Streets Ahead

Say, what news from France? Who is on the streets today? What ails them? Ah yes. Ail French for Garlic. Last month it was the fishermen, protesting about the cost of diesel. This month it was everyone else, but especially farmers and truckers.

That's the way. And, as you can see from the teevee reports on the various disturbances, the police keep their distance. Typical Gallic shrugs - it's the way it is. Don't get involved. Let them get on with it.
I love it. Sure, if you're being held up it's hell. And when they burn Irish lamb, it's a waste. But the idea that the citizens are fundamentally grumpy and wont to take to the streets when they get annoyed enough is one that should, I think, be more widely adopted. Like when we get pissed off with Charlie McCreevy.
Inherent in the French anarchic attitude is the idea of the citizen, the ordinary person as fundamental unit of society, and that s/he has a breaking point. And when enough of them hit breaking point on the same subject on or at about the same time, they take to the streets.
And it isn't just the sans-culottes. Recent years have seen every segment of French society out there, ranting and rattling.
Of course the streets are more closely entwined into French life than Irish. Here, people are carefully closeted in housing estates without natural congregation points. Indeed, our planners have quite deliberately shaped our environment in such a way as to minimise the possibility of crowds gathering spontaneously. Think about it. Is there a great square in any of our cities?
This fear translates in many ways remember how the Dublin millennium fireworks were placed as far away from the city as possible, so that crowds wouldn't form and the watchers would be as dispersed as possible? Contrast that with the French celebrations on July 14th, when they organised the 'grand pique-nique', on a table which stretched from the Normandy coast to the Mediterranean. Instead of dispersal, they thought of gathering.
Irish people who encountered it were really enthusiastic there they were, millions of people, sitting down to table with their lunches, three and four courses in many cases, bottles of wine, eau mineral, the lot. Even the cigarettes.
But you won't be able to do anything like that in Dublin in the future, thanks to the humourless clowns we call the Corporation. They have just passed a by-law outlawing drinking alcohol in public. A stupid knee-jerk and puritanical reaction to public hysteria about drunkenness in public places. Instead of asking the police to do their job, they pass another by-law that won't have any effect. Another half-witted Irish solution to an Irish problem.
Sure, we have a drunkenness problem. So do all northern European countries. But the most tolerant societies in Europe regarding alcohol sales, are the ones with least problems in this regard.
It's true drink is cheapest in France, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece. Of course you see drunks in these countries, but you never see the kind of mass vomiting and pissing and shouting and fighting that you see in Ireland and the UK and increasingly in Sweden, Norway and Finland.
The Mediterraneans find our drink culture unfathomable. Sure they like the pints of plain. And they drink as much as we do. But they do it with food. And a lot of it is wine. And their drinking hours are much longer (as in Spain). So they're more responsible.
In addition, every small town has a square, or piazza, or place, where people gather. And it's okay! Each evening there's the passagiata, or promenade. Every young person for miles around (and often every adult as well) gathers, usually to preen and prance and court and flirt. And it comes and goes, without trouble.
But, rather than any attempt to promote responsible drinking and public behaviour in Ireland, what do we find? We find individuals calling for additional taxes to make alcohol prohibitively expensive.
Here's the essence of the problem in Ireland. Local government officials and representatives seem to have a fundamental hatred and suspicion of the citizenry, and of young people in particular. Their overriding concern is with tidiness and quietude and with keeping mess off the streets.
They are quite unable to understand that the citizen, far from being a bloody nuisance, is the bedrock of society and that their function is to facilitate the citizens, not control them. And of course, it's reciprocal. Citizens are expected to behave in reasonable ways.
But, as is the case in commerce, the customer is always right. It seems impossible for the councillors and the mandarins, to accept this relationship. Because they think they know better, the arrogant, presumptuous, technocrats. (I exempt only the Green Party from this sweeping condemnation they were the only ones to disagree with the ordinance regarding drinking in public places).
The French have maintained their right to be revolting. It may be too late here. The dullards have control of our streets. Our space (in the fullest and most human sense of the word) has been taken. They have paved our souls with dull intentions. We are stifled by a straitjacket of worthiness.
The Hog