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THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE have taken to the streets of Dublin for a colourful celebration of the 40th anniversary of the city’s Pride parade.
Young and old lined the streets, some dancing while others waved rainbow flags in the Saturday sunshine, as the parade wound its way from O’Connell Street, along and across the River Liffey and down to Merrion Square.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was pictured with some of the groups taking part at the start of the march.
The first Pride parade in the city, in June 1983, crossed the city in the other direction, beginning at St Stephen’s Green and ending on O’Connell Street.
This year marks several other anniversaries for Ireland’s LGBT community.
It is 30 years on from the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Ireland and 50 years since the formation of the country’s first group focused on gay and lesbian rights, the Sexual Liberation Movement, in Trinity College.
Trailblazers who formed that first group at Trinity and those who took part in the first Pride parade ten years later were invited to the stage inside Merrion Square Park today.
They were given a rousing reception by the thousands gathered for the post parade speeches and music.
Long queues of people filtered into the sun-drenched park for more than two hours.
Among them was Marlon Jimenez Compton, who is originally from Venezuela but has been living in Dublin for 20 years.
“I usually take this opportunity to try to convey a message of resilience, hope and, most important, love,” he said.
“Because I think it’s important to take the event to convey the message that love is love and that’s my intention as a member of the LGBTQ+ community myself.”
Laura Barrett, 55, took part with her wife Roz Evans.
Barrett, who is originally from Dublin but now lives in Offaly, has mobility issues and today was the first time she was able to join the parade, having recently secured a new scooter that is capable of doing the distance.
“It’s the first time I’ve actually been able to march in Pride because now I have a scooter that does the whole trip,” she said.
“So this is my first time actually taking part in the parade, I’m 55 years of age and it’s taken a while to get here but it’s good to be here.”
Barrett, who is member of the choir Gloria, said the atmosphere was amazing.
“It’s magic, it’s absolutely wonderful and it would be great if it was like this all the time,” she said.
Speakers from a range of community and support groups addressed the crowds.
One of the final speeches was delivered by Sinn Fein’s Stormont leader Michelle O’Neill.
She paid tribute to the Pride pioneers of 40 years ago but said the journey to equality was not yet complete.
“I think the fact that so many thousands of people have come to walk through the streets of Dublin today is the best testimony to all those brave activists 40 years ago who walked the streets to stand up against hatred and prejudice, and we owe it to them to be here today and to celebrate what we’re doing today,” she said.
“We’re proud that they stood up to be counted and we will be forever grateful for the work that they started and the journey that they started, so let’s salute their bravery today.
“I’m so glad that we’re living in better times, I’m so glad that we’re living in a more modern Ireland, but we certainly have more work to do on this journey.
“We want to deliver a fairer Ireland, an Ireland where we have equality and respect at its heart because we all know that there are still many challenges facing people today.
“Many of our friends are still suffering discrimination, they are suffering bullying and even loneliness.
“So let me say very loudly here from the stage today – homophobia and transphobia have no place in Ireland.”
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If they allowed customers to download content at very slow speeds so they would be able to play it offline later, then people in rural areas would subscribe in their droves. Big opportunity there.
That’s the difference between Netflix and a Torrent
“We don’t need to change our service, the entire infrastructure for net access needs to change” exceptionally short sited view from a company who pride themselves on being forward thinking. Nevermind the fact that the ability to take things offline is practically an industry requirement, it’s incredibly simple to just cache the content for a period without needing to offer the user the choice. Bad move.
Do you remember that episode of The Simpsons where Skinner is looking for Bart after he bunked off and he goes to the “abandoned 4H Club”? “Am I so out of touch? No. It’s the children who are wrong.”
Sky go extra is great for off line activity. Download in a wifi area, watch at your own leisure while commuting or seat.
Exactly,
And do you feel confused by that option?
This comment from Netflix makes no sense.
Pirate Bay tbh lads.
The issue is that any time you allow content to be downloaded, you increase the risk of the files being copied and shared. Even if you load it up with DRM, chances are it will be cracked or circumvented at some point.
Netflix are using the excuse of consumer confusion to control the supply of their content, and by extension, their revenue stream. They’re in the dominant market position, so they have to. Amazon, being a smaller player (backed by a much bigger company) trying to catch up, can afford to take the risk – even just for the publicity boost.
There’s no risk, Grigori. The worst case scenario already happens everytime a new show is put up on Netflix. It wasn’t even a day after the most recent series of Orange is The New Black went up on Netflix that it was also up on TPB, KAT or whatever other popular torrent sites you like, in HD quality, with the intros cut.
All Netflix are doing here is harming their less tech savvy customers. There’s culchies and people in rural America and developing nations out there who have internet connections hitting 1mbps at a push, they can’t stream Netflix but they could download from it. I’m still baffled that Netflix ever took off to be honest. Torrenting is so much better.
Grigori,
That’s preventing a problem that already exists, with a method that doesn’t work.
Makes zero sense.
Sure recording onto the Sky+ box is doing the same thing but very few bother their balls to convert the filetype and upload it to tinterweb
The Movie HD App let’s you download and watch later. http://moviehdapp.com/
Yeah and it being illegal and liable for shutdown at any time is a great selling point. Good lad.
If I recall correctly there was one released that required you to have a Netflix account to download the Netflix content
The US courts declared that it was against the Netflix terms of service but not illegal because you were merely watching what you paid for
It’s been working well for the last few months.
Maybe they can beat piracy by selling us content that’s invisible. Then you won’t know if it’s worth copying or not, but you’ll just have to use your imagination a bit more.
The real reason is obvious, it converts Netflix . You download the media to watch offline, there’s nothing stopping you then uploading the files to your favourite torrent site.
That’s really not the case.
You can already capture streamed media, so they aren’t preventing anything that isn’t already possible by not allowing downloading of content.
have your say