Living about 100 yards from the Justius Lipsus building, where the summits take place, my whole neighbourhood is transformed for about three days. Otherwise chaotic roads are made worse by the presence of cops misdirecting traffic. Their guiding principle seem to be always send traffic through red lights, but don't let pass on a green. At the end of my road this morning there was the obligatory water cannon, and on every corner there are barbed wire barricades. After the summit these will be left in place so that local children can injure themselves. Don't complain, the state is nevr wrong! That's how life is in a fascist country.
Rue Belliard is always a challenge. A five lane one-way road, it suddenly turns into just a single lane just past Parc Leopold. This is the ultimate bottleneck. To make it worse, during summits a lane is reserved for these grand leaders, just as was the practice in the old Soviet days.
Why exactly does the Junior Minister for Unecessary Bureacracy from Andalucia need an escort of 12 motorcycle cops as his 6 car convoy covers the 200 yards from his hotel in Place Jourdan to the Justius Lipsus building?
During the last one of these summits, I tried to get to a cashpoint machine at the Schuman Roundabout. This is literally on the doorstep of the Commission building known as the Berlaymont. Armed police were on hand to prevent me from carrying out this dangerous terrorist act, as the roundabout was sealed off. This, of course, added to the traffic chaos as a major motorway terminates in a road tunnel that spews out traffic just a couple of hundred yards from the roundabout. You can get what the result is....
And if you want to get on or off the Metro at Schuman you can forget about that for a couple of days.
So its nice to see you Mr Cameron. I'm sorry that this part of Brussels is such a shithole, but you are making it much worse for those of us who have to live here.
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