Sock Puppets

Surely the Guardian sub-editors were taking the mick when they fronted a Cif piece by republican sympathiser Ronan Bennett with this headline :

All of Ireland could use what Martin McGuinness gave the North

As someone commented - "what, bullets ?".



I was struck, I know not why, by this comment, from "josephv1", who'd soon followed up with several more comments :

As a Northern Irish Presbyterian, I have no problem with Mr McGuinness as President. He rules us here in the North already. Increasing numbers of my community are OK with the man - he's good in government and times have moved on. We've moved on in Ulster. Time you guys did as well across the water ..

Seemed too good to be true - this Prod who was not swallowing the bitter pill of shared republican government but positively rejoicing in it. A quick look at the posting history of this Presbyterian named Joseph (not, unless I mistake, a very popular name among Ulster Protestants) produced this mild comment from Laban :

"Josephv1 should really expand his posting interests. A self-declared Ulster Presbyterian whose entire Guardian posting history consists of comments on the evil of the British state is a curiously unconvincing online persona."

It was deleted (Ronan Bennett's paramour is Georgina Henry, editor of Guardian Online).

Laban, nothing loth :

Indeed, the more I look at joseph's entire output ...

18th June - "being from an army family myself", 9 comments on Bloody Sunday.

20th of June - "There was huge support for Irish Repubicanism across Northern Ireland, and beyond" - 3 posts on the Saville Inquiry

The guy who opened his account with 9 comments on Bloody Sunday has a 5-week hiatus, then on August 2 "And before any of the bitter old tub thumpers, armchair generals and twisted moralisers on here accuse me of being some kind of ungrateful leftist traitor, giving succour to the enemy, I'll have you know I come from a long military lineage ...The plantation of Ulster served as a blueprint for later colonial expansion in the W Indies ... the British establishment, and much of the population, cannot see that it's wrong to kill civilians.." - 16 comments on "Wikileaks and British Lies in Ireland" - the guy's on fire. Odd then, that such an enthusiastic commenter has nothing to say for 9 more weeks... before unleashing a barrage of posts on this thread. Most odd.

I've been hearing for years about the sophistication of the Republican political wing, and I guess the Guardian's giving space to Ronan Bennett testifies to that. But this is a very poor standard of sock-puppetry.

Deleted.

"josephv1" really is a remarkable poster - an Ulster Presbyterian "from a long military lineage" who only wakes up to post on CiF when the evils of the Brits or the goodness of Sinn Fein are being discussed, who posts furiously on the subject, regurgitating republican mantras, (13 posts so far on the Bennett thread) then goes back to sleep for weeks or months until another suitable thread arrives, and he wakes once more like Drake in his hammock. And he only posts on the evils of the Brits. There's a couple of other "as a xxxx, I love Martin McGuinness" posters, one "RobinPercival" and one "Phud", but a look at their posting histories suggests that they at least have opinions on subjects outside of the evil Brits and their usurpation of the Four Green Fields. If they're sock puppets, someone's at least making an attempt to give them what Smiley would call a "legend". Not so for our joe. He's only got one specialist subject.

Keeping to character, joe defends himself against Laban's innuendo, Laban fires back between deletions :

"I come from an army family and grandfather was a lecturer at Sandhurst. Or do you demand blind allegiance at all times?"

Ah. I think we call this "the Johann Hari Technique".

I'm sorry, "joseph" - I would like to debate the issue with you, but as you may have noticed, my posts are being removed as fast as they go up. Sock-puppetry, in the Guardian world, is something those evil American Republicans do, not noble Irish ones.

Maybe we can cross keyboards again - in a couple of months, when you next post.

Mind, he may well come "from an army family". I'm just not at all sure that it's the British Army.


UPDATE - Interesting. The moderators have deleted all the most-approved comments, which unsurprisingly weren't mine but were of the "Martin McGuinness ran an organisation responsible for murdering thousands of people" variety. Apparently that's a 'hate fact' and an unacceptable statement to air in the Guardian.

"This Irish Miracle"

Written in 2006, quoted by Joseph Cotterill (his added links and emboldening, too) at FT Alphaville :

Ireland is no longer on the edge of Europe but is instead an Atlantic bridge. High-tech companies such as Intel, Oracle and Apple have chosen to base their European operations there. I will be asking Google executives today why they set up in Dublin, not London… What has caused this Irish miracle, and how can we in Britain emulate it?

… in a world where cheap, rapid communication means that investment decisions are made on a global basis, capital will go wherever investment is most attractive. Ireland’s business tax rates are only 12.5 per cent, while Britain’s are becoming among the highest in the developed world.

World-class education, high rates of innovation and an attractive climate for investment: these are all elements that have helped to raise productivity in Ireland. It is not the only advanced economy to have achieved this uplift. Last week in Washington the new Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, told me about the impact that the sustained increase in productivity growth had made in generating prosperity in the US…

The new global economy poses real long-term challenges to Britain, but also real opportunities for us to prosper and succeed. In Ireland they understand this. They have freed their markets, developed the skills of their workforce, encouraged enterprise and innovation and created a dynamic economy. They have much to teach us, if only we are willing to learn.

Good job we're slow learners, or we might be in even worse economic shape, were that possible.

But what manner of man can this be, who hails the tremendous prosperity of the US and Irish economies, and obviously cannot see a cloud in the economic sky? Surely, while a talented polemicist, he should be kept well away from any influence over actual decision-making?

Er... oh. Oh dear, oh dear. Most unfortunate.



UPDATE - to be fair, the SNP's Alex Salmond, currently heading up the Provisional Government of Scotland, went one better, lauding the economies of both Iceland(c) and Ireland(r) as the template for a future independent Scottish economy. Had he got his way, it might have been the shortest independence ever and the greatest disaster for the Scottish economy since the Darien scheme - which led directly to union with England.

It Gets More Like England Every Day

There's certainly a hefty tradition in Ulster of everyone knowing and no one saying who the guys with the guns are. Obviously exists south of the border too.

Even in song this city of 90,000 is divided. Contrast the proud anthem of Garryowen – “Our hearts so stout have brought us fame/ For soon ’tis known from whence we came. Where e’er we go they dread the name Of Garryowen in Glory” – with the “gangsta” rap of Ballinacurra Weston, Moyross, Southill and St Mary’s Park of the Island Field, where grey streets are punctuated with boarded-up houses and burnt or rusting debris lies scattered across the greens, picked at by roaming horses.

The soundtrack and the style here is alien to Limerick’s rugby culture – a sport introduced to the city in the 19th century by the British Army garrison.

Graffiti lauds Bullitz, a local rap star whose song Da Graveyard tells the story of another Limerick. “It’s sad but true / Limerick life can be cruel . . . God knows down here the next time someone dies / there’ll be retaliation / I can’t get a job with this Limerick life / I’m feeling like I’m trapped and I can’t survive / There’s people round here they don’t even care when you’re messing with death / you know what to expect / the war will continue until you’re put to rest.”

In one visit by The Times this week, hours after Mr Collins’s home was searched as part of the Shane Geoghegan murder inquiry involving 30 raids in Limerick, Cork and Dublin, police examined waste ground and scorched, gaping houses for drugs and weapons. One officer said: “If we find anything we don’t touch it until we’ve called in armed support. If we tried to leave with the stuff they’d just take it off us.”

The officer didn’t look up from his task but it was clear that he was referring to Jimmy and his friends, armed with baleful stares and hockey sticks standing a dozen yards away.

And, just as in the UK, the whole thing's state-subsidised - not to mention the factor of the derisory sentencing which recycles killers back to their estates inside a few years.

The problem is that there seems to be a conveyor belt of criminals from the sprawling, neglected estates of Limerick so that every time they take one gang member off the streets another takes his place. And it is back to these estates that the debate always returns.

About 41 per cent of all housing in Limerick city is local authority. This is the highest in the country by far and almost twice as high as Dublin, with 21 per cent. The unemployment rate in the city, according to the 2006 census, was the highest in the Republic at 14.6 per cent. The estates are among the biggest in Ireland, with more than 1,000 dwellings in many of them. It is a planner's dream gone badly wrong.

Some of these estates are wastelands. Rubbish has been tipped everywhere. Houses - in some parts rows of houses - are burnt out and boarded up.

Some would point to the boarded up houses as proof that people are being relocated ahead of the planned regeneration project. But these estates have been in a similar condition since at least 2003, when this reporter began making his by now regular trips to Limerick.

The law seems a little short of friends in that part of the world :

Two Limerick-related trials produced two of the most egregious examples in recent years of memories failing in an Irish court room.

Liam Keane (19) was at the centre of both. In January, he testified under oath about a knife attack on him in Limerick city centre last year, and confirmed a garda statement in which he said: "Kieran Ryan stabbed me in the back." But when asked if he could identify the man in the dock, Kieran Ryan, he said: "No."

Judge Carroll Moran then said he was left with "no alternative" but to direct the jury to find Ryan not guilty. Later that week, Ryan was abducted only to turn up safely a week later.

In a reverse scenario last week, Liam Keane was freed at Dublin's Central Criminal Court after six witnesses denied making statements implicating him in the stabbing to death of Eric Leamy (19). Detectives admitted that none of the witnesses was intimidated.

Officers attributed the attitude of the six witnesses to a "culture" prevalent among some people in Limerick. The bizarre events surrounding the Keane trial embodied the spirit of justice Limerick-style: a system which might or might not involve a trip to court, and where witnesses reserve their right to withdraw sworn statements.

"It's part of the culture in Limerick," according to Anthony Galvin, author of a forthcoming book Family Feud: Gangland Limerick Exposed.

At least 15 garda criminal investigations in Limerick have failed in recent years because of statements being withdrawn, said Galvin.

"The withdrawing of the statements during the last peace pact has contributed to the culture of non-cooperation with the gardai." John Creamer (30) is a case in point.Two years ago, he was shot in the head, neck, chest, arm, leg and an inch away from his heart by a 16-year- old armed with an Uzi submachine gun. Creamer survived,but was unable to identify his assailant.

The almost indigenous inability of witnesses to identify gangland gunmen in Limerick was best illustrated in the case of the late Eddie Ryan, an armed robber, drug dealer and occasional hitman.

In 2000, Ryan, armed with a handgun, walked up to his former associate Christy Keane and pulled the trigger.

Unfortunately for Ryan, the gun jammed, and a week later Chr isty's brother K ieran Keane is believed to have shot him dead in the Moose Bar in Limerick. Christy - serving ten years in Portlaoise prison - had been unable to identify Ryan to the team investigating the first gun attack.There is no suggestion that Christy had any knowledge of Ryan's death.

"There is this code of silence in Limerick, sometimes it's a principled stance by the witness. Secondly, there has been some intimidation. I would not say it's a factor in the case of Liam Keane," Galvin said.

Those who agree to testify face an uncertain fate. Keane's father, Christy, was cleared of murder nine years ago after one of the main trial witnesses was murdered. Michael McCarthy was gunned down on New Year's Eve, 1993, months ahead of the trial arising from the murder of his brother Pa McCarthy.

Hmm. They're taking the mick. Like the British state, the Irish state has long given up on being what I call 'the nutter of last resort' - i.e. the person you really don't want to cross.

Coming Here Soon

"Theirs was the generational dream: do well in school, get a degree, get a good job, buy a home, do better than their parents. But, now, for the first time in the history of our State, the Government has ensured they will have a lower standard of living than their parents."

Enda Kenny, Fine Gael (i.e. opposition) leader in Ireland, on the Government budget - a government which includes the Green Party - which will among other things introduce means-tested healthcare for the over-70s.

I'd say it's already the case in the UK that the dream is gone. House prices on their own would have seen to that, even without deindustrialisation and the education disaster.

More On Mullingar ...

According to the Herald the guy in the stripy top with the beanie hat, one Christie "Ditsy" Nevin, is named as a leading instigator.

A senior garda named Christie "Ditsy" Nevin (53) as the man who has contributed most to the violence. Superintendent John Gantly, a former head of the Garda Emergency Response Unit, claimed Nevin had opposed all attempts at compromise in a long running feud between families. Nevin was charged with public order offences. Hugh Nevin (21), of Grange Crescent, Mullingar, and David Nevin (30) of St Michael's Park, Mullingar, were both charged with assault. Five others were also accused of public order offences. They were: John Nevin (25), of St Michael's Park; Paddy McDonagh (70), of Dalton Park, Mullingar; David McDonagh (26) of Reask Court, Navan, Co Meath; Michael McDonagh (36), also of Reask Court; and Michael McDonagh (24) of Northern Close, Belcamp Lane, Coolock, Dublin 17.

I liked the comment on Politics.ie :

"The lad in the balaclava is with the Continuity Travellers"

Apparently after a prize-fight between two champions from the feuding families to decide on the 'king of the tinkers', someone didn't pay their gambling debts. Hence the house that was trashed. That's according to RTE.

George Borrow again, on the tramp through North Wales in 1854 :

We continued our way, and presently saw marks of a fire in some grass by the side of the road. “Have the Gipsiaid been there?” said I to my guide.

“Hardly, sir; I should rather think that the Gwyddelaid (Irish) have been camping there lately.”

“The Gwyddeliad?”

“Yes, sir, the vagabond Gwyddeliad, who at present infest these parts much, and do much more harm than the Gipsiaid ever did.”

“What do you mean by the Gipsiaid?”

“Dark, handsome people, sir, who occasionally used to come about in vans and carts, the men buying and selling horses, and sometimes tinkering, whilst the women told fortunes.”

“And they have ceased to come about?”

“Nearly so, sir; I believe they have been frightened away by the Gwyddelod.”

“What kind of people are these Gwyddelod?

“Savage, brutish people, sir; in general without shoes and stockings, with coarse features and heads of hair like mops.”

“How do they live?”

“The men tinker a little, sir, but more frequently plunder. The women tell fortunes, and steal whenever they can.”

“They live something like the Gipsiaid.”

“Something, sir; but the hen Gipsiaid were gentlefolks in comparison.”

“You think the Gipsiaid have been frightened away by the Gwyddelians?”

“I do, sir; the Gwyddelod made their appearance in these parts about twenty years ago, and since then the Gipsiaid have been rarely seen.”

“Are these Gwyddelod poor?”

“By no means, sir; they make large sums by plundering and other means, with which, ’tis said, they retire at last to their own country or America, where they buy land and settle down.”

(If you think the English or Welsh are dubious about travellers, just ask an Irishman about them and get your ears pinned back)

"members of the travelling community"

The BBC apparently think that County Westmeath is in Northern Ireland - at least that's where they've put this story. Any fule know that Lough Ree is

"where the three counties meet, Longford, Westmeath and Roscommon"

Seven people have been arrested after a riot in County Westmeath involving two feuding extended families. Gardai say 200 people were involved in the violence at Dalton Park estate in Mullingar and riot police were needed to deal with the trouble.
Two petrol bombs were also thrown and a number of people treated in hospital. Trouble began at about noon when it is understood a prize fight involving members of two feuding local families sparked serious violence. Stones and missiles were thrown amid sustained fighting in the housing estate.

Blimey. It reminds me of this little contretemps round my way some fifteen year ago. I know it's dreadful stereotyping, but can you think of any community characterised by this sort of large-scale inter-family barney ? Well would you believe it ...

Several people were injured and taken to the Midland Regional Hospital in the town, where further fighting broke out between members of the travelling community. Riot police from the Garda Public Order unit were needed to quell the trouble, and the Garda helicopter unit was also sent to patrol the scene, with ambulances and fire brigade units also present. Seven people were due to appear in court in connection with the violence. Local reports say a feud has been simmering between two extended families over recent months.

One of the things that makes the police and others leery of upsetting Irish travellers too much is the knowledge that to offend one is to offend the clan.

'Twas ever thus. 1854 ...

“Only think,” said I. “And now tell me, what brought you into Wales?”

“What brought me into Wales? I’ll tell you; my own fool’s head. I was doing nicely in the Kaulo Gav and the neighbourhood, when I must needs pack up and come into these parts with bag and baggage, wife and childer. I thought that Wales was what it was some thirty years agone when our foky used to say — for I was never here before — that there was something to be done in it; but I was never more mistaken in my life. The country is overrun with Hindity mescrey, woild Irish, with whom the Romany foky stand no chance. The fellows underwork me at tinkering, and the women outscream my wife at telling fortunes — moreover, they say the country is theirs and not intended for niggers like we, and as they are generally in vast numbers what can a poor little Roman family do but flee away before them?

A pretty journey I have made into Wales. Had I not contrived to pass off a poggado bav engro — a broken-winded horse — at a fair, I at this moment should be without a tringoruschee piece in my pocket. I am now making the best of my way back to Brummagem, and if ever I come again to this Hindity country may Calcraft nash me.”

“I wonder you didn’t try to serve some of the Irish out,” said I.

“I served one out, brother; and my wife and childer helped to wipe off a little of the score. We had stopped on a nice green, near a village over the hills in Glamorganshire, when up comes a Hindity family, and bids us take ourselves off. Now it so happened that there was but one man and a woman and some childer, so I laughed, and told them to drive us off. Well, brother, without many words, there was a regular scrimmage. The Hindity mush came at me, the Hindity mushi at y my juwa, and the Hindity chaves at my chai. It didn’t last long, brother. In less than three minutes I had hit the Hindity mush, who was a plaguey big fellow, but couldn’t fight, just under the point of the chin, and sent him to the ground with all his senses gone. My juwa had almost scratched an eye out of the Hindity mushi, and my chai had sent the Hindity childer scampering over the green. ‘Who has got to quit now?’ said I to the Hindity mush after he had got on his legs, looking like a man who has been cut down after hanging just a minute and a half. ‘Who has got notice to quit, now, I wonder?’

Well, brother, he didn’t say anything, nor did any of them, but after a little time they all took themselves off, with a cart they had, to the south. Just as they got to the edge of the green, however, they turned round and gave a yell which made all our blood run cold. I knew what it meant, and said, ‘This is no place for us.’ So we got everything together and came away and, though the horses were tired, never stopped till we had got ten miles from the place; and well it was we acted as we did, for, had we stayed, I have no doubt that a whole Hindity clan would have been down upon us before morning and cut our throats.”

And On The 12th I Love To Wear ...

An exceedingly large Lambeg drum.



I've always been a sucker for pipes and drums of whatever form, although the bagpipes are my favourite (Bonnie Dundee ! That tune could raise an army). I love the clipped, military side drum style.

I wonder if there's a music package that emulates a flute band ? It seems to me that the style lends itself to being adapted to all sorts of silly tunes. I'd feel a bit nervous about asking these guys (watch Skilly, the amazing baton man) to take a stab at "Hips Don't Lie", for example - but on a computer one could try it out. Failing that, my daughter plays the flute and we have a half-size drum kit in the house !

Irish Republic 1, United States of Europe 0

Reminds me of 27th March, 1941 (pdf file). As Churchill put it :

Here at this moment I have great news for you and the whole country. Early this morning the Yugoslav nation found its soul. A revolution has taken place in Belgrade, and the Ministers who but yesterday signed away the honour and freedom of the country are reported to be under arrest. This patriotic movement arises from the wrath of a valiant and warlike race at the betrayal of their country by the weakest of their rulers and the foul intriguers of the Axis Powers.

Now that's being a little unfair to the Irish Government - although I see absolutely nothing to suggest that they'd have acted any differently to the other governments were it not for the existence of the Irish Constitution.

The Supreme Court has ruled that any EU treaty that substantially alters the character of the Union must be approved by a constitutional amendment.

and

Any part of the constitution may be amended but only by referendum.

The EU constitution was turned down by the French and the Dutch - so it was renamed a treaty and pushed through their legislatures. Blair promised a referendum on the treaty, saw what had happened across the Channel and broke his word - a decision upheld by his successor.

"we must be far clearer in speaking up for the common ground upon which we stand - the shared British values of liberty, civic duty and fairness to all"

Where's the liberty ? Just about to be banged up without charge for six weeks, that's where. Where's Gordon Brown's civic duty? Where's the fairness ?

While I'm terribly pleased, proud of the Irish and ashamed for my own Government's cowardly refusal to consult the British people, I think we should remember what followed the Yugoslav revolution. Still, let us take what comfort we may. There's a drop of Paddy left in the kitchen cupboard. Sláinte!

"And we drank a health to old Ireland, and Paddy's green shamrock shore"

Comment Is Difficult

Here's a handy hint. If you need a cubic metre or more of concrete laid, don't mix it yourself. Even if you've got a concrete mixer. Took me from 10am to 11pm. Order a mixer load - it's well worth it in saved time !

Over at the Stroppers people were getting all lathered up about George Galloway's failure to support abortion on demand. Laban just had to add four penn'orth on the usual subject. Anyone know how many Irish came over to the mainland in the nineteenth century ? The comparison is quite an interesting one. Too many kids, strange religion, terrorist outrages - the Irish ticked all the same boxes ...

Be fair. Galloway's core constituency are very un-keen on abortion (I'm suprised there's not been an NHS campaign to encourage greater take-up of the State's termination services among the Muslim community).

And that's where the votes are. The 'revolutionary left', for want of a better word, don't reproduce much - and, not by coincidence, haven't come near to Parliamentary representation in the last 50 years - until GG, supported by the most rapidly growing demographic since perhaps the Irish in the nineteenth century, stepped up to the plate.

The Irish Catholics had an impact on Labour politics which lasted more than a century (and working class Catholic Labour MPs like the Mahon brothers were at the forefront of opposition to Roy Jenkins' abortion reforms). The cultural influences were also great - and although most Catholics have integrated, they still have more kids then the native English.

But when the Irish arrived, with their families of five, six or more, they were arriving into a society which also had a high birthrate. The immigrants from East and West Pakistan arrived in a country where the birthrate was collapsing as the Pill and the cultural revolution took hold. Their demographic, political and cultural impact will be at least as great as that of the Catholic Irish, and IMHO probably much greater.

GG, for all he is an opportunistic bum, is not a stupid man. He knows which side of his chapati has ghee on it.

How many divisions has the Pope ? asked Stalin. GG might well ask how many voters - and future voters - the SWP has.

A Few Primroses From The Curate's Coppice

In one postcode area of Bradford, nearly 60% of vehicles are uninsured.

The Motor Insurers' Bureau, which compiled the figures, estimates there are 30,500 uninsured vehicles across the Bradford district.The BD3 area, comprising Barkerend, Bradford Moor and Thornbury, tops West York-shire's league of shame, with 4,403 uninsured vehicles, which equates to 57.3 per cent of all vehicles in that postcode area.The BD8 area, which covers Girlington, Manningham and Lower Grange, is the second worst in West Yorkshire, with 42.7 per cent of vehicles uninsured.The BD5 area, which takes in Little Horton and West Bowling, and BD7, including Great Horton and Lidget Green, are the third and fourth worst.

Not all vehicles in that fair city are uninsured though, or Bradford wouldn't also be near the top of the table for the 'cash-for-crash' insurance scam.

Almost 2,000 immigrants are being granted the right to live and work in Britain every day, official figures have disclosed. More than 710,000 foreigners received National Insurance numbers last year, an increase of eight per cent from 2005-06, according to figures published yesterday.

Some useful and illuminating figures at the National Literacy Trust on literacy and education levels by ethnic group.




The increasing influence of Islam on British culture is disclosed in research today that shows the number of Muslims worshipping at mosques in England and Wales will outstrip the numbers of Roman Catholics going to church in little more than a decade.

Projections to be published next month estimate that, if trends continue, the number of Catholic worshippers at Sunday Mass will fall to 679,000 by 2020. By that time, statisticians predict, the number of Muslims praying in mosques on Fridays will have increased to 683,000.




Children with English as their first language are now in the minority in more than 1,300 schools, according to official figures. The Daily Telegraph (19/12/07)has obtained data from the Department for Children, Schools and Families illustrating the impact of high levels of immigration on the education system.

The figures show that in a total of 1,338 primary and secondary schools - more than one in 20 of all schools in England - children with English as their first language are in the minority. In 600 of these schools, fewer than a third of pupils speak English as their first language.

Top 30 councils, percentage of schools where English speaking children are in the minority :

Newham - 87.65432
Tower Hamlets - 76.19048
Westminster - 72.34043
Brent - 68.05556
Ealing - 61.84211
Hackney - 61.29032
Haringey - 60.27397
Kensington and Chelsea - 60
Harrow - 54.6875
Camden - 52
Waltham Forest - 43.83562
Redbridge - 43.28358
Lambeth - 42.85714
Hounslow - 41.89189
Hammersmith and Fulham - 39.53488
Slough - 36.84211
Enfield - 31.3253
Leicester - 31
Blackburn with Darwen - 30.30303
Barnet - 30.18868
Bradford - 30.10753
Islington - 29.62963
Southwark - 29.62963
Birmingham - 26.66667
Luton - 25.75758
Wandsworth - 22.72727
Oldham - 21.10092
Manchester - 18.70968
Greenwich - 18.18182
Rochdale - 17.64706

Interesting to compare this with the top 10 local authorities for births.



A possible Scottish back-door immigration route :

Sir Trevor Phillips said the Government's new points-based immigration system should be weighted to encourage skilled foreigners to move north of the Border rather than settle in London or the south-east. Critics warned last night that less strict rules north of the Border would lead to Scotland becoming the "back door" for migrants to enter the rest of the United Kingdom.

The number of migrant workers entering Britain annually to find skilled employment will reach a record 212,000 this year, business experts have predicted. An in-depth study found the influx of people seeking well-paid jobs in 2008 will be more than double that of 1997, the year Labour came to power. The report, by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, forecast there will be a total of 812,000 skilled migrants living here by 2012. A decade ago there were 400,000.




A whole slew of Telegraph links on the economy. Commentators seem to think either

a) we're reaping what Alan Greenspan sowed - by pumping in money every time a market crisis threatened he introduced moral hazard and dodgy practices of all kinds.

b) given the magnitude of the market crisis, his successor is quite right to do it again.

Some of them, like Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, seem to think both.



Across the water in what was once ould, Catholic Ireland, Ulsterman Seamus Heaney bemoans the cultural collapse which enables the Irish Government to whack a motorway through the Hill of Tara.

Mr Heaney, who is a fixture of the national secondary school curriculum, said that Tara represented “an ideal of the spirit” that was fundamental to what Ireland meant. “Tara means something equivalent to what Delphi means to the Greeks, or maybe Stonehenge to an English person, or Nara in Japan, which is one of the most famous sites in the world,” he said.

“It’s a word that conjures an aura — it conjures up what they call in Irish dúchas, a sense of belonging, a sense of patrimony, a sense of an ideal, an ideal of the spirit if you like, that belongs in the place. And if anywhere in Ireland conjures that up, it’s Tara."

The 1995 Nobel prizewinner, who is believed to account for two thirds of poetry volumes sold in Britain, said that Tara appeared to have enjoyed more protection while under British rule. He said: “I discovered that W. B. Yeats and George Moore, two writers at the turn of the century, and Arthur Griffith [the founder of Sinn Fein], wrote a letter to The Irish Times some time at the beginning of the last century because a society called the British Israelites had thought that the Ark of the Covenant was buried in Tara, and they had started to dig on Tara Hill.

“They talked about the desecration of a consecrated landscape. So I thought to myself, ‘If a few holes in the ground made by amateur archaeologists was a desecration, what is happening to that whole countryside being ripped up is certainly a much more ruthless piece of work’.”

Mr Heaney said that the country’s present rulers had made “a savage choice, they have made a secular choice. The Government is acting under pressure from secular motives”.

And finally - Matthew Parris has a funny kind of feeling :

When weather, wind and currents are on the turn, say yachtsmen, a curious, choppy and deceptive water (they call it “an uncertain sea”) can be the result. Such a sight is troublesome not only to the sailor's calculations, but to his spirit.

I think we in Britain are on such a sea in March 2008. The economic wind seems to be gusting one way, while the optimistic language of politicians gusts another. Most of my countrymen, in the backs of their minds, harbour doubts and worries about the future; yet few are sure enough to let it spoil their Bank Holiday plans.

Just as some animals can detect the approach of a storm, a tsunami, or even an earthquake, Mr Parris' sensitive antennae tell him something's amiss. He doesn't quite ask, like Churchill, 'who is in charge of the clattering train ?', but you get the idea :

Who knows what's happening? Perhaps nothing, after all. Perhaps this will all blow over. But what unsettles me goes deeper than a sense of mystery about the future. At most junctures in history there arises the feeling of a lull before a possible storm. Heck, we were in a worse state in 1945, or 1979. Danger was more imminent in the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 posited bigger unknowns for the future. But at these crossroads the air was full of ideas: strong ideas, competing ideas, confident philosophies, angry dissent. People had policies. Ideologies clashed. Politicians and thinkers jostled to present their plans. Leaders led.

But what distinguishes this hiatus in 2008 from those earlier forks in the road is the impassivity of our politics, and the idleness of political debate, as we wait. There is a sense of vacuum.

There was not in 1979, as there is now, this curious hollowness in the air. Where today is the bold advocacy, the impatience to persuade, the urgency of argument? Where are the shouts of “Here's how!”? It is as though the stage were set for some kind of theatrical climax, but peopled only with stage hands and the rattle and murmur of the scene-shift. Where are the leading actors, the big voices, the great thoughts?

I have a feeling that before he's an old man, some answers to his questions will present themselves. I'm not at all sure he'll like them.

It's A Theocracy I Tell You ...

Did you know that no feast day of the Church can fall in Holy Week ?

Easter's very early this year, and two feast days fall in that week - St Patrick on the 17th and St Joseph on the 19th.

So Paddy's been moved back to this Friday, the 14th, and St Joseph to the 15th.

And as all racegoers know, where St Patrick goes, the Cheltenham Drinking Festival is sure to follow.

(This annual drinking festival also features some kind of horse-racing, traditionally watched in an on-course bar over a sea of heads).

She's living in a Hibernian World ..

I've written a couple of small pieces on the major changes in Ireland over the last 20 years.

"Strange times in the Irish Republic. The boom years have been on for 20-odd years now, the country's becoming much more secular, immigration and asylum levels are high, the youth/dance/drug culture is widespread - it's starting to feel much more like degenerate, decadent England."

In fact, given their smallish population, immigration is massive - and it's pretty much all been in the last ten years. According to the BBC, one in seven - about 14% - of the Republic's population - were born abroad - the sort of demographic shift that took thirty-five years in the UK crammed into ten.

Ironic really. Traditionally all the problems of Ireland have been seen as the fault of the perfidious English. Murderous republicans have killed English toddlers in Warrington or Pakistani shopkeepers at Canary Wharf, but have avoided blowing up Dundee or Wrexham. Only in the North have they been happy to slaughter people of Scots descent whose forebears emigrated to Ulster 400 years back - and who, ironically, were of Ulster stock.

So while Sinn Fein pledge a rebel's stand against "England's sons with their long-barreled guns", the country is filling up behind them. If one in seven of the Republic's residents were English you can be sure that the petrol bombs now burning Orange halls across the North would be toasting the joists of English-owned homes in the South. Instead Sinn Fein call for immigrants to be welcomed "with open arms" - on the grounds that the nasty Brits gave us such a hard time when we went over there, and we don't want to be like them, do we ?

Some people in Ireland aren't completely happy about what's happening.

Hibernia Girl is one. She's your one-stop shop for all Irish immigration-related news. Very much worth watching, as the changes really are massive. I don't think Ireland yet has the UK's demographic disaster as well - as far as I know they're still having babies - but I'd be grateful if she'd keep an eye on that, too.

She also nominated me as an "Excellent blog", so thanks muchly.

(It's still ironic though. Even on HGs site there are plenty of commenters who think England's the big problem. As they say at the panto "Behind you !")