for irish abroad - a symbolic vote

[mockney piers]

It was all started by a TD in the dail a few months back, and whilst joking, he was illustrating a serious point.

I think the speech is on youtube somewhere.

[Narnia]

Who were you hanging out with Sean, West Brits and/or Prods? I don't think I ever met anyone who wasn't glad to be independent when I was growing up.

[mockney piers]

"post-colonial malaise played its part in that"

really?!

[OliviaDee]

why not mockney?

[mockney piers]

90 years is a long time to be out-of-sorts and not do anything about it, and why should it result in a greed driven housing bubble?!

I'm at a bit of a loss on this one I'm afraid.

[SeanMacGabhann]

Down in Cork I didn't know anyone who would support that view but more than a couple of Dubliners I met - and I remember someone on the Late Late show at the time (early 80s) saying something like that and it sparked a "debate"

[????]

The Irish I work with seem strangely accepting about their politicians and the mess that their banks have put them in. They think their politicians are a shower but don't seem to care much about it.....and, with all due rsepect, the debates I've watched on TV tend to make our shower in the UK look like JFK and yet they are paid well over double our MPs and ministers salary.

[????]

Would Ireland have been better remining part of the Britain...or the British Empire if you'd rather? is an interesting debate but presumably independence, sovreignty and freedom are worth a fair bit more than mere money?

Anyway, the Germans own your ass now ;-)

[OliviaDee]

mockney - 90 years is not really a long time - it fact it makes the republic quite a relatively young country. i am not suggesting that anyone else is to blame for the mess we got ourselves into - we did that ourselves. you ask 'why should it result in a greed driven housing bubble?!' and i, and many others would proffer, that for a country for whom emigration is a fact of life and the famine only just passed beyond living memory there was an absolute frenzy of grab while you can - bugger the consequences - for the first time i'll actually have something! still not excusable behaviour but that and the irish passivity ???? refers to are considered to be symptoms of post colonial malaise. many people in ireland, as here, refuse for different reasons, to even acknowledge the famine, but not so very long ago 2/3 of the population were extinguished one way or another, an entire language wiped out, and a culture and way of being with it. a rebellious people became repressed. quite frankly the irish are a race who don't really know who they are - their link with their own recent past was so severely broken. and i think that lies at the root of a lot of what we are seeing there today.

god this is getting heavy.

[OliviaDee]

???? - you think britain owns it own ass?

[????]

More than you guys...we can set our own interest rates for example

[mockney piers]

The famine has only just passed beyond living memory?! By god, that's quite some healthy diet there must be out there for such longeivity. Mind you, I should have guessed when I was comparing the jasmine revolutions with the spring revolutions of 1848 with an old codger in New Ross the other day who remembered them first time round ;-P

90 years may not be that old, but in the scheme of things it is a very long time to get your house in order. Dynamic countries like Croatia seem to have done pretty well in a substantially shorter time.

Spain had to pretty much start from a far worse position in the 40s, and whilst Franco's conservatism meant that economic growth was slow to recover, I'd say post war malaise could stretch no more than 30 years. A dose of healthy democracy transformed the economy and European money multiplied the effect.

It too suffered from a lack of diversity and depth of resilience in the economy, but though the end of the housing boom has caused difficulties, there wasn't the same level of greed despite the prevalence of a generation who knew poverty every bit as bad as the Irish (my dad was in his late 20s before he got his first ever pair of new shoes). And despite a greater penchant for low level corruption, Spain was actually much better at regulation, you only need to look at how acquisitive the relatively unscarred Spanish banks have been through the financial crisis.

I'd suggest post-colonial malaise is a weak excuse at best and indicative of victim syndrome at worst.

As Daragh O'Brien said "My friends back in Dublin are saying "we've decided to embrace the recession", jeez, in Britain they'd embraced it before it had even really started, not 2 years later, no wonder it's better placed to come out of it than Ireland".

I'd suggest a bit of soul searching is in order and people just need to say, yeah we fucked up, lessons learnt, lets move on. And as bad as many of those fleece lining politicians were, blaming them is no better than blaming a 'post colonial maliase'.

[mockney piers]

Here's an interesting comparison of outlooks in a similar situation

Fergal Keane on Ireland

OOC on Spain

[SeanMacGabhann]

Olivia - I can't find fault with anything Mockney says

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

If you're worried about the loss of language, you need to go to the Spidall outpost - Nunhead.

[OliviaDee]

the real spideal i'm very familiar with - probably the number one gaeltacht in the country where the language is strong and even flows from the lips of the german blow-ins, bless them. and it serves my argument well. just try and imagine if during a very few short years in the 1840s, in england, 2/3s of the population was wiped out and you woke up and found yourselves speaking, say french. (except for a few thousand people in pockets of, say Norfolk and Nunhead, who managed to hold on to the language of shakespeare et al). Just try and imagine it. what that would do to the nation's pysche and confidence and sense of self. and how that still might be manifesting itself today. i think it would be a very different england. i took great care in my posts to lay blame for recent irish behaviour at irish feet where it firmly belongs but i am really really interested in why this behaviour? it is not so difficult for me to fathom the greed of the boom years based on what i said earlier but i find it really difficult to figure out why on earth no reactive party or person has risen out of the current mess to lead us? or why the protests and rallies have been so minimal when there is so much to protest about? why the ballot is full of more of the same? it's mind boggling. and just look through irish history and its hard to disagree that that passivity/inertia/malaise is not native. i think it's interesting and important to ask why this has occurred because i don't think anything is going to improve otherwise - same as any systemic failure. i can't fault any of mockney's argument except that i don't think me saying that ireland is possibly still suffering fallout from the black years is 'indicative of victim syndrome'. i'm saying i think the fallout is still falling and manifesting itself now in a people who have really lost their way. and knowing how and why you got lost is your best shot of getting unlost.(And i brought this whole thing up only as a retort to sean suggesting there are those in ireland who think we might be better off under british rule again. perhaps a few paisleyites might embrace that but you'd be hard pushed to find anyone who would go back to it - no matter what the mess we've made - at least it's our own mess). you also suggest a bit of soul searching mockney - i agree -it's what this is. the REAL problems in ireland are not economic. yes we're economically fucked. so are lots of countries. and it doesn't matter what party gets in in that sense cos yes ???? the irish bottom belongs to germany and the economy will not recover for a very long time no matter who is slapping it. but what's really hurting now in the people, and anyone whose been there recently will likely agree, is the loss of sense of self. i'm just suggesting that that was lost a longer time ago.

(i'm going to get f**king crucified)

[mockney piers]

In all experience, everywhere, overlordship breeds discontent and rebellion, not acquiescence and malaise.

It wasn't the English who defeated the Irish, it was the church. If you want someone to blame, look a little closer to home.

My mother in law asked of me the other day, without so much as a hint of irony or sadness, 'so piers' she said 'do you think now times are bad, people will return to the church'. The sense of glee was irrepressible.

The 19th century saw the church, who had always seen the Irish flavour of Catholicism as difficult, as an opportunity to tie in a sense of identity and nationalism with a strict version of worship reserved for Ireland. It was very successful and managed to galvanise, in many ways, a united national self image and destiny, something tellingly in ireland's quest for self-determination, no one had hitherto achieved.

But I would say from personal experience, that that particular breed of Catholicism was too much and has coloured everything else in th country and better explains the traits you describe.

The good news is the grip lessens with each generation, and fingers crossed, my mother in law's vision for Ireland won't be realised.

And what's with that weird tolling bell death hour on the telly??!?! Freaks me out every time.

[Narnia]

Nothing compared with having to get down on your knees in the sitting room and mumble the rosary for 20 minutes.

[mockney piers]

Plus I'm pretty sure there are pockets of people in Norfolk and nunhead who DO speak French.

[OliviaDee]

mockney piers Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> In all experience, everywhere, overlordship breeds

> discontent and rebellion, not acquiescence and

> malaise.

- Quite. So why not in this case? That's my point exactly. The irish rebelled for centuries against 'overlordship' (interesting choice of word). But post-Famine, and after near full decimation this, understandably, stopped.(Bar the North - but if you want to go from the famine to northern ireland - you're on your own Mockney!) and i think this lies at a good part of the root of recent irish behaviour - both the greed of the boom and the paralysis of the bust.

>

> It wasn't the English who defeated the Irish, it

> was the church.

- Really? Huge generalisation there. The english were completely innocent then?

If you want someone to blame, look

> a little closer to home.

- For about the 5th time - i am not looking for someone else to blame. i am interested in why the irish pysche seems to have altered so much in the last 150 years - to the point that in its current inert state we have brought huge calamity upon ourselves.

My mother in law asked of me the other day,

> without so much as a hint of irony or sadness, 'so

> piers' she said 'do you think now times are bad,

> people will return to the church'. The sense of

> glee was irrepressible.

-Bless her.

-but she has a point. Pre-famine, irish catholicism was still very much intwined with paganism, matriarchy, keening, celtic gods, fertility rites, superstition, all that, and was expressed in the native tongue. Sexuality was expressed openly. Divorce was was quite widely practised and provision made for it in the legal system. the religion was bent to them, and yes, many of the church did not like it - but it expressed the people and damned if they were going to do it any other way. Then came the Famine and your MIL is right. The people had already tried turning to their 'overlords' for all the good it did them, and did indeed then turn to the church. 100s of sons and daughters took up the cloth and that is how and when the church largely got its stranglehold. and goes some way to expalining why this - 'It wasn't the English who defeated the Irish, it was the church' is such a generalisation.

> The 19th century saw the church, who had always

> seen the Irish flavour of Catholicism as

> difficult, as an opportunity to tie in a sense of

> identity and nationalism with a strict version of

> worship reserved for Ireland. It was very

> successful and managed to galvanise, in many ways,

> a united national self image and destiny,

> something tellingly in ireland's quest for

> self-determination, no one had hitherto achieved.

But I would say from personal experience, that

> that particular breed of Catholicism was too much

> and has coloured everything else in th country and

> better explains the traits you describe.

>

>-Yes. Absolutely. and sowed the seeds for church and state to be so catastrophically entwined. and the fact that the people no longer see the church, or wish to see the church, as so intrinsic a part of our national identity, i think is adding to the apathy. Because there is nothing yet to fill that void. i think this partly fuelled the greed of the Celtic Tiger. It wasn't just an ecomonic boom it was a chance at a new identity. we were no longer the 'niggers of europe.'(Roddy Doyle - not me). It seemed like a chance for a new definition of ourselves, optimism, absence of fear. suddenly people wanted to emmigate TO ireland! even the diaspora was coming home. we were the third richest soemthing or other. there was pride again (albeit, at its cheapest, expressed in consumerism). then it all went tits up and that is why i think the bust is as much of a pyschic shock one as an economic one. because in the past we had the church and a stronger sense of a national identity to cling to during past failures, now it is as if there is nothing, and that is leading to futility and despair and inertia. and the causes needs to be probed for the people to motivate themselves again. (and not as a blame-laying excercise)

>

>

> The good news is the grip lessens with each

> generation, and fingers crossed, my mother in

> law's vision for Ireland won't be realised.

>

-no need to cross your fingers. that ireland is dead and gone. thank god.

> And what's with that weird tolling bell death hour

> on the telly??!?! Freaks me out every time.

- Freaks me out too. i love it.

[Narnia]

Did you look at the 'election' result OD? About 6,000 voted. FF got only 2 seats.