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Progressive West Belfast Joins the Eurozone
In the spirit of welcoming our European neighbours to west Belfast, the businesses in the area are to accept the Euro as a form of payment. Needless to say, this has nothing whatsoever to do with nationalist pettyness and attempts to prove their Irishness by undermining anything remotely British.
Follow up:
120 businesses have already signed up to this "tourism scheme" promoted by the West Belfast partnership. "There is nothing political about it" said Gerry Carson of the partnership. There are a lot of tourists, apparently, from somewhere called "the 26 counties" who come in over the summer.
Tourists interviewed for BBC Newsline tonight said it was a great idea, as it saved them the inconvenience of changing their money to the currency used in the location they've chosen to visit. I don't expect to be able to spend my pounds when I travel to Spain or anywhere else on the continent, and doubtless the Parisians (famous for their customer service) would look at you in disgust if you asked them if they accept Sterling.
Plenty of border-region businesses, logically enough, already accept the Euro. These businesses have clear markets in the area over the border in the Irish Republic, which is often just a few miles away.
What's the need of the Euro in West Belfast though, other than to overcome certain people's insecurity with their sense of Irishness? There's a bank machine in the city centre that only dispenses Euro notes, and regularly it will go unused as a queue of half a dozen or more people queue up for the sterling machine beside it - and that's in the city centre, where people from the Republic might actually come to go shopping.
I really despair. Next thing we'll have WARN telling us their instructions that immigrants moving into west Belfast shouldn't approach the police to deal with crimes was just "friendly advice" - because republicans aren't bigoted. None of them.
I know this shouldn't annoy me, it would be no more than mildly amusing if they actually admitted their motives, rather than disguising their bigotry behind "tourism".