Whatever happened to the Irish?
Simon Clark posed a question yesterday.
Whatever happened to Ireland’s rebel spirit?
He starts off though by talking about the Irish being obsessed with Brexit.
I think “obsessed” might be a bit strong though. He was unfortunate enough to get stuck with a phone-in on the subject in the taxi, but apart from that I presume it would be a natural topic of conversation if an Irish person is talking to someone from England?
It does however seem to dominate our news. I suppose we do have as much interest as the British as it will affect us one way or another, with higher prices and possibly customs’ posts springing up on the border.
I do have a fairly strong opinion on the matter myself – I just wish Ireland was going down the same route. My reasoning is much the same as the average Brexiteer, namely that I am strongly opposed to the EU, as some may have gathered? It has little to do with immigration and everything to do with sovereignty. I just do not like being dictated to by a bunch of unelected foreigners whose only interest seems to lie in ever increasing control. Unfortunately I’m in a minority, but live in hopes that Brexit may be the start of the end for the whole fucking edifice.
The question he poses in the title is a different matter.
What did happen to the Irish rebel spirit?
This is a question I have often pondered on. We meekly accept all these Bully State laws, and in particular the Anti-Smoker laws without so much as a whimper. There was little or no protest when the ban came in, and smokers just seemed to shrug, go outside and mutter to themselves. The attitude was one of “well, what can you do? It’s the law“.
Of course the ban has been in place now for nearly fifteen years so we are seeing a whole generation growing up who will accept the ban as part of normal life, never having seen anyone smoking in a pub or office. Kids are being brainwashed in school [I know because of the Grandkids] so smoking, once benign is now evil.
Why wasn’t there any response when the ban came in?
I just don’t know.
I think it was Fintan O’Toole who wrote that it was 2004 when the Irish learned to obey the law.
First of all I don’t believe we are rebels, or ever really were. We vote for cute hoors, gombeens, tax dodgers, and brown envelope receivers, NIMBYs ahead of the common good thinking there is crumbs falling from the top table. we swapped the British for the church and now the EU.
The thing I find strange with vast majority opposed to brexit, is that, if the price is you will be poorer, people are happy with that.
Not everything comes down to LSD.
Whatever we were in the past, the modern Irish are like a docile herd of cattle happily trotting towards the slaughterhouse.
Whether there is a hard, soft or no Brexit I am expecting prices to rise here, simply because it is a grand excuse to add a wee percentage.
Not just the Irish. It is all over the Western world and has been a work in progress for several decades.
I see it coming to an end as our base nature starts to wake up. Let’s do our best to encourage that awaking in everyone although it isn’t going to be pretty. Maybe the next generations will learn from it as it is going to hurt so much, similar to WW2 imo.
” I just do not like being dictated to by a bunch of unelected foreigners whose only interest seems to lie in ever increasing control.”
That, Grandad, is the prime factor behind the results of the UK’s 2016 referendum. Unfortunately, our elected gobshites – who are mostly otherwise unemployable – think only of their own position in what they see as the upper echelons. I don’t care if they’re Paddy, Brit, Jock or Russki political class, they’re nearly all self-serving dictatorial arseholes who make me wish birth-control could be back-dated.
I think you had it when you wrote, “…a whole generation growing up who will accept the ban as part of normal life…“, although I would honestly state that it’s now two generations in play here. For example, the first generation would be the children of our generation who, once come of age, would find it much easier to adapt to “the way of things” than the cranky, old, stubborn folks of our generation that lived for decades when things were much different than today (and thus rebelled to any change?)
The second generation, of course, are the children the first generation are currently raising (or have raised) who were born and brought up while these “changes” were already in place so to speak and thus accept them as normal. But you stated that already.
As far as a lack of response when the ban first came in is concerned is anyone’s guess at this point, but I really don’t know either. But I do have a feeling that people in general (and I hate to generalize but oh well) find that tending to their own personal lives can be tasking enough without adding more to it, such as a then proposed smoking ban. From personal observation I found that “the change” has to be pretty damn severe in order to finally get enough attention to make a difference.
Of course I was born and raised in the US, not Ireland obviously, and though our daily lives may be similar in many ways there’s also many differences as well. We accepted, for example, that the “late lamp” of bars closing at 3:00 am on the weekends was done away with in a sneaky, round-about way (probably for the best) and we finally accepted, not without a good amount of rebelling, the ban on smoking in said bars, restaurants, public places, businesses, etc. The difference perhaps was that the change was gradual and not all at once? Besides, that was decades ago so there’s a fair amount of “generations” that already accept this as normal.
Okay, this comment is longer than I expected so I’d better stop, yes? (I’ll have to edit anyway since the [TinyMCE?] comment field doesn’t recognize paragraphs for some reason). Please forgive typos as there’s bound to be some.