Anonymous

http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0601/artefact-stolen-from-church-in-offaly.html

This is happening far to often lately; although in this case a big congrats to the local Gardai for ensuring the return of this artifact. A few facts need to be put out there.

1. The owners of historical buildings including churchs, Cathedrals do not have unlimited funds to put in manned security guarding.

2. The Gardai don’t have the resources to fully protect old buildings from theft.

3. If post theft restorations are to be authentic then metals do have to be used; commercial alternatives such as mastic asphalt are simply not an option.

Therefore to solve this blood boiling issue the problem needs to be looked at as to what happens after the crime.

Current position

1. Thief steals item
2. Thief sells to antique dealer or scrap metal dealer for cash
3. Thief is home free
4. Scrap dealer / antique dealer (to a lesser degree) gives bogus receipt and or description of vendor.
5. DPP advise Gardai that sufficient evidence does not exist to pursue recipient of stolen goods.

UK experience

In the UK metal theft has been a real issue affecting millions of people due to metal thieves stealing communications cableling serving commuter trains. In addition English Heritage estimates that some £770m (€947m) of damage was caused by metal thieves last year.

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/professional/advice/advice-by-topic/heritage-crime/

Solution

1. Ban all scrap metal purchases in cash; where bank transfers cannot be made the cheques would need to be made bearing information that such instruments were not transferable to third parties.

2. Set up a list of protected articles housed in protected structures to be held by police and the Irish Antique Dealers Association.

3. Create manditory fines for handling stolen antiquities from protected structure of not less than 10 times the value estimated by a valuer appointed by the Minister for the Environment and Local Government.

Any other ideas?

Tourism is a competitive game; I’d imagine that the competitor cities cannot believe their luck from these images which seem to be presenting themselves at ever more sensitive and central locations. Do all the enforcement section staff live in Lucan and commute on the no. 25 bus?

The Bachelor Inn, what a massacre of what was easily one of the best pub exteriors in the county. Change of brown bread supplier would get the food crowd in who would buy multiple pints out at €4; but only when people trusted the exterior to get an authentic Dublin meal. €3 pints do not make money…….

What kind of morons are getting control of what have the potential to be good businesses and when will senior management at DCC get the message tourists do not have to visit Dublin they have a choice in avoiding visits to what is rapidly becoming a tacky environment.

I would greatly support the Fruit Market project receiving DCC funds, which are tight, but what is the point is creating a flagship project when built enviroment standards are going down the toilet elsewhere?

DCC need to get ontop of their patch in the way credible local authorities do and have retailers appreciate that consent is granted when appropriate and that attempts to get away with it are an expensive mistake punished by Inns Quay’s finest earners.

un-fucking-believable.

Are you surprised?

Someone needs to have the Valuation Office made aware of this signage if they are not; this is extremely valuable outdoor advertising; the country needs all taxes collected. If shortcuts are made then more tax is due.

@gunter wrote:

I think it’s time that Dublin City do the decent thing and employ Graham to sort out the city.

Graham Hickey, Dublin’s first directly elected Mayor perchance? :clap:

Something quite appealing about the Players Please sign alright gunter, i’ve always liked it, not that you’d dream of errecting anthing of its ilk today of course *cough*

Supermacs took the former Beshoffs on the basis of the retail being zoned grease; they are limited in the premises they can take due to the policies in the development plan limiting proliferation of take away establishments; what may be appropriate is to take the same approach to take aways as pubs and make them licensed and allow the licenses to be transferred; that way a change of use application from the late 1980’s could be reversed and Supermacs get a unit that is better suited to their needs.

I agree on a level of balance, but to be fair to the reports authors every one of the signs highlighted are so inappropriate as to render balance an inappropriate word in the same sentance. I highlight the McDonalds signage as it is far from classical, far from invisible but it is successfully applied in so many diverse locations. If an international retailer can get it right; why can’t a local operator who should be nimbler in planning matters.

I take your point on the footpaths; but only by significantly reducing the level of buses will the specific pedestrian experience improve at this location; if Luas were run down here and buses relocated this would go back to the Wide Streets Commissioners vision of the grand boulevard.

It really is a pity the way signage is done at this location on the borders of the most frequented tourist zone in the City.

The temporary signage issue is really quite bizarre; you can understand a Christmas trader taking a unit for 6 weeks not wanting to spend a lot of money on signage given the depreciation ratio per trading day. But how many of these stores are on short term tenancies?

The bye-laws need to be altered to remove the capacity for any temporary signage on tenancies where the term is more than 8 weeks; it is a complete disgrace that busineses confident enough in a location to sign a ten or even five year lease can put up ‘temporary signs’ what are the legal costs of negotiating a lease, €5,000? €10,000? Cost of a proper sign, €3,000? €5,000?

An Taisce accuses council of ‘reckless neglect’ of city centre

An Taisce submission to Dublin City Council over “cheap garish signage” highlights a number of premises in the capital’s historic core including Charlie’s 3 Chinese takeawayIn this section »
Elderly man at centre of shooting incident in which man in 20s injuredVolumes of waste fell by 8% in 2009, report showsHSE plan to cut queues for acute patientsOLIVIA KELLY

THE HISTORIC core of Dublin city is becoming a blackspot of “cheap garish signage” and “lower-order shops” because of Dublin City Council’s failure to enforce planning laws, An Taisce has said.

The national heritage trust has lodged a complaint with the council which it said was guilty of “reckless neglect” of the city centre by not taking action against unauthorised shopfronts and signage, and in some cases allowing businesses to operate for years without planning permission.

Businesses had erected without permission signs which clearly did not comply with city council regulations for shop fronts, yet the council had not ordered their removal, An Taisce said. However, in a number of cases the council had refused permission for signs but businesses had not removed them, yet they were not being pursued by the council.

Poor quality shopfronts was an increasing problem city-wide, An Taisce said, but was most pronounced in the historic core on streets of major civic and architectural importance.

“The main thoroughfares immediately south of the Liffey – Westmoreland Street, Dame Street, Parliament Street and the South Quays – are becoming a blackspot of lower-order shops and fast-food restaurants with cheap, garish shopfronts and signage,” the submission said.

The recession was creating a big increase in closure and vacancy rates, and a proliferation of discount shops. In this environment, increased vigilance was needed to uphold standards and prevent major deterioration in streets, An Taisce said. “Instead, there seems to be no planning enforcement in operation at all.”

Westmoreland Street had seen the most severe deterioration of any city-centre street in recent years, in the wake of the closure of Bewley’s in 2004, it said. The west side of the street had “descended into an appalling collection of low-order shops competing with each other for signage clutter, while there were significant stretches of dead frontage on the east side”.

It highlighted a number of premises on Westmoreland Street breaking shopfront regulations including Supermac’s, which had been refused permission for certain signage and alterations made to the shopfront in October 2009 and Charlie’s 3 Chinese takeaway, which had been refused permission for its shopfront and to operate as a fast-food restaurant in 2005, yet remained open.

Managing director of Supermac’s, Pat McDonagh, said the signs referred to by An Taisce were temporary and Supermac’s was in the process of applying to the council for permanent projecting signs needed to attract customers. “An Taisce musn’t know there’s a recession – without these signs, which are less garish and more delicate than the flat signs, people could walk by and not even know we’re there.”

The owner of Charlie’s 3 was not available yesterday.

Among the premises An Taisce highlighted on Dame Street was a Spar shop which had in September 2009 been refused permission to retain certain aspects of its front window design but which remained in place. In a statement the company said it took its responsibilities in relation to planning very seriously and worked closely with the authorities in relation to its stores.

Parliament Street had started to “go downhill” in the last 18 months, An Taisce said. One fastfood restaurant, Mezza, had been ordered by the council to remove its illuminated signs by August 2010 but had not done so. Owner Eileen Monaghan yesterday said she had received no such notification from the council and was unaware of any complaints.

The council said the submission from An Taisce would be investigated and “where appropriate enforcement action will be taken”.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0208/1224289258966.html

The thing is Pat, your competitors think big and go with cool urban modern design;

http://www.chictip.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Picture-71.png

http://www.flickr.com/photos/santivalladolid/3855478039/in/pool-mcstores

fast food is not only recession proof if priced right it is a giffen good just look at the shareprice graph for Micky D’s http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=MCD+Interactive#symbol=MCD;range=5y

DCC need to look at enforcement as a revenue raising tool; there must be a way to use the by-laws to issue enforcement notices, levy fines directly and get a credit collection oriented legal practice to collect.

LONDON (Dow Jones)–The U.K. competition regulator Thursday said it would probe whether contracts with some U.K. public bodies offered by outdoor advertising giants JC Decaux SA (DEC.FR) and Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings Inc. (CCO) break competition laws.

The Office of Fair Trading said it would probe contracts the two companies offered local authorities for advertising on street furniture, such as bus shelters and information panels, in particular looking at the long durations of the contracts and potentially restrictive terms.

“There are some concerns around barriers to entry and expansion for media owners and the OFT has launched a competition investigation in order to assess whether certain street furniture agreements are compatible with U.K. and E.U. competition law,” Heather Clayton, the OFT’s senior director of infrastructure said.

“No assumption should be made at this stage that there has been an infringement of competition law,” Clayton added.

The OFT said it had decided that it wouldn’t refer the matter to the Competition Commission yet.

The U.K. has a two-tier competition regulation system, with the OFT probing possible competition concerns and then referring the matter to the Competition Commission if it believes that antitrust rules are being broken.

The OFT said it had looked at the whole of the U.K. outdoor advertising market. It said that while the market seemed to be functioning well, it had some concern over a system of rebates. It said it had some concerns that the rebates could distort how advertising campaigns are booked and recommend that advertisers take steps, such as using media auditors to monitor campaigns, to ensure agencies and specialist buyers act in the advertiser’s best interests.

Under the rebate system, when an advertiser pays for an outdoor campaign, the media agency and the outdoor buyer receive commission, the OFT said. At the end of a year, the outdoor buyer receives a payment from the outdoor media owner and is entitled to volume rebates related to the aggregate amount spent with the media owner over the year. Rebates tend to be negotiated with the larger outdoor media buyers.

France’s JC Decaux and Clear Channel of the U.S. are two of the biggest outdoor advertising companies in the U.K.

-By Steve McGrath, Dow Jones Newswires; 44-20-7842-9284; steve.mcgrath@dowjones.com

Was a second bidder even asked to submit a proposal in Dublin?