Click on the image to read the text. That was as close as I could get. (I always feel very self-conscious taking any kind of mobile phone picture, never mind a selfie. I have no idea how anyone has the guts to use a selfie stick, unless they are in a completely deserted area, and no rabbits or squirrels are looking.)
They might just be trying to provoke. I spent a lot of time in my anti-nationalist phases trying to provoke nationalists by speaking nostalgically of The Empire, etc.
Even in my cultural-but-not-political nationalist phase, I used to delight in telling people that I would happily give Ireland back to the British if only we had our own culture and traditions restored.
Now, I realise that politics and culture can't be so easily separated, and that politics has a shaping effect on culture. Even the fact that we have our own elections fosters a national consciousness. (And this is even an argument I would make for democracy.)
The Twitter account doesn't seem to exist, so I smell a wind-up. The manifesto exhibits strangely self-contradictory spirits, as well.
ReplyDeleteI can state with confidence that any 230 billion (pounds? Euros?) increase in GDP would have nothing to do with our side. What's Ireland's secret?
Self-contradictory is right! Although that in itself wouldn't disqualify something from being serious-- people can be very self-contradictory when they are bashing something. Still, the fact that the Twitter account doesn't exist presumably means it's a prank. I only saw two posters.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea what the GDP thing is about. I stop listening when people use such big figures.
You'd wonder what their point is?
ReplyDeleteBut it brings Joyce's Miss Ivors' "west Briton"remark to mind.
Was Ivors a strange choice of name or spelling for a character who was such a confirmed Celt?
I just remembered, concerning your university mass, that the previous archbishop of Perth, now emeritus, had a custom going for a while of saying a uni chapel Mass on Ash Wednesday each year. Curiously, it was Curtin University, not NotreDame ( Catholic uni) or UWA(considered the most prestigious, and which has a catholic college).
Might be a coincidence, not sure if the present Arch. has continued.
Regarding what their point is, I'm reminded of one of the funniest moments in Boswell's Life of Johnson, when Boswell wonders aloud why David Garrick had written something or other, and Johnson replies: "Sir, he did it in the hope he might vex someone."
DeleteThat IS very interesting about the Perth archbishop. I wonder is it a common practice? I've meant to ask one of the chaplains in UCD how the tradition started, but never have.
There are genuine West Brits in Ireland. I used to be one and I work with one. I'm quite fond of them as an established ideological minority.
ReplyDelete