SCHOOL is back and the mammies were not at all happy last week with the Mayor’s social sandpit at The Crescent interfering with poor little Johnnie getting to class.
It was all well and good when our first citizen and the city’s bush boozers were availing of the garden furniture during the summer holidays. But woe beside anyone getting in the way of the school run.
Listen, life is hard enough without having to take the long way around or sit twiddling thumbs in traffic just because the new mayor wants to build sandcastles with Celia Holman Lee. Won’t somebody please think of the children?
Just back to school and the little beggars had the stress of diversions and irate parents.
I feel as sorry for Mayor Moran as the next fella after his tongue-lashing from councillors last week. It wasn’t pretty to watch. Not only did they poke fun at the size of his Christmas list to Santy, they also voted against discussing it any further until they get a personal invite to Santy’s workshop to break down his masterplan.
Maybe the Mayor was right and some of these councillors were picked on in school for forgetting the lines in a school play?
Patience is a virtue, and neither our Mayor, trying to hurry his lofty plans over the line in time for the Budget, or the mammies transporting their offspring to school, have any of it.
Standing up for the rights of the childer, the mamas and the papas, and their poorly paid teachers, this week was Fine Gael councillor Sarah Kiely.
Mayor Moran made it very clear to councillors that he reads the newspapers and tunes in to local radio. So I have no doubt that Cllr Kiely now finds herself in his little black book after stomping all over his sandcastles on the wireless and in this very newspaper.
The City East representative said she had been contacted en masse regarding “traffic chaos”, making it very clear that councillors are not responsible for the road closure up and that any concerns should be raised directly with the Mayor.
“The school community are very concerned about traffic chaos at this location because of the road closure. It’s the function of the Mayor to have this road closure. It’s absolutely nothing to do with councillors,” Cllr Kiely explained.
Local shopkeeper Shane Gleeson was equally unimpressed, responding to a Facebook post from Cllr Kiely that “this closure makes no sense to me, it’s hurt my trade in Catherine Street”.
“If you want to do an event like this, what about the riverside or beside the People’s Park?”
“By all means have events, the more the merrier — but in an appropriate location, not a main artery to the city.”
Independent councillor Maria Donoghue, who was beside herself after Moran’s mayoral vision was deferred last week, was having none of it.
The Wolfe Tone Street woman posted a photo on the auld FaceTube of a ghostly junction up at The Crescent where ne’er a sight nor sound of traffic chaos as schools returned. In fact, the place was as empty as a politician’s address.
Was all the so-called “traffic chaos” all just a storm in a teacup? A political football? Who knows! What we can be almost guaranteed though is that this is surely the first of many spats between councillors and our new mayor.
As the month of August drew to a close, dinner, drinks, and craic aplenty was had to bring the curtain down on the month-long road closure. There was even opera singer up at The Crescent as the hooley got into full swing. Were they singing a swansong? Time will tell.
