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

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

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!

Shakespeare and the Irish

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

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?

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

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.