Furious Frenchmen are threatening to turn the Seine into a sewer this Sunday in a bizarre protest against the eye-watering costs of Olympic preparations.
The movement, cheekily dubbed #JeChieDansLaSeineLe23Juin (I’ll poo in the Seine on June 23), has gained traction after Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo boasted she’d take a dip to prove the river’s cleanliness.
Hidalgo, however, has now back-pedalled on her pledge, conveniently citing the hastily-called French elections as reason to postpone her plunge.
A staggering £1.2 billion has been poured into purifying the Seine for Olympic swimmers and triathletes, as the river prepares to host key events during the Games.
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With just five weeks until the Games, recent tests revealed alarming levels of two types of faecal bacteria, including E.coli, falling short of Olympic standards.
When I heard about the plans to clean up the Seine enough to have actual swimming events, I had to check it wasn’t an Onion article. While on paper it sounds nice - an urban river so clean you could swim in it - in practice it’s pretty much impossible to do. Not even factoring in the cost of it.
If I was an athlete, I’d skip the event if they tried to make me swim in that. There’s no vaccines and drysuits good enough to make me take that plunge. Especially not after half of Paris decides to take an actual shit in it.
Sorta crazy to think about. Unfortunately some of those people have been prepping for 4 years or more and it might be their only chance to be in the Olympics. They’re in a bad spot.
Lol thought you were going to say “…prepping for four years and it might be their only chance to shit in the Seine”
Lul, they could always just go there on vacation to shit in it.
I’m booking flights as we speak
That’s expensive. Do you think if I shit in a box and address it to the river, the postman will dump it in for me?
Postman: Ce n’est pas grand-chose, mais c’est un travail honnête
Which genius had the idea to swim in that infested river for an international event?
Honestly I was impressed with their ambition
First I heard of this protest it was much more than the river clean up costs, it was a protest against macron, and generally high cost of hosting the Olympics while they’ve been passing unpopular taxes and regulations on the people specifically farmers
Lemmy recommends letting it brew for a solid 3 days first
Sacre merde!
I do wonder about the protest - isn’t the problem that the Seine is polluted because they’ve been shitting in it?
They’re protesting by threatening to do what they are already doing.
If only protesting were that easy most of the time.
I think we in the UK should protest the water companies by going and shitting in the sea
How would we be able to tell the difference afterwards? Would it not be better to go and shit on the water companies or (as I have mentioned before) take a leaf from French farmers and drive a muck-spreader up to their HQ and give them the lot.
Yes or we could barricade them in with portaloos
