My son recently drew my attention to the insanity of the current pre-election poster campaign where candidates are frantically vying with each other for the attention of the passer by.
Unfortunately some of these passers by are driving motor cars, and to make matters worse there seems to be no rule against the candidates vying with the vital traffic signals either.
This unbelievable example is in Pearse Street, Dublin, at the junction of Sandwith Street.
Mind you, a perusal of the entrails would make you wonder if the traffic signals were trying to tell Bertie something - settle for the Park, or, no left turn, for example.
But it really isn't funny and shows an absolute contempt for one of the causes all the political parties are pledged to, namely, reducing road deaths. Oh yeah?
There are many other issues in this campaign, not least of which is how far Bertie might be prepared to go to recruit a partner to keep him in government.
The entrails below, in Kildare Street, Dublin, just beside the Irish Parliament building, suggest the possibility of an unholy alliance in the next Dáil, appropriately underscored by the the former Free State Senator whose poem A Terrible Beauty is Born says it all.
Enjoy the campaign and don't blame me for the result.
I see from Saturday's Irish Times (5/5/07) that there are rules in these matters and that:
ReplyDeletePosters must be a minimum of 2.3 metres above footpaths or any area to which pedestrians have access. They should not be erected on lamp standards with overhead electricity lines, traffic signal poles, bridge parapets, overpasses, pedestrian bridges, or roadside traffic barriers, and must not obscure any road signs.
and that
where Dublin City Council staff become aware of posters that are considered to be causing a hazard they will remove them.
This is hardly going to deter people putting them up in the first place. What is needed is for the parties concerned (political or individual) to be held directly responsible for where their posters appear and be subject to hefty fines where the rules are broken.
This should oblige the parties to limit distribution of their posters to those people they can trust to stay within the rules.
Let's give Dublin city's official motto a bit of meaning and bring a little happiness into the daily life of its citizens:
“Obedienta Civium Urbis Felicitas”
which, crudely translated, would render into Dublin english as:
"Do what you're effin told".
I figured there was something amiss with the Dublin City motto but it was only much later it occurred to me that it should have read:
ReplyDelete“Obedientia Civium Urbis Felicitas”
The earlier one was C&P'd from the City Council's own site and I have informed them of the error.