Gautam
Well spotted. Tell me one thing, how can India be a republic and a member of the commonwealth with the queen as head of State? Alternatively WHO is the head of state in India?
blatham wrote:george
Fatalities from Mad Potato Disease aren't the problem. It's those of you, the Irish, who survive and linger on in a shadow land of weird religious icons and policemen's billys and warm beer and loans payable Tuesday.
Blatham,
Have you descended a bit from the lighthearted whimsy? Had a bad day?
Surely this is not a reference to contemporary Ireland, where the population is younger than any in Europe, the tax rates lower, and the per capita GDP is higher than that in the UK.
Do you instead refer to the values of Irish immigrants to America? Even there the stereotype does not do justice to the people themselves, who have thrived as few orthers. What is wierd depends much on one's point of view.
Smacked down an entire nationality.
There's a word for that..... I think we discovered that 'bigotry' doesn't fit well.
Can we settle on a word for this blanket insult and stereotyping of a large group of people? I want to have it at the ready. Especially when it's my beloved Paddies being slurred.
George - it's still whimsy. Blatham is talking about the mythic, here.
Sofia - my, how you've changed. Is that an old picture? Funny, you don't look Irish.
Steve, the head of the state for India is the president of the country.
If u want, I can send u more details abt this office.
"per capita GDP (in Ireland) is higher than that in the UK"
Not according to a research paper by HM Treasury Economics and Statistics dept. 1998.
http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp98/rp98-064.pdf
Thanks Gautam, just demonstrating my ignorance and laziness.
But I might apply if you send me an application form.
On the other hand Ireland's GDP per capita has overtaken UK and France and Germany 1980 - 2000 according to
http://www.camecon.com/whatsnew/conf/PDF%20file/2001/richard_lewney.pdf
which demonstrates the empirical fact that if economists agree, its time to worry.
george
Last night, I dreamed I was a wee bit of yet underdone potato swimming in an Irish stew, elbowing aside carrots and bits of what appeared to be fullsome rodent limbs....descent...ascent...tumbling right...swooshing left...after a while, one loses certainty on where - even on who - one really is. At times such as these, we cast about for some anchorage, some meaning to it all. How did I, the son of a Cossack horsewoman and a homosexual English hairdresser, a graduate of the Broadway Street Mennonite Brethren Summer Bible School, ex-all star team shortstop, and enthusiastic drug user and masturbator come to be here talking with an American of Irish lineage? One, in such times, looks for anchorage but doesn't necessarily find it.
It's OK Blatham, I like you despite yourself. Certainly the attributes you assign yourself appear to be Irish enough.
I'll stick with my formulation of the pre-christian Irish stereotype, as it suits me so well--happy-go-lucky, lazy, likes to wear bright colors, sing, dance, and lay around in the warm sunshine . . .
Setanta wrote:I'll stick with my formulation of the pre-christian Irish stereotype ....
Indeed Setenta that prevailed in the Christian era until the English and French influences entered Ireland, first in the Council of Whitbey (I believe) and centuries later in the eras of Penal Laws, Jansenism, and Victorian social reforms.
The alternation of a bright, but not scorching sun, with the gentle rains which fall, often dozens of times in the course of the very long summer day in Ireland, make for a land of incredible beauty and benign peace . . . to bad about the damned Saxons and their Protestant clients . . .
A whole nation, all in brightly color pants, afloat on what Leonard Cohen terms 'a visionary floor of alcohol'...in retrospect, nothing other than this adminstration seems more fraught with huge perils.
It is to be noted with a good deal of irony, that the distillation of whiskey first appeared in Ulster, shortly after the invasion of Henry II's toady, Longbow. Alcoholism in a nation cradled in the loving arms of Jolly Old England is not to be wondered at . . . snide remarks about the Irish from those who have never visited the country, and do not know the people, are, saddly, too common to be wondered at . . .
You mean,
"Whiskey is God's way of keeping the Irish from ruling the world"
is inaccurate?
I trust no one is making the assumption that a single serious word has escaped this keyboard on the matter at hand...
Or many other topics.... :wink:
