It's NOT GRAND #notgrand

The patron of the campaign - legendary Irish pirate queen Grace O'Malley. A fierce leader at sea and on land.

The campaign is an expression of frustration with the Irish government that has for a long time and consistently neglected the basic needs of its citizens. Government should serve its citizens. Government should represent all of its citizens. To be in service to its citizens means not only to be of service to multinational corporations and to a tiny elite but to all people from all backgrounds. The crisis is self-imposed because of shortsighted incompetent decisions and insufficient investment into infrastructure, services and people.

This massive under investment into its citizens even during time of economical growth is causing  huge inequality and classism and stopping the economic growth. A civilised developed society shouldn't work to widening the wealth inequality.

Asylum seekers are the catalyst  showing on the surface the scarcity atmosphere about basic resources like housing and public services. Asylum seekers are not the cause. And the fences are the monument of a complete incompetence by the Irish government.

GOVERNMENT, show GRACE!

How to get involved? Express yourself and your opinion, what you see is the cause and what can be a  solution. Everyone's  viewpoint is valuable. Let's try to open a discussion. Question our politicians. Use #notgrand

Have a constructive discussion or simply make some noise and raise awareness. 

Classism - My Fair Lady is a nice musical. But do we need to live it in Ireland 2024? Rathmines in Dublin is one of my favourite districts in Dublin. It's a nice and vibrant place and  lots of different people from different backgrounds live there. Just beside Rathmines is Ratghar which is a more affluent area. Rathmines is a mixture, you can also find flats there. What was shocking for me as for a foreigner was  when I realised that people living just a few metres from each other can have 2 completely different accents based on their social background. That's how separated  these two groups  are even though they live in the same area and  walk through the same streets. This is not a modern vibrant democratic equalitarian society. And it has nothing to do with geographical differences and different accents and customs developed because of that. All these people live in Dublin 6 and were born there. And it's not only Rathmines, but Rathmines was the place where I realised it because I spent a lot of time there.  It's shocking . It's probably  something that the Irish took  from the English . Even though the Irish experienced the same thing because of the english oppression for being seen as the second class citizens. It's in the Irish interest to get rid of this. 

Classism is just a variation of racism and sexism. Each of these 3 is a prejudice against some group of people and are usually interconnected as the latest research show,

Now I am moving towards racism. And I won't be talking about asylum seekers. I am going to talk about Irish travellers. White skinned, the same DNA, just having little bit of a different lifestyle. Today it's cool if you say that you are a digital nomad, but it's less cool if you are an Irish nomad. It is quite a unique thing to be racist against your own race. Because again it's classism. And nobody is perfect, every nation has its own dark sides. But the only way to grow and learn is to talk about these things.  But Ireland is also very skilled in the collective  ignoring of issues.  Aka " It's grand!" 

In my opinion, Irish traveller culture is a unique and extremely interesting part of the Irish culture that should be protected as a cultural heritage (not only on the paper as it is, but also by a real action and investment). It can have a great potential for tourism.  It's important to see potential in people and make some investment into them. That's the way to create a growth. Investment into communities. 

Talking about the issues is the only way for change. Pretending that nothing really happened, or knowing about it but also  ignoring it or minimising the issue, just perpetuates it. This should actually be part of the education, the same way Germans are learning about the holocaust. 

Another thing that children should be taught in schools is  about the  (not so distant past) of Magdalene laundries and Mother and child homes. Even though there is plenty of brave activists and victims of these institutions calling for  justice and clear acknowledgment, the government "kinda" acknowledges it so they don't look really bad but at the same time they are not making it in any way easier for victims to get any closure  be given proper respect and dignity for the harm that happen to them, because the state is at the same time hiding lots of evidence needed for  proper justice. It didn't affect only women who were being terribly  exploited and their basic human rights, taken away along with their bodily integrity and dignity but it also affected the whole family systems and children of these women. Some of these children survived, some didn't. These terrible practices affected society as whole, the collective view over women , what is the women's place in society and that women's choices about their life and body are things to be  judged and punished by institutions. And yes, this is an example of sexism in one os  its very ugly forms. 

The capital city represents its country, it's the seat of majority of a country's power. Dublin city is in bits. It's embarrassing how Dublin is under developed, dirty and broken. At the same time, thank god that the rest of the country is not that bad. But Dublin instead of being a centre of culture, development and innovation it's more an ossified artifact  of outdated classism where people don't matter. Even the city centre that is not that big is broken and dirty. We still live in the  reality that the north of the city is more underdeveloped and certain communities are not properly heard. It's embarrassing.  

As a matter of fact, there's no need for governments and no economy can exist if there are no people, because people are the source of energy that makes it all work. The people give the validity to government. The people are producing and buying, creating, innovating, supplying services and making things to happen. They are creating the growth and money. The people are the asset. If you invest into them it will give returns with dividend  then  society and the environment are prosperous. Dublin doesn't look like a prosperous city.