Plastic Paddies to be certified: What will the feckers think of next?

According to yesterday's old lady of D'Olier St Micheál Martin has decided to go ahead with a plan to swizzle up to 70 million plastic paddies out of their hard earned hard currency in yet another scheme to bail out the blackguards above there in Dublin.

Following up on a complaint made at the Irish Global Economic Forum that indigene enterprise was failing to bleed the diaspora dry  exploit effectively the economic resource that the diaspora represents, our Micko plans to rectify the matter by issuing, for a small fee (naturally), a certificate of Oirishness.

Inspired by that ginger headed gobshite David McWilliams, the Forum noted that there was a disconnection between Ireland and the wallets ofthe diaspora, particularly those not previously ripped off  by the exhorbitant price of a passport unable to qualify for citizenship by virtue of having a parent or grandparent born in Ireland.

According to the Irish Times, Mr Martin said the Government had taken a broad and inclusive approach to defining Ireland’s global community:

“The Irish diaspora is not limited to Irish citizens living abroad or to those who have activated citizenship. Instead, it encompasses all those who believe they are of Irish descent and feel a sense of affinity with this country.”

Micheál, in an act uncharacteristic of a politician,  appears to have ripped the idea off those amadáns above at Irish Diaspora.ie  who proposed the introduction of a global ‘Emerald Card’ that anyone can apply for on proof of an Irish heritage. The card would  entitle the holder to 'various forms of acknowledgement in the tourist, travel, leisure and hospitality sector'. Aye, and anyone with an English or an American accent who has holidayed in Kerry or Connemara knows what that means, if you get my drift. And you don't need a fecking certificate to evoke it either.

Turning Irishness and Irish identity into a revenue stream isn't new, of course. I've written about the patronising,exploitative and frustrating attitudes held by indigene society towards its diasporic members before. I suppose all this does is put the roof on it and make patronising the diaspora an official state-sponsored enterprise.

I also expect that there'll be plenty of fools ready to line up and hand over their spondulicks to give a dig out to the gangsters and gombeens who run the Irish state. They'd be the same class of eejits who swallow this stuff, I suppose: 

Come in to the parlour (and keep your wallet handy)


I had the good fortune to be one of an elite group of plastic paddies invited to attend a top secret conference on Ireland's attitudes to the Diaspora held at Dublin Castle yesterday.

The aim of the conference was to 're-invigorate the debate' and assess the indigenous attitude to those rats who deserted the sinking ship, sorry, unfortunates who were driven off the four green fields and scattered to the corners of the earth by the great calamity that was pre-Celtic Tiger Irish history. A fate which, it appears, was not entirely the fault of the Brits after all, but don't be after spreading that around now.

Organised by a grand bunch of lads and lasses from the Department of Foreign Affairs, the event marked the 5 years which have passed from the publication of a highly classified document referred to as the Task Force Report on Emigration, but you didn't hear about that from me.

The meeting was opened by Bertie's kid brother Dermot or Desmond or whatever his name is. He gives good speech, by the way. There were moments during his intro when I felt almost obliged to slip on me Bhoys replica shirt, pop my DJ mix of A Nation Once Again, Skibbereen and the Fields of Athenry onto the Ipod and have an auld jive around the room. Sadly it all went down hill from there.

The speakers included the head honcho from the bogball and stick-fighting posse, a bimbo from some business school named after an airline (the school, not the bimbo), Ian Paisley's family doctor who I think had been dipping into the Big Yin's medication, and some old journo whose book about deh diasporee is, like The Sun newspaper, still banned in Liverpool due to its defamatory attitude to Scousers.

Some of the brogues were a bit thick for my English educated ear, but I think I can pretty much can summarise the attitudes of the indigenes who spoke as follows:

1. A long time ago a lot of people had to flee Mother Ireland's shores due to poverty, starvation and a surfeit of other woes, none of which can entirely be blamed on the Saxon foe good people of England. This was a pity and a great big sad lump of a thing for all concerned.
2. On the bright side some of you did very well, especially the ones who went to Amerikay and kept the nation going with all of the postal orders you sent back.
3. Some of you didn't do very well and didn't get as far Amerikay or the post office. These wee blackgaurds and rascals went to England on the lump and spent their money on drink instead of roof tiles in Kiltimagh and we're sorry for that. Especially because these days you're always after getting on Prime Time moidering us for hand-outs for community centres, free holidays and the like.
4. Now we're a rich and prosperous modern European nation that doesn't rely the postal orders any more, we're ready to let bygones be bygones. And anyway, times have changed. Thanks to new technology like the interweb there are lots of ways other than postal orders you can give us a dig out should the need arise. And you don't even have to queue at the counter to do it.
5. You can, for example, keep buying the U2 records, even though we all know that Sir Bono is a wee sleeveen, wearing the Aran knitwear and getting the lumps of gift-packaged bogland off the eee-Bay. For the right price and in the flick of a goat's tail at Puck Fair, we can have you all jabbering away as Gaeilge, playing handball, road-bowling and the bodhran (well maybe not the last).
   
6. You can keep coming here summer after summer and letting us patronise the shite out of you and your wacky St Patrick's Day parades and Quiet Man shenanigans. And it doesn't matter a jot that you're not really Irish, because your Sterling, Euros and Dollars are as good as anyone else's.
   

A footnote in the interest of balance (and how often do you find that in satire?). The fine people at the Department of Foreign Affairs should be commended for their efforts in trying to undo the colossal bad faith of the indigenous Irish towards the diaspora for the past 85 years. Where Angels Fear says a wholehearted fair fecks to yeh lads! Especially the cute 3rd Secretary Labour.

PS Did you know that the State Apartments in Dublin Castle doesn't have toilets? It has restrooms. What does that tell you? Answers on a postcard only please.

Lá le Pádraig Newsflash

In a pre-holiday crackdown intended to improve the quality of St Patrick's Day, Garda have today rounded up the following groups of people for offences under Section 35 (Amended) of the Annoying the Diaspora Act:

1. Anyone from Dublin who think its funny to don a ginger fright wig, a green bowler hat, or a kiss me I'm Irish tee-shirt just because that's what they do in New York.

2. Fuckwits from anywhere on earth who thinks its ok to wear a ginger wig, a green bowler hat, or a kiss me I'm Irish tee-shirt on the island of Ireland, period.

3. Arseholes who say to anyone who will listen 'You know, in New York they dye the beer green. They're mad the yanks, so they are.'

4. Sanctimonious bastards who feel obliged to remind you that 'it's supposed to be a religious festival, you know.'

5. Complete maggots who give up drink for Lent and then get spectacularly blitzed the day before, during and the day after St Patrick's and then immediately re-assume the high moral ground before their hangover is cold in its grave.

6. Utter gobshites who patronize Irish-American visitors by insisting that only the indigenous Irish know how Saint Pat's should be really celebrated. Unless your idea of a celebration is watching a few auld floats loaded with livestock, a pipe band led by a bedraggled wolfhound and some priests trundle by in the rain, they don't. The yanks have always done it better.

7. Irritating puss faces who challenge anyone with an English accent their right to wear the shamrock, paint their face green white and orange, or enter an informal Shane McGowan drinkalike competition for the duration of the festival.

8. Armchair republicans who think wearing a Celtic replica shirt and singing a few Wolfe Tone come all ye's demonstrates the purest love of their cultural identity. A special dispensation from this section exists for anyone who grew up under the aegis of the Prevention of Terrorism Act or the NI Special Powers legislation.

9. Traditional musicians in paid sessions who act like they're Druidic guardians of Holy Celtic culture rather than hired banjos who couldn't get a gig anywhere else and who shush loudly while some amadán destroys The Lonesome Boatman on a tin whistle.

10. Cute whoor bar owners who add a St Patrick's Day surcharge to their already over-inflated prices.

11. The same whoors who add a cover charge to pay for the dubious services of the musicians in section 9. And then pocket the difference between the charge and what they actually pay.

12. Community arts gobdaws who think Macnas is something to be emulated, rather than utterly eradicated like the street theatre plague carrier it is, and who dress under-nourished kids from Dolphins Barn up like survivors of a nuclear holocaust, smear their faces in manure and force them out half naked on to the streets in March.

13. RTE TV commentators watching the parade who say things like 'It's all got too much for someone there' Or 'Isn't that (insert minor celeb here) there? S/he looks like s/he's having a day of it.' Or 'Today's the day everyone wishes they were Irish' (usually said just after the camera picks out a black, brown or yellow face in the crowd).

14. Anyone, anywhere who calls the day in question 'St Patty's'.

15. Helpful head the balls who suggest dyeing the Liffey green, like they do in New York, having failed to notice it already is green, like 365.

16. Smug sleeveens who preface every conversation on the day with 'Did I tell you about the time I spent St Pat's in an Irish theme bar in Latvia/tagging jaguars in the Orinoco Basin/amongst the headhunting tribes of the Seepik Highlands who worship Prince Philip as a god? Boy, them boys could sup stout.'

17. Any begrudging bollocks who fails to understand that St Patrick's Day festivities are for migrants. We invented them and we own the copyright. It's the one day wherever you find yourself in the world that it's ok to be a Paddy. Except possibly in Ireland.

Have a nice time, folks, but be careful out there.

I was awoken Kraken-like from my slumbers this morning by the less than dulcet Cork tones of Orla Barry on Newstalk 106 discussing the problems facing English born people of Irish descent currently living on the Emerald Isle. One of her interlocutors was a former student of mine, Sean Folan, now a sports writer for the Indo and the other was some Irish descent guy from the British Council whose name escapes me. The latter appeared to have the possibly interesting (in the Chinese sense) job of marketing British culture on this auld sod.

The gist of this discussion was that the indigenous Irish are quite likely to engage in subtle and less subtle racist gibes and other such malarky when they hear an English accent. The old '800 years of oppression' argument was trotted out and the same dumb disingenuous questions about what football team you support if you're British born of Irish descent, etc. Blah blah blah, yawn, yawn, yawn.

Again as I recall, and bear in mind it was before I'd had my second cup of Kenyan peaberry so no jury in the land could convict me for any errors of recollection, one of the interviewees said that he wouldn't go to watch an international soccer game in a pub because of the responses of his fellow drinkers to an 'Englishman' supporting Ireland.

Now this stuff has serious implications and I've dealt with them elsewhere on this blog, but to be honest, after the best part of a decade's residence on this sainted isle I'm a bit fed up with hearing Irish descent people beating themselves (and on occasion, each other) up about an issue that was not of their making. In my view the ultimate responsibility for such self-flagellation lies with the bad faith of the gombeens who have effectively run this country since the foundation of the state, whenever that was.

These people, who smugly sat by and profited from the hundreds of thousands of their compatriots who were forced onto the emigrant boats to England in the two decades following the second world war, should have been forced to offer a public apology to every migrant who ever left to face the world of 'no blacks, no dogs, no Irish' that was Britain for the latter part of the 20th Century. Their descendants should go down on their knees and thank the children of emigrants for the sacrifice their parents made and remind themselves of that sacrifice every time they sip a cup of latté in their local Fergocino's.

Meanwhile, to British born children of Irish migrants I offer the following strategies to offset the negative effects of an English accent on life here:

1. Pretend to be from Liverpool. Cultivate a 'calm down, calm down' accent, have a bad curly perm and grow an Ian Rush/Graeme Souness moustache. Some people might mistake you for a Mullingar woman and you may have to face a certain amount of benignly patronising guff, but believe me it's worth it. Everyone in Ireland loves scousers because they know that we're better at being Irish than they are. Liverpool people are the Irish the indigenes wish they were; boisterous, aggressive, articulate, funny, friendly, and, above all, untainted by the material benefits of the Celtic Tiger.

2. Take to wearing a Celtic shirt in public places. This really confuses things for would be Anglophobes, particularly the armchair Republicans in the population. The contradiction of the English accent garbed in a Hoops shirts generates the kind of neurotic reaction Pavlov looked for in his dogs in some of his later, crueller experiments.

3. Maintain a critical and vocal disdain for Rugby Union and point out frequently that it's a garrison game played by English public schoolboys and latent homosexuals that any Irishman worth his salt should be ashamed to participate in. Follow this up by asking how they fancy England's chances in the Ashes. (Don't try this in Limerick though).

4. Ask people what soccer team they support and when they reply Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, etc. respond by saying 'That's funny you don't have a Manc/Cockney/Scouse accent' and then show them your Shamrock Rovers season ticket.

5. Never, ever go on the defensive about your English upbringing. Take the war to the aggressor. Mention things like the National Health Service (it's free, don'tcha know?), cheap beer, the relative absence of paedophile priests and corrupt politicians, and the better weather.