Well on reflection I’m more in favour of allowing other companies to compete on the same routes. Competition. Though I have to say the fares are very low already.
(Now I feel like that bloke in the Fast Show.)
So ** smiling bandit** what ya reckon? Are we a pack of hijacking all over the place bullshitters or what? 
what, increase the traffic in the bus lanes in the city? You’re mad!
No, I’m pretty happy seeing what Irishmen or interested dopers think about the topic.
One question though: Fine Gael is supposed to be right-wing, according to this thread, but from their last election platform they looked awesomely in the tax-and-spend democrat wing. It was all over sucking up to the EU (just let it lie, EU lovers) and strongly implied there would be taxes on rich midle class people to pay for new social services.
The bus lanes are the only bits that aren’t congested. Imagine the ability to get a bus within 2 minutes of arriving on the route - that’d certainly be an incentive to me not to take my car or a cab.
Which proves that we don’t need more buses, we need fewer cars.
You can read their reaction to this year’s budget here.
One thing you have to understand about both FG and FF, though, is that they are both capable of positioning themselves to either the left or the right of the other - sometimes both at the same time - depending on the issue and the prevailing mood of the country.
But the buses aren’t infrequent because of congestion - they’re infrequent because of CIE.
Which buses are you talking about? The ones I take are pretty damn frequent, except when there’s loads of traffic.
120, 121, 122 - a nightmare to get even one of em any time after 7pm which is when I’m usually leaving work.
there is a 120, 121 0r 122 every 14 to 20 minutes on O’connell Street.
Well, I take those buses too, and I haven’t found them to be particularly problematic. They don’t run as often after 7 pm, but then they don’t need to; even when I have had to wait for them they haven’t been SRO when they’ve arrived. Which means that a private company probably wouldn’t run them any more frequently at those hours - it wouldn’t be cost effective for it to do so.
Belfast based doper’s two cents here.
There really isn’t much to be had in the way of intellectual debate on the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. It’s a zero-sum problem. Any move towards one position will enrage one community, and any opposite move will enrage the other. Both communities have a solid emotional and rational argument on their side. Neither group is large enough to dominate the other, unlike in the past and as in other conflict areas in the world (for example Israel and the Occupied Territories). Northern Ireland has existed for a long enough time as to gain legitimacy as a territory, so the only real solution is to leave it as part of the UK until it decides it wants to do leave.
The real problems with Northern Ireland are, of course, economic. From being an economic powerhouse at the turn of the turn of the last century, it has fallen into a terrible decline through all the years of conflict. The world-class shipbuilding and linen industries are distant memories. Despite having some of the best schools in the world, talented people frequently leave at the first opportunity. And what is the real cause of this? The answer is very simple. It is organised crime.
There is no enterprise culture in Northern Ireland at all. A legacy of inter-community feuding has left Northern Ireland with a legacy of sophisticated and ruthless terrorist gangs. Any attempt at small business creation is generally met with a barrage of intimidation and racketeering. Small and medium businesses, the lifeblood of any economy, wither and die. As a result Northern Ireland doesn’t create wealth. This of course, plays into the hands of the terrorists-turned-mobsters, who can blame the poverty on ‘the other side’. This will increase public support for the terrorists, who will then be emboldened to stifle Northern Irish enterprise still further. And so on.
The British government are acutely aware of this. It is impossible to move around these parts without seeing advertisements for government grants for new business start-ups. They have paid companies vast sums of money to set up in Belfast. You can see shiny new tower blocks springing up in downtown Belfast all the time. The only reason these jobs are here is because they are effectively being financed by the British taxpayer. With all these grants, it is cheaper to have a call centre based in Belfast than it is in India, where wages are significantly lower.
This behaviour isn’t completely altruistic, of course. The British were crippled financially by the IRA terror campaign in Britain. Effectively, the British are paying us not to bomb London any more. So effectively the Northern Irish economy’s largest export is pacifism, which we export to Britain for large sums of money. Which is, to say the least, an interesting way of doing things.
It doesn’t look like things are going to change any day soon, either. With debate in the North still centred around the pointless constitutional matter, people are in no mood to do the one thing which could make this country great again, which would be to stand up to the terrorists, mobsters and scumbags who are destroying this country. The south have done well for themselves with their market economy, and the North is imploding with a (necessarily) planned economy and a lack of talent. Nobody understands Irish politics, least of all ourselves, so don’t worry if you can’t make head nor tail of it. The politics of the North, however, could best be described as a great sadness.
But it hasn’t gained legitimacy as a territory in the eyes of a significant percentage of its population. This is of course the crux of the conflict.