A nation and global economy go to war for the soul of Ireland.
Dispatches from no-mans land in 2024.
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Ireland 2024:
The upcoming ballot-crossing exercise has focused the minds of the nation somewhat. People are beginning to realise, a war of sorts, is upon them. A war that started quite sometime ago when everyone was too distracted to take any notice. This war didn’t begin with Covid and the pandemic times. Although, the Covid period was a significant battle, and perhaps the most significant indicator pointing to the war on our door-step, it wasn’t the beginning. But, even with the massive shop-floor signage signalling the future, many still didn’t understand what we were engaged in or with.
I include myself in that too.
Now, though, belatedly, the men and women of Ireland are beginning to comprehend some truths slowly, and indeed, many are slowly choosing sides. Reluctant combatants, most. On both sides. In plain terms, a starved nation wrestles an over-fed crocodile economy. Tik-Tok thinking fights ancient learnings, teachings and the accumulated hard-earned wisdom of our land and its people.
So, two armies gather. One has financial resources, international support and technological might.
And one does not.
To meet the new Goliath, Dáithí must reach for old shovels, spades and scythes from age-old hiding places. A battle of wills and weeping willows. Goliath has all the man-made resources but inconveniently Dáithí possesses all the soul and spirit. And that inconvenient fact - in a horse-chestnut - is what this whole war of conkers is about.
It has mostly escaped our attention that the Irish global economy has been on a gluttonous feeding frenzy for the last ten years. The bulk of the country are only now sitting up to take notice. Noticing not the ever rising economic numbers, but, rather, what the overweight croc is feeding on to achieve the mouth-watering financial results. The flesh and bones of the Irish nation.
Nowadays, the words “Celtic Tiger “ still engenders a chill of regret and disbelief amongst Irish people of a certain age stamp. A reminder of how easily, many of us took to greed, grandiosity, self importance and chasing streets paved with fools gold. The 2008 economic crash brought tumbling down most of our newly acquired grand notions. For awhile, at least. However, what followed next was worse. Far worse, frankly. Ireland began the first steps of transgendering from a nation to a fully non-binary globally captured economy.
A nation that racked up 200 billion in debt to over-build and over-invest in housing and property, now, fifteen years later, incredibly finds itself in the curious position of not having a spare bed. Never mind a spare bedroom. Kinda wild, when you sit down to think about it. But, unfortunately, we’ve built an economy that leaves little time to invest in the thinking business.
Now, at this point, I need to go a little boring for a second and offer an economic definition and a graph to continue the story. Fear not, this endeavour won’t last too long.
Gross Domestic Product or GDP is a measure of the size of the economy, the total economic activity in a country. It is the most important indicator of how a country is doing financially.
The definition is a reminder of this “GDP “ term we frequently hear economists, government ministers, and people earning over 100 grand a year drooling over on the news, or in the designer cafes of our nouveau-riche boulevards. The accompanying graph is a tool merely for the picture I’m trying to paint. While our GDP figures have skyrocketed, the glorious Celtic Tiger debt burden remains more or less the same. Our betters tell us the debt is not a problem just so long as our economy keeps growing because in percentage terms the debt is actually falling. But, like their predecessors promises about a soft crash in house-prices in 2006, the new expert class confidently predict our economy will never falter in the same fashion again. History, though, informs us that the intelligentsia are always at their most stupid when a nation needs them most.
Once a crash inevitably occurs, next month, next year or whenever, and the lights dim on our globalised economy, the debt will re-emerge from under the bed like a very real bogey-man dominating a darkened room. At this specific point Ireland will be at its most vulnerable to full and final take-over. A brief look back at our recent economic history is worthwhile to ascertain what exactly happened after our last economic catastrophe. To eek out clues as to what might be headed our way after our next one.
So, let’s jump back to the graph above now. I’m a visual learner more than an auditory one. So, when I get an idea, or learn something new, I generally see it in my mind quite clearly. The graph above on the right in red is interesting to me visually as it outlines Ireland’s GDP growth per capita ( person ) for the last forty years or so. But, it is also compelling viewing from a lateral rather than a logical thinking perspective too. Ireland’s GDP trajectory in this chart looks freakishly similar to a long-term crypto-currency trading chart pattern just before the crypto goes belly up.
Looked at in that light you might say this: The crypto-currency that is Ireland Inc is approaching the peak of its exponential growth phase and is about to stall and perhaps crash down to earth. To be put up for sale again at rock-bottom prices and be purchased by the very same global entities who drove this savage growth and changing demographics in the first place. But, who sell their chips and cash in their profits pre-crash ready. Now, if a crash arrives of the magnitude the charts indicate, these small number of global players will be waiting to “rescue“ us again - which means finish us off for good. A pump-and-dump scheme designed to hoover up not just our finances and housing stock this time round but much more. Our lands, our seas, our mountains, rivers and lakes, our skies, our culture. With the side benefit of exterminating our DNA and spirit from the face of the earth too.
Of course, not everyone sees this as a war. Which is fine but most Irishmen and women who don’t comprehend it in these terms are generally easy to spot and share a trait, I believe. They live most of their lives in the Irish economy and not in the Irish nation. These types of people will knee-jerk retort - quite aggressively- about the importance of the Irish economy and labour markets but never once speak about the duty of preserving the Irish nation.
We’ve all been guilty of this behaviour in the past so it’s important not to be too judgy on the subject. But, Ireland, I fear, at this moment in our evolution is a gluttonous, obese, global economy with a shrinking nation inconveniently attached to its hip. The three-card-trick our captured leadership class are trying to play at the moment is the sleight of hand you’d expect only from a street con-artist. It goes a little like this…..
First, bastardisation, hollowing out and takeover of the important Irish symbols from our history, culture and spirit. Then second, apply artificial intelligence, mass-immigration and upwardly mobile GDP stats to these fleshless nation stickers and sell them as Irish. Finally, mix in some globalised ideological value systems and pretend all these new meanings are what those Irish symbols always symbolised since time immemorial.
Dáithí has the fight of his life on his hands to survive methinks.
Now, as enjoyable as it was to witness many Irish megalomaniacs going bust in the 2008 - 2011 dip phase, it allowed the fast entrance from stage-left of a far worse array of global megalomaniacs. Ones not just greedy for our low 12.5% corporation tax rate but also hungry for much of what I describe above in addition. The 2008-2011 period of our financial history was the perfect storm for these global gods. An abundance of cheap property - housing and commercial - meant a new type of multi-national entered the arena while the existing ones quickly caught up too.
These new players were in simple terms Big Tech, Big Consulting, Big Finance, in addition to the expansion of Big Pharma. It was at this time, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and a raft of others moved operations to Ireland but with a key difference and shift of emphasis from the earlier Celtic Tiger period. It was a most significant one too.
These companies began a pattern of moving in workforces from outside of Ireland to enhance the cheap bricks and mortar newly acquired at rock bottom prices. The half-finished estates and apartment blocks bought up by international vulture funds were miraculously completed and the movement of a new immigrant, mainly non-EU population was ushered in under the cover of the darkness. Slowly at first, but then more rapidly, with the aid of boutique legal firms expert in the nuances of our immigration, work visa and student visa laws. While, the refugee and asylum practices of the last two years get all the headlines make no mistake about it, they are built on the foundations of the abuse of our work and student visa systems.
It was in this period, post 2011, that the war against our nation began in earnest. The globalists won a huge early victory - pre-pandemic - with the full capture of our capital city, Dublin, and yet no-one registered the fact until quite recently.
One of the serendipitous unusualness’s of my life is that I closed down my small IT business in the West of Ireland in 2013 and moved back into the global economy of Ireland by taking a day-rate contract position with the US multinational bank Citi, located on North Wall Quay in Dublin. I left behind a people and province still struggling and consumed with the after effects of the 2008 recession and entered a city that had fully left the recession behind. My first thought walking to work in city centre Dublin on my first day was a simple one.
“ Where’s the fucking recession gone? “
What I noticed, even ten years ago, was the changing face of Ireland’s multi-national workforce. The company was filled with educated, intelligent people from a dozen different countries. Many of the financial, tech and pharma companies doubled down on Ireland during this period, it also involved the siting of many of their associated call-centres here too. The lack of foreign language skills available in Ireland was one of the new chinks exploited by the multi-nationals in terms of importing non-Irish workforces onto these shores. Overtime, this was followed by the exploitation of many others chinks in our work visa armour.
In personal terms, the 2013-2015 period was when peak globalism met peak alcoholism in my life, and though, it is embarrassing to recall now, I loved every fucking second of it. So, in a sense, I can understand why there will be resistance in the months and years ahead. I was living in the Irish economy and not the Irish nation with money in my pocket. This is not a voluntarily easy thing to just drop-kick out the window.
Today, I sometimes ponder about what led me down the path I am on now. Or indeed, what the precise series of crossroads were exactly. I don’t know the answers to a lot of these questions but at these moments of reflection, I can’t help but concede to a truth. If I didn’t possess a significant, self-damaging inner shadow I would probably never have noticed the curious light, flickering dimly, like some far-off faulty light-bulb, in my inner distance. I suppose, that’s all life is, really. Days when your shuffling slowly but hopefully towards the promise of the sun. Then, nights when every fibre of your being is clamping shut your minds-eye to block the light. A voice cajoling and whispering in your ear that the long, tedious walk ahead mightn’t be worth it in the end. We have some positive cajoling to do of people on the opposite side of the fence ( or sitting on the fence) to us, I believe, and a good place to meet them is by asking them to consider thinking in terms of the Irish nation and not the Irish economy.
Anyway, back to the near present and the outer world. Last week, Neale Richmond TD, Minister of State for Business, Employment and Retail at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, announced the following on his Linkedin profile. In one fell swoop he granted employment status to tens of thousands of Non-EU nationals living in Ireland. In addition, he seems to have set in train a new situation with regard to Ireland’s already out-of-control work visa system. A successful applicant for a work-visa in Ireland now is also granted an employment visa for his or her spouse or “ partner “. With no definition of partner that I can see. As the nation goes to war on the refugee crisis engulfing the country, our government is quietly ensuring the production line of non-EU cheap labour doesn’t dry up any-time soon.
I posted the above snippet as a tweet last weekend and at last count it had over 150,000 views. This only happens when the other side of the argument engages with the conversation starter. Many, offered the counter-argument that this announcement was great news for…wait for it…wait for it…the Irish economy. A sample of the responses in support of the initiative are copied below:
“ Good move - help solve our labour shortages but queue the racists who will complain having never worked a day in their lives and got everything free from the state “
“ How dare people want to work and contribute to our economy, our tax system, our social welfare pot, our workforce! It's a scandal I tell you. Feet on the streets now! The morons give me a good laugh in fairness! Great news @nealerichmond
Work permits are a great idea “
My response to these kinds of comments generally have the global economy serfs reaching for the nearest far-right vaccine.
“ I live in a nation not an economy “
This is the fork in the road we all face moving forward. The two roads felt like parallel paths for most of the past thirty years. In a sense, we could fool ourselves into believing we could walk with a foot on either road. Eat from both troughs. Not anymore, I feel. The path in the woods is diverging in two and moving apart quite clearly and quickly.
Do we want to live and protect a land with clear links to the people, culture and spirit of our past?
Or do we want to march to the tune of the newly manufactured labels and symbols of Ireland Inc?
It is a question each and everyone of us will have to ask ourselves. There’s no avoiding it anymore.
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Brilliant as usual Gerry. I'm in the UK. Our problem like yours in the Emerald Isle is that we're too fucking reasonable, we need to toughen the fuck up.
Our souls are not for sale ever