Ireland is flagging behind.. but it is no one else’s fault
IT takes spectacular levels of ignorance and eejitry to wrap yourself in the Irish tricolour and start shouting guff about immigrants ruining Ireland.
In fact, it’s a massive feckin’ insult to generations of Irish people, our history and the men and women who sacrificed so much for our freedom to feck things up.
And that’s real sacrifice by the way, not putting on a yellow vest and filming yourself for Youtube, ranting about how the measles vaccine and an international Jewish conspiracy are the REAL reason Mayo haven’t won an All-ireland since ’51.
Do we really need to remind everybody of our history? There’s an estimated 55 million people around the world who can claim direct Irish ancestry. Our biggest export, for centuries, has been people.
We have been a nation of emigrants – and those emigrants suffered persecution – treated like dirt, everywhere from South London to Sydney, New York to San Francisco.
Even within this decade – thanks to the economic crash – we had emigration levels that were about the highest in the developed world.
I was living in London up until two years ago and you couldn’t throw a stone on Oxford Street without hitting some lad from Carlow.
You would wonder what Michael Collins, De Valera or James Connolly (emigrants all) would make of the self-proclaimed Irish patriots, the usually anonymous keywarriors board who clog up the internet with threats and hatred. Or those who wouldburndown a seaside hotel to keep Ireland For The Irish.
But we live in the Age Of Angry And Stupid, when facts mean nothing, thinking is for sissies and every eejit with a hi-viz jacket, a banner and a boat load of dumb ideas thinks the world has to listen to them.
You have people who think the right way to get their point across is to harass politicians and t h e i r families in their homes – or block the Port Tunnel because they don’t have to get a delivery van across the city on time or get the kids to school.
It takes a special kind of stupid to look at the problems we have in Ireland today and blame a handful of Syrian refugees, the Polish guy who put in your kitchen or the African lady who cleans your place of work.
Would you blame them or, say, the 100% native-born suits who crashed our economy?
So don’t wrap the Green Flag around ye, lads. It’s an insult.