Ship of Fools: Potemkin Village of Northern Ireland

Thread: Potemkin Village of Northern Ireland Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

I came across this today:

quote:
Marco Werman: I do it. You do it. We all do it, I hope, especially if I’m coming to your house. We do it when we have special guests. Fresh towels in the bathroom, give the counters a wipe, maybe even hide our dirty laundry in the closet. Well, the town of Enniskillen, in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland is sprucing up for some very special guests: President Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, to name just three. In a little over two weeks they and other leaders will gather for a G8 summit at a golf resort in Enniskillen. And as the date approaches the cleanup is moving into high gear. It includes new coats of paint on houses, tidying up lawns, and putting up fake storefronts on shuttered businesses. Irish Times reporter Dan Keenan visited Enniskillen and saw the cleanup process. Describe these fake buildings, first of all. What do they look like?

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.

It seems to me this is exactly the wrong approach. The G-8 are, at least theoretically, supposed to be able to formulate solutions to the current economic slowdown/recession. Why try to convince them it's not really that bad of a problem?

[A quick link to explain the terminology of the thread title for those unfamiliar with it.]

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

I would love to see the brief outlining the rationale for that investment.

Posted by Pigwidgeon (# 10192) on :

I heard that story on NPR* the other day. It reminded me of the phony town they built in Blazing Saddles.

*National Public Radio

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

reminds me of when the President (Ford, to date myself) came to speak at my univ. and the secret service decided there weren't enough exits to disperse the crowd in an emergency, so they built all these fake exits-- stairways and paths that ended in blank walls. Good for dispersing crowds, but probably a death trap for everyone but the prez in an actual emergency...

Posted by cheesymarzipan (# 9442) on :

Cork has a similar thing - there's a couple of run down/derelict buildings on Grand Parade, so when the Queen came to cork the other year they put a huge canvas picture on one of the buildings to make it look better

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

Maybe it's some kind of reverse psychology thing? I think that putting pictures in the shop windows of the things that used to be in there, would point the attention exactly to the fact that they are empty.

Posted by Catrine (# 9811) on :

They put up those in East Belfast when they held the first East Belfast Arts Festival last year. They cheer up that end of the city really well. Much better than a haphazard mishmash of boarded up shops.

Regarding it being a mask on the real issues, I'm sure if they wished to do so they could check the figures. In fact, I bloody hope they check the figures about the recession, austerity and the impact on society. They're the G8 hopefully checking the stats is high on the agenda whatever they are discussing.

In short, I'm in favour of this. It also has a positive impact on the people living there, no one is under any illusion that everything is massively different, it just looks less depressing.

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
Maybe it's some kind of reverse psychology thing? I think that putting pictures in the shop windows of the things that used to be in there, would point the attention exactly to the fact that they are empty.

That's a little subtle for me to follow. Crafting an elaborate illusion that the shop is open points more attention to the shop's emptiness than simply leaving it obviously empty? Does it work the other way? The best way to convince people you've got a thriving business is to make your premises look as derelict as possible?

quote:
Originally posted by Catrine:
They put up those in East Belfast when they held the first East Belfast Arts Festival last year. They cheer up that end of the city really well. Much better than a haphazard mishmash of boarded up shops.

I'm sure it was better, æsthetically speaking, but the East Belfast Arts Festival wasn't charged with formulating economic policy that might impact whether those shops stay boarded up in the future.

quote:
Originally posted by Catrine:
Regarding it being a mask on the real issues, I'm sure if they wished to do so they could check the figures. In fact, I bloody hope they check the figures about the recession, austerity and the impact on society. They're the G8 hopefully checking the stats is high on the agenda whatever they are discussing.

In short, I'm in favour of this. It also has a positive impact on the people living there, no one is under any illusion that everything is massively different, it just looks less depressing.

Except for the significant effort that's being put into crafting an illusion that everything is different. I mean, if they wanted to remind people that everything is still the same, they would've left it the same and spent the £300,000 on some other, more functional form of civic improvement.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
Crœsos: Crafting an elaborate illusion that the shop is open points more attention to the shop's emptiness than simply leaving it obviously empty?

Yes, it might be. I don't think that putting life-size pictures of thriving shops in the windows of empty ones will fool anyone into thinking that they are in fact still running.

So, the thought processes might go a bit like this:

- Hey, that's a lively shop over there!
- Wait a minute, that's not a real shop, it's just a picture in an empty shop.
- Hmm, why are there so many empty shops over here? Maybe it has something to do with the state of the economy?

With the information I have at this moment, I don't rule out that this is what they are trying to achieve. After all, they already got us talking about the fact that there are so many empty shops there, didn't they?

[ 31. May 2013, 19:33: Message edited by: LeRoc ]

Posted by Nicolemr (# 28) on :

It reminds me of this from the 80s in the Bronx:

Residents Give Bronx Cheer to Decal Plan

Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :

Numerous empty shops in this fair town have been brightened up by having large photos of the insides of nice-looking retail premises stuck on the boards. Nothing new - the Council have been doing it for several years.

It fools nobody - the streets still look half-derelict......and my Council Tax continues to be wasted on other half-baked schemes.....

Ian J.

Posted by AndyB (# 10186) on :

It's de rigueur in shopping centres here. Nicer than grotty whitewash.

Posted by fletcher christian (# 13919) on :

It's a deceit though. Not that I believe for one minute that any of them will be walking down the high street to do a bit of shopping. They will be praying for very fine weather so they can take them all out to the lakes and show off the beauty of the land.....before fracking drains them.

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