Fake storefronts prepared for G8
With G8 soon to start, thought it would be timely to post this:
Suffering Under Austerity, Northern Ireland Puts Up Fake Storefronts For G8 Summit
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/05/31/2086711/suffering-under-austerity-northern-ireland-puts-up-fake-storefronts-for-g8-summit/?mobile=wt
When leaders of the world’s eight largest economies convene in Northern Ireland next month for a summit of the G8, they’ll be surrounded by fictitious prosperity. As the Irish Times’ Dan Keenan explained to Public Radio International on Wednesday, the town of Enniskillen is erecting facades over vacant storefronts to simulate active businesses in a place Keenan says “has suffered terribly as a result of the credit crisis and the resulting recession.”
In all, Keenan reported in the Times, “More than 100 properties within range of the sumptuous Lough Erne resort which hosts the world’s wealthiest leaders, have been tidied up, painted or power-hosed.” The effort covers up the grimmer reality of a place more vulnerable to austerity than much of the rest of the United Kingdom, where child poverty is substantially higher than in the rest of the country. After three years of harmful austerity under Prime Minister David Cameron, the G8 summit will be the first shot of stimulus County Fermanagh’s economy has received in a long time. The Toronto Star puts the hoped-for spending injection at just under $60 million U.S., but notes that Toronto’s experience hosting a G20 summit in 2010 cost many times that much, and left “scars” on the city.
http://www.theworld.org/2013/05/northern-ireland-town-fakes-prosperity-for-g8-summit/
Dan Keenan: These are basically empty shops that are being now made to look as if they are thriving businesses, and they’ve done that in a very clever fashion indeed.
Werman: How do they do it?
Keenan: What they’ve done is they have filled the shop front window with a picture of what was the business before it went bankrupt or closed. In other words, grocery shops, butcher shops, pharmacies, you name it, they have placed large photographs in the windows that if you were driving past and glanced out the window, it would look as if this was a thriving business. It’s an attempt really by the local authority to make the place look as positive as possible for the visiting G8 leaders and their entourages, and it’s really tried to put a mask on a recession that has really hit this part of Ireland really very badly indeed.
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Keenan: This is one big initiative really stemming from the Foreign Office in London. This is David Cameron’s gig. It’s his invitation, it’s his decision to host the G8 in County Fermanagh, which is, don’t forget, part of the United Kingdom. It’s also on the island of Ireland, it’s in Northern Ireland, but he will be the hosting head of government and it’s his say so. Much of the money that has been spent in and around the host town of Enniskillen, about more than £300,000 worth, that’s getting on from half a million dollars, the bulk of the cash and certainly the driving force behind the plans to tidy up the place, that’s all coming from London.
= new reply since forum marked as read
But it does fit.
