So, the Abbey is iconic and out of the way and every once in a while someone decides this is not good enough and the Abbey should move. There then ensue a load of discussions about it. Put simply, those who care, then that the Abbey is not in an important enough location. They want it somewhere more noticeable. This is why, perhaps, they rejected ideas to locate it somewhere near Spencer Dock, for example, a previous suggestion.

They are gunning for the General Post Office on O’Connell Street. It’s been suggested before of course, and I thought it was idiocy. The Carlton Cinema if you’re stuck would be an option but the General Post Office on O’Connell Street is an iconic building in the way that the Abbey Theatre will never be.

So there’s this in the Irish Times – I’ll refrain from call it trash – pushing the idea again.

In all the times I see this idea mooted, not one person has ever managed to explain to me why we should change the Post Office from being a Post Office. Far more people use it as such than ever go near the Abbey Theatre other than to maybe get off a city centre bus.

It seems perfect for a multiplicity of reasons, not least the creation of a space in which the stories of 21st-century Ireland can be enacted on the spot where a vision of a society that cherishes “all the children of the nation equally” was first proclaimed by poets and writers.

Who writes this nonsense? Remember, far more people use the Post Office than go to the Abbey Theatre.

Importantly, it would provide a stimulus for revitalisation of the city’s main and still mostly shabby thoroughfare which, despite the excellent remedial work of Dublin City Council, has little to recommend it.

I doubt it. Look at Dun Laoghaire Baths for an example.

I know that the arts strata in Ireland are occasionally – maybe often – utterly totally detached from reality. The truth is this. If the Abbey Theatre performances and contribution to Irish society is as great as they shop it up to me, then the actual location doesn’t matter. If they need to take the one public building in the city which is truly used by people from all walks of life in this country, then they really haven’t a clue what the post office is about, or, indeed what arts are about.

Not one idiot peddling this idea has ever given me a good reason why we should shut down an iconic post office to open a theatre. In my opinion the Abbey should stay where it is or if it has delusions of grandeur, go to a big new location where it can exploit those delusions without wrecking one of the most useful buildings in the city.

ETA: and while I’m at it:

Nonetheless the sheer creativity of the idea – combining a solution to the Abbey’s problems and marking such a significant historic occasion by transforming this symbolic site – demands that it be fully explored and opened to debate.

At what cost? I don’t care about the Abbey’s problems – they are not more important to me than the fact that the GPO which was designed as a post office is still used as a post office and which is useful to many more people than a theatre is. The building is symbolic as a post office, far more than it ever would be as a theatre.

I’ve explored the idea. It’s nonsense. It’s high faluting nonsense. Frankly if the Abbey is stuck for space they should have done a deal with the O2. I realise that the arts brigade would talk about democratising the arts and making it more accessible to the people by wrecking the GPO for their own benefit but frankly, the Abbey’s location is such that if they failed to that, it’s not location is the problem. Or position on a grand thoroughfare. O’Connell Street could do with being glammed up a little but the removal of the central post office will not help that.

Delusions of grandeur. That is all this is.

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ETA

And there’s this from The Stage.

One man enthusiastic about what he calls “the perfect historical match” of the Abbey and the GPO is David Norris, Joycean scholar and senator, who claims to have been the first to suggest the move. He argues that as the state owns the GPO, there will be no acquisition costs while the existing Abbey site can be sold to help fund the new building.

He envisages the Abbey reopening in the GPO in Easter week, 2016, with the Sean O’Casey trilogy, including The Plough and the Stars, “as European heads of state arrive to celebrate the centenary”.

Definitely delusions of grandeur.

Fintan O’Toole mind, is not quite so impressed.

This is a clip out of a recent press conference, in which a question was put to him by the BBC, for, I imagine, the BBC’s audience. If you don’t speak German, the key piece of information from the speech he gave to the BBC journalist was “This is Germany, we speak German here.” He refused to take the question in English and on receiving a translation, he responded that his answer as was it was to his German colleagues, that this was a press conference in Germany and possibly some other time, they might take tea and speak English there. But for now, they were in Germany.

There are over 3000 comments on that clip already, with a split between those who understand how this will be perceived outside Germany (badly) and those who think that Westerwelle is absolutely correct.

I need to put in a disclaimer here. I speak German and French fluently and I’ve never bought the idea that English native speakers are poor at languages. I think they are basically just lazy. However…how I do feel about this?

Well. I see it as arrogant. The BBC is one of the biggest news providers in the world. They decimate the equivalent German agencies in terms of reach. The de facto position of English as everyone’s favourite second language means that if you communicate with the BBC in English, you reach a lot of people.

This guy is scheduled to be Germany’s next Foreign Minister. The press conference wasn’t just for the benefit of the German media. Maybe, 50 years ago when all this would have been in print, you could argue the BBC correspondant should have run the conversation in German and then, in writing a written piece, transferred it in English. But the media in the world has changed and these things go on radio, they go on television.

In this case, he wound up on Youtube. Where is the sense in assuming everything will be nicely redacted without direct quotes any more?

If you want to win hearts and minds, you make some effort to meet your audience part way and the audience in English is much bigger – and in some respects (viz America) much more influential – than the audience in Germany.

I think Guido Westerwelle has been misguided in this. Or else he has been totally arrogant. The net result is that my impression of how German foreign policy will change with his accession to the position of Foreign Minister is coloured by the impression that he is misguided with zero comprehension of what constitutes diplomacy and media-savviness. In other words, his PR people have a load of work to do to undo that mishap.