About our august visitor
May. 17th, 2011 11:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbI'm not happy that the streets of Dublin have been turned into one long series of security checkpoints. Or that's what it looks like. Maybe some people get the warm fuzzies about seeing the better part of 6,000 gardaí all turned out neat and shiny. Me, it makes me feel decidedly threatened. And I'm a nice, peaceful, law-abiding wee socialist, who actually has a fuzzy feeling or two towards our neighbours' institution of monarchy. (If it ain't broke, as the saying goes, don't fix it.)
Also, in this age of instantanious communication, please tell me. What's the damn point in a State visit? Apart, of course, from letting the chattering classes congratulate themselves on how forward-thinking and welcoming they are, and to roll over on their bellies for the royal breath of the world's longest-reigning celebrity. Or, in the case of the US president's visit, the world's shiniest celebrity with the biggest nuclear arsenal. Is it merely to muster all the shiny police-peoples to keep the hoi polloi in their place, produce a few self-congratulatory speeches, and make a large noise in public?
This particular woman-in-the-street finds the symbolism of State visits wasteful and offensive, right now. It's a masturbatory exercise in mutual congratulation, smarm, and sound and thunder, signifying nothing.
Except an excuse to set precedents, here, which appear to erode one's civil rights. No, I don't plan on going into college today. I'm a touch sick, which is a good excuse, but more than that, I don't mean to be in a position where An Garda Siochána are, as the newspapers have said, prepared to stop and search at random people walking the streets of the capital. And I really don't want to have to go to a security checkpoint to use the library. I'm normally okay with keeping my temper, but I am really, really fucking tempted to lose it right now.
Unemployment stands at a little under one tenth of total population. Not working population, total population. Over 400,000 people. Net emigration over the last two years makes approximately another estimated tenth of total population. From a nation containing over five millions of people, we're now at about four and a half.
And the government, who have poured good money after bad into the debt-ridden hole of the banks and knuckled to the ECB over austerity measures and rates of interest that will fucking cripple - that are crippling - this country, are spending thirty million euro on symbolism.
Thirty million euro is a decent number of hospital beds. It's one hundred annual just-under-average industrial wages (before deductions). It's about the sum of a thousand (ballpark estimate) annual jobseeker benefits payments.
And the government is spending it on symbolism.
Yep, I'm pissed.
Also, in this age of instantanious communication, please tell me. What's the damn point in a State visit? Apart, of course, from letting the chattering classes congratulate themselves on how forward-thinking and welcoming they are, and to roll over on their bellies for the royal breath of the world's longest-reigning celebrity. Or, in the case of the US president's visit, the world's shiniest celebrity with the biggest nuclear arsenal. Is it merely to muster all the shiny police-peoples to keep the hoi polloi in their place, produce a few self-congratulatory speeches, and make a large noise in public?
This particular woman-in-the-street finds the symbolism of State visits wasteful and offensive, right now. It's a masturbatory exercise in mutual congratulation, smarm, and sound and thunder, signifying nothing.
Except an excuse to set precedents, here, which appear to erode one's civil rights. No, I don't plan on going into college today. I'm a touch sick, which is a good excuse, but more than that, I don't mean to be in a position where An Garda Siochána are, as the newspapers have said, prepared to stop and search at random people walking the streets of the capital. And I really don't want to have to go to a security checkpoint to use the library. I'm normally okay with keeping my temper, but I am really, really fucking tempted to lose it right now.
Unemployment stands at a little under one tenth of total population. Not working population, total population. Over 400,000 people. Net emigration over the last two years makes approximately another estimated tenth of total population. From a nation containing over five millions of people, we're now at about four and a half.
And the government, who have poured good money after bad into the debt-ridden hole of the banks and knuckled to the ECB over austerity measures and rates of interest that will fucking cripple - that are crippling - this country, are spending thirty million euro on symbolism.
Thirty million euro is a decent number of hospital beds. It's one hundred annual just-under-average industrial wages (before deductions). It's about the sum of a thousand (ballpark estimate) annual jobseeker benefits payments.
And the government is spending it on symbolism.
Yep, I'm pissed.
