Censor this asshole.

The Irish are white people. Walking down the streets I used to amuse myself by looking freakishly ugly! If a mere American tries to tell the USA “I have never been around people so lacking in any moral standards, so perversely admiring of cheating and theft as you Americans” good luck. My theory is that immorality of every kind is “cool”!

I am looking forward to getting fat!

Thanks for telling the vermin.

What a load of left-wing navel-gazing Frank McCourt-style whiny wankery.

So, we’re supposed to be so edgy and cynical because we’re reinventing the devil and original sin and mortification of the flesh in the form of businessmen being the root of all evil, and we’re all tooo Catholic for tooo long (we are sooo guilty! Bless us and save us Fr. Marx! GUILLLLTYYYYY!!!) and liking money too much.

Well, actually, we do like money too much, fair enough; it’s as though we were teetotalling old bachelors who fell off the wagon spending the entire farm mortgage over an entire weekend in in a lap-dance bar full of polish strippers while blitzed on redbull and vodka.

And the girls in the photo remind me of some brit’s quip that at one time all the girls in Ireland used to have orange hair and skin the colour of straw, whereas now it’s the other way around.

You missed the obvious dick joke: our ultimate monument to the Celtic Tiger in the middle of Dublin’s O’Connell Street. Most public monuments in history are about claiming the public space for a symbol of collective membership. We got membership of the servile state and atomised global consumer society via the vacuous, vomit-worthy, enema-inducing “Spire” – i.e. the Spike, as in heroin needle, or perhaps an overpaid over-important underachieving civil servant’s paper spike, or just “A Giant Prick” (i.e. every south-side Dubliner or provincial dick-drip suburban semi-detatched wannabee you meet joyriding like a teenager on speed in the rest of Ireland every single goddamned bankholiday weekend – or the entire managerial class of Ireland, but I repeat myself).

In the Ireland of the ’80′s was there were whispers of a military takeover by the President to preserve public order in the face of 21% unemployment; it sure as hell wasn’t because we weren’t bankrupting ourselves on civil servants who thought they were a secular incarnation of Marx’s living church on earth, with 60% tax rates that practically legitimised tax fraud and bribery.

But all the neo-stalinist head-fuckers in the Workers Party cadres like Eoghan Harris who infiltrated the media, and entered into a kinder, gentler Hitler-Stalin Pact with royal-fucker cartel-capitalists like Tony O’Reilly, got to complain to this day about how terrible, how awful the Irish are about following the proper rules. (You may remember Eoghan as the paid spindoctor for neocon fraudster Ahmed Chalabi…) We really do need our betters to guide us – the global corporate mercantilists with their Economic forums and trade blocs; and their useful idiots from the “house negro” Left, who believe that all traditional institutions need to be broken down before Hegel’s wheel can turn fully to the revolution.

We have 300,000 assholes in the Civil Service who shit the money everybody else has to actually go out and earn with all the responsibility of Frat Boys with a permanent case of Spring Break squirts in Tijuana. Then we have 400,000 economic roadkill out of work, of which approximately 180,000 living brain-dead have been out of work for about 3 generations, right through the Celtic Tiger years when we were importing Eastern Europeans like french hookers to an arab yacht party.

Oh, and shout-outz to the EU for fucking us up with a one-size fits all Eurozone methamphetamine injection of bank-rates designed for a morbidly obese German savings regime under economic cardiac arrest. “why don’t they save like us?” because then no one would buy your exports, you pig-latin fucknuts.

Maybe Ireland is more like the mediterranean countries in temperment, so what? I’d rather be ruled by the equivalent of an Italian fascist than a super-efficient German feminist; you could at least bribe the Italian.

I thought you were impliedly saying that all Irish people were genetically cursed & should not pass this on, looking at yr reply at 52 above I see this was not the case

PS perhaps you’d be less cranky if married though? (joke)

I note you draw attention to the fact you’ve never been married. I’m trying to work out the significance of this – is it connected to the whole Irish thing you write about in your article, or am I missing something?

SDaedalus

It’s that small town village attitude.

If Mary down the road takes out a 2nd mortgage to pay for a 100,000 Euro kitchen, we have to do so too and also buy that apartment in Berlin (the Germans must really have been laughing at the Irish property investors here)

But if Kevin across the street actually gets off his ass and does something useful, he’s too big for his boots.

PS Leave Charlie Sheen alone, at least he keeps trying (an achievement given that he is part-Irish), we have to foster some initiative here.

Seriously though… I’ve never been married… oh, and, yeah, its not that people don’t care, its that they don’t want to hear solutions. Why? Well, I could give the elites plenty of pointers on how to run a more equitable economy in Ireland – I think they’d probably just call security.

As for the peasantr… I mean citizenry. Well, as stated above they don’t even want to hear advice like “No, don’t take out that second mortgage there’s going to be a crash”. They’re so aped up on the cultural equivalent of prozac – and sometimes prozac – that they don’t want to hear something that remotely criticises da syztem.

No, I’ll stick to my criticism: the Irish elite are corrupt; Irish people are complacent and “Two and a Half Men” is one of the worst shows ever broadcast on any television… anywhere!

Ok point taken, well put. I now appreciate the subtle pitch difference between a generic & specific moan.

The difficulty is that most people are thick and lazy and if you want change (as opposed to just criticism for the sake of criticism) it’s essential to offer a solution, they won’t think it up themselves.

Another point: I think that people should stop conflating “moaning” and genuine criticism. Had I gone to my local pub and complained about the price of a pint I’d be moaning. Had I returned home from a sterile, oppressive, soon-to-be-downsized office and complained to my spouse about my supervisor, I’d be moaning.

Making direct criticisms targeted at specific persons and institutions – as well as certain institutionalised character traits – is far from moaning. If you don’t believe me, give it a go. The former will ensure that you fit in nicely, live in a half-deserted suburb and die in a puddle of your own stress still working at 70 years old.

I’m not 100% where the latter will get you but you certainly won’t fit in nicely. People don’t like hearing that shit – because they’re too busy moaning!

@Toba

I scanned your post like a CIA computer scans people’s e-mails. I identified the words “cyclic nature of things” and “Celts” and have thus concluded that you are some sort of pagan or Wiccan or something of the sort. I have no love for Catholicism, but I thought we got beyond all that. Oh, hang on, I just picked up my local newspaper, there’s an astrology column – guess we didn’t…

The idea of satire without a solution is so Irish it makes me smile (in a nice way). We specialise in non-constructive criticism.

The suggestion “stop moaning” would be of mutual relevance, no?

The other suggestions on stop being subservient, voting for the local gombeen man, blaming the Brits, land-grabbing etc. are spot on.

We Irish are so apathetic (miasmatic?) that we really do need to be given concrete suggestions on how to improve if anything is to change.

Thank you for these suggestions. Maybe we can hold off on the hydrogen bombs for the time being.

While I may or may not have written this article I would make one point: it’s satire – it doesn’t have to point to a solution.

Nor does it point to some quasi-genetic defect with the Irish themselves – as some ghastly Galtonians seem to be implying. The Irish are the way they are due to their history, which has left them petty and their institutions in an aborted state of modernisation.

It’s a terrible pity because there’s a lot that’s good about the country. However, if the Irish ever want to crawl out of their primitivism they need to grow up. It’s that simple – and that complicated. Grow up.

Stop moaning. Stop being subservient. Stop allowing the elites to get away with murder. Stop blaming the Queen for everything. Stop enviously eyeballing your neighbours potato patch. Stop voting for “thu luvly bloke” from Fianna Fail. Grow up.

That’s really helpful. However I was kind of hoping that Ireland would be still around as a physical entity at the end of it all, which puts the kybosh on your first suggestion. The second suggestion is tempting though.

OstroNova
Miasma doesn’t exist. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory_of_disease

Also, it was White’s case that everything that went wrong for Arthur started in Lothian. He had an anti-Celtic bias.

This idea that the Irish are perpetually doomed is a great way to sit around on our arses feeling sorry for ourselves without doing anything about it.

PS the Scots (also Celtic, and also within White’s quote) managed to take over Great Britain. Twice.

“Case one: The Irish. Long time cannon fodder of the British Empire, the Irish can be expected to take one for the team pretty much on demand.”

“The Icelanders, on the other hand, put it to the people and the people said “No thanks, generally we get chocolates and flowers before we let people do that to us”.”

#49
I have a memory of watching the video (youtube?). Must have been put there by space aliens. My bad. (Whatever that means). “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story,” – ould Irish proverb?

“In writing, truth and lies can be used to tell the truth. In politics, no.” – Harold Pinter, paraphrased badly – Nobel Acceptance Speech – an evergreen piece of brilliant truth-telling –

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5779318336871023559

‘Don’t mess with writers,’ because they write the version that will be history – “But he will not be bullied. He will not be intimidated. He is a fearless, formidable, totally independent voice. He does something which is really quite simple but highly unusual. He tells the truth.” Harold Pinter Introduces Noam Chomsky. St. Pauls Cathedral, London, 2002. –

http://tinyurl.com/6o8sqh

Bono didn’t said that, it was actually Phil Lynott from the band Thin Lizzy. Check out the track Emerald from the ’78 live album Live and Dangerous.