Visiting Politicians Are A Nuisance And A Danger To Themselves

“Police defend traffic closures” said the headline in today’s Sydney Morning Herald. [Photo: AP] To quote the article:

”’I'M NOT apologising to anyone,’ a senior police officer said yesterday, warning that the traffic closures that infuriated Sydneysiders during the visit of the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, could be worse in September [when the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit takes place in Sydney] … Twelve protesters were arrested and charged during Mr Cheney's visit.”

Now I’m not a protester by nature and even Dick Cheney’s right-wing politics, while offensive and stupid, are not enough to get me out into the streets throwing eggs. However, I do object to the way police departments will disrupt everybody’s lives so that puffed up little nobodies can drive their ‘motorcades’ around our cities.

Yes, I know it’s for their protection. People like Cheney, Howard, Blair, and so on have upset so many people so much that there are likely to be violent crowds wherever they go and these halfwit egomaniacs may well be attacked. I can understand how the police would need to consider their safety. But haven’t they got it all arse about face?

It is the presence of these dangerous, disruptive people (so-called ‘world leaders’) on our streets that is causing the problem. If they weren’t parading up and down the streets, people wouldn’t gather to shout insults at them. So the obvious solution would be to prevent them from moving around.

If, say, a holocaust denier wanted to visit Sydney, chances are the authorities would refuse to give him or her a visa – on the reasonable grounds that their presence would upset people and might provoke violence. So why not keep Dick Cheney out too? His presence clearly upsets people and provokes violence. He is clearly a menace to any city he visits and the cost and disruption for thousands of ordinary people when the police try to protect him is hugely out of proportion to the value of anything such a man could possibly have to say. Besides, what’s wrong with the telephone? A few long-distance calls could have saved the American tax-payers the cost of his silly little outing and the ‘infuriated Sydneysiders’ the cost of having their police tied up with this nonsense.

If the world’s politicians are so hated and reviled that people gather in crowds to abuse them whenever they appear, why not do the sensible thing and keep them all locked away indoors?