Monday, March 27, 2006

Dirty Old Town

Breaking news: Dublin is Dirty. Ok maybe I'm being a little harsh here but DUH, everyone knows Dublin is a dirty old town. An Taisce should stop paying for stupid surveys, get off their arses and try to clean up the city.

Dublin is reported as being 12% less clean than the rest of the country. Personally I think a rating of 67% cleanliness for Dublin and 79% for the rest of the country is complete bollocks. Ireland is a dirty country. Walking around Dublin it seems most Irish people have never learned to pick up after themselves. People move around leaving a trail of paper, food, plastic, cigarette butts and chewing gum behind them like a leaking oil tanker sailing into an Alaskan harbor. 67% is a very generous rating to give this city.

I was in Sydney a few years ago on a short holiday and all the Australians were telling me that Sydney was a dirty city and not to judge the rest of the country by Sydney. I thought you could eat off the streets of Sydney and I was too embarrassed to tell people about Dublin. Sydney gleams in the sunlight, yet I would only say it was 70-80% clean. Dublin in comparison is at best 30% clean, probably less if you took out areas like Howth.

By the way, it is a popular belief that the song Dirty Old Town is about Dublin, but apparently it was actually written for Salford in England. Still I think it's adopted home is more than apt.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just got back from Ireland. It's been 7 years since I was there. The place is disgusting. Garbage EVERYWHERE! Each small village, each city, each beach and Dublin...WOW! Even throughout the mountains there were empty Lucozade bottles, wrappers and plastic trash everywhere. Sitting on a bench listening to a trad band surrounded by dog shit and garbage and debris. Disgusting.