“Oirish” Joe, steeped in dreamy emerald-green nostalgia, badly needs a history and geography lesson, but given his supposedly deep Irish roots he no doubt thinks he already knows it all – and thus blunders into the fray, insulting allies, trying to exert pressure over the UK/EU’s Irish border negotiations and talking about the GFA as though the DUP were not a part of it.
His total lack of understanding is only likely to embolden Republicans and EU negotiators against the UK Govt and Unionists, once again turning the border into a potential flashpoint for trouble.
Biden’s attitude towards Britain has been clear over his long – far too long – career. But you’d imagine, even in his addled state, he’d go to the trouble of learning the name of the leader of his nation’s most stalwart ally. But no, Joe publicly congratulated “Rashid Sanook” on becoming PM.
Rishi would have won my vote in perpetuity if, in response, he’d thanked President Jim Bowen for his kind words.
His latest gaffe was to congratulate the Irish Rugby team for flattening The Black and Tans – the man is a total liability, yet still gets an armchair ride from the media. Almost as much as previous Oirish democrats like Barragh O’Bamma!
Jealousy? Really? That’s what you read into my comment? Please explain.
Being called Paddy, and having lived for a while in the US (which I loved), I am well aware of the huge proportion of Americans who claim kinship to the ‘Old country’. However, you quickly realise that most Americans’ understanding of Ireland is one of whimsy and make-believe.
Most Americans seem to conjure an Ireland trapped in a time-warp, imagining the preferred mode of transport is a donkey cart. They completely overlook Ulster’s history, its politics and the depth of the sectarian divide, and thus see the IRA as romantic freedom fighters, pluckily challenging English Redcoats, set in some shamrock-bestrewn, buccolic Irish landscape of their imagination. This ignorance and faux-nostalgia has real-world consequences.
Even in the 1990s you could find NORAID collection buckets in “Irish” bars in most US cities.
It was only after 9/11 that most Americans woke up to the idea that funding terrorists (even if you romantically called them “Freedom Fighters”) actually caused death and misery – and the donations fell to a trickle.
Biden has a long history of associating himself with the Republican cause – not out of any desire to see a united Ireland, or due to any real conviction, but simply because it played well with those of his Pennsylvania base who claimed Oirish heritage.
Jealousy? Really? That’s what you read into my comment? Please explain.
Being called Paddy, and having lived for a while in the US (which I loved), I am well aware of the huge proportion of Americans who claim kinship to the ‘Old country’. However, you quickly realise that most Americans’ understanding of Ireland is one of whimsy and make-believe.
Most Americans seem to conjure an Ireland trapped in a time-warp, imagining the preferred mode of transport is a donkey cart. They completely overlook Ulster’s history, its politics and the depth of the sectarian divide, and thus see the IRA as romantic freedom fighters, pluckily challenging English Redcoats, set in some shamrock-bestrewn, buccolic Irish landscape of their imagination. This ignorance and faux-nostalgia has real-world consequences.
Even in the 1990s you could find NORAID collection buckets in “Irish” bars in most US cities.
It was only after 9/11 that most Americans woke up to the idea that funding terrorists (even if you romantically called them “Freedom Fighters”) actually caused death and misery – and the donations fell to a trickle.
Biden has a long history of associating himself with the Republican cause – not out of any desire to see a united Ireland, or due to any real conviction, but simply because it played well with those of his Pennsylvania base who claimed Oirish heritage.
Surely in the name of fair play (what a fantastic English/British virtue) you should have pointed out that the Brexiters in position of powers were incompetent and they never had a realistic plan about Brexit (including Northern Ireland). No?!
I would agree that many post-Brexit plans were somewhat nebulous – and often over-optimistic. But actually I wouldn’t include the Irish border issue in that.
The Irish border should never have been an issue in the negotiations at all. It became the chosen battleground for the EU to prove the impossibility of Brexit. Our troubled history with Ireland lent itself perfectly to casting the UK in a poor light if they didn’t give ground when threatened with risking the hard won peace of the GFA.
The sticking point was the threat from the EU and Mr Varadkar. Yet the threat was a chimera. A phantom. It was leverage, pure and simple, and UK Remainers seized on it as the intractable impasse that proved Brexit was impossible.
As David Trimble noted: “It is not true that Brexit in any way threatens the peace process. There is nothing in the Good Friday Agreement which even touches on the normal conduct of business between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Leaving the EU does not affect the agreement because the EU had nothing to do with it. “
Lord Trimble was one of the architects of the GFA, unlike Mr Blair and the various EU Bureaucrats who merely turned up for the photo-op signing. He actually knew what he was talking about – rather than those who used it as a slogan. The reasons it became an issue were political not practical. It was all about leverage – and nothing more.
It is a matter of record that after the 2016 referendum Taoiseach Enda Kenny convened a joint committee of ROI and UK civil servants to resolve any border related issues. It was only after the arch EU supplicant Leo Varadkar became Taoiseach that the issue arose as he fell in with Brussels plan to use it as leverage in negotiations. It didn’t go unnoticed at the time, as senior Irish diplomat noted “This emotive issue has been used as a weapon by those wanting to thwart Brexit — not least Michel Barnier. But Mr Varadkar, too, has pursued a high-risk strategy which could backfire badly, given that Britain is vital to Irish economic interests.”
What could have threatened the GFA was erecting manned customs posts along the border. Yet NO ONE was advocating that. The WTO adjudicated there was nothing in its rules that would force the UK, the ROI or EU to erect a hard border after Brexit. The UK Govt categorically said it would not do so. The ROI categorically said it would not do so. The EU categorically said it would not do so.. The media talked of a “hard border” as though a new Berlin Wall were about to be erected! This idea that an ‘open border’ meant ‘no border’ was a misreading of the argument.
Certain BBC journalists and pundits went on about it as though there was no (pre-Brexit) border between ROI and NI. The UK and ROI have different currencies, different tax rates, VAT, excise duties, different laws and legal systems. There was always a border – one which Customs authorities managed by intelligence-led policing of freight, which could have continued after Brexit. Both the head of the UK customs and Irish customs said they could have operated without any customs posts but the issue since became heavily politicised – to no-one’s benefit.
David Davis’s team were planning to negotiate a Canada ++ style FTA – that was also the only offer that the EU themselves had countenanced – Had Theresa May and Olly Robbins not ceded the timetable to Barnier and indicated their own weakness, we might have got further.
Had we gone along with a Canada style deal the EU’s stated position was that “In view of the unique circumstances on the island of Ireland, flexible and imaginative solutions will be required, including with the aim of avoiding a hard border, while respecting the integrity of the Union legal order. In this context, the Union should also recognise existing bilateral agreements and arrangements between the United Kingdom and Ireland which are compatible with EU law.”
At the outset the preferred solution was for a bilateral agreement to be thrashed out between UK and ROI, with the EU giving assent once negotiated. (Despite what nay-sayers insist it was indeed possible to do so. ) If they actually read the damn treaties they’d see that “Only the European Union may legislate and adopt legally binding acts concerning areas within its exclusive competence. EU member states may only do so themselves if empowered by the European Union. Accordingly, it falls to the European Union to decide whether to empower member states to conclude international treaties in fields of exclusive EU competence. “
If a bi-lateral agreement was reached between UK and Dublin then all Brussels would have to do was give it the nod and the issue could have been resolved without erecting a hard, physical border. All it required was goodwill and a genuine wish to see the matter resolved in a mutually beneficial way.
However, it proved the sticking point that it became because the EU Commission charged M Barnier with the task of using the issue as leverage. To no one’s advantage. Indeed, the endless comments from Remain zealots about Brexit causing a return to the Troubles was fuelling the fire and potentially turning that threat into reality.
The bad faith was not coming the UK Govt at all – they were acting on instruction from the electorate to leave the EU and were abiding by all the rules laid out in treaties for doing so. It was the EU who were using the idea of peace in Ireland as a bargaining chip – yet you seem to support them doing so, simply because you don’t like the idea of Brexit.
I would agree that many post-Brexit plans were somewhat nebulous – and often over-optimistic. But actually I wouldn’t include the Irish border issue in that.
The Irish border should never have been an issue in the negotiations at all. It became the chosen battleground for the EU to prove the impossibility of Brexit. Our troubled history with Ireland lent itself perfectly to casting the UK in a poor light if they didn’t give ground when threatened with risking the hard won peace of the GFA.
The sticking point was the threat from the EU and Mr Varadkar. Yet the threat was a chimera. A phantom. It was leverage, pure and simple, and UK Remainers seized on it as the intractable impasse that proved Brexit was impossible.
As David Trimble noted: “It is not true that Brexit in any way threatens the peace process. There is nothing in the Good Friday Agreement which even touches on the normal conduct of business between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Leaving the EU does not affect the agreement because the EU had nothing to do with it. “
Lord Trimble was one of the architects of the GFA, unlike Mr Blair and the various EU Bureaucrats who merely turned up for the photo-op signing. He actually knew what he was talking about – rather than those who used it as a slogan. The reasons it became an issue were political not practical. It was all about leverage – and nothing more.
It is a matter of record that after the 2016 referendum Taoiseach Enda Kenny convened a joint committee of ROI and UK civil servants to resolve any border related issues. It was only after the arch EU supplicant Leo Varadkar became Taoiseach that the issue arose as he fell in with Brussels plan to use it as leverage in negotiations. It didn’t go unnoticed at the time, as senior Irish diplomat noted “This emotive issue has been used as a weapon by those wanting to thwart Brexit — not least Michel Barnier. But Mr Varadkar, too, has pursued a high-risk strategy which could backfire badly, given that Britain is vital to Irish economic interests.”
What could have threatened the GFA was erecting manned customs posts along the border. Yet NO ONE was advocating that. The WTO adjudicated there was nothing in its rules that would force the UK, the ROI or EU to erect a hard border after Brexit. The UK Govt categorically said it would not do so. The ROI categorically said it would not do so. The EU categorically said it would not do so.. The media talked of a “hard border” as though a new Berlin Wall were about to be erected! This idea that an ‘open border’ meant ‘no border’ was a misreading of the argument.
Certain BBC journalists and pundits went on about it as though there was no (pre-Brexit) border between ROI and NI. The UK and ROI have different currencies, different tax rates, VAT, excise duties, different laws and legal systems. There was always a border – one which Customs authorities managed by intelligence-led policing of freight, which could have continued after Brexit. Both the head of the UK customs and Irish customs said they could have operated without any customs posts but the issue since became heavily politicised – to no-one’s benefit.
David Davis’s team were planning to negotiate a Canada ++ style FTA – that was also the only offer that the EU themselves had countenanced – Had Theresa May and Olly Robbins not ceded the timetable to Barnier and indicated their own weakness, we might have got further.
Had we gone along with a Canada style deal the EU’s stated position was that “In view of the unique circumstances on the island of Ireland, flexible and imaginative solutions will be required, including with the aim of avoiding a hard border, while respecting the integrity of the Union legal order. In this context, the Union should also recognise existing bilateral agreements and arrangements between the United Kingdom and Ireland which are compatible with EU law.”
At the outset the preferred solution was for a bilateral agreement to be thrashed out between UK and ROI, with the EU giving assent once negotiated. (Despite what nay-sayers insist it was indeed possible to do so. ) If they actually read the damn treaties they’d see that “Only the European Union may legislate and adopt legally binding acts concerning areas within its exclusive competence. EU member states may only do so themselves if empowered by the European Union. Accordingly, it falls to the European Union to decide whether to empower member states to conclude international treaties in fields of exclusive EU competence. “
If a bi-lateral agreement was reached between UK and Dublin then all Brussels would have to do was give it the nod and the issue could have been resolved without erecting a hard, physical border. All it required was goodwill and a genuine wish to see the matter resolved in a mutually beneficial way.
However, it proved the sticking point that it became because the EU Commission charged M Barnier with the task of using the issue as leverage. To no one’s advantage. Indeed, the endless comments from Remain zealots about Brexit causing a return to the Troubles was fuelling the fire and potentially turning that threat into reality.
The bad faith was not coming the UK Govt at all – they were acting on instruction from the electorate to leave the EU and were abiding by all the rules laid out in treaties for doing so. It was the EU who were using the idea of peace in Ireland as a bargaining chip – yet you seem to support them doing so, simply because you don’t like the idea of Brexit.
That’s funny, and I’m a democrat. Indeed listening to Biden is cringeworthy and I just can’t do it. It’s not just what he says but how he says it. That voice, jeez! And I worry when he walks, or shuffles. But what’s to be done for dems? I long for an alternative to Biden, but politics being what they are in America only a person with billions of dollars can win, and that narrows the field. America so desperately needs, but probably doesn’t want, a visionary leader.
Surely in the name of fair play (what a fantastic English/British virtue) you should have pointed out that the Brexiters in position of powers were incompetent and they never had a realistic plan about Brexit (including Northern Ireland). No?!
That’s funny, and I’m a democrat. Indeed listening to Biden is cringeworthy and I just can’t do it. It’s not just what he says but how he says it. That voice, jeez! And I worry when he walks, or shuffles. But what’s to be done for dems? I long for an alternative to Biden, but politics being what they are in America only a person with billions of dollars can win, and that narrows the field. America so desperately needs, but probably doesn’t want, a visionary leader.
Paddy Taylor
1 year ago
“Oirish” Joe, steeped in dreamy emerald-green nostalgia, badly needs a history and geography lesson, but given his supposedly deep Irish roots he no doubt thinks he already knows it all – and thus blunders into the fray, insulting allies, trying to exert pressure over the UK/EU’s Irish border negotiations and talking about the GFA as though the DUP were not a part of it.
His total lack of understanding is only likely to embolden Republicans and EU negotiators against the UK Govt and Unionists, once again turning the border into a potential flashpoint for trouble.
Biden’s attitude towards Britain has been clear over his long – far too long – career. But you’d imagine, even in his addled state, he’d go to the trouble of learning the name of the leader of his nation’s most stalwart ally. But no, Joe publicly congratulated “Rashid Sanook” on becoming PM.
Rishi would have won my vote in perpetuity if, in response, he’d thanked President Jim Bowen for his kind words.
His latest gaffe was to congratulate the Irish Rugby team for flattening The Black and Tans – the man is a total liability, yet still gets an armchair ride from the media. Almost as much as previous Oirish democrats like Barragh O’Bamma!
Katharine Eyre
1 year ago
This powerful “idea” of the homeland is not exclusive to Americans with Irish heritage, as I prefer to call them.
I’ve been living abroad now for 20 years and Britain has changed unimaginably in that time – it is no longer the country I left in 2004. Yet I still feel very British and feel the need to protect and sustain that “home” identity while living (quite happily) in a foreign culture.
You do end up playing up to certain stereotypes and over-egging the pudding: I find myself joking about having a “stiff upper lip” etc. which I don’t think I ever did while I lived in the UK. You kind of become a parody of yourself.
So it is with Irish Americans – this constant straining to cleave to an old identity based in an Ireland that has long since ceased to exist makes them seem absurd. If this group wasn’t quite so powerful on the world stage then we’d just laugh and think it quaint. As it is, I find it worrying that a group with such romantic notions quite divorced from 21st century reality has so much influence.
I recognise this entirely. During my ten years in South Africa I learned the words to Land of Hope and Glory, which was occasionally required at particularly alcohol fuelled rugby club do’s.
But we were both raised in the U.K. What do we make of 3rd generation immigrants, with strong regional British accents, supporting India or Pakistan at cricket matches? How will those identifies play out in the years to come?
It’s a good question. Identity is an incredibly powerful thing. Moreover, it is the most personal of all decisions: laws govern citizenship, but they cannot touch a felt identity.
Connecting to and being proud of your heritage and identity are absolutely fine…but it can go too far. The limit for me is when this foreign identity starts to spill out and influence your public and political behaviour. Which is why I look at Biden & co. with a very critical eye.
A little while ago, there were problems with Turks and Kurds just down the road from me. The Kurds were demonstrating about something or other and there was a confrontation with a number of Turks which got violent. A good number of those involved were Austrian citizens. That is not acceptable. Fine if you are privately involved in conflicts in the “home” country but it shouldn’t then be fought out on the streets of Vienna, costing us millions of € in taxpayer’s money to pay for police presence.
It’s a sticky question: the right to demonstrate is a basic right, and the state only has limited options for giving Austro-Turks a rap on the wrists for being too involved in non-Austrian issues (thus demonstrating the weakness of their bond to their state of citizenship). As I said, the state cannot steer identity. As societies get more diverse and multicultural, there is going to be a lot more of these clashes and you need to find answers on how to deal with them.
But tbh I think this is getting a bit far away from the topic of the article.
If it’s inappropriate for Austrians to involve themselves in Kurd v Turk violence at a cost of millions, wtf is the UK getting involved in a Russian v Ukraine war, costing not millions but billions??
What an utterly ridiculous contribution. The war between Russia and Ukraine is our war – it is a conflict between democracy and tyranny which will define the future of Europe for a long time to come. It is also a war between right and wrong.
Sorry, but that’s complete tosh. It’s a border dispute between two utterly corrupt eastern European states, neiher of which are democratic. And getting back to Biden, the subject of this article, he and his family have been involved in the corrupt machinations in Ukraine for years now. But you don’t want to know anything about that, do you.
And before anyone acuses me of being a Russian bot, let me just say that Putin is also a disgusting piece of authoritarian trash, in power far too long because of powerful, one-sided media organisations, police forces working solely on his behalf, and rigged elections … oh wait, that reminds me of something.
Sorry, but that’s complete tosh. It’s a border dispute between two utterly corrupt eastern European states, neiher of which are democratic. And getting back to Biden, the subject of this article, he and his family have been involved in the corrupt machinations in Ukraine for years now. But you don’t want to know anything about that, do you.
And before anyone acuses me of being a Russian bot, let me just say that Putin is also a disgusting piece of authoritarian trash, in power far too long because of powerful, one-sided media organisations, police forces working solely on his behalf, and rigged elections … oh wait, that reminds me of something.
Was the rise of Hitler and the Second World War the only thing you learned about in school history lessons?
There have been any number of less clear-cut conflicts, don’t you know. You might start doing a little research on Ukraine in WW2, keywords “Bandera” and “Babi Yar”. Go on, I dare you to look those things up.
Was the rise of Hitler and the Second World War the only thing you learned about in school history lessons?
There have been any number of less clear-cut conflicts, don’t you know. You might start doing a little research on Ukraine in WW2, keywords “Bandera” and “Babi Yar”. Go on, I dare you to look those things up.
What an utterly ridiculous contribution. The war between Russia and Ukraine is our war – it is a conflict between democracy and tyranny which will define the future of Europe for a long time to come. It is also a war between right and wrong.
If it’s inappropriate for Austrians to involve themselves in Kurd v Turk violence at a cost of millions, wtf is the UK getting involved in a Russian v Ukraine war, costing not millions but billions??
It’s a good question. Identity is an incredibly powerful thing. Moreover, it is the most personal of all decisions: laws govern citizenship, but they cannot touch a felt identity.
Connecting to and being proud of your heritage and identity are absolutely fine…but it can go too far. The limit for me is when this foreign identity starts to spill out and influence your public and political behaviour. Which is why I look at Biden & co. with a very critical eye.
A little while ago, there were problems with Turks and Kurds just down the road from me. The Kurds were demonstrating about something or other and there was a confrontation with a number of Turks which got violent. A good number of those involved were Austrian citizens. That is not acceptable. Fine if you are privately involved in conflicts in the “home” country but it shouldn’t then be fought out on the streets of Vienna, costing us millions of € in taxpayer’s money to pay for police presence.
It’s a sticky question: the right to demonstrate is a basic right, and the state only has limited options for giving Austro-Turks a rap on the wrists for being too involved in non-Austrian issues (thus demonstrating the weakness of their bond to their state of citizenship). As I said, the state cannot steer identity. As societies get more diverse and multicultural, there is going to be a lot more of these clashes and you need to find answers on how to deal with them.
But tbh I think this is getting a bit far away from the topic of the article.
To me, it’s essentially an inability for them to differentiate between ethnic background and cultural background that is very distinctly American, and causes so many problems when they insist on trying to transfer concepts borne of their culture to others.
Ethnically, I am slightly more Irish than Biden, although it comes to me via a weird mixture of Scottish, irish and Welsh ancestry, and I have an even weirder mixture of bloodlines on the other side of the family (which I won’t waste time detailing here), yet culturally I am English, in spite of being partly raised by my Scottish grandmother.
I might have the gift of a little more Scottish folklore and history woven through the stories my grandmother told me, but I have lived my whole life in England, I was baptised in an English Church, went through an English schooling system, the traditions and quirks and mannerisms I learned were English, my natural accent is perfectly typical mixture of the two locations I’ve spent the majority of my life.
The ethnic details and family history I have might be intellectually interesting to me, and might help me to understand any particular medical risks I might have, but it is just a list of interesting facts for the most part, not a massive part of my identity to be displayed wherever I go, or added as a prefix or suffix to my British nationality. I am British, I am not Irish-Scottish-Welsh-Italian-Arabic-British, or whatever other ethnic groups my distant relatives want to add to such a list, the British part of things is far more important than the results of an ancestry DNA test.
Hmmm… If you’re British, I’d be a little careful about saying things like that. After all, can anyone name another country, where for 40 years the biggest selling newspaper, featured on page 3..?
My best friend is American, and we’ve had many discussions about American and British culture over the years. I certainly don’t like certain aspects of their culture and consider them to be superficial, or weird or stupid, and she feels the same about some aspects of British culture (such as our indifference about how terrible our coffee is, and our ability to turn politeness into passive aggressive social weaponry).
We also both love things about these cultures, and have essentially appropriated them for ourselves (she now can’t live without a proper kettle in her house, and gets tea sent over from here so she can get her fix, I have a proper coffee maker, and have a whole notebook stuffed with her family recipes).
Everywhere has a culture of some sort, and they all have silly aspects to them (one of my German friends recently expressed frustration with how British politeness inhibits how well he learns English, because British people often consider it impolite to correct his errors in usage), and most of them also have some great aspects to them (I love German efficiency, and directness, for example).
“.. our ability to turn politeness into passive aggressive social weaponry.”
I totally understand why that frustrates foreigners. So many Brits abroad think that this passive aggressive behaviour dressed as politeness is going to get their message across, but no one gets it apart from us. The British psyche really is a weird place…and often weird without being wonderful.
As far as your German friend is concerned I think it’s partly politeness but it’s also because so many people speak English as a second language that we are used to hearing our native language butchered and simply let it pass over us.
Or, it’s simply a practical choice. I often converse with German colleagues who, for the most part, speak very good English, in the sense they make themselves perfectly well understood. In a business conversation I’m interested in the message, not all the precise words or phrases used to deliver it. Striving to correct every single little grammatical error or unconventional choice of vocabulary just seems unnecessary. Their English is a lot better than my German, anyway … and it’s not like all English people speak perfect English the whole time!
Or, it’s simply a practical choice. I often converse with German colleagues who, for the most part, speak very good English, in the sense they make themselves perfectly well understood. In a business conversation I’m interested in the message, not all the precise words or phrases used to deliver it. Striving to correct every single little grammatical error or unconventional choice of vocabulary just seems unnecessary. Their English is a lot better than my German, anyway … and it’s not like all English people speak perfect English the whole time!
Shur yous are all in da ha’penny place compared to Irish culture.. shur didn’t we improve your English culture no end with Goldsmith, Swift, Shaw, Yeats, Joyce and Becket! I know ye had Shakespeare but shur dat was ages ago!
Brilliant . You forgot Myles Na Gopaleen.
Mind you we should probably keep bit quiet about Charles Haughey – shure Trump was only an amateur compared to Charlie.
To be honest I found Ulysses a bit a drag me self
Brilliant . You forgot Myles Na Gopaleen.
Mind you we should probably keep bit quiet about Charles Haughey – shure Trump was only an amateur compared to Charlie.
To be honest I found Ulysses a bit a drag me self
I can honestly say that there is probably no more thoroughly disgusting hot beverage than the coffee I have been given at breakfast in American hotels.
I can honestly say that there is probably no more thoroughly disgusting hot beverage than the coffee I have been given at breakfast in American hotels.
“.. our ability to turn politeness into passive aggressive social weaponry.”
I totally understand why that frustrates foreigners. So many Brits abroad think that this passive aggressive behaviour dressed as politeness is going to get their message across, but no one gets it apart from us. The British psyche really is a weird place…and often weird without being wonderful.
As far as your German friend is concerned I think it’s partly politeness but it’s also because so many people speak English as a second language that we are used to hearing our native language butchered and simply let it pass over us.
Shur yous are all in da ha’penny place compared to Irish culture.. shur didn’t we improve your English culture no end with Goldsmith, Swift, Shaw, Yeats, Joyce and Becket! I know ye had Shakespeare but shur dat was ages ago!
Everyone has culture – including hard to believe – USA! Cowboy line dancing is not the Austrian Waltz but it surely is better than Morris Dancing.
Happy to provide a long list of good (not great like Tolstoy or Balzac) American writers. Some of them might even be considered semi-great writers (Hemingway, Melville).
There are plenty of painters, thinkers, musicians etc.
Unless you mean high culture but that is a Continental thing. It is certainly not a British (which explains why US doesn’t have high culture).
So what is British culture? There isn’t any… There might have been at one time but not in my ken or that of my parents or even my grandparents. We are British but we are also Scottish. If asked I am Scottish then British. I don’t identify with most of the culture that is supposed to be British including the monarchy.
American friends do have culture, which depends on which state they come from. A bit like which country you come from in the UK! Then there is the culture of First Nation people or African-Americans or Hispanic-Americans, Jewish-Americans…All my friends identify as American first and something else second. Bit different to people who live in the UK!
Untrue. Americana is not to be sniffed at.
I think America has provided most of the positive cultural influences for the world in the last 100 years – far more so than any other nation. Whether Steinbeck, F Scott Fitzgerald , Dylan, Jazz, Andy Warhol , the great National Parks devoid of all commercial advertising, the Creole cooking of the southern States, the Hubble telescope, the Apollo landings, the general optimism of Americans has contributed hugely to making the world a better place.
Yes of course we like to remember the stuff the U.S. gets wrong : but compare and contrast how culturally poorer we’d be without the USA. I live in the UK, and love it too, but what have we , or anyone else done that’s better recently.?
PS: I am not Americn.
Hmmm… If you’re British, I’d be a little careful about saying things like that. After all, can anyone name another country, where for 40 years the biggest selling newspaper, featured on page 3..?
My best friend is American, and we’ve had many discussions about American and British culture over the years. I certainly don’t like certain aspects of their culture and consider them to be superficial, or weird or stupid, and she feels the same about some aspects of British culture (such as our indifference about how terrible our coffee is, and our ability to turn politeness into passive aggressive social weaponry).
We also both love things about these cultures, and have essentially appropriated them for ourselves (she now can’t live without a proper kettle in her house, and gets tea sent over from here so she can get her fix, I have a proper coffee maker, and have a whole notebook stuffed with her family recipes).
Everywhere has a culture of some sort, and they all have silly aspects to them (one of my German friends recently expressed frustration with how British politeness inhibits how well he learns English, because British people often consider it impolite to correct his errors in usage), and most of them also have some great aspects to them (I love German efficiency, and directness, for example).
Everyone has culture – including hard to believe – USA! Cowboy line dancing is not the Austrian Waltz but it surely is better than Morris Dancing.
Happy to provide a long list of good (not great like Tolstoy or Balzac) American writers. Some of them might even be considered semi-great writers (Hemingway, Melville).
There are plenty of painters, thinkers, musicians etc.
Unless you mean high culture but that is a Continental thing. It is certainly not a British (which explains why US doesn’t have high culture).
So what is British culture? There isn’t any… There might have been at one time but not in my ken or that of my parents or even my grandparents. We are British but we are also Scottish. If asked I am Scottish then British. I don’t identify with most of the culture that is supposed to be British including the monarchy.
American friends do have culture, which depends on which state they come from. A bit like which country you come from in the UK! Then there is the culture of First Nation people or African-Americans or Hispanic-Americans, Jewish-Americans…All my friends identify as American first and something else second. Bit different to people who live in the UK!
Untrue. Americana is not to be sniffed at.
I think America has provided most of the positive cultural influences for the world in the last 100 years – far more so than any other nation. Whether Steinbeck, F Scott Fitzgerald , Dylan, Jazz, Andy Warhol , the great National Parks devoid of all commercial advertising, the Creole cooking of the southern States, the Hubble telescope, the Apollo landings, the general optimism of Americans has contributed hugely to making the world a better place.
Yes of course we like to remember the stuff the U.S. gets wrong : but compare and contrast how culturally poorer we’d be without the USA. I live in the UK, and love it too, but what have we , or anyone else done that’s better recently.?
PS: I am not Americn.
A former work colleague told me that he was a stalwart in all things to do with Irish culture when he worked in the Middle East, but when he came home he found had no great need or desire for the same things.
It is really odd. on some level it’s to do with making friends in a foreign place and using the old clichés about your country to entertain and break the ice…but it’s also about feeling like you have to (over-)assert and thus protect your own identity when you’re surrounded by and submerged in another one.
It is really odd. on some level it’s to do with making friends in a foreign place and using the old clichés about your country to entertain and break the ice…but it’s also about feeling like you have to (over-)assert and thus protect your own identity when you’re surrounded by and submerged in another one.
But do you group together with other Brits, in British bars, and join British clubs and make a big feal of St George’s Day? ..and form political alliances of Brits abroad? ..’bet you dont’
If you had you should have noticed that the place is littered with British Clubs, particularly in the Old Empire.
You should pop in sometime Paddies are always welcomed as ‘honorary’ Englishmen.
May I suggest the Muthaiga Club if you happen to be stuck in Nairobi, or perhaps the Singapore Cricket Club if out East?
I made the Club in Kuala Lumpur at the invitation of my India friend.. we were both embarrassed by a drunken Brit.. go figure as the Yanks say. I had a similar incident in Jamaica.. I’m not saying it’s typical, but those were my only two experiences..
I made the Club in Kuala Lumpur at the invitation of my India friend.. we were both embarrassed by a drunken Brit.. go figure as the Yanks say. I had a similar incident in Jamaica.. I’m not saying it’s typical, but those were my only two experiences..
If you had you should have noticed that the place is littered with British Clubs, particularly in the Old Empire.
You should pop in sometime Paddies are always welcomed as ‘honorary’ Englishmen.
May I suggest the Muthaiga Club if you happen to be stuck in Nairobi, or perhaps the Singapore Cricket Club if out East?
There is a reason you left. There is a reason people move on. Humans. They adapt. They cling. But they move on. Hayek is right. Tradition is rewarded by success. That what works is what we become. Embrace the change that is successful — and don’t look back, but never forget to weave the things you inherited that are successful, … that work, into the new.
You raise an interesting observation Katherine. I wonder why we want to cling to a version of our earlier “Home” identity? Is it just so that we feel good about our earlier (younger) life -when the sky was always blue and the world was good etc. Contrarywise, we may feel more invested in our new “host” country so that we become , in my case, more British than the average Brit. Funny world.
But did that romantic, idyllic Ireland ever really exist? As a Brit living in the US I know I romanticize about my roots in the little, English Village from whence I came, many, many years ago. I watch everything I can of period piece movies and documentaries. I yearn and weep, at the same time knowing that the reality of that life was somewhat different.The pull, for me, is the beautiful countryside, the flora and fauna, the blue bell woods, my dog, the historic buildings.The longing isn’t for the people or the culture, it’s for the place.
I recognise this entirely. During my ten years in South Africa I learned the words to Land of Hope and Glory, which was occasionally required at particularly alcohol fuelled rugby club do’s.
But we were both raised in the U.K. What do we make of 3rd generation immigrants, with strong regional British accents, supporting India or Pakistan at cricket matches? How will those identifies play out in the years to come?
To me, it’s essentially an inability for them to differentiate between ethnic background and cultural background that is very distinctly American, and causes so many problems when they insist on trying to transfer concepts borne of their culture to others.
Ethnically, I am slightly more Irish than Biden, although it comes to me via a weird mixture of Scottish, irish and Welsh ancestry, and I have an even weirder mixture of bloodlines on the other side of the family (which I won’t waste time detailing here), yet culturally I am English, in spite of being partly raised by my Scottish grandmother.
I might have the gift of a little more Scottish folklore and history woven through the stories my grandmother told me, but I have lived my whole life in England, I was baptised in an English Church, went through an English schooling system, the traditions and quirks and mannerisms I learned were English, my natural accent is perfectly typical mixture of the two locations I’ve spent the majority of my life.
The ethnic details and family history I have might be intellectually interesting to me, and might help me to understand any particular medical risks I might have, but it is just a list of interesting facts for the most part, not a massive part of my identity to be displayed wherever I go, or added as a prefix or suffix to my British nationality. I am British, I am not Irish-Scottish-Welsh-Italian-Arabic-British, or whatever other ethnic groups my distant relatives want to add to such a list, the British part of things is far more important than the results of an ancestry DNA test.
A former work colleague told me that he was a stalwart in all things to do with Irish culture when he worked in the Middle East, but when he came home he found had no great need or desire for the same things.
But do you group together with other Brits, in British bars, and join British clubs and make a big feal of St George’s Day? ..and form political alliances of Brits abroad? ..’bet you dont’
There is a reason you left. There is a reason people move on. Humans. They adapt. They cling. But they move on. Hayek is right. Tradition is rewarded by success. That what works is what we become. Embrace the change that is successful — and don’t look back, but never forget to weave the things you inherited that are successful, … that work, into the new.
You raise an interesting observation Katherine. I wonder why we want to cling to a version of our earlier “Home” identity? Is it just so that we feel good about our earlier (younger) life -when the sky was always blue and the world was good etc. Contrarywise, we may feel more invested in our new “host” country so that we become , in my case, more British than the average Brit. Funny world.
But did that romantic, idyllic Ireland ever really exist? As a Brit living in the US I know I romanticize about my roots in the little, English Village from whence I came, many, many years ago. I watch everything I can of period piece movies and documentaries. I yearn and weep, at the same time knowing that the reality of that life was somewhat different.The pull, for me, is the beautiful countryside, the flora and fauna, the blue bell woods, my dog, the historic buildings.The longing isn’t for the people or the culture, it’s for the place.
Last edited 1 year ago by Clare Knight
Katharine Eyre
1 year ago
This powerful “idea” of the homeland is not exclusive to Americans with Irish heritage, as I prefer to call them.
I’ve been living abroad now for 20 years and Britain has changed unimaginably in that time – it is no longer the country I left in 2004. Yet I still feel very British and feel the need to protect and sustain that “home” identity while living (quite happily) in a foreign culture.
You do end up playing up to certain stereotypes and over-egging the pudding: I find myself joking about having a “stiff upper lip” etc. which I don’t think I ever did while I lived in the UK. You kind of become a parody of yourself.
So it is with Irish Americans – this constant straining to cleave to an old identity based in an Ireland that has long since ceased to exist makes them seem absurd. If this group wasn’t quite so powerful on the world stage then we’d just laugh and think it quaint. As it is, I find it worrying that a group with such romantic notions quite divorced from 21st century reality has so much influence.
Last edited 1 year ago by Katharine Eyre
Paul MacDonnell
1 year ago
Nice article. The first and most important thing one must understand about Biden is that he is really, really, dumb.
On his own, he surely makes dumb, stupid statements and decisions. However, his basic personality is cunning manipulation, bullying, cheating, lying and stealing. He may be senile now, but he is still devious and his “handlers” use his desire for power and attention to do their bidding.
On his own, he surely makes dumb, stupid statements and decisions. However, his basic personality is cunning manipulation, bullying, cheating, lying and stealing. He may be senile now, but he is still devious and his “handlers” use his desire for power and attention to do their bidding.
Paul MacDonnell
1 year ago
Nice article. The first and most important thing one must understand about Biden is that he is really, really, dumb.
Ben Jones
1 year ago
I adore America and have visited regularly for over thirty years. The *only* place anyone was rude to me due to my nationality was – of course – Boston by an ‘Irish-American’, who was about as Irish as the Kurdish gentleman who cuts my hair. They would be comical were it not for the millions of dollars they sent to fund terrorism. Happily, most Americans think their cosplaying plastic Irishfolk are ridiculous too.
You damn 35 million because one was rude to you? ..that’s a bit extreme, isn’t it? I was well treated in England by 9 out of 10 people there and it never occurred to me, when abused by far more than one, to think badly of the English. Sure, don’t I put up with Charlie Stanhope here and he’s as anti-Irish as Oliver Cromwell was!
A memory of one of my trips to Boston in the 80’s was of Irish Americans on the streets drumming up support and $$ for the IRA. If the US govt. had applied the same reasoning as was the case with 9/11 then an invasion of Eire would have been on the cards..
You damn 35 million because one was rude to you? ..that’s a bit extreme, isn’t it? I was well treated in England by 9 out of 10 people there and it never occurred to me, when abused by far more than one, to think badly of the English. Sure, don’t I put up with Charlie Stanhope here and he’s as anti-Irish as Oliver Cromwell was!
A memory of one of my trips to Boston in the 80’s was of Irish Americans on the streets drumming up support and $$ for the IRA. If the US govt. had applied the same reasoning as was the case with 9/11 then an invasion of Eire would have been on the cards..
Ben Jones
1 year ago
I adore America and have visited regularly for over thirty years. The *only* place anyone was rude to me due to my nationality was – of course – Boston by an ‘Irish-American’, who was about as Irish as the Kurdish gentleman who cuts my hair. They would be comical were it not for the millions of dollars they sent to fund terrorism. Happily, most Americans think their cosplaying plastic Irishfolk are ridiculous too.
Jonny Stud
1 year ago
The whole thing is just a manufactured vote-harvest isn’t it? Biden reckons (probably correctly) that all those 30 million-odd americans who think they are Irish are worth more in votes at home than what Ulster or indeed the UK thinks of his acts and comments abroad.
The whole thing is just a manufactured vote-harvest isn’t it? Biden reckons (probably correctly) that all those 30 million-odd americans who think they are Irish are worth more in votes at home than what Ulster or indeed the UK thinks of his acts and comments abroad.
Allison Barrows
1 year ago
Biden is “the most powerful man in the world”? Please. He is a walking pharmacy run by we know not who and freely admits that he shouldn’t say this or that or he’ll get in trouble, no joke. He’s also claimed to be a black Puerto Rican Jew, so the author wastes his time waxing lyrical on claims of Biden’s connection to the auld sod.
Why is this obvious fact ignored by certain members of the scribbling class? Biden is in Ireland to give the media something to do instead of being forced to report on events here in the US that go against the official propaganda.
Biden is “the most powerful man in the world”? Please. He is a walking pharmacy run by we know not who and freely admits that he shouldn’t say this or that or he’ll get in trouble, no joke. He’s also claimed to be a black Puerto Rican Jew, so the author wastes his time waxing lyrical on claims of Biden’s connection to the auld sod.
Why is this obvious fact ignored by certain members of the scribbling class? Biden is in Ireland to give the media something to do instead of being forced to report on events here in the US that go against the official propaganda.
Isabel Ward
1 year ago
Of course part of the issue is that Joe Biden is only half Irish anyway:
” Biden’s paternal line has been traced to stonemason William Biden, who was born in 1789 in Westbourne, England, and emigrated to Maryland in the United States by 1820″
i.e he get’s his name from someone who was an English emigrant
A bit like Barack Obama. whose mother was white but only his black roots are emphasised.
Certainly not! Barak O’Bama’s white ancestors hale from Moneygall, Co Offaly! He visited there on his trip to Ireland.. The services complex there is called Barak Obama Plaza!
Certainly not! Barak O’Bama’s white ancestors hale from Moneygall, Co Offaly! He visited there on his trip to Ireland.. The services complex there is called Barak Obama Plaza!
I wondered how come the name Biden wasn’t in Ireland. He should certainly have honored that important part.
Isabel Ward
1 year ago
Of course part of the issue is that Joe Biden is only half Irish anyway:
” Biden’s paternal line has been traced to stonemason William Biden, who was born in 1789 in Westbourne, England, and emigrated to Maryland in the United States by 1820″
i.e he get’s his name from someone who was an English emigrant
A bit like Barack Obama. whose mother was white but only his black roots are emphasised.
Last edited 1 year ago by Isabel Ward
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Thank you Mr McTague for an amusing evisceration of this ridiculous ‘Kerrygold Farce’, currently being played out on the blood soaked Emerald Isle.
Who spilled 90% of that blood over the centuries Charlie? ..and who was the root cause the spilling of the other 10%.. but maybe we shouldn’t include the million who starved to death 3 years before Grandad emigrated? ..as I’m not sure starving people bleed?
What’s a real farce is the UK on its knees begging for American crumbs via a trade deal.. Maybe Joe is thinking of his starving grandad and is thinking: “Right so, let’s see how the English like starving for a change? ..maybe it’s in the genes Charlie? Watja tink?
Who in UK gov is talking up a trade deal with the US? It’s a terrible idea. It’s there way or the highway. And it’s pretty clear the only special relationship Biden wants is with Gerry Adams. Keep arms length, they’ve done enough damage to the UK banking system.
Who in UK gov is talking up a trade deal with the US? It’s a terrible idea. It’s there way or the highway. And it’s pretty clear the only special relationship Biden wants is with Gerry Adams. Keep arms length, they’ve done enough damage to the UK banking system.
Who spilled 90% of that blood over the centuries Charlie? ..and who was the root cause the spilling of the other 10%.. but maybe we shouldn’t include the million who starved to death 3 years before Grandad emigrated? ..as I’m not sure starving people bleed?
What’s a real farce is the UK on its knees begging for American crumbs via a trade deal.. Maybe Joe is thinking of his starving grandad and is thinking: “Right so, let’s see how the English like starving for a change? ..maybe it’s in the genes Charlie? Watja tink?
That may be the most lame comment I’ve ever read on Un-heard, and that is a low bar indeed! How may people who died in the 9-11 terrorist attack to you reckon contributed to the IRA?
That may be the most lame comment I’ve ever read on Un-heard, and that is a low bar indeed! How may people who died in the 9-11 terrorist attack to you reckon contributed to the IRA?
Sadly the British establishment never take any notice until violence is directed at them. Even nationwide strikes of vital industrial staff is ignored.. If the British hadn’t turned a blind eye to the endless, vicious sectarian abuse by DUP types perpetrated on the defenceless RC/Nationalist minority (now a majority) and paid attention to peaceful civil rights marches the IRA might have remained dormant in the late 1960’s.. I was there.. it was appalling what went on with B-Specials burning whole streets like the Black n Tans had done 50 years earlier..
When the state is brutal expect rebellion. You may see it yet in your own country if the Tories keep crushing ordinary British people!
Funnily enough, I actually agree with you that the past abuses of the Protestants against the Catholics were overlooked because the area was deemed to be self-governing. However, I still think that there were ways of making this known to the general public on the mainland without resorting to such terrible violence. Do remember that when the British troops were first sent in it was to protect the Catholic population. And in no circumstances is killing children acceptable, no matter what your aim is, and there can be no whataboutery here; it is wrong whoever does it.
Funnily enough, I actually agree with you that the past abuses of the Protestants against the Catholics were overlooked because the area was deemed to be self-governing. However, I still think that there were ways of making this known to the general public on the mainland without resorting to such terrible violence. Do remember that when the British troops were first sent in it was to protect the Catholic population. And in no circumstances is killing children acceptable, no matter what your aim is, and there can be no whataboutery here; it is wrong whoever does it.
Sadly the British establishment never take any notice until violence is directed at them. Even nationwide strikes of vital industrial staff is ignored.. If the British hadn’t turned a blind eye to the endless, vicious sectarian abuse by DUP types perpetrated on the defenceless RC/Nationalist minority (now a majority) and paid attention to peaceful civil rights marches the IRA might have remained dormant in the late 1960’s.. I was there.. it was appalling what went on with B-Specials burning whole streets like the Black n Tans had done 50 years earlier..
When the state is brutal expect rebellion. You may see it yet in your own country if the Tories keep crushing ordinary British people!
Roger Mortimer
1 year ago
Irish America funded the IRA in the 1970s and 80s, and now warns Britain not to do anything that would imperil the peace process. Excellent.
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
BEST JOE BIDEN QUOTE:-
“See this tie I have, this shamrock tie? It was given to me by one of these guys right here, who’s a hell of a rugby player who beat the hell out of the Black and Tans.”
Let’s not judge, maybe he was a very old and very vicious rugby player who was out there fighting for Ireland.
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
BEST JOE BIDEN QUOTE:-
“See this tie I have, this shamrock tie? It was given to me by one of these guys right here, who’s a hell of a rugby player who beat the hell out of the Black and Tans.”
D’you know I can’t remember the last time Russia attacked Ireland? ..nor can I remember ever reading about it in the history books! The only people who ever attacked us were the Norse and the Anglo-Norman-English and that was 1,300 and 700 years ago resp. I think we’re safe enough, thanks all the same.
What political mischief do you British have in mind for us? Sanctions? I note you made no mention at all of the United Nations? We’re well in with those guys y’know! LOL.
D’you know I can’t remember the last time Russia attacked Ireland? ..nor can I remember ever reading about it in the history books! The only people who ever attacked us were the Norse and the Anglo-Norman-English and that was 1,300 and 700 years ago resp. I think we’re safe enough, thanks all the same.
What political mischief do you British have in mind for us? Sanctions? I note you made no mention at all of the United Nations? We’re well in with those guys y’know! LOL.
Biden believes that West Ham United are a Palestinian football side, ” The Hamas”, but let’s confuse the old git more and tell him that AC Milan is actually The Athletic and Cricket Club of Milan, not Milano, and Genoa not Genova, is the English name for the Italian Genova Cricket club?
Now even I’m confused, as indeed you seem to be yourself!
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
Biden believes that West Ham United are a Palestinian football side, ” The Hamas”, but let’s confuse the old git more and tell him that AC Milan is actually The Athletic and Cricket Club of Milan, not Milano, and Genoa not Genova, is the English name for the Italian Genova Cricket club?
AC Harper
1 year ago
Jung suggested that there are psychological archetypes – an inherited idea or mode of thought that is derived from the experience of the race and is present in the unconscious of the individual.
Well maybe yes, maybe no. But archetypes whether they exist or are merely a useful fiction do tend to become polished and simplified over time – which makes them attractive to politicians with an ideological axe to grind.
The famine in Ireland, with a million starving to death and 1½ million emigrating with Biden’s grandad to escape death may well have created an archetype but it certainly was based on any fiction! Agonising death through starvation is very real. Forced emigration (you guys know about emigration don’t you?) is no fun either!
Plus an enormous population of over 8 million thanks to ‘bonking like bunnies’ for well over a century, egged on by the Catholic Church.
“Every sperm is sacred” as they used to say.
This is true, and even slightly relevant; but the main point stands.. Grandad didn’t like starving and handed down his feelings via his genes and his storytelling around the fire, didn’t he?
This is true, and even slightly relevant; but the main point stands.. Grandad didn’t like starving and handed down his feelings via his genes and his storytelling around the fire, didn’t he?
Plus an enormous population of over 8 million thanks to ‘bonking like bunnies’ for well over a century, egged on by the Catholic Church.
“Every sperm is sacred” as they used to say.
The famine in Ireland, with a million starving to death and 1½ million emigrating with Biden’s grandad to escape death may well have created an archetype but it certainly was based on any fiction! Agonising death through starvation is very real. Forced emigration (you guys know about emigration don’t you?) is no fun either!
AC Harper
1 year ago
Jung suggested that there are psychological archetypes – an inherited idea or mode of thought that is derived from the experience of the race and is present in the unconscious of the individual.
Well maybe yes, maybe no. But archetypes whether they exist or are merely a useful fiction do tend to become polished and simplified over time – which makes them attractive to politicians with an ideological axe to grind.
Erik Hildinger
1 year ago
Wasn’t Biden Welsh before he was Irish? Not merely plagiarizing the words of Neil Kinnock but also adopting his life story? But that was long ago…
Erik Hildinger
1 year ago
Wasn’t Biden Welsh before he was Irish? Not merely plagiarizing the words of Neil Kinnock but also adopting his life story? But that was long ago…
Benjamin Jones
1 year ago
To paraphrase The Pub Landlord, ‘Isn’t it bad enough being American without wanting to be Irish as well?’
Benjamin Jones
1 year ago
To paraphrase The Pub Landlord, ‘Isn’t it bad enough being American without wanting to be Irish as well?’
Rosemary Throssell
1 year ago
I live in Upstate New York and am always amazed how so many people dress in green on Saint Patrick’s day. It’s a huge event. Credit to the Irish for spreading their brand.
I took a subscription to this platform thinking there was a more intelligent level of contributor around. Clearly not. Not to mention your spelling above.
I took a subscription to this platform thinking there was a more intelligent level of contributor around. Clearly not. Not to mention your spelling above.
Interestingly, many people here in Southern Brasil (of Português, Italian and German extraction) also dress in green and celebrate on St. Paddy’s Day (much like we did in Chicago – start drinking at 9:00am, although we had a parade). I think St. Patrick’s Day is “a thing”.
Sure isn’t it a bit like your Mardi Gras and Festivale? Any auld excuse for a knees-up. The English do tea parties; and also street parties to show their German monarchy what subservient, docile little slaves they are! The French are showing them how to protest just now, like we show them how to party!
Years ago I had a student who emigrated from Ireland to CA and was introduced to that American holiday known as St Patrick’s not through green beer but green tamales — LA Mexicans were more “Irish” than she.
Sure isn’t it a bit like your Mardi Gras and Festivale? Any auld excuse for a knees-up. The English do tea parties; and also street parties to show their German monarchy what subservient, docile little slaves they are! The French are showing them how to protest just now, like we show them how to party!
Years ago I had a student who emigrated from Ireland to CA and was introduced to that American holiday known as St Patrick’s not through green beer but green tamales — LA Mexicans were more “Irish” than she.
Interestingly, many people here in Southern Brasil (of Português, Italian and German extraction) also dress in green and celebrate on St. Paddy’s Day (much like we did in Chicago – start drinking at 9:00am, although we had a parade). I think St. Patrick’s Day is “a thing”.
It’s a plot to take over the world.. build Irish pubs everywhere and just elbow into the bar, the legal bar I mean!
Rosemary Throssell
1 year ago
I live in Upstate New York and am always amazed how so many people dress in green on Saint Patrick’s day. It’s a huge event. Credit to the Irish for spreading their brand.
Peadar Laighléis
1 year ago
I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall in either Iveagh House (Irish Foreign Ministry) or Fine Gael HQ, when the news broke that their poster boy in the culture wars was wanted to visit Knock Shrine (the national Catholic shrine in the west of Ireland). Mixed messages from Uncle Joe
I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall in either Iveagh House (Irish Foreign Ministry) or Fine Gael HQ, when the news broke that their poster boy in the culture wars was wanted to visit Knock Shrine (the national Catholic shrine in the west of Ireland). Mixed messages from Uncle Joe
Mike Wylde
1 year ago
The football team of Notre Dame university are not called the Fighting Irish because of any Irish connection to the university. They took it after an opponent said something along the lines of “they fight like the bl….. Irish”. They took it as a complement but it was not intended as such!
When they stop pronouncing it Note ‘er Dayme I might take an interest.
Mike Wylde
1 year ago
The football team of Notre Dame university are not called the Fighting Irish because of any Irish connection to the university. They took it after an opponent said something along the lines of “they fight like the bl….. Irish”. They took it as a complement but it was not intended as such!
Kirk Susong
1 year ago
“What is important is not the purity of Biden’s bloodline — a horrible, fascistic idea — but the strength of belief in the idea of Irish-Americanness. If enough people believe they are Irish-American, then Irish America exists not only in theory but in practice — a living reality with its own power that must be reckoned with in Belfast and London.”
So you can be Irish if you like some white-washed, deracinated, neutered ‘brand’ of Irishness? It no longer matters if you have any actual history connected to Ireland, any genetics connected to ancient Irishmen, any cultural exposure to the fine grained details of Irish life and literature?
This is the Disneyfication of all culture, as if going to Epcot made you a world traveler. Now visiting a ‘Irish bar’ somewhere, drinking Guinness and wearing green on a day in March, watching The Quiet Man, simply liking some vague elements of the most banal bits of Irish culture… now these are the things that make you Irish?
Personally I think family matters, I think history matters, I think blood matters – and I don’t think that’s fascist at all. It’s human.
Biden wasnt born.. someone jacked on a wall and the sun hatched him out…
Kirk Susong
1 year ago
“What is important is not the purity of Biden’s bloodline — a horrible, fascistic idea — but the strength of belief in the idea of Irish-Americanness. If enough people believe they are Irish-American, then Irish America exists not only in theory but in practice — a living reality with its own power that must be reckoned with in Belfast and London.”
So you can be Irish if you like some white-washed, deracinated, neutered ‘brand’ of Irishness? It no longer matters if you have any actual history connected to Ireland, any genetics connected to ancient Irishmen, any cultural exposure to the fine grained details of Irish life and literature?
This is the Disneyfication of all culture, as if going to Epcot made you a world traveler. Now visiting a ‘Irish bar’ somewhere, drinking Guinness and wearing green on a day in March, watching The Quiet Man, simply liking some vague elements of the most banal bits of Irish culture… now these are the things that make you Irish?
Personally I think family matters, I think history matters, I think blood matters – and I don’t think that’s fascist at all. It’s human.
Tim Scott
1 year ago
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Last edited 1 year ago by Tim Scott
Tim Scott
1 year ago
r
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rob drummond
1 year ago
Taking the whole idiotic ‘I’m Irish’ to its logical conclusion – Ireland was very much part of The British Isles when mass-exodus happened – as such were ”the Irish” not also British?
In the same way we today have English/British – Scots British/ Welsh British and low & behold ”Irish British”.
Bidens claim to be Irish is patent nonesense, but it doesnt stop him saying it.
Not knowing where one was born is pretty fundemental to me.
rob drummond
1 year ago
Taking the whole idiotic ‘I’m Irish’ to its logical conclusion – Ireland was very much part of The British Isles when mass-exodus happened – as such were ”the Irish” not also British?
In the same way we today have English/British – Scots British/ Welsh British and low & behold ”Irish British”.
Bidens claim to be Irish is patent nonesense, but it doesnt stop him saying it.
Not knowing where one was born is pretty fundemental to me.
Dermot O'Sullivan
1 year ago
A remember the contrast between the UK and the USA reception to Irishness (going back a few decades here!). In the UK you had to be careful as there was a strong anti-Irish ethos active at the time, egged on by large sections of the media, and not absent from the authorities.
The US was all welcomes. ‘Oh, you’re Irish,’ the middle-aged bank manager beamed and I could see that she wanted me to keep talking just so she could enjoy listening to the accent. However, when I asked if the bank accepted the Eurocheques I wanted to cash, she shook her head in the negative.
Fortunately a young female teller who was on the ball, called out ‘ Yes, we do!’
Given a lot of Irish Republicans were killing British people at the time it is remarkable that there was so little anti Irish feeling! Most accepted that the murderers did not represent everyone in Ireland.
And a lot of British soldiers were shooting innocent marchers and suspects on sight in a shoot to kill policy.. So, dreadful wrongs on all sides.. can we put it behind us now?
And a lot of British soldiers were shooting innocent marchers and suspects on sight in a shoot to kill policy.. So, dreadful wrongs on all sides.. can we put it behind us now?
As someone who worked in the London at the time, trying to modernise the Underground (that in itself didn’t make me very popular!) I have to say I never had any abuse from any of the 420 middle and senior managers in that organisation, except one. There’s alway one isn’t there? I will give the English that.. a sense of fair play and justice; though sadly, that never applied to the army nor the judiciary.. but the ordinary English bloke.. no such abuse. I appreciated it too and said so more than once!
As someone who worked in the London at the time, trying to modernise the Underground (that in itself didn’t make me very popular!) I have to say I never had any abuse from any of the 420 middle and senior managers in that organisation, except one. There’s alway one isn’t there? I will give the English that.. a sense of fair play and justice; though sadly, that never applied to the army nor the judiciary.. but the ordinary English bloke.. no such abuse. I appreciated it too and said so more than once!
Given a lot of Irish Republicans were killing British people at the time it is remarkable that there was so little anti Irish feeling! Most accepted that the murderers did not represent everyone in Ireland.
Dermot O'Sullivan
1 year ago
A remember the contrast between the UK and the USA reception to Irishness (going back a few decades here!). In the UK you had to be careful as there was a strong anti-Irish ethos active at the time, egged on by large sections of the media, and not absent from the authorities.
The US was all welcomes. ‘Oh, you’re Irish,’ the middle-aged bank manager beamed and I could see that she wanted me to keep talking just so she could enjoy listening to the accent. However, when I asked if the bank accepted the Eurocheques I wanted to cash, she shook her head in the negative.
Fortunately a young female teller who was on the ball, called out ‘ Yes, we do!’
James Madison
1 year ago
Love this!! Well done.
James Madison
1 year ago
Love this!! Well done.
Doug Mccaully
1 year ago
Irish culture has changed profoundly since independence, Norther Irish culture is now catching up for lost time. Nowadays many of us have multi layered cultural identities
”Nowadays many of us have multi layered cultural identities” – very true as do your friends across The Channel.
Doug Mccaully
1 year ago
Irish culture has changed profoundly since independence, Norther Irish culture is now catching up for lost time. Nowadays many of us have multi layered cultural identities
James Kirk
1 year ago
Biden is a putz, whatever that means, but the onomatapoeia will do.
James Kirk
1 year ago
Biden is a putz, whatever that means, but the onomatapoeia will do.
Peter O'Dwyer
1 year ago
What a typical pathetic load of misanthropic, jingoistic, anti-Irish Paddywhackery.
The English have never forgiven Ireland for leaving the Empire and building a new polity with an ultra modern, high-tech, high income economy in Europe and the world, where our “betters” didn’t automatically look down on us … and expect us to “know our place”.
In 1922 95% of all Irish exports went to the UK in live cattle, grain, beer and biscuits!
100 years later, the UK isn’t even our 4th biggest trading partner.
Ireland is a world leading exporter in pharmaceuticals, (9 out of the world’s top 10 pharma companies manufacture here), and home to the non-US HQs of just about every internet and hi-tech. company you have ever heard of, employing young graduates from 150 countries.
This is not even to consider the four multi-billion dollar FABs that Intel has in Ireland manufacturing the most modern computer chips, and individually employing over 10,000 people.
If Joe Biden feels welcome in Ireland, as has practically every US President since JFK, including Barack Obama, that says a lot more about Ireland, than it does about Britain.
You can whine about the loss of Empire all you want, but, believe it or not, Britain’s industrial base has been in decline since the start of the 20th Century.
Every day, we meet more and more British citizens moving here for jobs, and they and the 100,000s of others who have flocked to our shores over the past 30 years are of course more than welcome.
”The English have never forgiven Ireland for leaving the Empire” Really? what evidence do you have for this?
Peter O'Dwyer
1 year ago
What a typical pathetic load of misanthropic, jingoistic, anti-Irish Paddywhackery.
The English have never forgiven Ireland for leaving the Empire and building a new polity with an ultra modern, high-tech, high income economy in Europe and the world, where our “betters” didn’t automatically look down on us … and expect us to “know our place”.
In 1922 95% of all Irish exports went to the UK in live cattle, grain, beer and biscuits!
100 years later, the UK isn’t even our 4th biggest trading partner.
Ireland is a world leading exporter in pharmaceuticals, (9 out of the world’s top 10 pharma companies manufacture here), and home to the non-US HQs of just about every internet and hi-tech. company you have ever heard of, employing young graduates from 150 countries.
This is not even to consider the four multi-billion dollar FABs that Intel has in Ireland manufacturing the most modern computer chips, and individually employing over 10,000 people.
If Joe Biden feels welcome in Ireland, as has practically every US President since JFK, including Barack Obama, that says a lot more about Ireland, than it does about Britain.
You can whine about the loss of Empire all you want, but, believe it or not, Britain’s industrial base has been in decline since the start of the 20th Century.
Every day, we meet more and more British citizens moving here for jobs, and they and the 100,000s of others who have flocked to our shores over the past 30 years are of course more than welcome.
William Brand
1 month ago
It is an idiocy for 4th generation Americans to claim to be Irish.
William Brand
1 month ago
England suffered due to the IRA in the nineties. Their best move would have been to give North Ireland its independence. They got rid of their orther colonies, why not this one. The fact that the majority of the population did not want independence is immaterial.
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
I note he avoiding the clear link between Biden’s granddad’s departure, 1850 and the famine 1847 and death through starvation of a million Irish people who didn’t emigrate.. nor did he say grandad was one of a million and a half that were forced to emigrate or die a horrible death.
These facts may have coloured granddad’s views a little?
Exactly, well said.
At the end of the day it’s clear many English people whether because of pure snobbery, religion, ancestry, or ignorance, still look down on our Irish friends when they have never ever studied Irish history nor even been to Ireland.
In the 1840’s there was nowhere on earth with a welfare state. The first one seems to have been Prussia under von Bismark, of all the unlikely people.
In the 1840’s the USA didn’t have foodstamps, medicare or medicaid. In fact they were still tying their slaves up to the whipping post and giving them hell.
I don’t think we need lessons from the Americans in how to treat people, not after the trail of tears.
Actually in 1840 there were only 26 states and the most important among them had abolished slavery:
Rhode Island 1652
Pennsylvania 1780
Massachusetts 1783
New Hampshire 1783
New Jersey 1804
New York 1817
Connecticut 1840 .
Huge quantities of Irish food was loaded onto ships at gunpoint destined for Britain. And it was British policy that forced farms to be bequeathed to all sons that reduced the size of the holdings so much that only a potato crop could feed the people.. But I agree with you: bad as the British were and they were appalling, the Americans were even worse, and are worse than ever today!
Actually in 1840 there were only 26 states and the most important among them had abolished slavery:
Rhode Island 1652
Pennsylvania 1780
Massachusetts 1783
New Hampshire 1783
New Jersey 1804
New York 1817
Connecticut 1840 .
Huge quantities of Irish food was loaded onto ships at gunpoint destined for Britain. And it was British policy that forced farms to be bequeathed to all sons that reduced the size of the holdings so much that only a potato crop could feed the people.. But I agree with you: bad as the British were and they were appalling, the Americans were even worse, and are worse than ever today!
Exactly, well said.
At the end of the day it’s clear many English people whether because of pure snobbery, religion, ancestry, or ignorance, still look down on our Irish friends when they have never ever studied Irish history nor even been to Ireland.
In the 1840’s there was nowhere on earth with a welfare state. The first one seems to have been Prussia under von Bismark, of all the unlikely people.
In the 1840’s the USA didn’t have foodstamps, medicare or medicaid. In fact they were still tying their slaves up to the whipping post and giving them hell.
I don’t think we need lessons from the Americans in how to treat people, not after the trail of tears.
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
I note he avoiding the clear link between Biden’s granddad’s departure, 1850 and the famine 1847 and death through starvation of a million Irish people who didn’t emigrate.. nor did he say grandad was one of a million and a half that were forced to emigrate or die a horrible death.
These facts may have coloured granddad’s views a little?
The mission of Unherd was to push back against the herd mentality, or so I read in its blurb. But an article on Ireland and the Irish brings the usual racist herd out in force I see.
O do stop being such a frightful bore!
Surely even you can do better than that?
Micheal MacGabhann
1 year ago
The mission of Unherd was to push back against the herd mentality, or so I read in its blurb. But an article on Ireland and the Irish brings the usual racist herd out in force I see.
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Do I detect a modicum of jealousy?
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Do I detect a modicum of jealousy?
j watson
1 year ago
‘If enough people believe they are Irish-American, then Irish America exists not only in theory but in practice’
Yep it may all be ‘plastic paddy’ nonsense to some but it’s also realpolitik to be smart and aware of it. So when you step clumsily and unthinking into Irish politics, as the British Govt did with Brexit, you can’t claim it’s a surprise a sizeable body politic in the US thinks you’ve been silly and reinforced an historical perfidious Albion stereotype.
j watson
1 year ago
‘If enough people believe they are Irish-American, then Irish America exists not only in theory but in practice’
Yep it may all be ‘plastic paddy’ nonsense to some but it’s also realpolitik to be smart and aware of it. So when you step clumsily and unthinking into Irish politics, as the British Govt did with Brexit, you can’t claim it’s a surprise a sizeable body politic in the US thinks you’ve been silly and reinforced an historical perfidious Albion stereotype.
Frank McCusker
1 year ago
So much British insecurity on display about Biden’s visit. Grow up.
So much British insecurity on display about Biden’s visit. Grow up.
Micheal MacGabhann
1 year ago
What’s the obsession with Biden by the British media? NI barely gets mentioned on a bad day in Britain let alone a good day: you’d have to point out its location to most folk on the “mainland”. Methinks some folk are in a bit if a huff when it comes the country that has bailed them out several times.
I think you’re mistaken about that! There’s 22 Tory MPs, Nigel Farrage and Hopeless Stan here! They don’t all support NI mind! In fact they probably cancel each other out. So yes, maybe you’re right!
I think you’re mistaken about that! There’s 22 Tory MPs, Nigel Farrage and Hopeless Stan here! They don’t all support NI mind! In fact they probably cancel each other out. So yes, maybe you’re right!
Sorry? Who is bailing out whom?
The UK was paying for the weapons the US sent us to fight WW2 with until 2006. The UK is still paying into the EU, and will be for several more years.
Shh, they hate it when you tell ’em that! Next you’ll be saying the Russians really won WW2! Oh, they did, did they? I think the score was 23 million to 4 million was it?
Sorry? Who is bailing out whom?
The UK was paying for the weapons the US sent us to fight WW2 with until 2006. The UK is still paying into the EU, and will be for several more years.
Shh, they hate it when you tell ’em that! Next you’ll be saying the Russians really won WW2! Oh, they did, did they? I think the score was 23 million to 4 million was it?
Could it possibly be that that Biden is a retard ?
Could it possibly be that Biden is also suffering from dementia ?
Micheal MacGabhann
1 year ago
What’s the obsession with Biden by the British media? NI barely gets mentioned on a bad day in Britain let alone a good day: you’d have to point out its location to most folk on the “mainland”. Methinks some folk are in a bit if a huff when it comes the country that has bailed them out several times.
“Oirish” Joe, steeped in dreamy emerald-green nostalgia, badly needs a history and geography lesson, but given his supposedly deep Irish roots he no doubt thinks he already knows it all – and thus blunders into the fray, insulting allies, trying to exert pressure over the UK/EU’s Irish border negotiations and talking about the GFA as though the DUP were not a part of it.
His total lack of understanding is only likely to embolden Republicans and EU negotiators against the UK Govt and Unionists, once again turning the border into a potential flashpoint for trouble.
Biden’s attitude towards Britain has been clear over his long – far too long – career. But you’d imagine, even in his addled state, he’d go to the trouble of learning the name of the leader of his nation’s most stalwart ally. But no, Joe publicly congratulated “Rashid Sanook” on becoming PM.
Rishi would have won my vote in perpetuity if, in response, he’d thanked President Jim Bowen for his kind words.
His latest gaffe was to congratulate the Irish Rugby team for flattening The Black and Tans – the man is a total liability, yet still gets an armchair ride from the media. Almost as much as previous Oirish democrats like Barragh O’Bamma!
Jealousy exudes from your words like yellaman puke.. get over it!
Jealousy? Really? That’s what you read into my comment? Please explain.
Being called Paddy, and having lived for a while in the US (which I loved), I am well aware of the huge proportion of Americans who claim kinship to the ‘Old country’. However, you quickly realise that most Americans’ understanding of Ireland is one of whimsy and make-believe.
Most Americans seem to conjure an Ireland trapped in a time-warp, imagining the preferred mode of transport is a donkey cart. They completely overlook Ulster’s history, its politics and the depth of the sectarian divide, and thus see the IRA as romantic freedom fighters, pluckily challenging English Redcoats, set in some shamrock-bestrewn, buccolic Irish landscape of their imagination. This ignorance and faux-nostalgia has real-world consequences.
Even in the 1990s you could find NORAID collection buckets in “Irish” bars in most US cities.
It was only after 9/11 that most Americans woke up to the idea that funding terrorists (even if you romantically called them “Freedom Fighters”) actually caused death and misery – and the donations fell to a trickle.
Biden has a long history of associating himself with the Republican cause – not out of any desire to see a united Ireland, or due to any real conviction, but simply because it played well with those of his Pennsylvania base who claimed Oirish heritage.
Jealousy? Really? That’s what you read into my comment? Please explain.
Being called Paddy, and having lived for a while in the US (which I loved), I am well aware of the huge proportion of Americans who claim kinship to the ‘Old country’. However, you quickly realise that most Americans’ understanding of Ireland is one of whimsy and make-believe.
Most Americans seem to conjure an Ireland trapped in a time-warp, imagining the preferred mode of transport is a donkey cart. They completely overlook Ulster’s history, its politics and the depth of the sectarian divide, and thus see the IRA as romantic freedom fighters, pluckily challenging English Redcoats, set in some shamrock-bestrewn, buccolic Irish landscape of their imagination. This ignorance and faux-nostalgia has real-world consequences.
Even in the 1990s you could find NORAID collection buckets in “Irish” bars in most US cities.
It was only after 9/11 that most Americans woke up to the idea that funding terrorists (even if you romantically called them “Freedom Fighters”) actually caused death and misery – and the donations fell to a trickle.
Biden has a long history of associating himself with the Republican cause – not out of any desire to see a united Ireland, or due to any real conviction, but simply because it played well with those of his Pennsylvania base who claimed Oirish heritage.
Surely in the name of fair play (what a fantastic English/British virtue) you should have pointed out that the Brexiters in position of powers were incompetent and they never had a realistic plan about Brexit (including Northern Ireland). No?!
I would agree that many post-Brexit plans were somewhat nebulous – and often over-optimistic. But actually I wouldn’t include the Irish border issue in that.
The Irish border should never have been an issue in the negotiations at all. It became the chosen battleground for the EU to prove the impossibility of Brexit. Our troubled history with Ireland lent itself perfectly to casting the UK in a poor light if they didn’t give ground when threatened with risking the hard won peace of the GFA.
The sticking point was the threat from the EU and Mr Varadkar. Yet the threat was a chimera. A phantom. It was leverage, pure and simple, and UK Remainers seized on it as the intractable impasse that proved Brexit was impossible.
As David Trimble noted: “It is not true that Brexit in any way threatens the peace process. There is nothing in the Good Friday Agreement which even touches on the normal conduct of business between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Leaving the EU does not affect the agreement because the EU had nothing to do with it. “
Lord Trimble was one of the architects of the GFA, unlike Mr Blair and the various EU Bureaucrats who merely turned up for the photo-op signing. He actually knew what he was talking about – rather than those who used it as a slogan.
The reasons it became an issue were political not practical. It was all about leverage – and nothing more.
It is a matter of record that after the 2016 referendum Taoiseach Enda Kenny convened a joint committee of ROI and UK civil servants to resolve any border related issues. It was only after the arch EU supplicant Leo Varadkar became Taoiseach that the issue arose as he fell in with Brussels plan to use it as leverage in negotiations. It didn’t go unnoticed at the time, as senior Irish diplomat noted “This emotive issue has been used as a weapon by those wanting to thwart Brexit — not least Michel Barnier. But Mr Varadkar, too, has pursued a high-risk strategy which could backfire badly, given that Britain is vital to Irish economic interests.”
What could have threatened the GFA was erecting manned customs posts along the border. Yet NO ONE was advocating that. The WTO adjudicated there was nothing in its rules that would force the UK, the ROI or EU to erect a hard border after Brexit. The UK Govt categorically said it would not do so. The ROI categorically said it would not do so. The EU categorically said it would not do so.. The media talked of a “hard border” as though a new Berlin Wall were about to be erected! This idea that an ‘open border’ meant ‘no border’ was a misreading of the argument.
Certain BBC journalists and pundits went on about it as though there was no (pre-Brexit) border between ROI and NI. The UK and ROI have different currencies, different tax rates, VAT, excise duties, different laws and legal systems.
There was always a border – one which Customs authorities managed by intelligence-led policing of freight, which could have continued after Brexit. Both the head of the UK customs and Irish customs said they could have operated without any customs posts but the issue since became heavily politicised – to no-one’s benefit.
David Davis’s team were planning to negotiate a Canada ++ style FTA – that was also the only offer that the EU themselves had countenanced – Had Theresa May and Olly Robbins not ceded the timetable to Barnier and indicated their own weakness, we might have got further.
Had we gone along with a Canada style deal the EU’s stated position was that “In view of the unique circumstances on the island of Ireland, flexible and imaginative solutions will be required, including with the aim of avoiding a hard border, while respecting the integrity of the Union legal order. In this context, the Union should also recognise existing bilateral agreements and arrangements between the United Kingdom and Ireland which are compatible with EU law.”
At the outset the preferred solution was for a bilateral agreement to be thrashed out between UK and ROI, with the EU giving assent once negotiated. (Despite what nay-sayers insist it was indeed possible to do so. ) If they actually read the damn treaties they’d see that “Only the European Union may legislate and adopt legally binding acts concerning areas within its exclusive competence. EU member states may only do so themselves if empowered by the European Union. Accordingly, it falls to the European Union to decide whether to empower member states to conclude international treaties in fields of exclusive EU competence. “
If a bi-lateral agreement was reached between UK and Dublin then all Brussels would have to do was give it the nod and the issue could have been resolved without erecting a hard, physical border.
All it required was goodwill and a genuine wish to see the matter resolved in a mutually beneficial way.
However, it proved the sticking point that it became because the EU Commission charged M Barnier with the task of using the issue as leverage. To no one’s advantage. Indeed, the endless comments from Remain zealots about Brexit causing a return to the Troubles was fuelling the fire and potentially turning that threat into reality.
The bad faith was not coming the UK Govt at all – they were acting on instruction from the electorate to leave the EU and were abiding by all the rules laid out in treaties for doing so. It was the EU who were using the idea of peace in Ireland as a bargaining chip – yet you seem to support them doing so, simply because you don’t like the idea of Brexit.
I would agree that many post-Brexit plans were somewhat nebulous – and often over-optimistic. But actually I wouldn’t include the Irish border issue in that.
The Irish border should never have been an issue in the negotiations at all. It became the chosen battleground for the EU to prove the impossibility of Brexit. Our troubled history with Ireland lent itself perfectly to casting the UK in a poor light if they didn’t give ground when threatened with risking the hard won peace of the GFA.
The sticking point was the threat from the EU and Mr Varadkar. Yet the threat was a chimera. A phantom. It was leverage, pure and simple, and UK Remainers seized on it as the intractable impasse that proved Brexit was impossible.
As David Trimble noted: “It is not true that Brexit in any way threatens the peace process. There is nothing in the Good Friday Agreement which even touches on the normal conduct of business between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Leaving the EU does not affect the agreement because the EU had nothing to do with it. “
Lord Trimble was one of the architects of the GFA, unlike Mr Blair and the various EU Bureaucrats who merely turned up for the photo-op signing. He actually knew what he was talking about – rather than those who used it as a slogan.
The reasons it became an issue were political not practical. It was all about leverage – and nothing more.
It is a matter of record that after the 2016 referendum Taoiseach Enda Kenny convened a joint committee of ROI and UK civil servants to resolve any border related issues. It was only after the arch EU supplicant Leo Varadkar became Taoiseach that the issue arose as he fell in with Brussels plan to use it as leverage in negotiations. It didn’t go unnoticed at the time, as senior Irish diplomat noted “This emotive issue has been used as a weapon by those wanting to thwart Brexit — not least Michel Barnier. But Mr Varadkar, too, has pursued a high-risk strategy which could backfire badly, given that Britain is vital to Irish economic interests.”
What could have threatened the GFA was erecting manned customs posts along the border. Yet NO ONE was advocating that. The WTO adjudicated there was nothing in its rules that would force the UK, the ROI or EU to erect a hard border after Brexit. The UK Govt categorically said it would not do so. The ROI categorically said it would not do so. The EU categorically said it would not do so.. The media talked of a “hard border” as though a new Berlin Wall were about to be erected! This idea that an ‘open border’ meant ‘no border’ was a misreading of the argument.
Certain BBC journalists and pundits went on about it as though there was no (pre-Brexit) border between ROI and NI. The UK and ROI have different currencies, different tax rates, VAT, excise duties, different laws and legal systems.
There was always a border – one which Customs authorities managed by intelligence-led policing of freight, which could have continued after Brexit. Both the head of the UK customs and Irish customs said they could have operated without any customs posts but the issue since became heavily politicised – to no-one’s benefit.
David Davis’s team were planning to negotiate a Canada ++ style FTA – that was also the only offer that the EU themselves had countenanced – Had Theresa May and Olly Robbins not ceded the timetable to Barnier and indicated their own weakness, we might have got further.
Had we gone along with a Canada style deal the EU’s stated position was that “In view of the unique circumstances on the island of Ireland, flexible and imaginative solutions will be required, including with the aim of avoiding a hard border, while respecting the integrity of the Union legal order. In this context, the Union should also recognise existing bilateral agreements and arrangements between the United Kingdom and Ireland which are compatible with EU law.”
At the outset the preferred solution was for a bilateral agreement to be thrashed out between UK and ROI, with the EU giving assent once negotiated. (Despite what nay-sayers insist it was indeed possible to do so. ) If they actually read the damn treaties they’d see that “Only the European Union may legislate and adopt legally binding acts concerning areas within its exclusive competence. EU member states may only do so themselves if empowered by the European Union. Accordingly, it falls to the European Union to decide whether to empower member states to conclude international treaties in fields of exclusive EU competence. “
If a bi-lateral agreement was reached between UK and Dublin then all Brussels would have to do was give it the nod and the issue could have been resolved without erecting a hard, physical border.
All it required was goodwill and a genuine wish to see the matter resolved in a mutually beneficial way.
However, it proved the sticking point that it became because the EU Commission charged M Barnier with the task of using the issue as leverage. To no one’s advantage. Indeed, the endless comments from Remain zealots about Brexit causing a return to the Troubles was fuelling the fire and potentially turning that threat into reality.
The bad faith was not coming the UK Govt at all – they were acting on instruction from the electorate to leave the EU and were abiding by all the rules laid out in treaties for doing so. It was the EU who were using the idea of peace in Ireland as a bargaining chip – yet you seem to support them doing so, simply because you don’t like the idea of Brexit.
That’s funny, and I’m a democrat. Indeed listening to Biden is cringeworthy and I just can’t do it. It’s not just what he says but how he says it. That voice, jeez! And I worry when he walks, or shuffles. But what’s to be done for dems? I long for an alternative to Biden, but politics being what they are in America only a person with billions of dollars can win, and that narrows the field. America so desperately needs, but probably doesn’t want, a visionary leader.
Jealousy exudes from your words like yellaman puke.. get over it!
Surely in the name of fair play (what a fantastic English/British virtue) you should have pointed out that the Brexiters in position of powers were incompetent and they never had a realistic plan about Brexit (including Northern Ireland). No?!
That’s funny, and I’m a democrat. Indeed listening to Biden is cringeworthy and I just can’t do it. It’s not just what he says but how he says it. That voice, jeez! And I worry when he walks, or shuffles. But what’s to be done for dems? I long for an alternative to Biden, but politics being what they are in America only a person with billions of dollars can win, and that narrows the field. America so desperately needs, but probably doesn’t want, a visionary leader.
“Oirish” Joe, steeped in dreamy emerald-green nostalgia, badly needs a history and geography lesson, but given his supposedly deep Irish roots he no doubt thinks he already knows it all – and thus blunders into the fray, insulting allies, trying to exert pressure over the UK/EU’s Irish border negotiations and talking about the GFA as though the DUP were not a part of it.
His total lack of understanding is only likely to embolden Republicans and EU negotiators against the UK Govt and Unionists, once again turning the border into a potential flashpoint for trouble.
Biden’s attitude towards Britain has been clear over his long – far too long – career. But you’d imagine, even in his addled state, he’d go to the trouble of learning the name of the leader of his nation’s most stalwart ally. But no, Joe publicly congratulated “Rashid Sanook” on becoming PM.
Rishi would have won my vote in perpetuity if, in response, he’d thanked President Jim Bowen for his kind words.
His latest gaffe was to congratulate the Irish Rugby team for flattening The Black and Tans – the man is a total liability, yet still gets an armchair ride from the media. Almost as much as previous Oirish democrats like Barragh O’Bamma!
This powerful “idea” of the homeland is not exclusive to Americans with Irish heritage, as I prefer to call them.
I’ve been living abroad now for 20 years and Britain has changed unimaginably in that time – it is no longer the country I left in 2004. Yet I still feel very British and feel the need to protect and sustain that “home” identity while living (quite happily) in a foreign culture.
You do end up playing up to certain stereotypes and over-egging the pudding: I find myself joking about having a “stiff upper lip” etc. which I don’t think I ever did while I lived in the UK. You kind of become a parody of yourself.
So it is with Irish Americans – this constant straining to cleave to an old identity based in an Ireland that has long since ceased to exist makes them seem absurd. If this group wasn’t quite so powerful on the world stage then we’d just laugh and think it quaint. As it is, I find it worrying that a group with such romantic notions quite divorced from 21st century reality has so much influence.
I recognise this entirely. During my ten years in South Africa I learned the words to Land of Hope and Glory, which was occasionally required at particularly alcohol fuelled rugby club do’s.
But we were both raised in the U.K. What do we make of 3rd generation immigrants, with strong regional British accents, supporting India or Pakistan at cricket matches? How will those identifies play out in the years to come?
It’s a good question. Identity is an incredibly powerful thing. Moreover, it is the most personal of all decisions: laws govern citizenship, but they cannot touch a felt identity.
Connecting to and being proud of your heritage and identity are absolutely fine…but it can go too far. The limit for me is when this foreign identity starts to spill out and influence your public and political behaviour. Which is why I look at Biden & co. with a very critical eye.
A little while ago, there were problems with Turks and Kurds just down the road from me. The Kurds were demonstrating about something or other and there was a confrontation with a number of Turks which got violent. A good number of those involved were Austrian citizens. That is not acceptable. Fine if you are privately involved in conflicts in the “home” country but it shouldn’t then be fought out on the streets of Vienna, costing us millions of € in taxpayer’s money to pay for police presence.
It’s a sticky question: the right to demonstrate is a basic right, and the state only has limited options for giving Austro-Turks a rap on the wrists for being too involved in non-Austrian issues (thus demonstrating the weakness of their bond to their state of citizenship). As I said, the state cannot steer identity. As societies get more diverse and multicultural, there is going to be a lot more of these clashes and you need to find answers on how to deal with them.
But tbh I think this is getting a bit far away from the topic of the article.
If it’s inappropriate for Austrians to involve themselves in Kurd v Turk violence at a cost of millions, wtf is the UK getting involved in a Russian v Ukraine war, costing not millions but billions??
What an utterly ridiculous contribution. The war between Russia and Ukraine is our war – it is a conflict between democracy and tyranny which will define the future of Europe for a long time to come. It is also a war between right and wrong.
Sorry, but that’s complete tosh. It’s a border dispute between two utterly corrupt eastern European states, neiher of which are democratic. And getting back to Biden, the subject of this article, he and his family have been involved in the corrupt machinations in Ukraine for years now. But you don’t want to know anything about that, do you.
And before anyone acuses me of being a Russian bot, let me just say that Putin is also a disgusting piece of authoritarian trash, in power far too long because of powerful, one-sided media organisations, police forces working solely on his behalf, and rigged elections … oh wait, that reminds me of something.
Sorry, but that’s complete tosh. It’s a border dispute between two utterly corrupt eastern European states, neiher of which are democratic. And getting back to Biden, the subject of this article, he and his family have been involved in the corrupt machinations in Ukraine for years now. But you don’t want to know anything about that, do you.
And before anyone acuses me of being a Russian bot, let me just say that Putin is also a disgusting piece of authoritarian trash, in power far too long because of powerful, one-sided media organisations, police forces working solely on his behalf, and rigged elections … oh wait, that reminds me of something.
It cost the UK a great deal to get involved in a war between Germany and Poland. It was the right thing to do.
Was the rise of Hitler and the Second World War the only thing you learned about in school history lessons?
There have been any number of less clear-cut conflicts, don’t you know. You might start doing a little research on Ukraine in WW2, keywords “Bandera” and “Babi Yar”. Go on, I dare you to look those things up.
Was the rise of Hitler and the Second World War the only thing you learned about in school history lessons?
There have been any number of less clear-cut conflicts, don’t you know. You might start doing a little research on Ukraine in WW2, keywords “Bandera” and “Babi Yar”. Go on, I dare you to look those things up.
What an utterly ridiculous contribution. The war between Russia and Ukraine is our war – it is a conflict between democracy and tyranny which will define the future of Europe for a long time to come. It is also a war between right and wrong.
It cost the UK a great deal to get involved in a war between Germany and Poland. It was the right thing to do.
If it’s inappropriate for Austrians to involve themselves in Kurd v Turk violence at a cost of millions, wtf is the UK getting involved in a Russian v Ukraine war, costing not millions but billions??
It’s a good question. Identity is an incredibly powerful thing. Moreover, it is the most personal of all decisions: laws govern citizenship, but they cannot touch a felt identity.
Connecting to and being proud of your heritage and identity are absolutely fine…but it can go too far. The limit for me is when this foreign identity starts to spill out and influence your public and political behaviour. Which is why I look at Biden & co. with a very critical eye.
A little while ago, there were problems with Turks and Kurds just down the road from me. The Kurds were demonstrating about something or other and there was a confrontation with a number of Turks which got violent. A good number of those involved were Austrian citizens. That is not acceptable. Fine if you are privately involved in conflicts in the “home” country but it shouldn’t then be fought out on the streets of Vienna, costing us millions of € in taxpayer’s money to pay for police presence.
It’s a sticky question: the right to demonstrate is a basic right, and the state only has limited options for giving Austro-Turks a rap on the wrists for being too involved in non-Austrian issues (thus demonstrating the weakness of their bond to their state of citizenship). As I said, the state cannot steer identity. As societies get more diverse and multicultural, there is going to be a lot more of these clashes and you need to find answers on how to deal with them.
But tbh I think this is getting a bit far away from the topic of the article.
To me, it’s essentially an inability for them to differentiate between ethnic background and cultural background that is very distinctly American, and causes so many problems when they insist on trying to transfer concepts borne of their culture to others.
Ethnically, I am slightly more Irish than Biden, although it comes to me via a weird mixture of Scottish, irish and Welsh ancestry, and I have an even weirder mixture of bloodlines on the other side of the family (which I won’t waste time detailing here), yet culturally I am English, in spite of being partly raised by my Scottish grandmother.
I might have the gift of a little more Scottish folklore and history woven through the stories my grandmother told me, but I have lived my whole life in England, I was baptised in an English Church, went through an English schooling system, the traditions and quirks and mannerisms I learned were English, my natural accent is perfectly typical mixture of the two locations I’ve spent the majority of my life.
The ethnic details and family history I have might be intellectually interesting to me, and might help me to understand any particular medical risks I might have, but it is just a list of interesting facts for the most part, not a massive part of my identity to be displayed wherever I go, or added as a prefix or suffix to my British nationality. I am British, I am not Irish-Scottish-Welsh-Italian-Arabic-British, or whatever other ethnic groups my distant relatives want to add to such a list, the British part of things is far more important than the results of an ancestry DNA test.
the words cultural and American do not fit in the same sentence… Culture is to America what Polar Bears are to the Kalahari desert.
Hmmm… If you’re British, I’d be a little careful about saying things like that. After all, can anyone name another country, where for 40 years the biggest selling newspaper, featured on page 3..?
‘The Guardian’ has had a far more pernicious influence on British culture that the ‘tits & bums’ of The Sun, it must be said.
Well said! I shall steal that remark.
Well said! I shall steal that remark.
‘The Guardian’ has had a far more pernicious influence on British culture that the ‘tits & bums’ of The Sun, it must be said.
My best friend is American, and we’ve had many discussions about American and British culture over the years. I certainly don’t like certain aspects of their culture and consider them to be superficial, or weird or stupid, and she feels the same about some aspects of British culture (such as our indifference about how terrible our coffee is, and our ability to turn politeness into passive aggressive social weaponry).
We also both love things about these cultures, and have essentially appropriated them for ourselves (she now can’t live without a proper kettle in her house, and gets tea sent over from here so she can get her fix, I have a proper coffee maker, and have a whole notebook stuffed with her family recipes).
Everywhere has a culture of some sort, and they all have silly aspects to them (one of my German friends recently expressed frustration with how British politeness inhibits how well he learns English, because British people often consider it impolite to correct his errors in usage), and most of them also have some great aspects to them (I love German efficiency, and directness, for example).
“.. our ability to turn politeness into passive aggressive social weaponry.”
I totally understand why that frustrates foreigners. So many Brits abroad think that this passive aggressive behaviour dressed as politeness is going to get their message across, but no one gets it apart from us. The British psyche really is a weird place…and often weird without being wonderful.
On the other hand politeness allows us to deal in a civil way,with people we really don’t like..
On the other hand politeness allows us to deal in a civil way,with people we really don’t like..
As far as your German friend is concerned I think it’s partly politeness but it’s also because so many people speak English as a second language that we are used to hearing our native language butchered and simply let it pass over us.
Or, it’s simply a practical choice. I often converse with German colleagues who, for the most part, speak very good English, in the sense they make themselves perfectly well understood. In a business conversation I’m interested in the message, not all the precise words or phrases used to deliver it. Striving to correct every single little grammatical error or unconventional choice of vocabulary just seems unnecessary. Their English is a lot better than my German, anyway … and it’s not like all English people speak perfect English the whole time!
Funny.
Or, it’s simply a practical choice. I often converse with German colleagues who, for the most part, speak very good English, in the sense they make themselves perfectly well understood. In a business conversation I’m interested in the message, not all the precise words or phrases used to deliver it. Striving to correct every single little grammatical error or unconventional choice of vocabulary just seems unnecessary. Their English is a lot better than my German, anyway … and it’s not like all English people speak perfect English the whole time!
Funny.
Shur yous are all in da ha’penny place compared to Irish culture.. shur didn’t we improve your English culture no end with Goldsmith, Swift, Shaw, Yeats, Joyce and Becket! I know ye had Shakespeare but shur dat was ages ago!
Brilliant . You forgot Myles Na Gopaleen.
Mind you we should probably keep bit quiet about Charles Haughey – shure Trump was only an amateur compared to Charlie.
To be honest I found Ulysses a bit a drag me self
Brilliant . You forgot Myles Na Gopaleen.
Mind you we should probably keep bit quiet about Charles Haughey – shure Trump was only an amateur compared to Charlie.
To be honest I found Ulysses a bit a drag me self
An American telling the rest of the world how to make (atrocious) coffee. Tell me you are joking – surely!
I can honestly say that there is probably no more thoroughly disgusting hot beverage than the coffee I have been given at breakfast in American hotels.
Exactlly!! And never order tea in America unless it”s in an expensive place, otherwise it’s a teabag in warm water in a mug.
I can honestly say that there is probably no more thoroughly disgusting hot beverage than the coffee I have been given at breakfast in American hotels.
Exactlly!! And never order tea in America unless it”s in an expensive place, otherwise it’s a teabag in warm water in a mug.
As I do not have nor want any German friends, I cannot possibly comment.
Then don’t.
And yet you have commented. To be fair, your comment does add immeasurably to the conversation.
Then don’t.
And yet you have commented. To be fair, your comment does add immeasurably to the conversation.
“.. our ability to turn politeness into passive aggressive social weaponry.”
I totally understand why that frustrates foreigners. So many Brits abroad think that this passive aggressive behaviour dressed as politeness is going to get their message across, but no one gets it apart from us. The British psyche really is a weird place…and often weird without being wonderful.
As far as your German friend is concerned I think it’s partly politeness but it’s also because so many people speak English as a second language that we are used to hearing our native language butchered and simply let it pass over us.
Shur yous are all in da ha’penny place compared to Irish culture.. shur didn’t we improve your English culture no end with Goldsmith, Swift, Shaw, Yeats, Joyce and Becket! I know ye had Shakespeare but shur dat was ages ago!
An American telling the rest of the world how to make (atrocious) coffee. Tell me you are joking – surely!
As I do not have nor want any German friends, I cannot possibly comment.
Everyone has culture – including hard to believe – USA! Cowboy line dancing is not the Austrian Waltz but it surely is better than Morris Dancing.
Happy to provide a long list of good (not great like Tolstoy or Balzac) American writers. Some of them might even be considered semi-great writers (Hemingway, Melville).
There are plenty of painters, thinkers, musicians etc.
Unless you mean high culture but that is a Continental thing. It is certainly not a British (which explains why US doesn’t have high culture).
Stormy Daniels.. high priestess of American culture, along with suave, sophisticated, eloquent, intellectual, Donald T. Rump.
Exactly, the music derived from black culture is American culture for which we are all the richer.
Stormy Daniels.. high priestess of American culture, along with suave, sophisticated, eloquent, intellectual, Donald T. Rump.
Exactly, the music derived from black culture is American culture for which we are all the richer.
So what is British culture? There isn’t any… There might have been at one time but not in my ken or that of my parents or even my grandparents. We are British but we are also Scottish. If asked I am Scottish then British. I don’t identify with most of the culture that is supposed to be British including the monarchy.
American friends do have culture, which depends on which state they come from. A bit like which country you come from in the UK! Then there is the culture of First Nation people or African-Americans or Hispanic-Americans, Jewish-Americans…All my friends identify as American first and something else second. Bit different to people who live in the UK!
Keep taking the medication…
Keep taking the medication…
Untrue. Americana is not to be sniffed at.
I think America has provided most of the positive cultural influences for the world in the last 100 years – far more so than any other nation. Whether Steinbeck, F Scott Fitzgerald , Dylan, Jazz, Andy Warhol , the great National Parks devoid of all commercial advertising, the Creole cooking of the southern States, the Hubble telescope, the Apollo landings, the general optimism of Americans has contributed hugely to making the world a better place.
Yes of course we like to remember the stuff the U.S. gets wrong : but compare and contrast how culturally poorer we’d be without the USA. I live in the UK, and love it too, but what have we , or anyone else done that’s better recently.?
PS: I am not Americn.
Well said.
Well said.
It does have a culture albeit not a desirable one.
Your posting tells us far more about your culture – or lack of it – than you intended.
Hmmm… If you’re British, I’d be a little careful about saying things like that. After all, can anyone name another country, where for 40 years the biggest selling newspaper, featured on page 3..?
My best friend is American, and we’ve had many discussions about American and British culture over the years. I certainly don’t like certain aspects of their culture and consider them to be superficial, or weird or stupid, and she feels the same about some aspects of British culture (such as our indifference about how terrible our coffee is, and our ability to turn politeness into passive aggressive social weaponry).
We also both love things about these cultures, and have essentially appropriated them for ourselves (she now can’t live without a proper kettle in her house, and gets tea sent over from here so she can get her fix, I have a proper coffee maker, and have a whole notebook stuffed with her family recipes).
Everywhere has a culture of some sort, and they all have silly aspects to them (one of my German friends recently expressed frustration with how British politeness inhibits how well he learns English, because British people often consider it impolite to correct his errors in usage), and most of them also have some great aspects to them (I love German efficiency, and directness, for example).
Everyone has culture – including hard to believe – USA! Cowboy line dancing is not the Austrian Waltz but it surely is better than Morris Dancing.
Happy to provide a long list of good (not great like Tolstoy or Balzac) American writers. Some of them might even be considered semi-great writers (Hemingway, Melville).
There are plenty of painters, thinkers, musicians etc.
Unless you mean high culture but that is a Continental thing. It is certainly not a British (which explains why US doesn’t have high culture).
So what is British culture? There isn’t any… There might have been at one time but not in my ken or that of my parents or even my grandparents. We are British but we are also Scottish. If asked I am Scottish then British. I don’t identify with most of the culture that is supposed to be British including the monarchy.
American friends do have culture, which depends on which state they come from. A bit like which country you come from in the UK! Then there is the culture of First Nation people or African-Americans or Hispanic-Americans, Jewish-Americans…All my friends identify as American first and something else second. Bit different to people who live in the UK!
Untrue. Americana is not to be sniffed at.
I think America has provided most of the positive cultural influences for the world in the last 100 years – far more so than any other nation. Whether Steinbeck, F Scott Fitzgerald , Dylan, Jazz, Andy Warhol , the great National Parks devoid of all commercial advertising, the Creole cooking of the southern States, the Hubble telescope, the Apollo landings, the general optimism of Americans has contributed hugely to making the world a better place.
Yes of course we like to remember the stuff the U.S. gets wrong : but compare and contrast how culturally poorer we’d be without the USA. I live in the UK, and love it too, but what have we , or anyone else done that’s better recently.?
PS: I am not Americn.
It does have a culture albeit not a desirable one.
Your posting tells us far more about your culture – or lack of it – than you intended.
the words cultural and American do not fit in the same sentence… Culture is to America what Polar Bears are to the Kalahari desert.
A former work colleague told me that he was a stalwart in all things to do with Irish culture when he worked in the Middle East, but when he came home he found had no great need or desire for the same things.
It is really odd. on some level it’s to do with making friends in a foreign place and using the old clichés about your country to entertain and break the ice…but it’s also about feeling like you have to (over-)assert and thus protect your own identity when you’re surrounded by and submerged in another one.
It is really odd. on some level it’s to do with making friends in a foreign place and using the old clichés about your country to entertain and break the ice…but it’s also about feeling like you have to (over-)assert and thus protect your own identity when you’re surrounded by and submerged in another one.
Agreed. And the line, “each life is its own story” can be said about everyone on the planet, not just the Irish.
But do you group together with other Brits, in British bars, and join British clubs and make a big feal of St George’s Day? ..and form political alliances of Brits abroad? ..’bet you dont’
Have you never lived abroad Liam of chap?
If you had you should have noticed that the place is littered with British Clubs, particularly in the Old Empire.
You should pop in sometime Paddies are always welcomed as ‘honorary’ Englishmen.
May I suggest the Muthaiga Club if you happen to be stuck in Nairobi, or perhaps the Singapore Cricket Club if out East?
I made the Club in Kuala Lumpur at the invitation of my India friend.. we were both embarrassed by a drunken Brit.. go figure as the Yanks say. I had a similar incident in Jamaica.. I’m not saying it’s typical, but those were my only two experiences..
Such behaviour is NOT unknown in the Republic as I recall.
Such behaviour is NOT unknown in the Republic as I recall.
You may as well be speaking Martian to most of the ill-read quasi literate dolts on this thread.
Would they not be full of stuffy old white geezers?
I made the Club in Kuala Lumpur at the invitation of my India friend.. we were both embarrassed by a drunken Brit.. go figure as the Yanks say. I had a similar incident in Jamaica.. I’m not saying it’s typical, but those were my only two experiences..
You may as well be speaking Martian to most of the ill-read quasi literate dolts on this thread.
Would they not be full of stuffy old white geezers?
Have you never lived abroad Liam of chap?
If you had you should have noticed that the place is littered with British Clubs, particularly in the Old Empire.
You should pop in sometime Paddies are always welcomed as ‘honorary’ Englishmen.
May I suggest the Muthaiga Club if you happen to be stuck in Nairobi, or perhaps the Singapore Cricket Club if out East?
There is a reason you left. There is a reason people move on. Humans. They adapt. They cling. But they move on. Hayek is right. Tradition is rewarded by success. That what works is what we become. Embrace the change that is successful — and don’t look back, but never forget to weave the things you inherited that are successful, … that work, into the new.
You raise an interesting observation Katherine. I wonder why we want to cling to a version of our earlier “Home” identity? Is it just so that we feel good about our earlier (younger) life -when the sky was always blue and the world was good etc. Contrarywise, we may feel more invested in our new “host” country so that we become , in my case, more British than the average Brit. Funny world.
But did that romantic, idyllic Ireland ever really exist? As a Brit living in the US I know I romanticize about my roots in the little, English Village from whence I came, many, many years ago. I watch everything I can of period piece movies and documentaries. I yearn and weep, at the same time knowing that the reality of that life was somewhat different.The pull, for me, is the beautiful countryside, the flora and fauna, the blue bell woods, my dog, the historic buildings.The longing isn’t for the people or the culture, it’s for the place.
I recognise this entirely. During my ten years in South Africa I learned the words to Land of Hope and Glory, which was occasionally required at particularly alcohol fuelled rugby club do’s.
But we were both raised in the U.K. What do we make of 3rd generation immigrants, with strong regional British accents, supporting India or Pakistan at cricket matches? How will those identifies play out in the years to come?
To me, it’s essentially an inability for them to differentiate between ethnic background and cultural background that is very distinctly American, and causes so many problems when they insist on trying to transfer concepts borne of their culture to others.
Ethnically, I am slightly more Irish than Biden, although it comes to me via a weird mixture of Scottish, irish and Welsh ancestry, and I have an even weirder mixture of bloodlines on the other side of the family (which I won’t waste time detailing here), yet culturally I am English, in spite of being partly raised by my Scottish grandmother.
I might have the gift of a little more Scottish folklore and history woven through the stories my grandmother told me, but I have lived my whole life in England, I was baptised in an English Church, went through an English schooling system, the traditions and quirks and mannerisms I learned were English, my natural accent is perfectly typical mixture of the two locations I’ve spent the majority of my life.
The ethnic details and family history I have might be intellectually interesting to me, and might help me to understand any particular medical risks I might have, but it is just a list of interesting facts for the most part, not a massive part of my identity to be displayed wherever I go, or added as a prefix or suffix to my British nationality. I am British, I am not Irish-Scottish-Welsh-Italian-Arabic-British, or whatever other ethnic groups my distant relatives want to add to such a list, the British part of things is far more important than the results of an ancestry DNA test.
A former work colleague told me that he was a stalwart in all things to do with Irish culture when he worked in the Middle East, but when he came home he found had no great need or desire for the same things.
Agreed. And the line, “each life is its own story” can be said about everyone on the planet, not just the Irish.
But do you group together with other Brits, in British bars, and join British clubs and make a big feal of St George’s Day? ..and form political alliances of Brits abroad? ..’bet you dont’
There is a reason you left. There is a reason people move on. Humans. They adapt. They cling. But they move on. Hayek is right. Tradition is rewarded by success. That what works is what we become. Embrace the change that is successful — and don’t look back, but never forget to weave the things you inherited that are successful, … that work, into the new.
You raise an interesting observation Katherine. I wonder why we want to cling to a version of our earlier “Home” identity? Is it just so that we feel good about our earlier (younger) life -when the sky was always blue and the world was good etc. Contrarywise, we may feel more invested in our new “host” country so that we become , in my case, more British than the average Brit. Funny world.
But did that romantic, idyllic Ireland ever really exist? As a Brit living in the US I know I romanticize about my roots in the little, English Village from whence I came, many, many years ago. I watch everything I can of period piece movies and documentaries. I yearn and weep, at the same time knowing that the reality of that life was somewhat different.The pull, for me, is the beautiful countryside, the flora and fauna, the blue bell woods, my dog, the historic buildings.The longing isn’t for the people or the culture, it’s for the place.
This powerful “idea” of the homeland is not exclusive to Americans with Irish heritage, as I prefer to call them.
I’ve been living abroad now for 20 years and Britain has changed unimaginably in that time – it is no longer the country I left in 2004. Yet I still feel very British and feel the need to protect and sustain that “home” identity while living (quite happily) in a foreign culture.
You do end up playing up to certain stereotypes and over-egging the pudding: I find myself joking about having a “stiff upper lip” etc. which I don’t think I ever did while I lived in the UK. You kind of become a parody of yourself.
So it is with Irish Americans – this constant straining to cleave to an old identity based in an Ireland that has long since ceased to exist makes them seem absurd. If this group wasn’t quite so powerful on the world stage then we’d just laugh and think it quaint. As it is, I find it worrying that a group with such romantic notions quite divorced from 21st century reality has so much influence.
Nice article. The first and most important thing one must understand about Biden is that he is really, really, dumb.
He was dumb before he was senile.
Yes. He was.
Nothing is worse than a dumb idiot with a lust for power.
Like Trump and DeSantos to mentioon just a few. It’s lean pickins.
Like Trump and DeSantos to mentioon just a few. It’s lean pickins.
Nothing is worse than a dumb idiot with a lust for power.
Yes. He was.
On his own, he surely makes dumb, stupid statements and decisions. However, his basic personality is cunning manipulation, bullying, cheating, lying and stealing. He may be senile now, but he is still devious and his “handlers” use his desire for power and attention to do their bidding.
He was dumb before he was senile.
On his own, he surely makes dumb, stupid statements and decisions. However, his basic personality is cunning manipulation, bullying, cheating, lying and stealing. He may be senile now, but he is still devious and his “handlers” use his desire for power and attention to do their bidding.
Nice article. The first and most important thing one must understand about Biden is that he is really, really, dumb.
I adore America and have visited regularly for over thirty years. The *only* place anyone was rude to me due to my nationality was – of course – Boston by an ‘Irish-American’, who was about as Irish as the Kurdish gentleman who cuts my hair. They would be comical were it not for the millions of dollars they sent to fund terrorism. Happily, most Americans think their cosplaying plastic Irishfolk are ridiculous too.
You damn 35 million because one was rude to you? ..that’s a bit extreme, isn’t it? I was well treated in England by 9 out of 10 people there and it never occurred to me, when abused by far more than one, to think badly of the English. Sure, don’t I put up with Charlie Stanhope here and he’s as anti-Irish as Oliver Cromwell was!
Praise indeed Sir! Praise indeed!
You’re most deserving Charlie!
You’re most deserving Charlie!
Praise indeed Sir! Praise indeed!
A memory of one of my trips to Boston in the 80’s was of Irish Americans on the streets drumming up support and $$ for the IRA. If the US govt. had applied the same reasoning as was the case with 9/11 then an invasion of Eire would have been on the cards..
You damn 35 million because one was rude to you? ..that’s a bit extreme, isn’t it? I was well treated in England by 9 out of 10 people there and it never occurred to me, when abused by far more than one, to think badly of the English. Sure, don’t I put up with Charlie Stanhope here and he’s as anti-Irish as Oliver Cromwell was!
A memory of one of my trips to Boston in the 80’s was of Irish Americans on the streets drumming up support and $$ for the IRA. If the US govt. had applied the same reasoning as was the case with 9/11 then an invasion of Eire would have been on the cards..
I adore America and have visited regularly for over thirty years. The *only* place anyone was rude to me due to my nationality was – of course – Boston by an ‘Irish-American’, who was about as Irish as the Kurdish gentleman who cuts my hair. They would be comical were it not for the millions of dollars they sent to fund terrorism. Happily, most Americans think their cosplaying plastic Irishfolk are ridiculous too.
The whole thing is just a manufactured vote-harvest isn’t it? Biden reckons (probably correctly) that all those 30 million-odd americans who think they are Irish are worth more in votes at home than what Ulster or indeed the UK thinks of his acts and comments abroad.
Biden does not think anything: his charge nurse does it for him.
Including the next ‘nappy change’.*
(*Diapers for US readers.)
Please don’t condescend to us. Everybody in the US knows that. PBS taught us.
Really!!!
I am astonished!
Really!!!
I am astonished!
Your time will come, Charles, if it hasn’t already.
And yours Ms Knight.
And yours Ms Knight.
Please don’t condescend to us. Everybody in the US knows that. PBS taught us.
Your time will come, Charles, if it hasn’t already.
Including the next ‘nappy change’.*
(*Diapers for US readers.)
So… what’s wrong with that?
Biden does not think anything: his charge nurse does it for him.
So… what’s wrong with that?
The whole thing is just a manufactured vote-harvest isn’t it? Biden reckons (probably correctly) that all those 30 million-odd americans who think they are Irish are worth more in votes at home than what Ulster or indeed the UK thinks of his acts and comments abroad.
Biden is “the most powerful man in the world”? Please. He is a walking pharmacy run by we know not who and freely admits that he shouldn’t say this or that or he’ll get in trouble, no joke. He’s also claimed to be a black Puerto Rican Jew, so the author wastes his time waxing lyrical on claims of Biden’s connection to the auld sod.
Why is this obvious fact ignored by certain members of the scribbling class? Biden is in Ireland to give the media something to do instead of being forced to report on events here in the US that go against the official propaganda.
Well at least he has made a simply brilliant job of being the stereotypical Paddy that most Englishman have long suspected.
Although his confusing of the All Blacks with the Black & Tans recently does diminish his supposed Irishness somewhat
Edit: Apologies, I see that’s already been mentioned further down the thread
Although his confusing of the All Blacks with the Black & Tans recently does diminish his supposed Irishness somewhat
Edit: Apologies, I see that’s already been mentioned further down the thread
Will you shhh, we don’t want anyone to know that!
Well at least he has made a simply brilliant job of being the stereotypical Paddy that most Englishman have long suspected.
Will you shhh, we don’t want anyone to know that!
Biden is “the most powerful man in the world”? Please. He is a walking pharmacy run by we know not who and freely admits that he shouldn’t say this or that or he’ll get in trouble, no joke. He’s also claimed to be a black Puerto Rican Jew, so the author wastes his time waxing lyrical on claims of Biden’s connection to the auld sod.
Why is this obvious fact ignored by certain members of the scribbling class? Biden is in Ireland to give the media something to do instead of being forced to report on events here in the US that go against the official propaganda.
Of course part of the issue is that Joe Biden is only half Irish anyway:
” Biden’s paternal line has been traced to stonemason William Biden, who was born in 1789 in Westbourne, England, and emigrated to Maryland in the United States by 1820″
i.e he get’s his name from someone who was an English emigrant
A bit like Barack Obama. whose mother was white but only his black roots are emphasised.
How very embarrassing for him!
Certainly not! Barak O’Bama’s white ancestors hale from Moneygall, Co Offaly! He visited there on his trip to Ireland.. The services complex there is called Barak Obama Plaza!
Biden is about as Orish as Elizabeth Warren is native American.
Because blacks in America were forced to identify as black if they only had a bit (I don’t know how much) blackness.
I wondered how come the name Biden wasn’t in Ireland. He should certainly have honored that important part.
How very embarrassing for him!
Certainly not! Barak O’Bama’s white ancestors hale from Moneygall, Co Offaly! He visited there on his trip to Ireland.. The services complex there is called Barak Obama Plaza!
Biden is about as Orish as Elizabeth Warren is native American.
Because blacks in America were forced to identify as black if they only had a bit (I don’t know how much) blackness.
I wondered how come the name Biden wasn’t in Ireland. He should certainly have honored that important part.
Of course part of the issue is that Joe Biden is only half Irish anyway:
” Biden’s paternal line has been traced to stonemason William Biden, who was born in 1789 in Westbourne, England, and emigrated to Maryland in the United States by 1820″
i.e he get’s his name from someone who was an English emigrant
A bit like Barack Obama. whose mother was white but only his black roots are emphasised.
Thank you Mr McTague for an amusing evisceration of this ridiculous ‘Kerrygold Farce’, currently being played out on the blood soaked Emerald Isle.
And who might be the instigators?
Vae Victis!
You should have fought harder, history abhors losers.
Vae Victis!
You should have fought harder, history abhors losers.
Who spilled 90% of that blood over the centuries Charlie? ..and who was the root cause the spilling of the other 10%.. but maybe we shouldn’t include the million who starved to death 3 years before Grandad emigrated? ..as I’m not sure starving people bleed?
What’s a real farce is the UK on its knees begging for American crumbs via a trade deal.. Maybe Joe is thinking of his starving grandad and is thinking: “Right so, let’s see how the English like starving for a change? ..maybe it’s in the genes Charlie? Watja tink?
As above, reply to MM.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It’s great to be a victim, is it not ?
It’s nothing to do with modern
day British people
Who in UK gov is talking up a trade deal with the US? It’s a terrible idea. It’s there way or the highway. And it’s pretty clear the only special relationship Biden wants is with Gerry Adams. Keep arms length, they’ve done enough damage to the UK banking system.
As above, reply to MM.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It’s great to be a victim, is it not ?
It’s nothing to do with modern
day British people
Who in UK gov is talking up a trade deal with the US? It’s a terrible idea. It’s there way or the highway. And it’s pretty clear the only special relationship Biden wants is with Gerry Adams. Keep arms length, they’ve done enough damage to the UK banking system.
It’s a Kerrygold farce all right, I’m not disputing that. Thankfully the place is not so soaked in blood as it used to be, however.
And who might be the instigators?
Who spilled 90% of that blood over the centuries Charlie? ..and who was the root cause the spilling of the other 10%.. but maybe we shouldn’t include the million who starved to death 3 years before Grandad emigrated? ..as I’m not sure starving people bleed?
What’s a real farce is the UK on its knees begging for American crumbs via a trade deal.. Maybe Joe is thinking of his starving grandad and is thinking: “Right so, let’s see how the English like starving for a change? ..maybe it’s in the genes Charlie? Watja tink?
It’s a Kerrygold farce all right, I’m not disputing that. Thankfully the place is not so soaked in blood as it used to be, however.
Thank you Mr McTague for an amusing evisceration of this ridiculous ‘Kerrygold Farce’, currently being played out on the blood soaked Emerald Isle.
Irish America funded the IRA in the 1970s and 80s, and now warns Britain not to do anything that would imperil the peace process. Excellent.
‘They’ did however get their comeuppance with 9/11, and have mellowed slightly since.
You have such a nice, sensitive way of putting your point across Charlie, don’t you?
Thank you Liam old chap.
Thank you Liam old chap.
That may be the most lame comment I’ve ever read on Un-heard, and that is a low bar indeed! How may people who died in the 9-11 terrorist attack to you reckon contributed to the IRA?
Exactly.
Cantor Fitzgerald?
Exactly.
Cantor Fitzgerald?
You have such a nice, sensitive way of putting your point across Charlie, don’t you?
That may be the most lame comment I’ve ever read on Un-heard, and that is a low bar indeed! How may people who died in the 9-11 terrorist attack to you reckon contributed to the IRA?
Sadly the British establishment never take any notice until violence is directed at them. Even nationwide strikes of vital industrial staff is ignored.. If the British hadn’t turned a blind eye to the endless, vicious sectarian abuse by DUP types perpetrated on the defenceless RC/Nationalist minority (now a majority) and paid attention to peaceful civil rights marches the IRA might have remained dormant in the late 1960’s.. I was there.. it was appalling what went on with B-Specials burning whole streets like the Black n Tans had done 50 years earlier..
When the state is brutal expect rebellion. You may see it yet in your own country if the Tories keep crushing ordinary British people!
As if Starmer and his bunch of retards wouldn’t do exactly the same thing.
You are spot on there Liam old chap, ‘we’ weren’t paying attention and should have intervened much earlier.
We were a little busy in Borneo and Aden but that isn’t really a valid excuse.
Funnily enough, I actually agree with you that the past abuses of the Protestants against the Catholics were overlooked because the area was deemed to be self-governing. However, I still think that there were ways of making this known to the general public on the mainland without resorting to such terrible violence. Do remember that when the British troops were first sent in it was to protect the Catholic population. And in no circumstances is killing children acceptable, no matter what your aim is, and there can be no whataboutery here; it is wrong whoever does it.
As if Starmer and his bunch of retards wouldn’t do exactly the same thing.
You are spot on there Liam old chap, ‘we’ weren’t paying attention and should have intervened much earlier.
We were a little busy in Borneo and Aden but that isn’t really a valid excuse.
Funnily enough, I actually agree with you that the past abuses of the Protestants against the Catholics were overlooked because the area was deemed to be self-governing. However, I still think that there were ways of making this known to the general public on the mainland without resorting to such terrible violence. Do remember that when the British troops were first sent in it was to protect the Catholic population. And in no circumstances is killing children acceptable, no matter what your aim is, and there can be no whataboutery here; it is wrong whoever does it.
‘They’ did however get their comeuppance with 9/11, and have mellowed slightly since.
Sadly the British establishment never take any notice until violence is directed at them. Even nationwide strikes of vital industrial staff is ignored.. If the British hadn’t turned a blind eye to the endless, vicious sectarian abuse by DUP types perpetrated on the defenceless RC/Nationalist minority (now a majority) and paid attention to peaceful civil rights marches the IRA might have remained dormant in the late 1960’s.. I was there.. it was appalling what went on with B-Specials burning whole streets like the Black n Tans had done 50 years earlier..
When the state is brutal expect rebellion. You may see it yet in your own country if the Tories keep crushing ordinary British people!
Irish America funded the IRA in the 1970s and 80s, and now warns Britain not to do anything that would imperil the peace process. Excellent.
BEST JOE BIDEN QUOTE:-
“See this tie I have, this shamrock tie? It was given to me by one of these guys right here, who’s a hell of a rugby player who beat the hell out of the Black and Tans.”
QED!
Let’s not judge, maybe he was a very old and very vicious rugby player who was out there fighting for Ireland.
Let’s not judge, maybe he was a very old and very vicious rugby player who was out there fighting for Ireland.
BEST JOE BIDEN QUOTE:-
“See this tie I have, this shamrock tie? It was given to me by one of these guys right here, who’s a hell of a rugby player who beat the hell out of the Black and Tans.”
QED!
Everyone so far has looked at this from the American perspective. I’ll look at it from the Irish perspective. Ever since America became a prominent world power in the 1890s, Irish politicians have courted Irish-American public opinion. They wanted a powerful ‘big brother’ handy, when dealing with the English. Kennedy’s election was an almighty sugar rush, and they have not looked back since.
Despite assiduous cultivation by the Irish (not just successive Irish governments), those links are fading (https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2023/04/11/biden-visit-marks-end-of-era-as-passing-time-has-thinned-out-irish-american-blood/).
Why do the Irish bother? Because they still have to deal with us, from a position of strategic weakness. Ireland still depends on Britain for her defence (https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/secret-defence-pact-allowing-raf-jets-inirish-airspace-undermines-our-neutrality-says-td-berry-40526069.html). So the Irish depend on us to protect them militarily from the R*****ns, and on Brussels and Washington to protect them politically from us.
D’you know I can’t remember the last time Russia attacked Ireland? ..nor can I remember ever reading about it in the history books! The only people who ever attacked us were the Norse and the Anglo-Norman-English and that was 1,300 and 700 years ago resp. I think we’re safe enough, thanks all the same.
What political mischief do you British have in mind for us? Sanctions? I note you made no mention at all of the United Nations? We’re well in with those guys y’know! LOL.
D’you know I can’t remember the last time Russia attacked Ireland? ..nor can I remember ever reading about it in the history books! The only people who ever attacked us were the Norse and the Anglo-Norman-English and that was 1,300 and 700 years ago resp. I think we’re safe enough, thanks all the same.
What political mischief do you British have in mind for us? Sanctions? I note you made no mention at all of the United Nations? We’re well in with those guys y’know! LOL.
Everyone so far has looked at this from the American perspective. I’ll look at it from the Irish perspective. Ever since America became a prominent world power in the 1890s, Irish politicians have courted Irish-American public opinion. They wanted a powerful ‘big brother’ handy, when dealing with the English. Kennedy’s election was an almighty sugar rush, and they have not looked back since.
Despite assiduous cultivation by the Irish (not just successive Irish governments), those links are fading (https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2023/04/11/biden-visit-marks-end-of-era-as-passing-time-has-thinned-out-irish-american-blood/).
Why do the Irish bother? Because they still have to deal with us, from a position of strategic weakness. Ireland still depends on Britain for her defence (https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/secret-defence-pact-allowing-raf-jets-inirish-airspace-undermines-our-neutrality-says-td-berry-40526069.html). So the Irish depend on us to protect them militarily from the R*****ns, and on Brussels and Washington to protect them politically from us.
Biden believes that West Ham United are a Palestinian football side, ” The Hamas”, but let’s confuse the old git more and tell him that AC Milan is actually The Athletic and Cricket Club of Milan, not Milano, and Genoa not Genova, is the English name for the Italian Genova Cricket club?
Now even I’m confused, as indeed you seem to be yourself!
no, merely accurate.
no, merely accurate.
Now even I’m confused, as indeed you seem to be yourself!
Biden believes that West Ham United are a Palestinian football side, ” The Hamas”, but let’s confuse the old git more and tell him that AC Milan is actually The Athletic and Cricket Club of Milan, not Milano, and Genoa not Genova, is the English name for the Italian Genova Cricket club?
Jung suggested that there are psychological archetypes – an inherited idea or mode of thought that is derived from the experience of the race and is present in the unconscious of the individual.
Well maybe yes, maybe no. But archetypes whether they exist or are merely a useful fiction do tend to become polished and simplified over time – which makes them attractive to politicians with an ideological axe to grind.
The famine in Ireland, with a million starving to death and 1½ million emigrating with Biden’s grandad to escape death may well have created an archetype but it certainly was based on any fiction! Agonising death through starvation is very real. Forced emigration (you guys know about emigration don’t you?) is no fun either!
Too many spuds in one basket?
Plus an enormous population of over 8 million thanks to ‘bonking like bunnies’ for well over a century, egged on by the Catholic Church.
“Every sperm is sacred” as they used to say.
This is true, and even slightly relevant; but the main point stands.. Grandad didn’t like starving and handed down his feelings via his genes and his storytelling around the fire, didn’t he?
This is true, and even slightly relevant; but the main point stands.. Grandad didn’t like starving and handed down his feelings via his genes and his storytelling around the fire, didn’t he?
Too many spuds in one basket?
Plus an enormous population of over 8 million thanks to ‘bonking like bunnies’ for well over a century, egged on by the Catholic Church.
“Every sperm is sacred” as they used to say.
The famine in Ireland, with a million starving to death and 1½ million emigrating with Biden’s grandad to escape death may well have created an archetype but it certainly was based on any fiction! Agonising death through starvation is very real. Forced emigration (you guys know about emigration don’t you?) is no fun either!
Jung suggested that there are psychological archetypes – an inherited idea or mode of thought that is derived from the experience of the race and is present in the unconscious of the individual.
Well maybe yes, maybe no. But archetypes whether they exist or are merely a useful fiction do tend to become polished and simplified over time – which makes them attractive to politicians with an ideological axe to grind.
Wasn’t Biden Welsh before he was Irish? Not merely plagiarizing the words of Neil Kinnock but also adopting his life story? But that was long ago…
Wasn’t Biden Welsh before he was Irish? Not merely plagiarizing the words of Neil Kinnock but also adopting his life story? But that was long ago…
To paraphrase The Pub Landlord, ‘Isn’t it bad enough being American without wanting to be Irish as well?’
To paraphrase The Pub Landlord, ‘Isn’t it bad enough being American without wanting to be Irish as well?’
I live in Upstate New York and am always amazed how so many people dress in green on Saint Patrick’s day. It’s a huge event. Credit to the Irish for spreading their brand.
It’s just another excuse to drink yourself into oblivion to help forget about life.
Both Stalin, Mao, & Adolph did likewise but that doesn’t make it acceptable.
I took a subscription to this platform thinking there was a more intelligent level of contributor around. Clearly not. Not to mention your spelling above.
Ignore Charlie, he’s not the phull pshilling don’t y’know!
Charlie is the token clown and seems happy with the role.
Charlie is the token clown and seems happy with the role.
What precisely are you referring to?
Ignore Charlie, he’s not the phull pshilling don’t y’know!
What precisely are you referring to?
I took a subscription to this platform thinking there was a more intelligent level of contributor around. Clearly not. Not to mention your spelling above.
I’m always amazed Americans don’t realise they can get drunk whenever they like
Naw, American bars are sleazy places.. the Irish Pub is yer only man!
Agree, American bars are sleezy. UK pubs are jolly but becomiing a dying breed I hear, at least along the coasts.
Agree, American bars are sleezy. UK pubs are jolly but becomiing a dying breed I hear, at least along the coasts.
Naw, American bars are sleazy places.. the Irish Pub is yer only man!
Interestingly, many people here in Southern Brasil (of Português, Italian and German extraction) also dress in green and celebrate on St. Paddy’s Day (much like we did in Chicago – start drinking at 9:00am, although we had a parade). I think St. Patrick’s Day is “a thing”.
Sure isn’t it a bit like your Mardi Gras and Festivale? Any auld excuse for a knees-up. The English do tea parties; and also street parties to show their German monarchy what subservient, docile little slaves they are! The French are showing them how to protest just now, like we show them how to party!
Years ago I had a student who emigrated from Ireland to CA and was introduced to that American holiday known as St Patrick’s not through green beer but green tamales — LA Mexicans were more “Irish” than she.
Sure isn’t it a bit like your Mardi Gras and Festivale? Any auld excuse for a knees-up. The English do tea parties; and also street parties to show their German monarchy what subservient, docile little slaves they are! The French are showing them how to protest just now, like we show them how to party!
Years ago I had a student who emigrated from Ireland to CA and was introduced to that American holiday known as St Patrick’s not through green beer but green tamales — LA Mexicans were more “Irish” than she.
It’s a plot to take over the world.. build Irish pubs everywhere and just elbow into the bar, the legal bar I mean!
It’s just another excuse to drink yourself into oblivion to help forget about life.
Both Stalin, Mao, & Adolph did likewise but that doesn’t make it acceptable.
I’m always amazed Americans don’t realise they can get drunk whenever they like
Interestingly, many people here in Southern Brasil (of Português, Italian and German extraction) also dress in green and celebrate on St. Paddy’s Day (much like we did in Chicago – start drinking at 9:00am, although we had a parade). I think St. Patrick’s Day is “a thing”.
It’s a plot to take over the world.. build Irish pubs everywhere and just elbow into the bar, the legal bar I mean!
I live in Upstate New York and am always amazed how so many people dress in green on Saint Patrick’s day. It’s a huge event. Credit to the Irish for spreading their brand.
I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall in either Iveagh House (Irish Foreign Ministry) or Fine Gael HQ, when the news broke that their poster boy in the culture wars was wanted to visit Knock Shrine (the national Catholic shrine in the west of Ireland). Mixed messages from Uncle Joe
Maybe he just wanted to use the Airport?
Maybe he just wanted to use the Airport?
I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall in either Iveagh House (Irish Foreign Ministry) or Fine Gael HQ, when the news broke that their poster boy in the culture wars was wanted to visit Knock Shrine (the national Catholic shrine in the west of Ireland). Mixed messages from Uncle Joe
The football team of Notre Dame university are not called the Fighting Irish because of any Irish connection to the university. They took it after an opponent said something along the lines of “they fight like the bl….. Irish”. They took it as a complement but it was not intended as such!
When they stop pronouncing it Note ‘er Dayme I might take an interest.
They do have a strange pronunciation, I must admit, but I suppose it’s just an Americanisation of the words.
Funny and true.
They do have a strange pronunciation, I must admit, but I suppose it’s just an Americanisation of the words.
Funny and true.
When they stop pronouncing it Note ‘er Dayme I might take an interest.
The football team of Notre Dame university are not called the Fighting Irish because of any Irish connection to the university. They took it after an opponent said something along the lines of “they fight like the bl….. Irish”. They took it as a complement but it was not intended as such!
“What is important is not the purity of Biden’s bloodline — a horrible, fascistic idea — but the strength of belief in the idea of Irish-Americanness. If enough people believe they are Irish-American, then Irish America exists not only in theory but in practice — a living reality with its own power that must be reckoned with in Belfast and London.”
So you can be Irish if you like some white-washed, deracinated, neutered ‘brand’ of Irishness? It no longer matters if you have any actual history connected to Ireland, any genetics connected to ancient Irishmen, any cultural exposure to the fine grained details of Irish life and literature?
This is the Disneyfication of all culture, as if going to Epcot made you a world traveler. Now visiting a ‘Irish bar’ somewhere, drinking Guinness and wearing green on a day in March, watching The Quiet Man, simply liking some vague elements of the most banal bits of Irish culture… now these are the things that make you Irish?
Personally I think family matters, I think history matters, I think blood matters – and I don’t think that’s fascist at all. It’s human.
Biden wasnt born.. someone jacked on a wall and the sun hatched him out…
I find all your comments offensive.
I find all your comments offensive.
Biden wasnt born.. someone jacked on a wall and the sun hatched him out…
“What is important is not the purity of Biden’s bloodline — a horrible, fascistic idea — but the strength of belief in the idea of Irish-Americanness. If enough people believe they are Irish-American, then Irish America exists not only in theory but in practice — a living reality with its own power that must be reckoned with in Belfast and London.”
So you can be Irish if you like some white-washed, deracinated, neutered ‘brand’ of Irishness? It no longer matters if you have any actual history connected to Ireland, any genetics connected to ancient Irishmen, any cultural exposure to the fine grained details of Irish life and literature?
This is the Disneyfication of all culture, as if going to Epcot made you a world traveler. Now visiting a ‘Irish bar’ somewhere, drinking Guinness and wearing green on a day in March, watching The Quiet Man, simply liking some vague elements of the most banal bits of Irish culture… now these are the things that make you Irish?
Personally I think family matters, I think history matters, I think blood matters – and I don’t think that’s fascist at all. It’s human.
r
r
Taking the whole idiotic ‘I’m Irish’ to its logical conclusion – Ireland was very much part of The British Isles when mass-exodus happened – as such were ”the Irish” not also British?
In the same way we today have English/British – Scots British/ Welsh British and low & behold ”Irish British”.
Bidens claim to be Irish is patent nonesense, but it doesnt stop him saying it.
Not knowing where one was born is pretty fundemental to me.
Taking the whole idiotic ‘I’m Irish’ to its logical conclusion – Ireland was very much part of The British Isles when mass-exodus happened – as such were ”the Irish” not also British?
In the same way we today have English/British – Scots British/ Welsh British and low & behold ”Irish British”.
Bidens claim to be Irish is patent nonesense, but it doesnt stop him saying it.
Not knowing where one was born is pretty fundemental to me.
A remember the contrast between the UK and the USA reception to Irishness (going back a few decades here!). In the UK you had to be careful as there was a strong anti-Irish ethos active at the time, egged on by large sections of the media, and not absent from the authorities.
The US was all welcomes. ‘Oh, you’re Irish,’ the middle-aged bank manager beamed and I could see that she wanted me to keep talking just so she could enjoy listening to the accent. However, when I asked if the bank accepted the Eurocheques I wanted to cash, she shook her head in the negative.
Fortunately a young female teller who was on the ball, called out ‘ Yes, we do!’
Given a lot of Irish Republicans were killing British people at the time it is remarkable that there was so little anti Irish feeling! Most accepted that the murderers did not represent everyone in Ireland.
And a lot of Ulster loyalists were killing a lot of people too
That is true.
Why mark the post down ?
And a lot of British soldiers were shooting innocent marchers and suspects on sight in a shoot to kill policy.. So, dreadful wrongs on all sides.. can we put it behind us now?
What a load of BOLLOX.
What a load of BOLLOX.
That is true.
Why mark the post down ?
And a lot of British soldiers were shooting innocent marchers and suspects on sight in a shoot to kill policy.. So, dreadful wrongs on all sides.. can we put it behind us now?
As someone who worked in the London at the time, trying to modernise the Underground (that in itself didn’t make me very popular!) I have to say I never had any abuse from any of the 420 middle and senior managers in that organisation, except one. There’s alway one isn’t there? I will give the English that.. a sense of fair play and justice; though sadly, that never applied to the army nor the judiciary.. but the ordinary English bloke.. no such abuse. I appreciated it too and said so more than once!
MacAlpine’s Fusiliers?
MacAlpine’s Fusiliers?
And a lot of Ulster loyalists were killing a lot of people too
As someone who worked in the London at the time, trying to modernise the Underground (that in itself didn’t make me very popular!) I have to say I never had any abuse from any of the 420 middle and senior managers in that organisation, except one. There’s alway one isn’t there? I will give the English that.. a sense of fair play and justice; though sadly, that never applied to the army nor the judiciary.. but the ordinary English bloke.. no such abuse. I appreciated it too and said so more than once!
Given a lot of Irish Republicans were killing British people at the time it is remarkable that there was so little anti Irish feeling! Most accepted that the murderers did not represent everyone in Ireland.
A remember the contrast between the UK and the USA reception to Irishness (going back a few decades here!). In the UK you had to be careful as there was a strong anti-Irish ethos active at the time, egged on by large sections of the media, and not absent from the authorities.
The US was all welcomes. ‘Oh, you’re Irish,’ the middle-aged bank manager beamed and I could see that she wanted me to keep talking just so she could enjoy listening to the accent. However, when I asked if the bank accepted the Eurocheques I wanted to cash, she shook her head in the negative.
Fortunately a young female teller who was on the ball, called out ‘ Yes, we do!’
Love this!! Well done.
Love this!! Well done.
Irish culture has changed profoundly since independence, Norther Irish culture is now catching up for lost time. Nowadays many of us have multi layered cultural identities
”Nowadays many of us have multi layered cultural identities” – very true as do your friends across The Channel.
”Nowadays many of us have multi layered cultural identities” – very true as do your friends across The Channel.
Irish culture has changed profoundly since independence, Norther Irish culture is now catching up for lost time. Nowadays many of us have multi layered cultural identities
Biden is a putz, whatever that means, but the onomatapoeia will do.
Biden is a putz, whatever that means, but the onomatapoeia will do.
What a typical pathetic load of misanthropic, jingoistic, anti-Irish Paddywhackery.
The English have never forgiven Ireland for leaving the Empire and building a new polity with an ultra modern, high-tech, high income economy in Europe and the world, where our “betters” didn’t automatically look down on us … and expect us to “know our place”.
In 1922 95% of all Irish exports went to the UK in live cattle, grain, beer and biscuits!
100 years later, the UK isn’t even our 4th biggest trading partner.
Ireland is a world leading exporter in pharmaceuticals, (9 out of the world’s top 10 pharma companies manufacture here), and home to the non-US HQs of just about every internet and hi-tech. company you have ever heard of, employing young graduates from 150 countries.
This is not even to consider the four multi-billion dollar FABs that Intel has in Ireland manufacturing the most modern computer chips, and individually employing over 10,000 people.
If Joe Biden feels welcome in Ireland, as has practically every US President since JFK, including Barack Obama, that says a lot more about Ireland, than it does about Britain.
You can whine about the loss of Empire all you want, but, believe it or not, Britain’s industrial base has been in decline since the start of the 20th Century.
Every day, we meet more and more British citizens moving here for jobs, and they and the 100,000s of others who have flocked to our shores over the past 30 years are of course more than welcome.
”The English have never forgiven Ireland for leaving the Empire” Really? what evidence do you have for this?
”The English have never forgiven Ireland for leaving the Empire” Really? what evidence do you have for this?
What a typical pathetic load of misanthropic, jingoistic, anti-Irish Paddywhackery.
The English have never forgiven Ireland for leaving the Empire and building a new polity with an ultra modern, high-tech, high income economy in Europe and the world, where our “betters” didn’t automatically look down on us … and expect us to “know our place”.
In 1922 95% of all Irish exports went to the UK in live cattle, grain, beer and biscuits!
100 years later, the UK isn’t even our 4th biggest trading partner.
Ireland is a world leading exporter in pharmaceuticals, (9 out of the world’s top 10 pharma companies manufacture here), and home to the non-US HQs of just about every internet and hi-tech. company you have ever heard of, employing young graduates from 150 countries.
This is not even to consider the four multi-billion dollar FABs that Intel has in Ireland manufacturing the most modern computer chips, and individually employing over 10,000 people.
If Joe Biden feels welcome in Ireland, as has practically every US President since JFK, including Barack Obama, that says a lot more about Ireland, than it does about Britain.
You can whine about the loss of Empire all you want, but, believe it or not, Britain’s industrial base has been in decline since the start of the 20th Century.
Every day, we meet more and more British citizens moving here for jobs, and they and the 100,000s of others who have flocked to our shores over the past 30 years are of course more than welcome.
It is an idiocy for 4th generation Americans to claim to be Irish.
England suffered due to the IRA in the nineties. Their best move would have been to give North Ireland its independence. They got rid of their orther colonies, why not this one. The fact that the majority of the population did not want independence is immaterial.
I note he avoiding the clear link between Biden’s granddad’s departure, 1850 and the famine 1847 and death through starvation of a million Irish people who didn’t emigrate.. nor did he say grandad was one of a million and a half that were forced to emigrate or die a horrible death.
These facts may have coloured granddad’s views a little?
Exactly, well said.
At the end of the day it’s clear many English people whether because of pure snobbery, religion, ancestry, or ignorance, still look down on our Irish friends when they have never ever studied Irish history nor even been to Ireland.
In the 1840’s there was nowhere on earth with a welfare state. The first one seems to have been Prussia under von Bismark, of all the unlikely people.
In the 1840’s the USA didn’t have foodstamps, medicare or medicaid. In fact they were still tying their slaves up to the whipping post and giving them hell.
I don’t think we need lessons from the Americans in how to treat people, not after the trail of tears.
Actually in 1840 there were only 26 states and the most important among them had abolished slavery:
Rhode Island 1652
Pennsylvania 1780
Massachusetts 1783
New Hampshire 1783
New Jersey 1804
New York 1817
Connecticut 1840 .
Important in what way may I ask?
That probably explains why the Irish headed for New York rather than New Orleans!!
Important in what way may I ask?
That probably explains why the Irish headed for New York rather than New Orleans!!
Huge quantities of Irish food was loaded onto ships at gunpoint destined for Britain. And it was British policy that forced farms to be bequeathed to all sons that reduced the size of the holdings so much that only a potato crop could feed the people.. But I agree with you: bad as the British were and they were appalling, the Americans were even worse, and are worse than ever today!
Actually in 1840 there were only 26 states and the most important among them had abolished slavery:
Rhode Island 1652
Pennsylvania 1780
Massachusetts 1783
New Hampshire 1783
New Jersey 1804
New York 1817
Connecticut 1840 .
Huge quantities of Irish food was loaded onto ships at gunpoint destined for Britain. And it was British policy that forced farms to be bequeathed to all sons that reduced the size of the holdings so much that only a potato crop could feed the people.. But I agree with you: bad as the British were and they were appalling, the Americans were even worse, and are worse than ever today!
Exactly, well said.
At the end of the day it’s clear many English people whether because of pure snobbery, religion, ancestry, or ignorance, still look down on our Irish friends when they have never ever studied Irish history nor even been to Ireland.
In the 1840’s there was nowhere on earth with a welfare state. The first one seems to have been Prussia under von Bismark, of all the unlikely people.
In the 1840’s the USA didn’t have foodstamps, medicare or medicaid. In fact they were still tying their slaves up to the whipping post and giving them hell.
I don’t think we need lessons from the Americans in how to treat people, not after the trail of tears.
I note he avoiding the clear link between Biden’s granddad’s departure, 1850 and the famine 1847 and death through starvation of a million Irish people who didn’t emigrate.. nor did he say grandad was one of a million and a half that were forced to emigrate or die a horrible death.
These facts may have coloured granddad’s views a little?
Joe biden is Irish and stupid.
Not quite as stupid as the readers here.
Not all of them.
Not all of them.
Not quite as stupid as the readers here.
Joe biden is Irish and stupid.
The mission of Unherd was to push back against the herd mentality, or so I read in its blurb. But an article on Ireland and the Irish brings the usual racist herd out in force I see.
t**t.
O do stop being such a frightful bore!
Surely even you can do better than that?
If you weren’t such a buffoon, Charles, you’d be annoying, but reading your comments is like listening to Trump- horror and laughter.
If you weren’t such a buffoon, Charles, you’d be annoying, but reading your comments is like listening to Trump- horror and laughter.
t**t.
O do stop being such a frightful bore!
Surely even you can do better than that?
The mission of Unherd was to push back against the herd mentality, or so I read in its blurb. But an article on Ireland and the Irish brings the usual racist herd out in force I see.
Do I detect a modicum of jealousy?
Do I detect a modicum of jealousy?
‘If enough people believe they are Irish-American, then Irish America exists not only in theory but in practice’
Yep it may all be ‘plastic paddy’ nonsense to some but it’s also realpolitik to be smart and aware of it. So when you step clumsily and unthinking into Irish politics, as the British Govt did with Brexit, you can’t claim it’s a surprise a sizeable body politic in the US thinks you’ve been silly and reinforced an historical perfidious Albion stereotype.
‘If enough people believe they are Irish-American, then Irish America exists not only in theory but in practice’
Yep it may all be ‘plastic paddy’ nonsense to some but it’s also realpolitik to be smart and aware of it. So when you step clumsily and unthinking into Irish politics, as the British Govt did with Brexit, you can’t claim it’s a surprise a sizeable body politic in the US thinks you’ve been silly and reinforced an historical perfidious Albion stereotype.
So much British insecurity on display about Biden’s visit. Grow up.
Rubbish!
Most of us couldn’t give a toss, although I must admit it is rather amusing!
I detect a seething rage from your ilk Charlie.
Not from me, far too old for that.
Now, now boys, stick to the topic.
Now, now boys, stick to the topic.
Not from me, far too old for that.
I detect a seething rage from your ilk Charlie.
Hardly.
Biden should be in a care home.
Rubbish!
Most of us couldn’t give a toss, although I must admit it is rather amusing!
Hardly.
Biden should be in a care home.
So much British insecurity on display about Biden’s visit. Grow up.
What’s the obsession with Biden by the British media? NI barely gets mentioned on a bad day in Britain let alone a good day: you’d have to point out its location to most folk on the “mainland”. Methinks some folk are in a bit if a huff when it comes the country that has bailed them out several times.
The truth is that no- one in GB gives a tinkers cuss about Northern Ireland.
ps apart from Scotch presbyterians and Rangers supporters of course: Give Ulster to an independent Scotland.
I think you’re mistaken about that! There’s 22 Tory MPs, Nigel Farrage and Hopeless Stan here! They don’t all support NI mind! In fact they probably cancel each other out. So yes, maybe you’re right!
ps apart from Scotch presbyterians and Rangers supporters of course: Give Ulster to an independent Scotland.
I think you’re mistaken about that! There’s 22 Tory MPs, Nigel Farrage and Hopeless Stan here! They don’t all support NI mind! In fact they probably cancel each other out. So yes, maybe you’re right!
Northern Ireland is never out of the headlines in Britain and has been for 50 years.
Sorry? Who is bailing out whom?
The UK was paying for the weapons the US sent us to fight WW2 with until 2006. The UK is still paying into the EU, and will be for several more years.
I think he means 1941 and all those US troops and tanks and stuff.. a trifle surely?
I think he means 1941 and all those US troops and tanks and stuff.. a trifle surely?
Shh, they hate it when you tell ’em that! Next you’ll be saying the Russians really won WW2! Oh, they did, did they? I think the score was 23 million to 4 million was it?
Liam, at time of writing there are 100 odd comments on this article and half of them appear to be by you. Put a lid on it will you?
Didn’t they?
Charlie and Liam get a room will ya!!
Charlie and Liam get a room will ya!!
Liam, at time of writing there are 100 odd comments on this article and half of them appear to be by you. Put a lid on it will you?
Didn’t they?
Could it possibly be that that Biden is a retard ?
Could it possibly be that Biden is also suffering from dementia ?
Prince Charles is knighting Biden … he will now be known as
… Sir Niall de Mentia…
Possibly : also he is very old. I still wonder what George Dubbya Bush’s excuse was. Surely he could not have been as stupid as he appeared?
(I still smile when I think of how he used to say “I am a merkin.”)
Thanks for the laugh! And what about “nucler”!
Thanks for the laugh! And what about “nucler”!
Prince Charles is knighting Biden … he will now be known as
… Sir Niall de Mentia…
Possibly : also he is very old. I still wonder what George Dubbya Bush’s excuse was. Surely he could not have been as stupid as he appeared?
(I still smile when I think of how he used to say “I am a merkin.”)
The truth is that no- one in GB gives a tinkers cuss about Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland is never out of the headlines in Britain and has been for 50 years.
Sorry? Who is bailing out whom?
The UK was paying for the weapons the US sent us to fight WW2 with until 2006. The UK is still paying into the EU, and will be for several more years.
Shh, they hate it when you tell ’em that! Next you’ll be saying the Russians really won WW2! Oh, they did, did they? I think the score was 23 million to 4 million was it?
Could it possibly be that that Biden is a retard ?
Could it possibly be that Biden is also suffering from dementia ?
What’s the obsession with Biden by the British media? NI barely gets mentioned on a bad day in Britain let alone a good day: you’d have to point out its location to most folk on the “mainland”. Methinks some folk are in a bit if a huff when it comes the country that has bailed them out several times.