Hooliganism

“In Poland,” said the man on the bus, “we don’t let our children put their feet on the seats.”

An Spailpín was on the bus home, queuing for the next stop. Ahead of me, a man was talking to the driver. They knew each other. Perhaps they spoke in English in order to practise; perhaps the driver wasn’t Polish as well, but an immigrant from somewhere else. I don’t know.

“If the children are on their own, of course, they will put up their feet – it’s the natural instinct to rebel,” the man continued. “But what I can’t understand is why they do it when they are accompanied by a parent. Why don’t the parents stop them from being so selfish?”

An Spailpín has thought hard about that Polish man in the past few days since the horrific shooting of Aidan O’Kane in East Wall, Dublin, on Sunday night. An Spailpín does not attempt, of course, to draw a parallel between putting feet on bus seats and gun crime. But your correspondent is pretty damned sure that if a child has sufficient consideration to put his or her feet on the floor and leave the seat opposite open for other commuters, that child will not then collect a dozen eggs when he or she gets home and goes off with his or her friends for an evening’s hooliganism.

The bigger picture here is not this particular shooting, terrifying though it is. The issue is that there is a sub-strata of feral youth that exists outside of the society that supports them, and there is zero political will to tackle the situation. Because tackling the situation would mean a radical rethink of the way Western society has been organised since the Second World War.

In certain areas of cities, there are gangs of children hanging around outside convenience shops in the evening. Their pastime is to harass and annoy the people working in the shop. Does it ever occur to them that these shop workers are people just like themselves, trying to get by, who don’t need a depressing job made worse by this hooliganism? No, it does not. All they are into is themselves. They show exactly the same ability to empathise or look to the future as an animal.

And what can the shop security do about this? Nothing. That’s why the kids persist. Their parents don’t care. The children know they can’t be touched. What’s the point in chasing them if you can’t do anything once you catch them? What’s the point in calling the Guards? What are the Guards going to do? The Irish Times reports that Mr O’Kane contacted the Guards on Saturday night after an attempt was made to torch his car. But what were the Guards to do? What do they ever do?

There are two factors here. The first is that there is a tremendous abdication of parental responsibility. You only need a license for a dog, not a child, after all. The second is that the Guards’ hands are tied by a judicial revolving door process. If you have twenty previous convictions, what earthly difference will a twenty-first make to you? How deeply depressing is it to read in this morning’s Irish Independent that a thirteen year old being held for questioning in the Aidan O’Kane killing is out on bail, while the prime suspect, a fifteen year old, has “made several court appearances in the past?”

At some stage, unknown to ourselves as a society, we lost the big picture. At some stage the needs of the many became less important than the needs of the few. Societal order is held to ransom because nobody is willing to be judgemental; nobody is willing to say that hooligans are not victims. They are hooligans, full stop.

How unwilling are we to say that? We’re so unwilling that the only person who uses the word “hooliganism” to describe people throwing eggs at other people’s houses is myself. “Anti-social behaviour” is what hooliganism is called now – look at the story in the Irish Times again. Anti-social behaviour is turning down an invitation for after work drinks in Neary’s; throwing eggs at people’s houses, annoying shopkeepers and shooting people is criminal hooliganism, and should be punished as such.

Mr Dermot Ahern, Minister for Justice, said in the Dáil debate on the Shane Geoghegan killing that “the Government will rule nothing out which is reasonable and consistent with the rule of law in tackling these gangs head on.” Note the phrase “reasonable and consistent with the rule of law.” That phrase is a copout. That phrase allows all manner of squirming to avoid taking actions that will cut this sort of stuff off at source.

The opposition are no better. Mr Charlie Flanagan, the Fine Gael spokesman on Justice, has called for tougher sentencing on murder and possession of deadly weapons. Tougher sentencing is a marvellous idea. The only thing is that tougher sentencing means longer sentencing, which means bigger prisons and more prison officers. How are we going to pay for that? It’s fine in principle, but it helps all the old people living in Ireland who are now even more terrified of hooded youth than before not a whit. It’s nothing more than pointless hand-wringing.

If the political class want to do anything to cut down on this hooliganism, why don’t they introduce legislation – and that’s what they’re paid to do, isn’t it? Legislate? – that allows shop security, for instance, to use necessary force to defend the premises. This means that a security man can give a hooligan a shoe in the hole and not have to worry about losing his job as a result of it. Some people will claim this will lead to victimisation, and this is an example of the needs of the few outweighing the needs of the many once more. But if some guy gets a busted lip when he didn’t deserve it, it’s worth it if it allows people to do their shopping and get on with their lives in peace. Nobody every died of a busted lip.

The other common argument against a return to common sense is that these sort of measures victimise the vast majority in communities who are good and upstanding citizens. Aidan O’Kane was one such good and upstanding citizen, and Aidan O’Kane is dead today because neither he nor the police could stop hooligans from pelting his house with eggs or setting his car or his bins on fire. That’s the bottom line. It’s that simple.

In Poland, they don’t let their kids put their feet on the seats of the buses. We need to take a lesson from Poland.




Technorati Tags: Ireland, Dublin, hooliganism, anti-social behaviour, crime, Aidan O'Kane, society

Finglas in Flames, Nation in Denial

The St Patrick’s Night festivities in Finglas, where gangs of feral youths saw fit to commemorate the arrival of Christianity to this island by burning out cars and rioting con brio, are covered in all this morning’s newspapers. An Spailpín couldn’t help but smile to himself when RTÉ’s Valerie Cox, presenting It Says in the Papers on Morning Ireland, reported that The Sun's editorial is thundering this morning that the good citizens of Finglas, rightly disgusted by this behaviour, are considering moving somewhere else.

Ms Cox didn’t have space to say where these good citizens are expected to move to, but for anybody who doesn’t take The Sun of a morning, like An Spailpín, I believe that Shangri-La is quite nice this time of year. Tír na nÓg has been popular for some time. For those thinking of a rural idyll, Percy French had great faith in many places on this green isle, such as Drumcolliher, Ballyjamesduff and those Mountains of Mourne that sweep down to the sea. Or, for those sick of rain, the Beach Boys had great faith in a spot called Kokomo back in the eighties, which is a bar somewhere in the Florida Keys I believe. Very specific bucks, those Beach Boys.

One of the foundation myths of the Irish property boom is that one can pogo from area code to area code, until eventually reaching the prefect peace of a Georgian domicile in leafy Dublin 4. Well, if any of those citizens of Finglas are thinking of making the move from Dublin 11 to Dublin 4 – and it certainly seems like a good idea right now – they’ll have to find someone to buy the current house first. Someone that doesn’t read the papers, or listen to the news, and who thinks that their Hyundai Tuscon will be exempt from the periodic torching that is part of the local charm.

The Examiner’s editorial is on the button this morning. The government has been talking about “zero tolerance” for eleven years. The ASBO was introduced last year, but not one has been issued. And here’s the kernel of the matter: “This is not just antisocial behaviour, it is serious criminal behaviour and should be regarded as such.”

And it is clearly not regarded as such. The Irish Times reports that Fine Gael, with the flair for practical politics that has made the party such a viable alternative Government, has called for the introduction of “special night courts” to deal with the problem.

Special night courts. So you haul a guy with twenty prior convictions up before the Beak and now he has twenty-one convictions. Does anybody really think that’s going to make a difference?

The tireless campaigner Father Peter McVerry is quoted in that same report in the Irish Times as saying that “nobody seems to have any answers to try and deal with this particular problem.”

An Spailpín Fánach has two suggestions.

The first suggestion is that if someone is indulging in criminal acts, he or she is imprisoned, and kept there until they stop. This is seems simple enough, but with fellas running around with multiple criminal convictions, putting criminals in prison and keeping them there is something we as a society don't seem to quite understand.

On the broader social issue, Carl O’Brien is correct in today’s Irish Times in saying that sustained funding and early intervention can alleviate the problem. But An Spailpín is not sure that we as a people fully realise what early intervention means. If you’re dealing with parents who think it’s ok to have ten-year-olds drunk and rioting then a finger-wagging from a social worker or a civvy-wearing padre isn’t going to do it. Besides, at ten it’s too late; those young fellas' only hope is to join the British Army, and hope that the Queen can do for them what their own State has failed, and give them some purpose in life. The British Army has been doing it for their forebears for hundreds of years, after all.

And for the younger children, for whom there is still hope, if you are going to intervene that means that you have to take children off their parents, who are clearly a bad influence of them. You have to write off one generation in order to save the next. This means you have to build many orphanages, and staff them with trained professionals. And if you’re going to do all that, you have to write big, fat cheques and raise taxes in order to pay those professionals. You may say foster homes are better than orphanages; fair enough. The problem is that the cheque for the orphanages will be big enough; there’s no way there’s enough money to pay for better care. There just isn’t. This is the price we pay for long-fingering the problem for so long. Shame on us all.

Someone in the Irish political landscape will want to be come down with a very virulent case of vision before any of this happens, of course. An Spailpín shan’t be holding his breath.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, Dublin, hooliganism, anti-social behaviour, crime, Finglas, St Patrick's Day

Everybody Must Get Stoned - More Fun on the Buses

At half-past seven tonight, a 123 double decker bus was following its usual route - having crossed Gardiner Street from Parnell Street, it was travelling east along Summerhill, moving into Summerhill Parade and on towards Ballybough and Fairview. Contemporaneous with the moving bus, three static children - ten year olds, according to an eye-witness - were arming themselves with missiles in the flats along Summerhill, waiting for a sufficiently rewarding target.

As the bus drove by, the children let fly with their fusillade. The two youths on the ground floor did no damage, but their Hannibal, who had the wit to station himself on the high ground of the first floor balcony, scored a bull's eye. He struck one of the windows of the upper deck of the bus, shattering it.

As the bus crossed the North Circular Road into Summerhill Parade, the remaining glass began to fall out of the window and render the bus unsafe. Another was called from the depot; as the passengers waited for the lifting of the siege, they compared notes about other horrors. One girl had suffered double jeopardy - her father had the back window of his car broken in the same area, while her dog had been blinded after being struck by the glass. Eventually, the second bus arrived and we continued on our way.

There are one million stories in the naked city, and this hasn't been a terribly interesting one. If anyone wishes to kick up the dust about it, and perhaps remark that when one is travelling home from a day's work one does not expect a re-enactment of the Alamo, that plaintiff will be met with a shrug of bureaucratic shoulders and be reminded that Dublin is a big city now bud, these things happen. Friend bureaucrat will remark in confidence that, were it up to him, "scumbags" such as these would have their coughs softened but, in his official capacity, the bureau's shoulders remain shrugged.

Unfortunately, if there is one stubborn, spiteful, selfish son of a bitch on this Earth it is your faithful narrator. An Spailpín Fánach is not willing to accept that being fired upon on the way home from work is beyond our control, or a small price to pay for living in "this vibrant city [that] hums with a palpable sense that it is creating a new cultural heritage", or any of the rest of that buncombe to which we're so often treated. As such, though he only be a voice, crying in the wilderness, An Spailpín will continue to record these incidents so that, when the Chinese or the Muslims or six-foot mutant ants or extra-terrestrial invaders like the Martians or the Jovians, whoever it is takes over from our now clearly past its sell-by date Western Society, will know what it was like in the final years. Stubborn, as I say.


Technorati Tags: Dublin, Dublin Bus, Anti-Social Behaviour, Hooliganism

All the Animals Come Out at Night

That Dublin youth have become more feral in recent years is no secret, as the last post here may have indicated, even to the slow and wilfully stubborn, who refuse to believe the evidence of their eyes. But just how common this feral, beastly, behaviour is can be forgotten as Darwin kicks in, as we adapt, keep our heads down, and say nothing. These are the last three hours on Saturday night of the October Bank Holiday weekend, 2006, just from my own personal experience. This is what I saw on my ordinary routine, without going out looking for the foul and rotten. God only knows what I would have come across if I made an effort.

Six o'clock. A gang of youths, at least twenty in number, with their faces smeared with dirt and swinging sticks, marches up one of the residential streets on the Northside of the city, a street undergoing gentrification where a 700 square foot two up, two down semi-detached house retails at half-a-million Euro for starters. They were like something out of the Dark Ages. One of them, with half a broomstick in his fist as his weapon of choice, asked An Spailpín where were his tyres, and remarked that he - the youth - would be back later to collect them. The child isn't old enough to shave yet. An Spailpín saw a girl in the group, who should have been in some sort of supervisory, big sister, role, was also in combat camouflage, but she looked very unhappy. Under the dirt, she would have been pretty. It was a strange side to choose.

Seven o'clock. Two young men are attempting to gain entry into the shop of a Statoil garage near where the mortal remains of former Taoiseach Charles Haughey lay in state. The bouncer bars them by physically standing in the door; they gain entry when a civilian exits through the other door. The bouncer chases them around the shop, while they knock stands and displays. But all he can do is escort them off the premises when he finally catches them; he has no other power of sanction. Nobody is on his side. Therefore, it is no surprise to An Spailpín Fánach that the youths camp out in front of the shop door, enjoying their night's fun, wrecking his head and attempting to regain entry. There was no time to ask the bouncer if he got paid enough money to put up with this.

Eight o'clock. A youth, again too young to shave, steps out of the darkness to throw something at An Spailpín Fánach's car. The area in which the youth is standing has houses that sell at €600,000 and up.

Nine o'clock. An Spailpín is in another garage. Two girls are inside, drunk, causing trouble. An Spailpín returns to his car. As An Spailpín gets in, a man emerges from the car parked next to An Spailpín on the garage forecourt, goes into the corner and starts pissing there. There is a bar less than fifteen yards away whose toilets are fully functional. Sir Galahad prefers al fresco. His famous discretion temporarily abandoning him, An Spailpín looks into the car next to him, to see what sort of company the bladder reliever is keeping. There's a girl in the driver's seat, a nice girl, a girl who doesn't need to see her "fellit" - in the current argot - pissing in public. Or does she? Could she not do better? Why does she put up with this ape, this cretin, this louse? Mystified, An Spailpín pulls away, returns home, turns on his computer, and sadly files his report.

Our society is wretched, rotten, and surely doomed. This will all end in tears - all we have left to decide is who will be doing the weeping. And your correspondent is not optimistic on that score.

Technorati Tags: Ireland, Dublin

Only Losers Take the Bus

An Spailpín is still trying to come to terms with a clip from Liveline he heard this morning, just before the eight o’clock news on Radio 1. It seems that a 19 year old man was thrown off the upper deck of the 77 bus in Tallaght at the weekend, and is currently pretty badly shook up in hospital.

Thrown off the upper deck of a bus. Isn’t that astonishing? And if it is, why hasn’t it been front page news? In his efforts to faithfully chronicle contemporary Irish life, An Spailpín likes to keep an eye on these things, and this story is definitely well under the news radar.

What about the comments of John McGrane of the National Bus and Rail Union, reported in this morning’s Independent, that they will have no option other than not to go to Tallaght anymore if the gardaí aren’t going to protect their drivers? An Spailpín isn’t the greatest Irish public service union man in the world, but it’s very hard not to see Mr McGrane’s point.

Not least when we discover that a man being thrown off the upper deck of the 77 bus is only one of twenty-five reported incidents on buses serving west Tallaght in the past month alone. These include:

• A passenger’s coat being set on fire
  
• A bus driver being spat at in the face
  
• A child being assaulted
  
• A bus being set on fire
  
• Fighting in the upper deck
  
• Drug-taking in the upper deck
  

On reading that list of depravity, we quickly realise that it’s not just the bus drivers that need protection here. All his life, An Spailpín has heard about how Tallaght is one of the fastest growing and biggest towns in Ireland, and how its needs need to be looked after. So what An Spailpín now wants to know is: what is the government doing to protect the ordinary, decent people of Tallaght, who are in the overwhelming majority, as we are always reminded whenever these reports of so-called “anti-social behaviour” occur? What steps are being taken to stop Joe or Jane Citizen from having their clothing set on fire, their bus set on fire, their means of getting to and from work being set on fire, their children being spat at or assaulted?

The gougers rule the city of Dublin. We saw it during the riots, we see it every day in the city, and we sit back and accept it. There is zero political will to deal with the issue and in the meantime ordinary decent people have to get up and go to work without knowing what sort of foul horror will confront them once they get on their bus. And what do they get in return? Lectures about inequality in society on the op-ed pages of the Irish Times.

What they don’t get are results. What they have to suffer every day doesn’t even make the news. An Spailpín has searched today’s Irish Times in vain for the story about the potential disruption in bus services to Tallaght, and he can’t find it. Here’s the link to the Article Index in today's Irish Times – happy hunting.

The Irish Times isn’t slow to laud itself as the paper of record, but on an issue that affects a huge tranche of the population it has nothing to report. Zero. Zip. The null set. Madam ought to be ashamed of herself. As for any poor dumb bastard that’s trying to commute to and from Tallaght, may God help you, because nobody else gives a fiddler’s. Only losers take the bus.

Technorati Tags: Ireland, Dublin, Dublin Bus, Anti-Social Behaviour