The Ideas Campaign - An Update

[wysiwyg]

For anyone else who has been following the Ideas Campaign, and who may have made a submission, as I did, I just got an e mail from the organisers today thanking me, and giving me a taste of some of the ideas that they recieved from others.

My eyes fell on this one, and considering the day that's in it, I just had to post it. (this is a genuine submission)

For some reason, it was in the Education section:

"Attract more middle class Chinese people to travel to Ireland. The population in China is 1.3bn. If you can get 1% of people to travel to Ireland instead other European countries and make the visa process easier, this will be attractive to the Chinese. In the Chinese culture, people always buy lots of presents when they go abroad. The lovely Irish hand made craft and other designer items in the shops, will be attractive to them.

All the resources in Ireland are all ready to use, no investment is needed. The only thing needed now is to advertise in China, make them aware how lovely a country Ireland is. Lots of Chinese people love River Dance!"

Best laugh all day to be honest!!!

In the name of the Good Lord above, who in their right mind thinks that attracting 13 million Chinese people to buy Aran jumpers would be a way out of the recession ?

[Digout]

I was wondering what was going on with this, I'd say the consultancy form behind it has some nice projects to work on now.

[geraghd]

For anyone else who has been following the Ideas Campaign, and who may have made a submission, as I did, I just got an e mail from the organisers today thanking me, and giving me a taste of some of the ideas that they recieved from others.

My eyes fell on this one, and considering the day that's in it, I just had to post it. (this is a genuine submission)

For some reason, it was in the Education section:

"Attract more middle class Chinese people to travel to Ireland. The population in China is 1.3bn. If you can get 1% of people to travel to Ireland instead other European countries and make the visa process easier, this will be attractive to the Chinese. In the Chinese culture, people always buy lots of presents when they go abroad. The lovely Irish hand made craft and other designer items in the shops, will be attractive to them.

All the resources in Ireland are all ready to use, no investment is needed. The only thing needed now is to advertise in China, make them aware how lovely a country Ireland is. Lots of Chinese people love River Dance!"

Best laugh all day to be honest!!!

In the name of the Good Lord above, who in their right mind thinks that attracting 13 million Chinese people to buy Aran jumpers would be a way out of the recession ?

That actually sounds like a fantastic idea. Despite the global downturn there are still a hell of a lot of Chinese with money to burn, and attracting them as tourists to Ireland can only be a good thing. Problem of course is making sure they leave afterwards ;-)
But really, the Irish Visa process seems to be one of the worst in the world. €60,over a month waiting time and a defined period of admittance is a joke. Apply for a Visa in other countries and you can get it a day or two later with little in the way of a fee. Oh and they allow a couple of months around your holiday dates.
If we are going to do anything about getting us out of this mess, starting with Visa reform and Tourism Promotion would be an easy and profitable measure especially given the ratio of our population to the world.

[lostexpectation]

its such a great idea there already doing it

[geraghd]

its such a great idea there already doing it

Doing what?

[lostexpectation]

promoting ireland as tourist destination in china

[john f]

Not a bad idea since many hotel rooms are idle. May I say that no one suggestion was meant to solve our problems. Would you mind sharing your suggestion with the rest of us!

[oceanclub]

That sounds like a sensible ideas compare to the one which talked about damming our rivers in order to produce hydroelectricity which would be used to pump water to giant off-shore tankers to sell to other countries.

Honestly, I'm not making it up.

P.

[wysiwyg]

Maybe I took it up wrong, but I thought it sounded like the idea was looking for the 13 million Chinese to move to Ireland, rather than visit here... my bad if I was wrong.

My suggestion centred around getting rid of pre-fabs in schools (rental cost, 80m), and going to the international money markets to borrow money to actually built classrooms instead, using the 80 million to pay of the capital loan cost.

This would allow us access around 1 billion over 25 years, and the increased budget would also stimulate the construction sector, but not throw good money after bad into the residential housing market

[KingKane]

Maybe I took it up wrong, but I thought it sounded like the idea was looking for the 13 million Chinese to move to Ireland, rather than visit here... my bad if I was wrong.

My suggestion centred around getting rid of pre-fabs in schools (rental cost, 80m), and going to the international money markets to borrow money to actually built classrooms instead, using the 80 million to pay of the capital loan cost.

This would allow us access around 1 billion over 25 years, and the increased budget would also stimulate the construction sector, but not throw good money after bad into the residential housing market

Would you ever get out of here with you logic and common sense? Sure once the children had their classrooms how could the local cllr/TD ever get a vote again for promising them what they already had?