What with Dublin finally being recognised as being the dirtiest, filthiest capital city in Europe - quite an achievement seeing as French people tend to urinate openly on the street in broad daylight and that Turkey is officially in Europe - it may come as a surprise that the latest advertising campaigns being undertaken by Irish companies have taken so long to come about.

For those of you who make the daily heartbreaking crawl to work along the Naas Road, you may already be familiar with the concept of ‘clean stencilling’ as there has been an ad for Persil ‘cleaned’ onto the wall at the Bluebell shops for a few months now. It is possibly the cleanest thing in Bluebell, inhabitants included. 

However, going a few steps further are those robbing bastards at 11890, who, not content to charge you ridiculous amounts of money for providing a brutal service, have now stolen Persil’s idea, and have begun to spray ads on the shit and vomit encrusted footpaths all over the city centre.

The company have avoided being fined for graffiti because they use steam cleaners to stencil their mark on the ground instead of paint, and are arguing that they are providing a public service because they are actually cleaning the paths. A bit of a far fetched claim, but fair play to them for pointing out the ridiculousness of Dublin City Council’s anti-graffiti laws.

From now on I expect all grafitti artists and taggers who have been snared by the Gardaí to simply claim that they were painting sections of the wall and that they were doing the city a favour. Which, if you take 11890’s arguement literally, is true.

Forgive me for reposting this picture, but  tell me which you think looks worse - the Persil job above, or this horrible eyesore from Hatch Place…