Saturday 22 June 2013

Supporting The Brazilian Demonstators

After many of us said the same thing about Britain paying out billions to host the Olympics last year, i have every sympathy with the people of Brazil demonstrating against the cost of their country hosting the World Cup football tournament next year and the 2016 Olympics while the countries public services are being slashed.
A million demonstrators took to the streets to demand new spending priorities as billions of dollars have been spent preparing for sporting events.
Statistics from Ipece, the CearĂ¡ institute of research and economic strategy, show that more than 133,000 people are living in severe poverty in Fortaleza and a third of inhabitants live without sanitation but the Government have built a £150 million stadium in their city, and forcibly removed 5,000 people to do it, so easy to see why Fortalezans are saying stuff the world cup and spend the money on housing, hospitals and education.
I don't agree with the looting and destruction of property that is going on but i agree completely with the Brazilians making life as uncomfortable as possible for the Government unless us Brits whose apathy is quite astounding.
While the UK government are trampling over the sick and vulnerable, eroding away our rights and spying on us, we just sit and take it unlike the Turks, Brazilians and Greeks.
We were promised a legacy while we spent £9 billion on the London Olympics but since last summer all we have seen is public services slashed and public servants sacked but i'm sure the Brazilian public will be spun the same rubbish about how spending billions of their taxes on sports stadiums while they struggle to survive is somehow a good thing.
The threat of large scale demonstrations and disorder about how our Governments fritter away our money on short term events to please the likes of FIFA and IOC instead of their own people should focus the minds the next time these committees are looking around the World for hosts of their events.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

15 of the cities in the list of "top 50 most violent cities" are in Brazil... Ouch.

q

Lucy said...

Wonder if they are the poorer cities with a large divide between rich and poor, a place where the trickle down of Capitalism isn't working.