Tales of an Irish exile

Merkel and the Jedi knights: slowly moving Ireland to the Death Star?

2012-05-10T07:03:00.000-07:00

Angela Merkel visits Ireland to meet the Taoiseach.

At passport control, the Garda asks:

"Occupation?"

"Not this time. Only here 'til Tuesday"

The Irish Jedi investigation

Sometimes however reality is stranger than fiction: A politician from the Irish government has set up a parliamentary commission to ponder the existence of Jedi knights in Ireland.

What a completely immoral use of tax payer money, and another example of how completely divorced from reality Irish politicians are from the ordinary citizen in a country with an unemployment rate of more than 14%.

Princess Leia Merkel may be called on to rescue the Irish again

The serious element to this is that Ireland will inevitably need to be bailed out again, as the number of productive people working relative to the total population continues collapsing meaning fewer Irish workers to pay for government largesse. The end result is that Ireland will inevitably have to return to Germany with the "beal bocht" shortly.

During the boom times from 1998 to 2007, the ratio rose, meaning more and more working people supporting fewer and fewer dependants. According to CSO figures, that trend has now dramatically reversed, and shows no signs of plateauing.

The more you try to tax private sector workers and keep welfare and pubic sector pay levels the same, the sooner comes the point where it’s not worth going to work.

At the rate at which the ‘workers to dependants’ ratio is deteriorating, Ireland is fast approaching such a tipping point -without question.

Germany will shortly be tapped up for a few bob again by Enda - but what if they say "Nein, danke" this time?

Lighthouse opens in Cork shocker

2012-05-07T03:06:00.001-07:00

I am really concerned that Ireland is sleepwalking to her doom.

In a country where unemployment and emigration are rising, due mainly to the Irish government's lack of will to tackle sky high welfare payments and public sector pay and conditions, and where the BBC have outed the head of the Catholic church for trying to silence victims of Brendan Smith, still the main headline on the 6:01 news last week was about opening a lighthouse in Cork

The video is here:
New Lighthouse in Cork shocker

This sort of wilful ignorance of the real issues facing ordinary Irish people, despairing at the church and the government that are supposed to support then, really infuriates me.

If it wasn't so sad, it would be funny

Only in Ireland!

Lads of Summer

2012-05-05T11:18:00.000-07:00

As Summer approaches, I am reminded of the Summers of the 70s, which I always spent bored out of my head as a kid at my Gran's house.

My Dad would pile all the kids into the back seat of a Ford Cortina and drive for a solid six hours from Dublin to County Mayo.

He would stop for nothing - toilet breaks, small animals in the middle of the road, or sometimes even traffic lights. Even in Ireland, the Summer would get hot and the plastic seats of the car would scald your skin as we sat there in short trousers, eating Macaroon bars and squabbling with the siblings.

We would then be deposited at my Gran's house, with its two TV channels, no town nearby, or anything. As a child, I was incredibly bored. I never appreciated the beauty, simplicity and the solace of the place being only a few minutes from the Atlantic coast on one side and from the majesty of Croagh Patrick on the other.

The problem with small places like that, is that the local towns and villages develop a sub-culture of their own with their native tough guys who would never leave the area.

This is their untold story...

10 odd things about England

2012-05-02T13:57:00.000-07:00

Ten things I find odd about the English, and living in England:

1) The kind of schools where only the very rich attend due to the astronomical tuition and boarding fees are called "public schools."

2) The Monarch can be Jewish, Muslim, or a Jedi, but under the Act of Settlement of 1701 Roman Catholics are banned from the throne. It also laid down that no one married to a Catholic could succeed. So bang goes my plan to marry one of Sarah Ferguson’s daughters.

3) Statistics show that about 25% of Londoners were born outside the UK and there are over 300 different languages spoken in the capital – all of these people are usually to be found ahead of me as I try to buy my ticket at the train station most Monday mornings.

4) Greetings are peculiar. It's not "How are you?" when greeting someone, it's "You awright?". The response to which is “Awright”

5) The Fear factor: Nearly twenty years here and I’m still alive. Sometimes I wonder how? Those first few months, I didn’t think I was going to survive. The city was under the cosh of knife-carrying gangs of feral youth – millions of them according to The Evening Standard – and they wanted your phone and laptop (money is yesterday’s crime). It felt like Harry Brown meets London Town, only I didn’t feel like Michael Caine. Last August, some of these potential tormentors joined the London riots, and funnily enough they didn’t want money then either, just the latest electrical goods and a reason to fight the police.

6) Sadly, no one speaks in Cockney rhyming slang. Other than for the fact that I grew up on Only Fools and Horses, I’d never have heard of terms like Me Old China, You’re having a Giraffe, or Gone for a Burton. You just don’t hear these old sayings. Today, London-speak is encapsulated by one word – innit – a five-letter blip which manages to get parked at the end of sentences instead of a full stop.

7) They are incredibly tolerant. For a country that pretty much every terrorist nutbag grouping (my own country men included) have tried to blow up at some point or other, the English remain tremendously tolerant and very proud of their diversity.

8) There is only one type of lemonade. Ask for red lemonade and you get a blank stare

9) The Guinness in Irish bars really is awful – the only place you will get a decent pint is pub with names like “George the first” or “The Dog and Duck”, never ever in a place called “Timmy Mac Toohills” or the like

10) Cricket

Shakespeare and the Irish

2012-04-28T07:28:00.000-07:00

It seems we have been a troublesome lot since Shakespeare's time

It's worth listening to this short documentary on the great bard's view of the Irish, set in the context of Elizabeth's battles with her neighbours in the 1590s.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b01gg7dt

While the Scots had the great play Macbeth to themselves, the Irish have to console themselves with a relatively minor character, Macmorris, in that most English of plays, Henry V.

While Shakespeare's plays had few direct references to the Irish, we were never far from the minds of his audience.

Murphy and the Bricks

2012-04-25T02:44:00.000-07:00

On a slightly lighter note than some of my recent missives, this song is a great favourite of mine and a wonderful example of just how the Irish manage to find humour in even the darkest of situations.

Why do the Irish let this happen?

2012-04-24T08:54:00.001-07:00

The haemorrhaging of human talent runs unabated in Ireland, with over 100,000 having left over the past 12 months.

The IDA, a State run agency, ran adverts when I was in school in the 1980’s boasting that our young people were our greatest asset. Yet we celebrate the export of our own people to staff the offices, building sites, and hospitals of other countries all around the world.

The new government, elected in 2011, is just as bad as the previous administrations. It is turning its back on Irish citizens who are unable to make a life for themselves in the land where they were born.

Can you imagine the public outcry in the UK or the US if the citizens of those countries were forced to leave their homeland to obtain work? The government would be kicked out of office at the earliest opportunity.

Why do the Irish accept emigration, and the destuction that it leaves in its wake so easily?

The Famine never happened

2012-04-22T09:53:00.000-07:00

Sinead O’Connor, despite her own personal and very public troubles, is an excellent lyricist.

Her 1994 song on the Famine outlines her thesis on how so many of Ireland’s problems today in terms of our high rates of alcoholism, drug addiction and child abuse harp back to our guilt over the famine when our political and religious leaders turned their back on the starving peoples.

The video is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZIB6MslCAo&ob=av2n

As a people, we have never really come to terms with the fact that so many Irish people were complicit in this terrible event that saw a million die from starvation and millions more forced to leave the country in search of a better life. The pain is still very raw.

Shi'ite Irish girls say

2012-04-22T06:15:00.002-07:00

Apologies to any non-Irish people trying to fathom this young lady's accent.

She uses a lot of very local Irish expressions, that probably wont mean a lot to anyone born outside the island of Ireland, but it is very funny nonetheless.

On a seperate note, I've now got a twitter account (like all you crazy kids do with your computers and U2).

Please feel free to follow me here:
https://twitter.com/#!/IrishExileinLdn

Next thing you know, I may even get a mobile phone that doesn't look like something that should be in a glass case in the British Museum

Dara O'Brian on the English and the Irish

2012-04-19T23:52:00.002-07:00

I was recently described as looking like the love child of Dara O'Brian and Adrian Chiles.

I don't know which is more disturbing.

Here is another great comedy sketch from Dara on what he calls the "awkwardness" between the English and the Irish:

Castletown Donkey Derby 1994

2012-04-18T13:04:00.001-07:00

http://youtu.be/8XtVm8z28e4?t=1m26s

The Lonely Planet on Ireland

2012-04-18T11:44:00.002-07:00

“The two decades since 1990 have transformed the country immeasurably, with prosperity, modernity and multiculturalism helping shift traditional attitudes and social mores,” the book notes.

It notes too that we are more than used to this austerity and in some ways that is to our credit: “The Irish – fatalistic and pessimistic to the core – will shrug their shoulders and just get on with their lives.”

Drink and the pub does of course get a mention and Lonely Planet notes that there is “no sign of letting up” when it comes to “the country’s most popular social pastime”.

http://www.thejournal.ie/pessimistic-boastful-but-loves-a-drink-what-lonely-planet-says-about-ireland-326313-Jan2012/

Pretty much sums it up, I'd say

In the beginning ...

2012-04-18T11:30:00.001-07:00

I've lived in England now for almost 20 years, and it really has been a great home to me.

I swore when I left Dublin, that I was different, that I'd be back in Ireland's bosom again in a few months. As the song says: "Months turn into years. How quick they pass". Now almost 20 years later, I've started this blog to tell some of my story.

Ireland has many faults, and I am a huge critic but being Irish means that you have a unique view of the world that others often envy. And like so many others, I always think fondly of my homeland.

I was one of the last who left Ireland, through forced emigration. That probably made it all the more difficult watching Ireland grow as a country, as I scratched through my twenties trying to forge a life in London, hanging out at the Swan in Stockwell or the Archway Tavern in north London dreaming of a country that I would find very different if I ever went home.

That distance strained most of my friendships, as every time I went home we had fewer and fewer common stories to talk about and we grew apart.

And so I took a job that allowed me to travel to strange and wonderful corners of the world: Israel, Europe, the US, Saudi, the Far East, you name it.

The taste for Lyons Tea and Tayto crisps soon passes, but the feeling of being Irish in Exile never does