What’s your most controversial opinion? **Read OP** **Mod Note in Post #3372**

Yep, my wife told me I was cynical because I saw some young one on the news bemoaning that she was a single mother with no house, yet she had 4 young kids including a young baby, and my response was - 'She should stop having babies if she doesn't have a home.'

I hate that I have become that cynical, but I have seen firsthand how entitled some people are, yet most people are expected to work their arses off to support them.

When the prison forum was live and visible in boards feedback, half of then all boards posters posted their best and most memorable threads in their threads in a prison forum.

Their true flying colours and finest hour.

Subsequent threads by re regs in the prison forum got boring though. Sometimes just to say they'd be back later in a different handle again.

So only the rich & privileged get to breed?

Id say Most of the population on this earth were brought up in less than absolutely ideal condition’s throughout history but we still made it somehow.

And there’s plenty of rich people now who came from nothing.

Just saw the approved new design for the Stephen Green Shopping centre and it's kind of depressing that this new design has been approved.

Dublin is a fairly visually unispiring city and they just seem to love putting up brutalist eye sores in the city rather than preserving any visually appealing architecture, same thing when they demolished so many of those Georgian building in the city which could and should have been preserved.

If anyone honestly thinks this new design should have been signed off on they need to get their eyes tested they clearly could have come up with a more visually appealing design or left the facade exactly as it is.

The lack of appreciation of decent architecture really lets us down as a country it genuinley appears to be a national characteristic considering unaesthetic the country is in general , a large proportion of towns in Ireland are terribly depressing and ugly aswell because we don't appear to have any appreciation for attractive buildings.

Current design

New design

Looks far better than the current 80s eyesore.

Agree, so much of our towns and cities are full of cheap and nasty looking buildings. Large expanses of glass which will look shít when (inevitably) they aren't cleaned all of the time. The old design isn't great either, like a Mississippi steamboat that's run aground, but the new one manages to be both brutal and boring at the same time.

planning departments don’t give a monkeys, the absolute state of properties both residential and commercial that are in receipt of permission to build it’s just bewildering.

perhaps it’s just the artist’s impression there doing it a disservice but…. More of a ‘how ?’ factor instead of a ‘wow’ factor.

It looks exactly like the cheapest possible option that it is.

Gonna be much more difficult to put a tin-foil hat on it.

The new design looks like it’s made out of cardboard and cling film

What's there now is preferable to the almost universally panned proposed design, even if it is a clunky riff on a Victorian shopping arcade. It does look nicer inside than out but I'd say it probably costs an absolute bomb to heat/cool. Also, what in the world do we want with office space in the new development??

I think Art Nouveau and more so Art Deco designs age better than the soulless glass boxes beloved by developers.

"Busk when it's Christmas

You only busk when it's Christmas..."

She’s a bit questionable actually from a business perspective … saw her website a while back and she was looking for online tips / donations , as in tips of money…

If I enjoyed her music, I wouldn’t mind paying to download some actual music, or pay to see her live…. But why would you go to someone who has to have made a reasonable amount of dosh by busking, selling downloads, playing live shows etc… just enter your card details and pay them money, for nothing ? So they can have a good career, it’s very odd… I just went to her site there seeing if I misremembered and maybe you did get a song or two for your troubles but nope… Ali and her Dad would like your free cash ! 👀

For me this is just tradition.

Stephens Green discussion reminds me of what a character in The Unbearable Lightness of Being says after she escapes from Prague and goes to Geneva and is disappointed at how bland and ugly the buildings in Geneva are:

"The uglification of the world. The only way we can find beauty is if its persecutors have overlooked it. Its a planetary process, and I can't stand it."