What could be more civilised than a brass and reed band, where teenagers play side by side with 80-year-olds, something deeply rooted in the traditions of a city?
What could be further from the drug-ridden scum who infest our town?
What could be more decent?
Well, the City Council don’t care about that, and the bulldozers are at the door of the St John’s band-hall, trying to knock it down so they can build a new road.
The band are staging a sit-in.
They offered the council eight different alternatives for accommodation, but got no acknowledgement to any of their suggestions. Instead the council intend to knock the bandroom, and St John’s Brass and Reed Band can fuck off.
You see, these traditions mean nothing to the management of the corporation, because none of the managers there are from Limerick and they couldn’t give a shit if one of our fine old civilising traditions lives or dies, as long as they get their roads and their sewers.
I suppose the big problem is that the band members aren’t knackers and therefore don’t appear on the corporation’s radar. They don’t turn up at the counter screaming like mad people and flinging dead rats at the terrified staff. They aren’t sprayed orange. They don’t wear wife-beater t-shirts. They aren’t covered in tattoos or accompanied by a dozen Tayto-munching fatty knacker children.
They’re just ordinary, decent people, who don’t complain.
In other words, they’re the sort of people the corporation isn’t afraid of.
