Yarra Council to spend OUR money so THEY can get pissed
Although it’s not listed in the City of Yarra press release about the 150th anniversary of the founding of Fitzroy as a municipality, the council is planning an exclusive (literally) celebration where they will use our money collected from rates to pay for themselves to get pissed. The Fitzroy public is not invited. No one knows (or is telling) who is on the invite list, and the Age is curious.
Yarra’s Socialist Party Councillor Steve Jolly (Facebook profile) is hosting a protest / alternate celebration across the road at the Napier Hotel. He writes in his blog that:
Council has organised a cocktail party for Tuesday 30th September, at the swipe-card only Fitzroy Town Hall to celebrate the event. Invited guests include local ALP member, Dick Wynne, the 9 Councillors, and the Council Executive.
This elitist event is not the best way to celebrate a suburb that spawned so many organisations and individuals of the labour, union, artistic, public housing and Aboriginal movements.
Fitzroy is a suburb ‘of the street’ – in terms of activism, of art and culture, and of life – not of cocktail parties behind closed doors.
Therefore I will not be attending the cocktail party and instead invite you to an alternative celebration at the Napier Hotel, in Napier St, Fitzroy from 7pm on Tuesday 30th September. Come and celebrate Fitzroy in a Fitzroy pub with real people.
The ancient and unplugged will be in the Town Hall being boring. According to the Age, there will be people in historical costume and a horse and cart. How incredibly lame. I’m annoyed that I’m not on the invite list (apparently 400 other people are) but more than that I think this is an example of a Council that is out of touch with the community it claims to represent.
The digerati and the rest of the community will be at the Napier. I’ll do my best to join them for a beer and a bogan burger paid for with my own money. If I can’t eat it all I’ll keep the leftovers to throw at the establishment freeloaders.
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Other posts you may find relevant and interesting
- Yarra Council invites public to swimming pool 100th anniversary, 16 October 2008
- dinner at the Napier hotel to celebrate Fitzroy’s 150th anniversary, 6 October 2008
- Ogaden cultural day on Friday 25 June at the Fitzroy town hall, 23 June 2010
- City of Yarra proposes to remove community gardens from Fitzroy streets, 8 August 2009
- a new Fitzroy Residents’ Association website, 31 May 2010
September 26th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
I agree – and I also can’t find out what selection criteria they have used to pick the ’400′. Certainly nobody I know – and I know most of the local resident activists – has been picked.
I’ll be at the Napier too.. :-)
Ian
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