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Monday, March 17, 2008

Happy St Patrick's Day!



A very Happy St Patrick’s Day to all Irish readers. To celebrate, here’s a Eurovision classic from 1970. Ireland has won the contest on numerous occasions, but, with apologies to Johnny Logan, I don't think any of their subsequent winning songs can match 'All Kinds of Everything', sung by the lovely Dana.
In 1970, The Long Fellow was still Irish President (at the ripe old age of 88) and the country was still a free, unglobalised and independent nation. And it was a country where human values, came above the worship of money. Now of course, Ireland has entered ’the real world’. It’s a member of the EU and capitalism rules supreme. Am I the only one to think that something very important- something which made Ireland such a truly wonderful country- has been lost along the way?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, I dunno. 'What's Another Year' by Johnny Logan was pretty good too!

Martin Meenagh said...

Cheers Neil. We should fight to keep things that are worthwhile in this country too--and that includes the Southall Black Sisters, whom Ealing Council is trying to close down. They provide secular support and refuge to battered minority women, and have done since 1979. They have helped change the law for battered women. Ealing's tories say they are only acting on the Labour government's agenda to withdraw 'ethnic' and 'non inclusive' funds, but actually the two parties are collaborating in the destruction of a home for women with precious little hope who fight back. I hope you can get your readers to support them!
Readers can go to the Southall Black Sisters website, sign the Downing Street Petition, or join the 'Save the Southall Black Sisters' site on facebook.

Anonymous said...

When I first visited Ireland (1988), the bus from the airport was simply the local bus that happened to pass by. Seated opposite an elderly man, he lent towards me, saying without more ado, 'Do n't you think the interest rates these banks charge on these cards is usurious? As St Thomas Aquinas said in the Summa Contra Gentiles...' We had a fabulous, civilised conversation on attitudes to money as the bus wended its way to the centre of Dublin. A different world indeed from aspects of the modern Ireland...!

Anonymous said...

Unglobalised? What part of Ireland is the Catholic Church from then? No mulitinational company, NGO etc on the planet has 1% of the control the Church had in Ireland until the 1990s...