tyburn Brook The River Westbourne Counter's Creek Stamford Brook River Brent (partly underground) River Rom (partly underground)
River Fleet - "Steps" down to the Thames outlet
River Thames – south bank:
The River Peck The River Neckinger The River Effra The Falconbrook The Graveney River
River Lea:
The Moselle is visible above ground flowing through Tottenham Cemetery on its way to the Lea.
Hackney Brook The River Moselle
To see some of the underground pictures on their original sites see;
Some of this article and photos are licensed under the Creative Commons BY-SA License. The text uses material from Wikipedia content. Thanks to sub-urban.com and john Doe for their pictures of the underground river.
Thanks to my good Bloggy Buddy “The Girl in the Cafe” for the heads up on these wonderful photos of the underground river.
Over to Ireland recently to my hometown of the Fair City of Dublin for some special times with some special people. The Fair City has taken an economic battering as the Celtic Tiger turned into a scabby moggy and it shows; Hotels closed down, retail difficult and banks becoming mausoleums to broken dreams.
Powerscourt House, South William Street
However inspiration can still be found for Ireland knows about adversity and reinvention. So around my old “parish” of the South William St. Rag Trade area there is a very definite fight back with Project 51 Fashion Co-Operative and clever businesses such as Clement & Pekoe opening up. We gathered, including an old friend I hadn’t seen in over 30 years, to welcome Jessie on the Friday to take in the atmosphere of O'Donoghue's and Foleys in Merrion Row and enjoy the Craic, caint, rince, amhránaí agus ceol - Conversation, dance, song and music.
The one, the only, the unique Jessie Noble Cowan singing “Caledonia” ably backed by the dynamic duo of The Harrington’s. Is maith an cailín!
One of New York’s finest who was intimately involved in the events of 9/11 and afterwards ten years ago we were honoured she had chosen to be us at this time. There was time also to catch up with folks and other friends and travel down to Edenderry for the first time in four years. All this and a Ryanair flight that got back early to the UK before scraggy end of Hurricane Katia hit. Special places, special people, special times to remember and share.
So I thought I’d pick out some of my favourite spots in Dublin and give you an insight into the some of the new ventures which are part of Ireland’s fightback against economic adversity. South William Street is the centre of the interesting area between the affluence of Dublin’s Grafton Street and the somewhat down at heel South Great George’s Street. It includes Powerscourt Townhouse Centre and the South City Markets. This has always been an interesting area keeping much of its Georgian and Victorian buildings despite a few ill advised intrusions.
Castle Market
In truth what preserved it was the poverty of Dublin in the 20th Century and the colour was lent to it by it becoming the hub of the “Rag Trade” a business activity known for its colourful and entrepreneurial characters. Indeed when I was around Dublin businesses used to start and fold but strangely the same people always seemed to be around. In those days Provincial buyers and used to come up to Dublin to order their next season’s stock and they would walk around the “block” of Sth. William Street and Drury Street to call on the rag trade showrooms and agents.
Busyfeet and Coco
That type of business is largely gone but the old showrooms, warehouses and Georgian buildings are now attracting a new generation into the Café Quarter. One such place is a bustling café owned by my buddy Emma which resplends in the title of Busyfeet and Coco and occupies the busy corner between Chatham and South William Streets @ 41/42 South William St. Dublin 2. One of a (thankfully) growing number of places where you can go after work without drinking alcohol or ordering an expensive meal, Busyfeet and Coco is a pretty compact little place - normally, this would mean you could either talk quietly or about things you don't mind the whole world knowing, but the dark and atmospheric lighting makes it safe to gossip in during the evening. Staffs are invariably friendly and it was one of Dublin’s first Fairtrade café’s. The menu is straightforward but the food here is good - tasty sandwiches, wraps and soups are ideal for informal eating. Some evening, especially at weekends, there are lively music sessions and there are outdoor tables for serious people watching.
Project 51
It was Dublin Fashion week when I was there and further up the street Eoin McDonnell (owner of www.Precious.ie – diamond and wedding ring specialists) was launching a new Irish Designer Collective store, Project 51 located at 51 South William St Dublin 2. There are 15 Irish designers involved in the new concept which is devoted to providing its customers the very best from high end luxury Irish goods. Housed in a 19th Century Georgian building Project 51 - Irish Design Collective – is a High End NYC Soho style luxury boutique filled with the Best of Irish fashion, jewellery, millinery, accessories and furniture. Project 51 offers the ultimate shopping experience in a relaxed friendly atmosphere. Customers can choose from an amazing selection of luxury goods, from engagement rings to bridal wear, jewellery, evening wear, tailoring, millinery and luxury leather bags.
Project 51 is bringing an international concept to Ireland: establishing a creative-fashion-design hub to showcase Irish design and provide the designers with the opportunity to offer unique designs to the public. There is the other factor in these straitened times that by purchasing in an Irish owned boutique you can contribute significantly to the Irish economy! For every 100 spent in a multinational store only 14 goes back into the local economy versus 45 through an Irish owned shop (figures courtesy www.DCBA.ie )
According to Jennifer Rothwell one of Ireland’s top designers involved in the store, “South William Street was always filled with the business end of the Rag Trade and now it is being reclaimed. It’s time for the rebirth of South William St once again as the Fashion Centre of Dublin!” The designers involved also intend to make an international impact, to increase the profile of Irish design internationally with an emphasis on high quality and innovative design. Their aim is to achieve the same level of international recognition as the “Antwerp Six”, a group of influential avant garde fashion designers who graduated from Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts between 1980-1981. The fashion collective presented a distinct, radical vision for fashion during the 1980s that established Antwerp as a notable location for fashion design. It is lovely to see the pride with which No. 51 has been converted into a fashion showcase with a workshop and beautiful display areas including one mocked up as an avant garde dining room.
Next door at No. 50 I bumped into Simon Cummins putting the finishing touches to the new showroom and Coffee House for his company specialising in really fine teas and coffees, Clement and Pekoe. The Clement in the name is of course Pope Clement VIII! Coffee aficionados often claim that the spread of its popularity is due to Pope Clement VIII's influence. Being pressured by his advisers to declare coffee the "bitter invention of Satan" because of its popularity among Muslims and it being a sort of antithesis or substitute for wine (which was used in the Eucharist), upon tasting it he instead declared that, "This devil's drink is so delicious...we should cheat the devil by baptising it." The year often cited is 1600. It is not clear whether this is a true story or not, but it may have been found amusing at the time.
Clement and Pekoe
Clement & Pekoe are passionate about loose leaf Tea & freshly roasted Coffee and they have a wonderful selection. They source the finest pickings from all over the world and their luxury gift boxes are an ideal gift for Christmas, Birthdays and other celebrations which you can personalise & they can deliver directly to them. Their website is a mine of information on black, white and green teas and coffee varieties and now that their South William Street premises are open you can sample these exotic oriental beverages and raise a sober toast to Clement VIII, the habit of toasting Popes having fallen into disuse in modern Ireland!
Strolling onwards to the top of South William Street you cross Dublin’s wide Dame Street by the piazza surrounding architect Sam Stephenson’s outstanding Central Bank Building and my old studio master Eamonn O’Doherty’s “Tree of Gold” on the Central Bank Plaza.
Now Sam Stephenson had many faults but he was hugely talented and energetic designer and along with Arthur Gibney ran Ireland’s most successful architectural practice. What he did here at least was a work of some brilliance; hanging the great bulk of the Central Bank offices like as suspension bridge from wires suspended from a steel umbrella leaving wide and open plaza underneath brilliantly creating a new public space and circulation route into Temple Bar and across the Halfpenny Bridge on the River Liffey where none existed before. He further accentuated the contrast between old and new by reconstructing the landmark 18th C Ouzel Galley building, which used to face onto Dame Street, so that it faced onto the plaza to act as a foil to the unabashed modernity of the radical Central Bank. How depressing today it is to see Sam’s architectural vision and the openness of this space being damaged by the Central Bank being surrounded by truly hideous and inept repro Georgian railings.
The timeless surroundings of upstairs in Neary's Bar, Chatham Street
Beweley's Oriental Cafe Grafton Street with its Egyptian Revival facade
Ignore this travesty and behind the Central Bank you will find Cope Street and down a mysterious archway one of Dublin’s most interesting retail outlets with its continuously changing displays The Graphic Studio Gallery. Opened in 1988 and now based in Temple Bar this impressive gallery space is used for the sale and exhibition of fine art prints. The staff are happy to give visitors information on the art of print making, or to offer advice on selecting a work of art whether buying for investment or purely for pleasure. With over 3,000 works to choose from, with work by leading Irish and international artists, you can begin your own art collection for as little as €90!
The Graphic Studio Gallery
The gallery in Temple Bar is one arm of Graphic Studio Dublin, which also includes a studio off the North Circular Road. Together they form a non-profit organisation supporting artists and promoting the medium of fine art printmaking. Graphic Studio Gallery is the oldest gallery in Dublin dealing exclusively in original contemporary fine art prints. The gallery's stock includes etchings, lithographs, woodblocks, screenprints, monoprints and carborundum prints by over 200 Irish and international artists. Artists who have exhibited here include: Hugh O’Donoghue, Martin Gale, Seán Mc Sweeney, Richard Gorman, Tony O'Malley, Michael Cullen, Charlie Cullen, Elizabeth Blackadder, William Crozier, Felim Egan, Gwen O'Dowd and Stephen Lawlor. When I was there it was showcasing an exhibition by renowned printmaker and watercolourist, Pamela Leonard with a selection of her works spanning 20 years to date. A graduate of NCAD Leonard is especially renowned for her landscapes. Her works explore light and dark and focuses on capturing these elements in forests and glades.
The Graphic Studio has been a valuable support and catalyst for many Dublin artists who I knew in its early days. I knew the Gallery from its very inception when the irrepressible and talented Mary Farl Powers was the driving force – sadly Mary died way too young in 1992 at the age of 43. It gives me great pleasure today to see it being run with such élan by my great buddy Catherine ably and knowledgably assisted by Paula. If you want to invest in great value Irish Art and support emerging Irish Artists avoid the commercial galleries and make a bee line for here.
Beyond the Gallery lies Temple Bar well known to visitors and one of the reasons why Dublin is one of the most popular City Break destinations in Europe. It is promoted as "Dublin's cultural quarter" and has a lively nightlife that is popular with tourists. Unlike the areas surrounding it, Temple Bar has preserved its medieval street pattern, with many narrow cobbled streets. During the 19th century, the area slowly declined in popularity, and in the 20th century, it suffered from urban decay, with many derelict buildings. Its unfashionability probably saved it from Dublin's property developers, who destroyed much of the city's historic architecture during the 1960s. So today you will find remnants of pre-Georgian buildings built by Huguenots in the “Dutch Billy” style with Dutch gables, central fire-breasts acting as structural supports, panelled interiors and box sash windows.
Temple Bar and a genuine Leprechaun, really, really........
The area is bounded by the Liffey to the north, Dame Street to the south, Westmoreland Street to the east and Fishamble Street to the west. It probably got its name from the Temple family, who lived in the area in the 17th century; Sir William Temple, provost of Trinity College Dublin in 1609, had his house and gardens here. However it got its name, the earliest historical reference to the name Temple Bar is on a 1673 map.
Bad Ass Cafe, Crown Alley
Fishamble Street in Temple Bar was the location of the first performance of Handel's Messiah on 13 April 1742. An annual performance of the Messiah is held on the same date at the same location. The republican revolutionary group, the Society of the United Irishmen, was formed at a meeting in a tavern in Eustace Street in 1791.
However returning to this area today with its bustling cafes, bars, restaurants, night clubs and funky shops I find myself like the Irish Alcoholic drowning in a vat of Guinness; I have mixed feelings. First up the trite Disneyesque vision of Dublin presented to visitors is a turnoff, Leprechaun “characters” grubbing for the tourist pound by offering photo-ops and “Whiskey in the jar” being belted out at three in the afternoon from “traditional” pubs has something of the theme park about it. No matter what overpriced slop is served up in these establishments their scrotum burgers and cheeps are invariably labelled “Irish home cooking.” It can’t have been a very good home and I won’t be unfair to Disney; they would have done it far better.
Central Bank Building from Crown Alley
The other more significant reason for my unease is I remember many friends and acquaintances who started up great new businesses in the area and were invariably pushed out when it was redeveloped by Temple Bar Properties with public funds and gradually gentrified. In the 1980s, the state-owned transport company Córas Iompair Éireann proposed to buy-up and demolish property in the area and build a bus terminus in its place. In the best traditions of waste by Irish public bodies this “Transport Solution” was never designed, approved or, heavens forbid, actually budgeted for!
Regent Hairdressers, Temple Bar
While this was in the planning stages, the purchased buildings were let out at low rents, which attracted small shops, artists and galleries to the area. Protests by An Taisce, residents and traders led to the cancellation of the bus station project, and the then Taoiseach Charles Haughey was responsible for securing funding and, in 1991, the government set up a not-for-profit company called Temple Bar Properties to oversee the regeneration of the area as Dublin's cultural quarter.
Brindley Printhouse, Temple Bar now the Ark Children's Cultural Centre
Today the area is the location of many Irish cultural institutions, including the Irish Photography Centre (incorporating the Dublin Institute of Photography, the National Photographic Archives and the Gallery of Photography), the Ark Children's Cultural Centre, the Irish Film Institute, incorporating the Irish Film Archive, the Temple Bar Music Centre, the Arthouse Multimedia Centre, Temple Bar Gallery and Studio, the Project Arts Centre, the Gaiety School of Acting, IBaT College (City Centre), as well as the Irish Stock Exchange and the Central Bank of Ireland.
The Oliver St John Gogarty Pub in Temple BarAfter dark, the area is a major centre for nightlife, with many tourist-focused nightclubs, restaurants and bars. Pubs in the area include The Porterhouse, the Oliver St. John Gogarty, the Turk's Head, the Temple Bar, Czech Inn (in the former Isolde's Tower), the Quays Bar, the Foggy Dew, Eamonn Doran's and the Purty Kitchen (formerly Bad Bobs and before that the really excellent Granary, run by the Byrne family).
Dublin Bikes
Two squares have been renovated in recent years — Meetinghouse Square and the central Temple Bar Square. The Temple Bar Book Market is held on Saturdays and Sundays in Temple Bar Square. Meetinghouse Square, which takes its name from the nearby Quaker Meeting House, is used for outdoor film screenings in the summer months. Since summer 2004, Meetinghouse Square is also home to the Speaker's Square project (an area of Public speaking) and to the Temple Bar Food Market every Saturday.
As for Dublin itself Ireland’s financial woes have hit hard. Job opportunities are scarce and emigration is a factor once again and as always it is the young, enterprising and able who are in the vanguard of this pernicious but traditional Irish export. Property prices have crashed as they head towards reality. A striking example when I was there was one of Dublin’s landmark pubs, John Doyle’s at Doyle’s Corner. It sold in 2006 for €4.2 M, today it is back on the market “asking” €850,000 – 20% of its value a mere 5 years ago. It is almost inevitable that due to the bravado and economic incontinence which led to the Irish Government guaranteeing ALL of the Irish Bank’s debt that Ireland will default on its unsustainable bailout – the guarantee made bank debt sovereign debt – not v. Clever.
The extent of the banking collapse was brought home to me when I went into the National Irish Bank on College Green, opposite where Barrack Obama had made his stirring speech some months earlier.
It is the bank’s head branch and before that was the headquarters of The Hibernian Bank whose initials are still carved in the elaborate ceiling of its cavernous banking hall with its high Victorian marble pillars and 150 foot mahogany banking counter. I had an account here many years ago and you would have over 30 staff busy on the banking floor serving customers. I wandered in looking for an ATM and just clocked the notice that “National Irish Bank” was now a subsidiary of Danske Bank and this was now a “cashless branch”, not a concept I’ve come across but I presumed it meant there were automated ATM, deposit machines and such like. I presumed wrongly for the contrast with the bank I was last in 20 years ago was incredible. Not an ATM in sight and indeed in this huge space not one staff member behind the impressive counter. Instead in the cavernous but empty public space in front of the counter was a cheap desk and behind it serving a queue of six people were two really young staff members processing “cashless” transactions with not a computer in sight. It was the strangest bank branch I’ve been in a long time, a sort of Mausoleum to the Ghost of Banking past.
Ceiling - National Irish Bank with the Hibernian Banks monogram in the plaster
But around Dublin there is an air of unreality which echoes Brendan Behan’s comment that “The Irish are very popular with themselves!” Buoyed up by Unemployment Benefit of €184 per week, twice the rate it is in a poor country like Germany, the posing classes of Dublin slurp a slow Beaujolais outside the Bailey, buy Manuka Honey at €15 a jar in Fallon & Byrne and spend €6.50 on a pint to dull the pain. Every idle person is involved in a project which consists of some contrived reworking of public subsidy whilst working on their “first novel.” Dublin must have the highest ratio of unpublished first novels per inhabitant in the world. Reading the papers they have lost none of their appetite for self important pontificating reinforcing Behan’s other observation that “they are a nation of master debaters.” The visits by the Queen and Barrack Obama have obscured a certain reality – Ireland you are economically insignificant and the rest of the World truly does not want to bail you out of the mess created by your own Gombeenism.
Terminal 2 @ Dublin Airport, a snip at €1.2 Billion
The cost base is still far too high caused by the ludicrous levels of social support which disincentivise employment and effort and the stranglehold of state owned monopolies in energy and healthcare which are expensive conspiracies against the users. The third “Insurance Levy” in 23 continuous years of stupidity has now been imposed on insurance premiums to pay for stupidity and lack of regulation and all the major banks are effectively state owned, as an alternative to going bankrupt. At Dublin Airport the final bitter monument to Celtic Hubris, an overblown €1.2 Bn White Elephant of Terminal 2. Michael O’Leary of Ryanair who campaigned against it has offered €320m for it but I suspect he may be nervous that he is overpaying.
In a country where people such as Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness who were embedded so deeply in the murderous crypto-fascism of the Provisional IRA can pose as the answer you have to ask “what the hell is the question?” I fear for the future of my Hometown and Country.
