Xenos and Blarney

Sadly, the tragic death of three bank workers in Greece following a petrol bomb attack on a bank, during yesterday’s protests, has been reduced by a lot of the newspapers today to more puns about ‘Greek Tragedy’ etc. The Daily Mail even has a tasteless ‘What have the Greeks ever done for us?’ trivia page. Nothing like a little bit of euro-sceptic xenophobia (a word given to us by the Greeks) to gloss over a human tragedy. Thankfully, more reliable coverage of what is happening in Greece is available.

What is clear is that the numbers taking to the streets to protest against the austerity measures in Athens is a mere fraction of the number that turned out for protests by the Irish Congress of trade Unions in February and November last year. I think that is why no media group has even attempted to report on the numbers involved. Any coverage I've seen it never looks like more than a few hundred people.

Hardly a revolution. And certainly not a reliable barometer of what Greek people feel about the EU / IMF bail out.

A little closer to home, the Xenos serving your coffee and fluffing your pillows is under a thinly veiled attack that betrays just how low some people are prepared to stoop in this crisis.

Unhappy that the hotel concierge is Lithuanian? Dismayed that the chamber maid is Polish? Ah, there’s nothing quite like a bit of casual racism thrown into the debate about staffing in the Irish hotel industry (this one has legs, I can tell). And of course, the 'concerned' proprietor is from Blarney; a placename synonymous with people talking large volumes of utter nonsense.

I worked as a hotel porter in London in the glorious summer of 1987, and I would have sympathised with any visiting tourists who may have been dismayed that I wasn’t a proper, full-on, born-within-earshot-of-Bow-bells cockney.

Funnily enough, they NEVER WERE. I could hardly Adam n’ eve it.