bike thief arrested

Beasty

Chuchote wrote: »

a heartless beastly capitalist!

Oh God! what have I done now

Chuchote

brocbrocach wrote: »

Maybe it allows him to buy food that he can feed his struggling family with, cos his mam is on gear and no-good, and one day his little brother will grow up to be an AIDS doctor in Africa.

Mmmnot really. What would do that is helping him into a job.

brocbrocach

Chuchote wrote: »

Mmmnot really. What would do that is helping him into a job.

Only if they have "the right stuff" in em though. We have quite enough plumbers and electricians of dubious character.

tomasrojo

Enduro wrote: »

Inequality exists as we're human beings, not an ant colony. Different people have different skills and abilities.

And different amounts of money in their parents' bank accounts. And different social environments that might lead you never to explore what skills and abilities you have.

Enduro wrote: »

Any society which tries to level that off is doomed to massive injustice. The only good attempt I can recall at it was the Khmer Rouge, who were prepared to do what was necessary to eliminate any discrepencies in human abilities.

To be fair, there are numerous social democracies that try to limit discrepancies in income, for the greater good of society. Wealth gathers wealth, so quite a lot of wealthy people, the great majority in fact, make small fortunes every year because they're already in possession of a large fortune.


This doesn't really sort out bike theft.

Chuchote

brocbrocach wrote: »

Only if they have "the right stuff" in em though. We have quite enough plumbers and electricians of dubious character.

Hah, think of France, where les flics retire early, but before they retire are trained, mostly as craftsmen, so the State has a network of spies mending everyone's plumbing.

More seriously, dubious character doesn't appertain to class. Working-class people are as likely to be kind and moral as upper-class people.

I offer you Ken, a kid of sixteen, whose mother would like him to stay in school and go on to get a good job; she herself is working responsibly. His father shrugs, he's going down to the pub. Ken has two role models, and is teetering between the two choices of way of life. Then he meets a friend from school who's licking his finger to count the nine lovely fifties he's got for a bike he nicked and sold on the street…

Whoever bought that bike has now tipped Ken's choice the wrong way.

eeeee

Enduro wrote: »

That's a frankly disgusting attitude. The vast majority of people who are relatively financially less well off do not resort to theft. They are perfectly capable of understanding right from wrong and choosing the more ethical path. Similarly there are plenty of relatively weatlthy people who steal things. Relative wealth and personal morality are not collected. It's absolutely disgusting that you seem to think that being relatively poor justifies unethical behavior. It show a real disrespect for the vast majority of relatively poor people who do not steal.

Inequality exists as we're human beings, not an ant colony. Different people have different skills and abilities. Any society which tries to level that off is doomed to massive injustice. The only good attempt I can recall at it was the Khmer Rouge, who were prepared to do what was necessary to eliminate any discrepencies in human abilities. Not a great model to adopt, IMO.

Equality of opportunity is a good thing. It's completely incompatible with equality of outcome though.

Never said all less well off people resort to crime.

And I never said it's wrong to be upset about your stuff being stolen.

I did say that bike theft is emblematic of much, much bigger social problems that 99% of people ignore or don't even think about or consider; they're just happy to vilify the thief without trying to understand what may have made the situation arise in the first place, and what that means and what they can do about it.

Chuchote

nee wrote: »

Never said all less well off people resort to crime.

And I never said it's wrong to be upset about your stuff being stolen.

I did say that bike theft is emblematic of much, much bigger social problems that 99% of people ignore or don't even think about or consider; they're just happy to vilify the thief without trying to understand what may have made the situation arise in the first place, and what that means and what they can do about it.

You're right in that; it is, and 99% do.

newacc2015

nee wrote: »

Never said all less well off people resort to crime.

And I never said it's wrong to be upset about your stuff being stolen.

I did say that bike theft is emblematic of much, much bigger social problems that 99% of people ignore or don't even think about or consider; they're just happy to vilify the thief without trying to understand what may have made the situation arise in the first place, and what that means and what they can do about it.

Its nice to think so fondly of people with drug addictions. 99% of people dont like them as they have zero remorse stealing from loved ones/relatives. It is hard to feel empathy towards a heroin addict whose only motive in life is to get his next fix regardless of his effects on others whether it be stealing a students bike or snatching a phone off a child.

It is easy to blame capitalism and the society we live in etc etc and all the other sociology BS. But there as heroin addicts in Dublin with family relatives in excellent well paying jobs. Some addicts choose a different path and they are the only ones responsible for that.

The Government needs to do more to reduce addiction in the City. If we reduced the amount of addicts, crime would fall in the City. But lets not pretend all heroin addicts are victims of capitalism. There are plenty of people without a pot to piss in who would never go for heroin

endacl

newacc2015 wrote: »

Its nice to think so fondly of people with drug addictions. 99% of people dont like them as they have zero remorse stealing from loved ones/relatives. It is hard to feel empathy towards a heroin addict whose only motive in life is to get his next fix regardless of his effects on others whether it be stealing a students bike or snatching a phone off a child.

It is easy to blame capitalism and the society we live in etc etc and all the other sociology BS. But there as heroin addicts in Dublin with family relatives in excellent well paying jobs. Some addicts choose a different path and they are the only ones responsible for that.

The Government needs to do more to reduce addiction in the City. If we reduced the amount of addicts, crime would fall in the City. But lets not pretend all heroin addicts are victims of capitalism. There are plenty of people without a pot to piss in who would never go for heroin

Indeed. The harsh reality is that the choice to take heroin for the first time is a choice. And in this day and age, it's an overwhelmingly informed choice.

eeeee

endacl wrote: »

Indeed. The harsh reality is that the choice to take heroin for the first time is a choice. And in this day and age, it's an overwhelmingly informed choice.

A number of my family members are heroin addicts and methadone users.

It's not a choice, its most definitely not.

It's easy to spout that ignorant, uninformed, dispassionate shyte from the comfort of middle class privilege, but those of us not so lucky to be born to it have a right different experience of choice.
Imagine you grow up in a chaotic, unstable home. You have no stable family. No one you know, in or outside your house has a stable job, they suffer drug addiction. Various forms of abuse are rife. No one tells you to go to school. No one makes you breakfast in the mornings. No one checks if you've been to school. You don't know anyone in your family or circle who's ever been to college. Jobs and education are a world away from your reality.
You live, as most people do, as you were reared. You're surrounded by others like you.

Trust me it's not clear as day to see out of that. It's fcuking hard and you often have to leave your community behind.

Leaving school at 15 in darndale is a very different prospect to leaving school at 15 in sandycove. Privilege is a thing that exists.

Drug addiction is a symptom of the problem. If it were only about drugs we'd all be addicts after ever operation we have that requires morphine.

I know what's behind my family members heroin addiction. And it's not choice.
Junkies are people like you or I.

You cannot, CANNOT judge them as one conglomerate sub human group. They have their own histories and they don't end up on heroin because life was rosy.

Not understanding that shows a blatant and wilful lack of compassion, understanding and a barrowful of ignorance.

It's easy to see how cloistered, sheltered and divided we are becoming as a society.
The gap between the haves and the have nots had never been wider nor more difficult to bridge.

brocbrocach

Chuchote wrote: »

Hah, think of France, where les flics retire early, but before they retire are trained, mostly as craftsmen, so the State has a network of spies mending everyone's plumbing.

More seriously, dubious character doesn't appertain to class. Working-class people are as likely to be kind and moral as upper-class people.

I offer you Ken, a kid of sixteen, whose mother would like him to stay in school and go on to get a good job; she herself is working responsibly. His father shrugs, he's going down to the pub. Ken has two role models, and is teetering between the two choices of way of life. Then he meets a friend from school who's licking his finger to count the nine lovely fifties he's got for a bike he nicked and sold on the street…

Whoever bought that bike has now tipped Ken's choice the wrong way.

I see your Ken and I offer you Gordon, his father is a barrister and his mother looks good. His uncle works for a "big 5 firm" and when young Gordon joins there via Blackrock and Smurfit he makes a rapid rise through the ranks of his unconnected peers. His ex-schoolmates work in finance, law and banking. Gordon does very well indeed on the work they send his way. One day a guy he knows from the tag rugby circuit pulls him aside and tells him about a nice little earner the guys in the bank have going ... they just need the right guy on the auditing side of things ...

smacl

Enduro wrote: »

Equality of opportunity is a good thing. It's completely incompatible with equality of outcome though.

Not really, equal opportunity is a worthy aspiration that is seldom achieved, and where society doesn't provide adequate opportunity for someone to succeed within the rules they're liable to break those rules. I don't think it is fair to consider equality of outcome until equality of opportunity has been properly addressed.

Chuchote

Adding to nee's points, http://health.spectator.co.uk/the-case-for-prescription-heroin/

The case for prescription heroin
Our refusal to treat addiction in the most straightforward way creates crime, misery – and more addicts
Johann Hari 9 May 2015

Extract:

Dr Marks could see the difference between the street addicts stumbling into the clinic for help for the first time, and the patients who had been on legal prescriptions for a while. The street addicts would often stagger in with abscesses that looked like hard-boiled eggs rotting under their skin, and with open wounds on their hands and legs that looked, as Parry told me, ‘like a pizza of infection. It’s mushy, and the cheese you get on it is pus. And it just gets bigger and bigger.’
The addicts on prescriptions, by contrast, looked like the nurses or receptionists or Dr Marks himself. As a group, you couldn’t tell.
Faced with this evidence, Marks was beginning to believe that many ‘of the harms of drugs are to do with the laws around them, not the drugs themselves’. In the clinic, as Russell Newcombe tells me, they started to call the infections and abscesses and amputations ‘drug war wounds’. So Dr Marks began to wonder: if prescription is so effective, why don’t we do it more? He expanded his heroin prescription programme from a dozen people to more than 400.
The first people to notice an effect were the local police. Inspector Michael Lofts studied 142 heroin and cocaine addicts in the area, and he found there was a 93 per cent drop in theft and burglary. ‘You could see them transform in front of your own eyes,’ Lofts told a newspaper, amazed. ‘They came in in outrageous condition, stealing daily to pay for illegal drugs; and became, most of them, very amiable, reasonable law-abiding people.’ He said elsewhere: ‘Since the clinics opened, the street heroin dealer has slowly but surely abandoned the streets of Warrington and Widnes.’

magicbastarder

endacl wrote: »

Indeed. The harsh reality is that the choice to take heroin for the first time is a choice. And in this day and age, it's an overwhelmingly informed choice.

ah jaysus. surely you know the issue is more complex than that?
these things don't happen in a vacuum. there's a reason heroin addiction is more prevalent in certain socioeconomic strata; if it was just down to an idiotic choice, it'd be a much more equal opportunities drug.

Chuchote

An eye-opening vision of how someone becomes a heroin user comes from the cult French film La Haine (Hate), in which the most worthwhile character among the trio of protagonists drifts into drug use in a miserable, hopeless flatblock life. I haven't been able to watch any further through the film yet - all my hopes were fixed in this lovely character, the calm, sweet guy who keeps his two immature friends on the rails as they react to the death of their buddy in a police riot.

magicbastarder

this taps into one of the biggest issues i had with the austerity cuts over the last few years - the cut in education budget. iirc, the generally accepted multiplier of spending on education is approximately a factor of seven - i.e. every extra euro you put into education is repaid in the long term by a factor of seven.
but the clear corollary is that shrinking the education budget is borrowing from the future to pay for the present. i know a couple of teachers; one an art teacher, half of whose hours were doing remedial work in a school with a lot of vulnerable students. her remedial hours were completely cut; i don't think it's going to be a mystery what will happen to a student already struggling to keep up if that assistance vanishes.

another friend is a teacher in a primary school in a very economically depressed area, and with lots of horror stories about the situations the kids live in. after a particularly glum day in the staffroom, with lots of staff voicing 'what's the bloody point' style stories, the head teacher basically summed it up this way to them: 'just think of your role as being one where you get to provide the kids with an experience of normality for a few hours a day'.
how can you grow up normal if you're one of those kids?

tomasrojo

Having lost an extended family member to drug addiction, I'd just like to agree with nee.

Another factor in the prevalence of heroin addiction in certain communities since the 70s is that the authorities didn't care about it while it was restricted to those communities. There is a terrible attitude to these communities and it's existed for decades.

Chuchote

magicbastarder wrote: »

how can you grow up normal if you're one of those kids?

Yes, speaking from family experience, you can become utterly apparently normal, but be broken inside.

I see the government is going to give a big fund to families for creche costs. The instant result, of course, will be that creches become more costly. This government is one #headdesk moment.

ThisRegard

nee wrote: »

I did say that bike theft is emblematic of much, much bigger social problems that 99% of people ignore or don't even think about or consider; they're just happy to vilify the thief without trying to understand what may have made the situation arise in the first place, and what that means and what they can do about it.

This is Ireland, the unemployed and those that are simply lazy are looked after reasonably well. Bike theft, mainly by organised gangs or little scrotes, is not done so in order to put a bit of stale bread on the table for them and their 10 starving kids.

tomasrojo

Incidentally, though the conversation about social deprivation is very interesting, I'm not sure to what extent bike theft is driven by addiction. People engage in petty theft (petty in the eyes of the law in the case of bikes, despite some of them costing as much as new low-end cars) for many reasons, and I'm not sure drug addiction is a major one. Wanting to fit in is another reason, I'm sure. Just being young and stupid is another. Many of my (middle-class) friends and acquaintances when through a shop-lifting phase. It baffled me, but it was definitely "a thing".

Chuchote

ThisRegard wrote: »

This is Ireland, the unemployed and those that are simply lazy are looked after reasonably well. Bike theft, mainly by organised gangs or little scrotes, is not done so in order to put a bit of stale bread on the table for them and their 10 starving kids.

But may I reiterate my point one more time (probably one more of many): the reason for bike theft isn't scrotes or gangs. The reason is that other people are willing to buy stolen goods. If the Gardaí targeted the buyers, and there were many "solicitor bought bike from teen on street - now must pay €2,000 fine" and "civil servant bought bicycle from man in a pub - fined €2,000" with pictures of the buyers, and if these stories continued, the bottom would drop out of the market.

(The stories have to continue: look at the way mobile phone use in cars briefly stopped completely when there was a sweep of Garda pounces - and then resumed twice as bad when the gardaí stopped giving people points for it.)

The comfortable middle-class guy who says "Feck it, I've had two bikes stolen, I don't care where I get the next one" is personally guilty for robbing the thief of a life and a future.

I take your Ken, Gordon, et al, and raise you Mike, on his way to an interview for an apprenticeship, and Joe, on his way to the same interview, and Steve, interviewing these two kids. Mike has a rep as a bike thief, Joe is less bright and in ordinary circumstances wouldn't have a chance against Mike.

But in this case, of course will take on Joe and tell Mike, sorry kid. And the person who's stolen that apprenticeship is Gordon, who bought the bike off Mike in the back yard of his local pub.

Gordon's fine; he's going to have a nice career. He could easily have paid for a legal bike. But he's a thief; he's stolen Mike's life by buying the stolen bike off him.

ThisRegard

Chuchote wrote: »

But may I reiterate my point one more time (probably one more of many): the reason for bike theft isn't scrotes or gangs. The reason is that other people are willing to buy stolen goods.

Not all bikes are stolen to sell on. Some get stolen because people want something they don't want, some get stolen to go for a joyride, some get stolen just to get a kick.

Chuchote

ThisRegard wrote: »

Not all bikes are stolen to sell on. Some get stolen because people want something they don't want, some get stolen to go for a joyride, some get stolen just to get a kick.

Oh, absolutely true. But these are generally opportunistic thefts, of bikes that aren't well locked, surely? What we're talking about here is the fact that thousands upon thousands of bicycles are stolen in Dublin every year - from where they're well locked on the streets, from high-up balconies, from 'secure' lockups in apartment blocks, from garden sheds. These are stolen for profit, and the profit isn't there unless there's a crook ready to buy them.

I'd very much blame Lidl and Aldi, by the way, for selling angle-grinders and bolt-cutters to all comers. If I had my druthers, you'd only get these in hardware shops, and you'd have to produce photographic ID and have the photo filed.

ThisRegard

So blame everyone but the bike thief? Would you blame the county council for building the roads that allowed the thief of your car to drive it away?

Chuchote

ThisRegard wrote: »

So blame everyone but the bike thief? Would you blame the county council for building the roads that allowed the thief of your car to drive it away?

Oh, I blame the bike thief. But I think there's also the responsibility not to buy stolen goods - "Don't Turn a Good Boy Bad".

magicbastarder

ThisRegard wrote: »

So blame everyone but the bike thief?

trying to understand the situation in which someone ends up in a life of crime is not 'blaming everyone but the bike thief'.

dermabrasion

I posted about the copper knocking crap out of the bike thief, whom i suspected might have been a junkie. I have no reason to validate this stereotype, as I never met him. All I know is what was said by his defence barrister insofar that he was a repeat offender with substance abuse issues and that operated in a deprived area that seemed to be very easily caught time and again by the same Garda. I don't need to be told here that my class prejudice here is wrong, and FWIW the beating he got from the Garda has never sat right with me all these years.
I work in D1 for sometime now, and see addiction and the consequences of generations of Dubliners and other citizens left behind by society. Still, that does not give me any insight of living that reality so vividly posted above. I go home to leafy suburbs, worlds away from the chaos I see at work.
So what's my point? Not sure, but it is around this: I understand many of the reasons for where this comes from, and I am sorry for it. I believe in social justice for all citizens, but I also believe in justice. If my bike is robbed, I want it back, and I want the thief caught and prosecuted. The law must be balanced with society solving the underlying reasons for this. I want my taxes to go to help these issues as much as I want more Gardai.

ThisRegard

magicbastarder wrote: »

trying to understand the situation in which someone ends up in a life of crime is not 'blaming everyone but the bike thief'.

My post was in response to what was said about 'middle class' buyers and Lidl/Aldi being to blame.

magicbastarder

tomasrojo wrote: »

Incidentally, though the conversation about social deprivation is very interesting, I'm not sure to what extent bike theft is driven by addiction. People engage in petty theft (petty in the eyes of the law in the case of bikes, despite some of them costing as much as new low-end cars) for many reasons, and I'm not sure drug addiction is a major one. Wanting to fit in is another reason, I'm sure. Just being young and stupid is another. Many of my (middle-class) friends and acquaintances when through a shop-lifting phase. It baffled me, but it was definitely "a thing".

i suppose if you grow up in an environment where unemployment is normalised, you don't spend too much time thinking about what a criminal record will do to your chances of getting a full time job. and as you mention, peer pressure, boredom, and getting a kick from some petty theft are major issues.

similar to your experience, i went to a school where the amount of petty theft committed by guys who were doing it for kicks rather than economic reasons was quite eye opening.

tomasrojo

Sorry dermabrasion if it sounded as if I was taking you to task at any stage. I never thought you were condoning what the Garda said had happened.

ThisRegard

magicbastarder wrote: »

i suppose if you grow up in an environment where unemployment is normalised, you don't spend too much time thinking about what a criminal record will do to your chances of getting a full time job. and as you mention, peer pressure, boredom, and getting a kick from some petty theft are major issues.

It's a decision that a person makes. They can take a look around and see where they may end up, and they can just go with it or make an effort to make something out of themselves. Education in Ireland is pretty equal to everyone once you take private schools out of it and they do have the opportunity to do so.

magicbastarder

you are joking, yes?

tomasrojo

Another working-class quirk I noticed among my friends (a bit off-topic) is, if you do go to third-level education, pretending that your part-time job is your real job, so people don't realise you're at third level, and think you're getting up yourself. Relatives also pretend to their neighbours that your part-time job is your real job. It's a very different mindset.

tomasrojo

magicbastarder wrote: »

you are joking, yes?

Me? Well, he did use the term "scumbag", but I didn't think he actually condoned any putative police brutality.

EDIT: No, ThisRegard is whom you're talking about, I think!

magicbastarder

tomasrojo wrote: »

Me? Well, he did use the term "scumbag", but I didn't think he actually condoned any putative police brutality.

EDIT: No, ThisRegard is whom you're talking about, I think!

correct, it was a response to ThisRegard.

ThisRegard

magicbastarder wrote: »

you are joking, yes?

No, I'm not in the least bit joking. I actually went to a secondary school that's now a DEIS school, grew up in an area in the 80s that during the last Deprivation Index of Ireland survey was ranked as very disadvantaged, coming in somewhere around 300 in the list out of all Ireland.

So I know well the opportunities that are there and that can be availed of. I know people who have very successful careers as teachers, legal profession, media and tech. They had the same opportunity available to them as the person next door that became a thief and all round scumbag. The only variance would be the parents, but that's not a constant either.

So when I hear the excuse that the person robbing your bike is doing so because of where they grew up and the conditions that fed into it, I don't buy it.

There's no denying that there's an influence, but I don't buy it as an excuse. It's an easy out.

tomasrojo

ThisRegard wrote: »

No, I'm not in the least bit joking. I actually went to a secondary school that's now a DEIS school, grew up in an area in the 80s that during the last Deprivation Index of Ireland survey was ranked as very disadvantaged, coming in somewhere around 300 in the list out of all Ireland.

The point you were making about education being very equal in Ireland was what surprised me.

magicbastarder

ThisRegard wrote: »

There's no denying that there's an influence, but I don't buy it as an excuse.

i'm not trying to portray it as an 'excuse' - when you're standing in front of the judge, you're either guilty of a crime or you're not - it's the influence you mention that i'm talking about.

if someone from an area with chronic unemployment is 20% more likely (i dunno what the actual figure is - that's plucked out of the air) to end up in a life of crime than someone from foxrock, trying to understand the factors involved, and their influence on how people fare later in life (on a macro level) is *not* excusing the crime.

magicbastarder

for me, and i grew up in a stable middle class family, there's a lot of 'there but for the grace of god go i' involved (even though i'm not religious).

ThisRegard

tomasrojo wrote: »

The point you were making about education being very equal in Ireland was what surprised me.

Taking private schools out of the equation, I believe it is. The standards may not be equal across the board, but the opportunity to get into 3rd level education if the will is there I think is.

tomasrojo

I don't know. Taking private schools out of it is taking quite a lot of the education system out of the equation. And the expectations and attitudes of your classmates inform your world view too. The experience of being a fish out of water in college is tricky too, from what I've been told.

A girl I knew in TCD who came from Ballymun flats was talking to a Freshman (Freshgirl?) from County Clare and she asked her how she was finding life in Dublin. It's ok, she said, but I find it hard to orientate myself; everytime I get on a bus I'm afraid I'll end up in the flats in Ballymun!

I have taught informally in a non-private school in Finglas, and it was a good school, so I assume that by and large the schools are at least ok.

magicbastarder

ThisRegard wrote: »

Taking private schools out of the equation, I believe it is. The standards may not be equal across the board, but the opportunity to get into 3rd level education if the will is there I think is.

the will is clearly important - but also support from family has to make a big difference. will have to try to remember where i read it - may have been an american context - but i was reading a few years ago that one thing that separated kids who did well in school from the kids who didn't do so well, was that kids who did well tended to be more often from families where some sort of education or encouragement to learn was maintained during the summer months - so the biggest factor in the kids falling behind was not necessarily the quality of the school, but the fact that the (unfortunately, usually better off) kids were coming back with several months more learning under their belts. and leaving the other kids behind. they maymake similar progress for nine months of the year, but it was the other three which were important.

it's another anecdote, but i was talking to a taxi driver recently who was saying the number of journeys he makes bringing kids to school at 10am and later is scandalous. because the parent is clearly not in a fit state to bring them there.

ThisRegard

tomasrojo wrote: »

A girl I knew in TCD who came from Ballymun flats was talking to a Freshman (Freshgirl?) from County Clare and she asked her how she was finding life in Dublin. It's ok, she said, but I find it hard to orientate myself; everytime I get on a bus I'm afraid I'll end up in the flats in Ballymun!

I saw similar from a clown from Sligo in one of the DITs in the 90s. He had never been to Dublin but started hassling a student who was from an area he had read about in the papers for less than glorious reasons. After a couple of weeks of this he eventually got a dig in the head for his troubles, the other guy not doing much for the stereotype, but it ended the hassle there and then.

tomasrojo

The girl from Clare was mortified when she found out. The two were pretty friendly after that, so no harm was done, but these things can't be easy.

Chuchote

Yeah, I had a country girl renting next door who was always waking me up at three in the morning to come in and inspect all the presses and under the stairs and check the back door, convinced that The Scrotes were coming to get her. She really thought this nice suburb in an axis exactly between working-class and upper-class in Dublin was full of The Robbers. She moved back to Mayo (I think it was), where I'd be petrified to live, reading as I do about people breaking into isolated houses and beating the tripes out of old farmers for their supposed millions in savings.

smacl

ThisRegard wrote: »

Taking private schools out of the equation, I believe it is. The standards may not be equal across the board, but the opportunity to get into 3rd level education if the will is there I think is.

Not really though. Say you've got two people with equal abilities, one from a well to do background, one from a poorer background. The kids from the well to do background are more likely to be among a peer group where the expectation is to go to college, the teachers are preparing them for this, and the funds from parents will be available to do so. The kid from the poorer background may be in a peer group where very few people will be going to college, there are fewer honour classes in any subjects as a result, and the parents may have made it clear that the funding to pay for college won't be available. The opportunity is not equal, the kid from the poorer background will have to work much harder to get a 3rd level education.

I've been through this to some extent myself, while coming from a middle class background my folks were in the process of splitting up when in 6th year, and knowing that college was not affordable didn't exactly motivate me to study. It took a few years of hard graft to get the funds together to eventually get to 3rd level, so I'd definitely be of the opinion that money affords opportunity in this instance, or rather lack of money denies it.

ThisRegard

I think though that for Dublin based students as an example that want to go to college in Dublin, the funds required is not too big an issue as they can stay living at home, so they don't have the biggest cost, rent, that people coming to Dublin would have.

However my experience is all from the early/mid 90s so I'm out of touch with all the costs involved, and anything I've studied in the 2000s I was lucky to have funded by my employer.

I've similar experience with honours subjects, when I was doing them honours Irish and Business has to be done either at lunch or after school. Asking an enthusiastic student to do that, never mind a student you're trying to push, is a tough task, I bailed on Irish myself. As for maths, there simply was no honours class for the handful that wanted to try it.

magicbastarder

tomasrojo wrote: »

It's ok, she said, but I find it hard to orientate myself; everytime I get on a bus I'm afraid I'll end up in the flats in Ballymun!

reminds me of the time i was getting off the bus in UCD with a friend, and some kids got off at the same time and asked us the way to a building they were looking for. we didn't know the building; they were heading there for some open day. turns out the building they were looking for was in DCU.

Chuchote

I know the figures on free university (when it existed) were that it benefited the middle class disproportionately. This was not my experience in interviewing entrepreneurs, however. I spent the 1990s and 2000s interviewing young entrepreneurs and suddenly, instead of Daddy and Clongowes and leafy seaside privilege, it was Da was a milkman and gritty Crumlin and Finglas. It made a huge difference.

In this thread, on another matter, we're rather conflating working-class - typically formal people with high expectations of their children - with workless class, where kids have little or no chance of anything but repeating their parents' lives.

magicbastarder

getting a little back on topic, it'd be interesting to know how many people it takes to create a bike theft crimewave.
sounds a little like a junior cert maths problem - 'if one person can steal one bike per day, and has a 5% chance of being caught, how many bike thieves are operating in dublin if the average length of time your BT win bike will last locked outside drumcondra railway station is 90 days?'