ARE YOU BEING sound right now? You’d better watch your back if not.

This week, Dublin City Council launched its ‘Be Sound This Summer’ campaign, which involved deploying ‘Soundness Detectors’ to the streets of the city to hand out badges to pedestrians and cyclists as a reward for ‘positive behaviour’.

First things first, ‘Soundness Detectors’ puts one in mind of a Dalek-like creature, dispassionately gliding through the streets and evaporating, without a shred of remorse, anyone who isn’t being sufficiently sound. It is therefore worth clarifying that the ‘Soundness Detectors’ are human people. 

Second of all, it’s an incredibly Dublin City Council move to launch a ‘Be Sound This Summer’ campaign on the second last day of July. We can now wait with bated breath for their Be Kind This Christmas campaign, launching on 28 February, 2026. 

Specifically, the campaign is aimed at anyone who is walking, cycling or driving through Dublin city centre during the summer months (which, and I cannot stress this enough, are already over). One hopes that the soundness detectors have been warned to stay out of moving traffic as they chase people through town trying to interrogate them as to their soundness.  

Few would dispute that we could all stand to be a bit more sound. One might wonder, however, whether gimmicky campaigns like this do anything at all to achieve that outcome. It seems reasonable to argue that an improvement in material conditions would probably be met with an increase in soundness. Of course, the way Dublin city is managed is not always conducive to soundness, but what can we really expect the council to do about that besides sending out some minions like radio DJs to hand out goodies to anyone who’s prepared to make the sacrifice of not mowing down a cyclist in their SUV. 

But if we can’t do improved material conditions, at least give the soundness brigade some truncheons. I can only speak for myself, but I’m much more likely to be sound under threat of a good clubbing. 

Ultimately, marketing campaigns are not the answer to any of Dublin’s ills. Irish people have been propagandised into thinking of ourselves as paragons of soundness for long enough. We haven’t begun to slip out of those habits simply because we don’t have council workers to affix a little badge to our lapel. Realistically, this soundness detector business is about as worthwhile a use of time and resources as a Conor McGregor appeal at the High Court.

A much greater service was done for the people of the capital by An Coimisiún Pleanála, who this week refused a proposal to redesign the St Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre. 

The artist’s impression of the new design evoked the kind of shopping centre storefront that can be seen in many cities around the world. Gone are the unique Babylonian hanging baskets and the criss-crossing white window beams that give the building the look of an especially ostentatious greenhouse. They’re replaced instead by a flat design, devoid of texture, something that looks like the lobby of a Trump building on the bottom with generic office space on the floors above. 

On the one hand, it does seem silly to be precious about what a shopping centre looks like. It was built in 1988, and it’s not necessarily an integral part of Dublin. It’s not like it’s Dr Quirkey’s Good Time Emporium, or something. But if we have to change it, wouldn’t it be nice, for once, to change something… for the better? Once you install that identikit frontage, the character of the centre’s interior is sure to be lost with it. You think there’d still be an Asha if the centre reopened with that kind of bland exterior? No chance. They wouldn’t be letting the goths into a building like that. Thankfully, the ACP seemed to recognise this.

In its rejection, the ACP said the plan for the updated centre “lacks a strong sense of original aesthetic,” which is the kind of mundane insult that if you ever heard it said about you, would likely cause you to revise your entire wardrobe and personality for the rest of your life. Maybe if they’d had the sense to at least propose to make the toilets free. 

All’s well that ends well, however, and while it’s likely that centre owners DTDL Ltd will likely draw up a new plan, one can hope that — since their bad idea was rebuffed — they will come up with something that is, at the very least, a little less bad.

Between this and the white-water rafting centre, we’ve had a few successes lately in preventing bad ideas from reshaping the city. Now all we need are some good ideas and who knows where we could be. 

While this column is typically concerned with domestic enemies, it is only right for us to occasionally cast a glance across the Irish Sea to keep an eye on the movements of Great Britain. This week, the top story was the news that Prime Minister Keir Starmer had begun to use Palestinian statehood as a bargaining chip in a sort of PR war with Israel. 

Starmer said the UK would take the step of recognising Palestine unless Israel “takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agrees to a ceasefire, and commits to a long-term sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a two-state solution”. Now, at first glance, it might sound like he’s making demands. When you read a little closer, you’ll notice that he’s not calling for an end to the appalling situation in Gaza, but rather ‘substantive steps’ towards such a thing. What would such steps be? You know, he didn’t mention.

It might seem like he’s calling for a long-term, sustainable peace, but no. He called for Israel to ‘commit’ to a long-term, sustainable peace. Just tell us you’ll behave, Bibi. Just pretend. It’s dastardly, and not in a fun Wacky Races way. 

The decision to recognise the Palestinian state is, first and foremost, a symbolic one. It does nothing to directly save lives or ease the suffering of those who have been starved, burned, bombed into oblivion. Second of all, it’s a moralistic decision — either you recognise the right of the people of Palestine to self-determination, or you don’t. Granted, that has never been the forté of the United Kingdom. 

However, it is the height of cynicism to warn Benjamin Netanyahu and the state of Israel that you will recognise the state of Palestine unless Israel dials its genocide back down to the levels we were seeing a few months ago, back when Starmer and his ilk still had nothing to say about it besides proscribing protest groups and calling for hip-hop trios to be censored for trying to draw the world’s attention to the horror.

In contrast with countries like Ireland, Spain and France, which are at least prepared to do symbolism in the service of Palestinian solidarity, Starmer has shown that he is only prepared to threaten symbolism — and little else — unless Israel makes some lame attempt at rehabilitating its image, and by extension, his own.