Gombeen Nation: U2, their tower, Dublin property, saving the world

Rewind to the Eighties and early Nineties.

No contraceptives without a doctor's prescription. No divorce. Priests and nuns outside referendum polling booths telling us how to vote.

So what's changed since then? Not much actually...

STILL NO CHOICE on abortion - it is still one of our greatest exports to Britain.

CORRUPT POLITICIANS are constantly re-elected, no matter what sort of dodgy deals they are found guilty of, and no matter how close their ties with the building industry. The latter was demonstrated by continuing application of inflationary property-based tax shelters during the boom which pushed prices into the stratosphere and brought the country to ruin.

THE IRISH LANGUAGE INDUSTRY IS STILL ALIVE AND WELL. Compulsory Irish remains. We are the only EU country whose first official language is one the general population does not speak. Yet there is a continuing Irish language requirement for some State jobs such as primary teaching. Extra marks are given in the Civil Service for "optional" Gaeilge exams. Large sums of taxpayers' money are spent translating documents that are left unread, and gaelscoil students get extra marks for answering State exams "as Gaeilge", manufacturing a new educational and professional elite - and an attendant industry based on State subvention.

DESPITE THE HISTORY OF IRISH EMIGRATION since the State's foundation, and the fact that Irish people have lived and worked in countries all over the world, there is a new mood of racism and xenophobia among some sections of the population in Ireland - especially among the young.

Many of the racist slurs applied to Irish people by the likes of the NF and the BNP living in the Britain of the 70s and 80s, are now made by a new generation of Irish racists in relation to our own new citizens. Sometimes backed up by a spurious, exclusive, definition of Irishness with roots in folkish myth and invention rather than reality.

I Could go on... and do, in GOMBEEN NATION.

Irish three-day weather forecast

Friday 18 July 2008

U2, their tower, Dublin property, saving the world - the spectrum of pop star vanity

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