Famine day
Posted in Blog by Twenty Major on July 23rd, 2008
Apparently some taxi driver is trying to have an annual Famine Day to honour the memory of those who died in the great famine all those years ago.
Seems a bit mawkish to me. The great famine took place between 1845 and 1849 and over a million people died and a million emigrated - a fact which inspired one of the greatest comedy lines of all time. Alan Partridge, meeting two Irish writers (Graham Linehan one of them), said, ‘If they could afford to emigrate they could afford to eat in a modest restaurant’.
But back then there were no telethons, no Bob Geldofs to raise some ‘focking money’ and I can always remember in my history book in school there was a picture of a woman holding a baby and with just a couple of quick scribbles you could make it look like she had a great big giant mouth and she was trying to devour the youngster to stave off the hunger.
But isn’t all so long ago that we don’t really need to be doing anything at all? How long in the past does something have to take place before we can stop hearing about it? Of course it’s a huge part of our history but history is what it is. Who exactly are we honouring? It just seems a bit pointless to me.
But wait, here’s a quote from the taxi driver himself. He says:
If the Famine didn’t happen, there could be 12 million people living in Ireland and eight million could be native Irish speakers.
Well, there’s a cause for celebration. Eight million Irish speakers, fuck me. What a nightmare. Add those to another eight million people in the country and this place would be a right shithole. Imagine the traffic on the M50 if Dublin was a city of 5 million. Jesus, nobody would get anywhere and half of us wouldn’t be able to understand the fucking Nuacht telling us there was a delay at the Ballymount exit.
So do it, Mr Taximan, let’s celebrate the famine and how natural selection has made Ireland a better place to live.
Slán go fóill.
Ah, I wouldn’t say it was exactly natural selection now ted.
Well unless you consider Hitler killing Jews as natural selection too.
Personally I can’t wait for people to stop talking about 9/11.
July 23rd, 2008 at 8:47 am
Difficult one here, these things should be taught and remembered, I kind of think alot of people try to sweep these things under the carpet, and that’s the wrong approach, not sure if a famine day is the right way forward.
That episode of Partrige is classic, his insight into Sunday Bloody Sunday still makes me laugh after seeing it twenty times.
July 23rd, 2008 at 8:49 am
1
best argument i had with a taxi driver in ireland was on my way back from the airport. i made a passing comment about the works on o’connell street and how dublim seems to be just a large building site and he started lashing on the brits and how ireland has only been independent for bla bla bla. it got ugly. he asked me to get out and all…
taximen know it all…
July 23rd, 2008 at 8:50 am
2
I heard this on the radio yesterday, someone suggested they should hold it on that first day of lent, you know, when we’re all thinking about how close to god fasting makes us.
I laughed.
July 23rd, 2008 at 8:51 am
3
Well unless you consider Hitler killing Jews as natural selection too.
He selected them quite naturally. People say his demeanour at the time was remarkably commonplace.
July 23rd, 2008 at 8:52 am
4
the crazy French still celebrate some peasants storming a prison, ok they were storming something and we were hungry and left the country. But this stuff never goes away.
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:09 am
5
Why only the ‘great’ famine ?
( Great seems a strange word )
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:17 am
6
The Americans still celebrate Independence by refusing to have gun control laws and shooting innocent people, just in case the Redcoats march through Manhattan again
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:18 am
7
Unless we learn from history we are doomed to repeat it. I’m feeling hungry already.
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:19 am
8
We should celebrate our best moments in history, not the worst.
Like that time when …erm… and that other thing … you know … yeah …
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:20 am
9
We should celebrate our best moments in history, not the worst.
Cromwell Day sounds like a great idea to me.
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:28 am
10
heh
We could have it on the same day we commemorate the 1916 Disaster.
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:32 am
11
“We should celebrate our best moments in history, not the worst.”
Eamonn Coghlans win in the 10,000 metres, the way he looked into that other guys face as he breezed past him was priceless.
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:32 am
12
and we can have a ‘tainted urine sample day’ with Michelle de Bruin smiling and waving from an open top bus.
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:34 am
13
It’s been scientifically proven that all taxi drivers are cunts.
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:37 am
14
We have more than enough Irish speakers as it is. Just enough to keep a dead language ticking over while they sound like they’re choking on their own phlegm while speaking it. We should be proud.
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:38 am
15
Commemorate Ireland,s awesome record in the Eurovision with Dustin Day on which Dana meets Mr auro da fé ?
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:42 am
16
The question is, who were the ones who stayed behind? Who are we descended from!
I think the statues on the quays are enough.
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:51 am
17
I hope we can soon celebrate the day Des Bishop stops trying to be Irish (& an Irish speaker) and fecks off back to America.
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:54 am
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Thank fuck for that Lou, i thought I was the only one who finds him an annoying,patronising, unfunny cockmeister
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:58 am
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His brother is more amusing than him.
July 23rd, 2008 at 10:01 am
20
Its the same person, think about it-
they are never in the same place at the same time,
a bit strange for a pair of brothers.
July 23rd, 2008 at 10:07 am
21
Sounds a right wanker - is he related to Harold Bishop ?
July 23rd, 2008 at 10:16 am
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I think a national holiday is a bad idea. A day of commemoration is fine but not a day off, it’s over the top.
As for the native speaker thing, the population of the west coast of Ireland would be much higher than it is now and therefore the number of Irish speakers would be higher. But we would be like any country with more than one main language and we would manage just fine. The attitude to Irish would not be one fostered during the 1970s by Dublin school kids.
I spent a lot of time in Connemara in my youth and learned Irish quite well down there. Thousands of people there and elsewhere in Ireland speak Irish every day and not out of some protest or sentimentality, it’s just their language.
So I really do get a pain in my bollocks when I hear people moan about it. if you want to moan about how it was taught, then fine because it is bad but don’t moan about it just because it is the Irish language. It is a fucking language, spoken and written and goes back long before any Anglo Saxon language.
The reason Irish people say things like “are you getting a plane tomorrow” or “I’m after doing a puke” is because of how we spoke in Irish. We expressed ourselves, our difference, our culture, our thoughts through our own language and the English language doesn’t have the scope for us. English is a language of industry, of urgency, of distance. It is a great language as all are but the softness and humility of the Irish language cannot be expressed in English, therefore we are never truly expressed through English.
A very simple example of what it means to have a language that represents your own culture is the use of slang. Slang develops on a very local level and everyone knows slang from their locality but it may mean nothing to someone down the road. That’s the way it is with Irish.
July 23rd, 2008 at 10:17 am
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If you were born in Ireland of Irish parents you are probably descended from people who did quite well out of the famine - the larger farmers prospered (farmers who were Catholics not ascendancy landlords). The famine’s victims died or emigrated, their descendants live in places like Liverpool or Boston.
Not a popular thing to say. Fans of the Sinn Feiner M.O.P.E. (Most Oppressed People Ever) model of Irish history won’t debate that they’ll just go for your throat.
(btw I think it would be a good thing if a lot of people here spoke Irish - as English speakers we’re too lazy about learning other languages and if we had to use two languages we’d probably be better at learning third and fourth languages)
July 23rd, 2008 at 10:31 am
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the population of the west coast of Ireland would be much higher than it is now and therefore the number of Irish speakers would be higher.
I disagree - what would they have lived on? Jobs ? No matter which way you cut it they would have had to emigrate anyway - and the Irish Language would have still found itself as hopelesly unsuited to the 20th century.
However, maybe we would have been spared Irish America and cunts like the Drop Kick Murphys.
July 23rd, 2008 at 10:34 am
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I think it’s a brilliant idea - it should be a national holiday. All restaurants, pubs, cafes should serve the best gourmet nosh all day from daybreak, fine steaks, fine wines etc. free of charge to all comers - funded by a mega Hunger Aid concert in Croke organised by Bono. There should be free food and booze stalls all along O’Connell Stree, Grafton Street and all over Stephens Green (and one vegetarian one with soya stuff for Nonny). Yeah
July 23rd, 2008 at 10:34 am
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btw I think it would be a good thing if a lot of people here spoke Irish - as English speakers we’re too lazy about learning other languages and if we had to use two languages we’d probably be better at learning third and fourth languages
That’s often claimed, but it’s bollix - Ireland has already had compulsory bi-lingual education for generations and trails the rest of the EU in language skills.
July 23rd, 2008 at 10:37 am
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Maggot, just mere fact that the population would be higher would create a market for jobs and industry.
There would have been less migration to the east and Galway and other western towns and cities would have grown more and prospered.
And too all… please if you don’t speak Irish and if you have never witnessed communities who actually do, then you haven’t a clue what you are criticising. It’s a typical irish reaction… must destroy what I don’t understand!….So fucking parochial.
July 23rd, 2008 at 10:43 am
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“That’s often claimed, but it’s bollix - Ireland has already had compulsory bi-lingual education for generations and trails the rest of the EU in language skills.”
There have been problems with the method of teaching, which have been rectified, and I think your sweeping statement can be applied to most English speaking nations, who out of arrogance or ignorance do not stress the importance of a second language to their children.
July 23rd, 2008 at 10:57 am
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Different matter entirely PP - the claim is that teaching Irish facilitaties third languages - it demonstrably hasn’t.
eople have to want to speak other languages - hell, I was taught Latin, French and English - but can only speak English.
Maggot, just mere fact that the population would be higher would create a market for jobs and industry.
That’s wishful thinking - and easy to disprove - if the presence of people in itself automatically attracted jobs and industry then the decline of the west wouldn’t have happened in the 20th century with the massive emigration.
July 23rd, 2008 at 11:14 am
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Sorry, I’m in a hurry, so I just skimmed over this.
-did someone mention a free holiday?
July 23rd, 2008 at 11:25 am
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A week on Lemur Island for the first person to tap Twenty on the shoulder and say “I claim my free Holiday” in Irish MB
July 23rd, 2008 at 11:31 am
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Natural selection? Are you that stupid or merely childish?
July 23rd, 2008 at 11:56 am
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Obviously you never received a decent education. I was born and bred an Irish Speaker! Delighted that I speak our ‘first language’, as per the ‘Bunreacht’. Can’t believe the ignorance of some people.
For a language that is dying out, a language that few wish to take as part of their curriculum, a language that was spoken throughout the world by the diaspora of Ireland, a language that was prevalent when we built half the fucking world, you have the audacity to piss upon it. Your a disgrace.
If you bothered to look past your hole you’d realise that the rest of the country couldn’t give an toss if the M50 was there or not. You must be tuning in to AA roadwatch too much.
Pog mo ‘fucking’ thoin!
fat cock salutes you,idiot
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:01 pm
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Got to love plastic paddies like FCS
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:04 pm
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twenty major,you are an idiot,you need to
read and learn some history.
even hitler would have let you live because you are stupid.
you can smoke my cigar ,maybe you will get intelligent.
fat cock salutes you spasopsolixxxxxxxxx
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:09 pm
36
Instead of a national holiday, why not just celebrate the great hunger through the medium of song? The Faminefest CD could include Bob Marley (Famine..I hope you like famine too) Mariah Carey (I can’t live, if living is without food) and Nancy Sinatra (These boots are made for eating).
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:15 pm
37
But isn’t all so long ago that we don’t really need to be doing anything at all? How long in the past does something have to take place before we can stop hearing about it?”
In the words of the late, great Bill Hicks ‘As long as we’re talking about shelf life here, why the fuck are people still going on about Jesus? That was two thousand years ago and we still have to put up with Easter every damn year.’
“It is a fucking language, spoken and written and goes back long before any Anglo Saxon language.”
Actually HM, Latin was the first written language in Ireland and a huge chunk of Gaelic is Latin based. It’s a fine language and certainly deserves its place in the world but people tend to get caught up in the ancient druidic fantasy of our history and forget these annoying little facts.
“There have been problems with the method of teaching, which have been rectified,”
Too right there PP. At some point in the nineties, some pedagogical genius in the department of education realized that sex can sell anything. And that maybe having a line of sexy girls dancing in miniskirts might be better at promoting a culture than having a Christian Brother beating it into you. Or maybe not.. depending on your inclinations.
Personally I’m all for having a Famine Day. We’re way behind the Jews when it comes to drumming up historical pity worldwide. And they got a fucking country out of it.
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:15 pm
38
plastic paddy maggot?? better than being a west brit!
if brian boru didn’t stop the danes in 1014, you’d only be cream running down the inside of olga’s leg.
plastic paddie?? a fat cock for you!
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:17 pm
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Hey, fatsackofcockface or whatever, in any language you are a noisy stupid twat.
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:19 pm
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We should commemorate the famine with a 24 hour fast for concern.
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:20 pm
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any language in general super? or are you limited to insulting me ‘as bearla’?
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:22 pm
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how’s this…?
… up your hól
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:25 pm
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if brian boru didn’t stop the danes in 1014
Jesus, what a twat.
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:29 pm
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klotzak,arsgeiger,cornouto,pello di potta,
pente,pederast,poutanas gie,pizzo,kallouboy
wyxa,super grooooooover means somebody you
fuck in the ass. and i can speak many languages.
fat cock salutes youxxxxxxxxx
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:35 pm
45
fatcocksacker loves us all, the fucking witless clit.
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:39 pm
46
We’re way behind the Jews when it comes to drumming up historical pity worldwide. And they got a fucking country out of it.
hehe.
That reminds me have you heard Denis Leary’s traditional Irish song from “no cure for cancer”?
http://endor.org/leary/#IrishFolk
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:00 pm
47
Dear Lord I hate the Dropkick Murphys, they’re about as Irish as Cromwell’s left nut.
Their ’style’ seems to be take some traditional song done justice by the likes of the Dubliners and make a right dogs dick of it.
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:14 pm
48
Quick morgor the gaelgóir - there he is, tap his shouder and claim your holiday!
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:14 pm
49
oh christ the shinners will want to do it up here…….then the other lot will want their own special day too…..you know something to commemorate the day houses prices fell or something equally as bogus….
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:14 pm
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Fucking grim - A HREF=”http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics/monkey/7479984.stm”>Olympic Monkey!<
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:16 pm
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Olympic Monkey!
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:17 pm
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Class story! Sneaky orientals - They threw him a banana!
Chimp escapes Japanese zoo
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:20 pm
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Special days are the sole preserve of those who went to school on the special bus.
Get back to work, the rest of ye.
A taxi driver? A fuckin’ taxi driver? Sure he only wants an excuse to charge extra for the Bank Holiday!
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:21 pm
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I am all for this remembrance thing, for… What was it again? I cant be arsed scrolling back up…
As long as we get the day off, and get the chance to get pissed and fall about the streets in remembrance, Then I’m all for it.
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:23 pm
55
release the drunken famine monkeys, dressed in rags.
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:23 pm
56
There’s a point when national pride degrades into jingoism. The worse (and most dangerous) kind of jingoism is the self-pitying kind. I know this; I’m a Scot and we’re among the best at it.
Everything is someone else’s fault, usually the english and the old hates are carried on idiotically in the modern age. no harm thrilling to them as drama, but no sense in pleading perpetual victim either.
I typed this out hours ago them fell asleep (out at pub quiz). Now it’s 5.27 adn I don’t know what the discussion’s been or if someone’s already said this but i guess Ill hit submit any old way.
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:28 pm
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Maggot, if Twenty downloads the Monkey it will only bitch slap him and call him a cheeky cunt.
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:29 pm
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West Coast PCB?
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:30 pm
59
Watching that Japanese clip for the third time - love seeing the twat lose his gun to the chimp!
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:33 pm
60
Off topic. Isnt it really annoying to create a (funny??) blog, and try your best to get attention for it, and then get pissed when everyone doesnt listen, and then take it down, and then slag everybody elses blog, and then put it back up and disable commenting… Some people are fucking idiots arent they??
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:36 pm
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Who exactly would you be alluding to there SAm?
We want names!
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:39 pm
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we should celebrate the famine with a great big cake?
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:40 pm
63
Remember the commemorative dinner plate for the hunger strikers ?
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:42 pm
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Sponge cake Sid! Have some consideration for the toothless veterans.
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:43 pm
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all the information is there monkey, but I’m not going to name names. Just find it a bit bemusing..
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:45 pm
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You have me worried that you might mean me SAm. I had a blog where the commenting went haywire, through no action of my own, then I set up another one, and then I set up another>/i> one, and I slagged off other people’s blogs too. Everything else is wrong, and doesn’t fit me at all, but a blinkered person with an agenda could easily overlook that.
Please let it be me.
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:51 pm
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I can’t format when I’m angry!
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:52 pm
68
At least you go green and rip your pants.
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:53 pm
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I’ve lost a snot somewhere.
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:57 pm
70
I think you mean smoke green and cum in his pants
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:08 pm
71
And you’d smoke green cum if you thought it meant pants.
Or something….
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:11 pm
72
How about a chariddy cook book with some lovely, ‘eat well on a shoestring’ recipes (without spuds, naturally) donated by Irish Z list celebs such as Ritchie Cavanagh, Derek Mooney, Brendan Kilkenny etc and written as gaeilge with a foreword commemorating the terrible events by Gerry Adams.
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:14 pm
73
Ah, the Great Diet… or the body-image disaster that was Black ‘48. I blame the Brits with their magazines and the shopkeepers of Ireland.
Shure an’ aren’t the womenfolk still at it?
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:14 pm
74
If you get a day off work, I say get behind it. Proud republican Australians happily spend the Queen’s birthday holiday getting cunted and sleeping all the next day. Lets not let ideology get in the way a day off. Good to see a taxi driver taking time off from working on immigration policy to look at other issues as well. They must be expanding their portfolio.
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:28 pm
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i STILL dont know why they didnt eat fish.
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:29 pm
76
OTHER IRISH HOLIDAY SUGGESTIONS:
Wally Sands Remembrance Day
Whit Trash Sunday – Line dancing in track suits in churches throughout the land.
Martyrdom of Bishop Casey –Irish Catholics are to give extra alms to chambermaids across the country. (two hundred grand if you can afford it)
Saint Vincent de Paul – Two holidays. One for each.
Botched Rebellion Day – In noble memory of Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, Padraig Pearse and the many other paragons of Irish competence.
The Lisbon Epiphany – Celebrating that magnanimous day when for once, the rest of Europe actually noticed us.
Cash Wednesday – Only a holiday for undeclared workers.
Palm Sunday – Only a holiday for workers in the pornographic industry.
Ar Souls Day – Any day when you wake up, look deeply into your soul and realize that you couldn’t be arsed going to work.
Any other offers?
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:36 pm
77
we could take holidays when the sun shines…….. that would be easily another week a year.
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:38 pm
78
Aaah its all a load of bollocks… “The protocols of the Brothers of Eire” prove this, erm not, must finish that david Irving book.
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:40 pm
79
Jesus MB that was a stretch, shouldn’t take it as an insult, more of a raising a glass to your lifestyle , maybe even jealousy.
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:40 pm
80
Celtic Tiger Day : I havent worked out exactly what the celebration would consist of …Any suggestions?
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:44 pm
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Fill3rup - it would consist of buying latte’s with 500 pounds notes and fucking the change into the liffey.
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:47 pm
82
i STILL dont know why they didnt eat fish.
they probably weren’t allowed to own boats, and the rest of them didn’t live by the sea.
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:51 pm
83
And post Celtic-Tiger day will involve making property developers walk the plank into boiling skinny latte, and having a barbecue on their X5
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:52 pm
84
Great suggestions Lung, the idea of Whit Trash Sunday stands out particularly. The images in my mind are still creasing me up!
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:53 pm
85
Fuck you and your famine. It gave America the most corrupt politicians between the North Pole and the South Pole. But on the good side, it gave us millions of saloons.
July 23rd, 2008 at 5:47 pm
86
I’d say my mother in law would make a good famine cake. What would it have in it?
I think the anti Gaeilge thing is partly just a Dublin pejudice - people feel far more positive about it and speak it more fully beyond the pale.
I think it’s also racial memory - not only was it outlawed, it was beaten out of Iris children by parents too. It became seen of the language of poverty, illiteracy, while English became associated with education, the law, etc. Post colonialism - very interesting.
July 23rd, 2008 at 6:13 pm
87
This is perhaps the stupidest fucking post I’ve ever read by you.
Seriously, go fuck yourself you stupid cuntmonger. You’re ignorant as shit.
July 23rd, 2008 at 6:24 pm
88
Good man john
July 23rd, 2008 at 6:47 pm
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No fucking Diggity.
July 23rd, 2008 at 7:27 pm
90
The Native Americans , the Australian aboriginies , the New Zeland Maoiris all
fucked over by them God fearing british empire types shure its there own fault If they hadn’t been so stoopid as to resist the empire would have been good to them
July 24th, 2008 at 1:30 am
91
monkey, it aint you, I wish it had been now, cause you seem to need the attention.
I promise to come up with something abusive for you tomorrow, but have to go to bed now..
July 24th, 2008 at 2:32 am
92
I DID used to wonder why they didn’t eat fish-surely even the inland folk could have been near a lake or two back before we commercially fished the shit out of everywhere. Or gathered some shellfish or something? We Irish people are notoriously picky eaters though….my sister won’t eat anything except potatoes and chips anyway! she’d be the first to die in a potato famine.
July 24th, 2008 at 7:58 am
93
Inland fishing was controlled by landlords, not quite as simple as sticking a bit of string in the water, coastal area did in fact fare a bit better.
July 24th, 2008 at 8:23 am
94