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DUTCH POLICE DETAINED 34 people when rioting broke out as thousands of party-goers invaded a small town for a teenager’s birthday after her Facebook invite went viral, local officials said Saturday.
The individuals will be charged with public disturbance and more arrests could be expected after police study pictures taken of the Friday night clashes in the sleepy northern town of Haren, chief Oscar Drots told a press conference aired on public television.
“An innocent call on Facebook to party led to riots, destruction, looting, fires and injuries in the centre of the town,” Haren mayor Rob Bats said, adding that 500 police officers had been called to the scene.
Twenty-nine people, including three officers, sustained injuries but none were serious, according to Dutch media.
“This cannot be tolerated,” Dutch Justice Minister Ivo Opstelten said as the local people of Haren cleared up the mess.
The authors of these acts will be judged, punished and should pay for the damage done.
The police had been on high alert after the schoolgirl posted a message inviting friends to her 16th birthday party on Friday, but forgot to mark it as a private event, prompting more than 20,000 replies.
Local officials said between 3,000 and 5,000 people turned up in the town of 18,000 residents.
Officials had prepared for trouble by blocking access to the girl’s street, banning alcohol consumption near her home and having the teeenager herself quit the premises.
But riot police were still forced to intervene when a couple of hundred young drunks tried to get into the street.
Dutch news agency ANP quoted a correspondent as saying police were pelted with stones, bottles, tubs of flowers and even bicycles.
Groups of rioters then moved to the centre of the town where they wrecked cars, fencing, street lamps and signs.
Some of the party-goers wore T-shirts bearing the words ‘Project X Haren’, a nod to the 2012 US teen film ‘Project X’ about a suburban birthday party that gets out of control after an invitation goes viral.
Several websites had sprung up dedicated to the party, with one publishing the girl’s address and adding, “By all means bring some friends!”
Previous ‘Project X’ parties have run riot in different parts of the world including Germany, Australia and the United States, where teens wrecked an unoccupied Texas home, causing damage of up to $100,000.
A new Facebook page, called Project Clean-X Haren has now been set up to organise the clean-up. Its administrators say that they will show that “there is nothing that others can degrade faster than we can build it back together”.
-Additional reporting by Sinéad O’Carroll
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How are you supposed to rob them from the hotel if they are not in small plastic packaging
@Mark Mccormack: Bring your own bottle and pump the dispensers dry?
@Charles McGuire: that’s the kind of thinking outside the box that will save the planet
@Darren Byrne: Genius
What a joke country in crisis and he is concerned about little plastic bottles Rise up paddy
@John Hartigan: yes, biodiversity crises, climate crisis, environmental crisis. His suggestion seems reasonable, no?
@John Hartigan: Ya, they should give them to the homeless.
@John Hartigan: I hope Paddy when he rises up is smarter than John
@John Hartigan: why are we in crisis?
@John Hartigan: Is climate and pollution not a crisis? It’s an easy change to remove these plastics. Lots of baby steps can be as good as one big one.
in hotels in america they have on the shower bath walls, refillable body wash, shampoo and conditioner. No need for those bottles
@Charles McGuire: you mean like in the Merriott hotels, as mentioned in the article?
@Vocal Outrage: Precisely good sir or ma’am.
The mini plastic bottles can be refilled, but obviously dispensers are a better option. Apparently the mini bars of soap are a huge ecological problem. They’re never fully used, so they’re thrown out and don’t biodegrade. Amazed that hotels still provide shower caps and plastic cups wrapped in plastic in bathrooms. Seems a bit strange that these practices continue especially when hotels advise you not to use too many towels in order to help the environment
@Anne Marie Devlin: you’d imagine that in a lot if these cases it would also be cheaper for hotels.
@Anne Marie Devlin: the soap problem is not in fact a high ecological problem at all, but the solution that hotels have been using for years isn’t publicised to widely as for all our virtue signalling some solutions we still aren’t comfortable with. The unused remnants of hotel soap are processed and recycled into yet more bars of mini soaps for hotels. So next time you wash your face in a hotel bathroom just think, how many people have used this soap before me?
Airlines should stop using plastic cups and be forced to use compostable cups, these could be disposed of on airport grounds in that case …
@Shane Murphy: You can bring your own reusable cup on board..
Speaking of waste let’s reduce his salary…. Should not earn that much
Someone needs to tell him we went metric a long time ago
Seriously have they nothing better to be looking into!!!
@Amy Keane: Probably. But it’s an easy fix that can save millions of plastic bottles going to landfill or our seas
@Amy Keane: you think plastic waste is not an issue?
Never noticed the country’s awash with miniature shampoo bottles in the waste centres. Who would have thought that that’s whats been filling up the tips all this time. This man is going places!
Nit picking and a fraction of plastic compared to the amount of plastic cups, pint carriers and ponchos discarded at the numerous concerts over the weekend.
@Matt Connolly: actually I’d imagine the amount of mini single plastic bottles dumped after one weekend in all Irish hotels is equally substantial and its ongoing . Both issues should be tackled
Rock. The td who was looking for match tickets from john delaney in the aviva when the matches weren’t even close to being sellouts!
Classic virtue signalling from Rock. Still though, he had John Delaney on speed dial for match tickets and found a way to feel sorry for Pat Hickey after the Olympic ticket scandal. Claimed he wouldnt claim expences if he got elected which also turned out to be bull s h i t e!
@Doubtchya Boy!: I think he said he wouldn’t claim untouched expenses as a councillor, I have no issue with vouched expenses as they have to be justified, and from what I can gather he didnt make unvouched claims, and then got rounded upon when he said he would do the same as a TD.
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/youre-messing-it-up-for-the-rest-of-us-tds-round-on-noel-rock-in-dail-pay-fury-35172862.html
Leo says “green Wave” B U L L S H I T E ……………do they take us for F00LS
Noel rock should be banned he produces too much co2
How about the hotels fleecing people Noel.
Great idea and an easy fix! Don’t get the negativity in these comments!
@Eoin Stapleton: i think some of the negativity is partly because we have a country that has so many obvious problems (crisis ! ) that need addressing , over the weekend the 4000 people over 75 years old on trolleys for longer than 24 hrs in a+e – think about that , housing crisis , transport is congested and banjaxed , pretty much any govt project is billions , billions being wasted and the people we elect in are trying to grab media headline talking about the ‘trendy’ topic of the day instead of doing their f&&&ing job. Just a thought.
@Dave Hammond: I get your ‘thought’ and agree that it needs to be sorted but it’s slightly off topic.
Ireland has c.60,000 hotel bedrooms. By implementing a relatively simple strategy we could eliminate the use of near 50 million plastic bottles a year with little effort! (Assuming each has a 75% occupancy year round and each contains 3 plastic bottles (shampoo, conditioner and shower gel))
Just because the idea came from a politician doesn’t automatically make it bad!
@Eoin Stapleton: not bad , populist – at the moment shampoo bottles in hotels in ireland is whats ‘off topic’ mate.
@Dave Hammond: Ha, and I’m the populist?!
Does that mean we can take a full bottle of shampoo,deodorant Tec.. onto a flight..this makes no sense..Sound bite bollix.
@Patrick Lavery: ‘Individual hotel chains have made efforts to reduce plastic use in their rooms, such as Marriott which last year began to swap the plastic bottles for in-shower dispensers in over 400 of its hotels.’
Right in the article you just commented on. In-shower dispensers. Makes plenty of sense.
What a side show. How about doing something really, really useful, like sorting out the housing crisis, health and our outdated education system.
You know, things that really matter. Instead we referendums, and stuff like this. All smoke and mirrors from a do nothing government.
Noel Rock brings his own cornflakes away with him. Pass it on.
He would have more impact if he targeted used car tyres. And don’t tell me they are all recycled!
@davey boy: no, that would be bike tyres
Think of the millions of little plastic bottles going into landfill. Ban the damn things!
Typical FG jumping on whatever they deem is gonna get votes.
Trying (badly) to surf the green wave now
Ban Happy Meals and the likes, it’s criminal
have your say