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Globe and the G8
G8 Update
"Signs of hard times covered up for G-8; Posters hiding empty storefronts" by Shawn Pogatchnik | Associated Press, June 07, 2013
BELFAST — The Northern Ireland border village of Belcoo has never looked so good. And critics say that’s just the problem.
Organizers of the G-8 summit June 17-18 in Northern Ireland have spent weeks sprucing up the facades of businesses around the County Fermanagh venue. Their use of window-sized posters on two derelict Belcoo shops, to make them appear like thriving businesses with fully stocked shelves, has proved most eye-catching — indeed, eye-fooling.
While many in the border village of barely 500 residents and two pubs applaud the use of posters to give their home a cheerier look, some complain they have covered up the reality of economic hard times.
That's government.
To passing motorists, the former Flanagan’s butcher’s shop in Belcoo looks packed to the rafters with fresh cuts of meat. Its locked door even has a poster on it, depicting an open door so convincing that would-be shoppers have nearly strolled into the wall. Across the road, a former pharmacy’s windows have been covered with images of shelves full of office supplies, books, and computer software.
In reality Belcoo, which lies about 10 miles south of the luxury golf resort hosting the G-8 summit, has been hard hit by the collapse of Ireland’s economy. Many who were previously employed in construction have struggled to find work since 2009. The area’s biggest employer, fallen billionaire Sean Quinn, has seen his cross-border empire seized by an Irish state-owned bank as part of a historic bankruptcy fight.
Elsewhere in Fermanagh, banners depicting the county’s historical sites and scenery have been deployed across the fronts of empty commercial buildings. The village of Fivemiletown has witnessed its own transformation of two vacant storefronts into an antiques shop and a delicatessen.
Phil Flanagan, whose family shut Belcoo’s butcher shop last year, said the G-8 spruce-up brought welcome work to painters and plasterers, but he believes the lifelike veneers are a deception too far. He said the reported $500,000 used on pre-G-8 cosmetic work for Fermanagh would have been better spent reviving a real employer.
‘‘Some people are putting out the idea that there’s no such a thing as a closed-down business in Fermanagh. It’s a huge lie and a false economy,’’ he said.
The practice of adorning fake fronts on commercial eyesores has been widespread in Britain and the US for years.
So you really can't believe your eyes.
Former New York mayor Ed Koch pioneered the practice in the early 1980s to conceal urban decay.
Why does that not surprise me?
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Wanna hit the links?
"Cardinal Dolan lauds New York’s late mayor Koch" Associated Press, June 03, 2013
NEW YORK — Cardinal Timothy Dolan on Sunday celebrated the late former mayor Ed Koch as a Jewish New Yorker who considered Catholics a ‘‘glue’’ that held the city together.
What skeletons does Dolan have in his closet?
The head of the city’s Roman Catholic archdiocese remembered Koch during a Sunday Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The former mayor died of congestive heart failure in February at 88.
Speaking from the pulpit, the cardinal told worshipers that he had been ‘‘looking for a good way for the Catholic community of New York to thank God for the gift that he was.’’
Koch’s family and friends were invited to the Mass at the cathedral, where Koch had often attended services. He and then-Cardinal John O’Connor had become good friends, sharing meals and writing a book together titled ‘‘His Eminence and Hizzoner.’’
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On Sunday, Dolan said that while Koch was proud of his Jewish faith, he also was a ‘‘great friend’’ of New York’s Catholics. The cardinal said Koch told him, ‘‘you know, the Catholic Church is the glue that holds this New York community together, and all its parishes and schools and charities and outreach and community services.’’
Dolan concluded: ‘‘We honor him, we miss him, we thank him. . . . His was a great example of public service.’’
However, the cardinal added with a grin, “humility was not one of his virtues.”
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As a Catholic, I'm tired of the guilt trip and fawning over the chosen people.
Now let me just stop in this store here befo... oh.
UPDATES:
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