Bob Geldolf - why the hate?

LordSutch

I wonder if Bob looked in on this thread (without seeing the title), would he know it was about him ?

MadsL

LordSutch wrote: »

I wonder if Bob looked in on this thread (without seeing the title), would he know it was about him ?

He wouldn't look in, he's too busy doing the bidding of the Evil Empire. :rolleyes:

HansHolzel

MadsL wrote: »

A million what now? Are you going to unleash some primary school level version of the Famine on me now?

We could start there with you. Ease you into the subject.

MadsL

HansHolzel wrote: »

We could start there with you. Ease you into the subject.

OK. I'll start you off with some Gunpowder Plot fairy tales too...

HansHolzel

For later, when MadsL has advanced in his knowledge...

Between 1845 and 1851, the Great Hunger saw the population of Ireland reduced by as much as a quarter. The immediate cause of the Famine was a mould, Phytophthora infestans, and the disease it caused is commonly known as potato blight. Though it ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, its savage human cost in Ireland was guaranteed by political and economic factors. Although central to everyday life in Ireland, the Irish potato crop was already an uncertain quantity long beforehand. The Famine that began in 1845 was different only in its huge scale and there had already been twenty-four partial crop failures, going back to 1728.

The 1841 census showed a population of just over eight million on the island. Catholics made up eighty per cent of the population, the bulk of which lived in miserable conditions on rented scraps of ground. In 1845, nearly two thirds of all Irish tenant farms were less than fifteen acres. At the top of society stood the Ascendancy class that owned most of the land. Many of these were absentee landlords who employed agents to collect their rents and administer their properties. Some never even set foot in Ireland. Only the potato could be grown in sufficient quantity to maintain a system of monoculture (where one plant is dominant).

Confronted by widespread crop failure in the autumn of 1845, Conservative Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel purchased £100,000 worth of Indian corn and corn meal secretly from America. Due to weather conditions, the first shipment did not arrive in Ireland until the beginning of February 1846. Secondly, the corn had not been ground down and was inedible without the knowledge of how to prepare it. In addition, before the Indian meal could be consumed it had to be doubly cooked or else eating it could result in severe bowel complaints. Thus, due to the maize’s yellow colour and the fact that it required complex preparation, it became known in Ireland as “Peel’s brimstone”.

In 1846, Peel moved to repeal the Corn Laws, which maintained tariffs on grain imports and kept the price of bread artificially high. The measure split the landowners in the Conservative Party, leading to the fall of Peel’s government on 25 June. Ten days later, Lord John Russell of the Whig Party assumed office. The Whigs were nineteenth-century liberals who opposed state interference in the economy and believed in letting ‘nature’ take its course.

The Irish temperance preacher Father Theobald Mathew wrote to Charles Trevelyan, the new Treasury Secretary, saying that on 27 July he had passed from Cork to Dublin and “this doomed plant bloomed in all the luxuriance of an abundant harvest”. He compared the return journey on 3 August when he saw “one wide waste of putrefying vegetation”. The priest saw that “in one week the chief support of the masses was utterly lost”.

Russell’s government introduced public works projects, which by December 1846 employed some half a million. The works were designed to be unproductive and in January 1847 the government abandoned these useless and disorganized schemes. It then turned to a mixture of indoor and outdoor direct relief. The former was administered in workhouses through the Poor Law Unions; the latter through soup kitchens. The costs fell primarily on the local landlords, who in turn often attempted to reduce their liability by evicting their tenants.

Half a million people were evicted in the Famine. For example, the Great Hunger clearances in Clare began at the end of 1847 and featured a powerful land agent named Marcus Keane, who became known as the Exterminator General of Clare. A fanatical Protestant who promoted forced conversions, he sometimes offered a fiver to tenants to level their own homes but also maintained a squad of goons (called ‘levellers’ or ‘wreckers’), numbering about forty, which he recruited in Ennis to carry out a massive eviction programme.

In the absence of proper state intervention, large sums of money were donated by charitable sources. Even the Choctaw Indians famously sent seven hundred dollars to help. The Ottoman Caliph in Turkey declared his intention to send £10,000 but then Queen Victoria requested that he give less than she had (£2,000). In 1847 the US government fitted out two ships and loaded them with food supplies for Ireland. The Jamestown sailed from Boston and arrived in Cobh on 12 April. The ship was commanded by a Captain Forbes who accompanied Father Mathew on a tour of the terrible sights.

I saw enough in five minutes to horrify me: houses crowded with the sick and dying, without floors, without furniture, and with patches of dirty straw covered with still dirtier shreds and patches of humanity; some called for water to Father Mathew, and others for a dying blessing.

Forbes also described a soup kitchen where “hundreds of spectres stood… begging for some of the soup which I can readily conceive would be refused by well-bred pigs in America”. There was a stark choice for very many people – flight on the coffin ships or certain death. By the 1911 census, Ireland’s population had fallen to 4.4 million. Generally speaking, emigration during the famine years of 1845 to 1851 was to England, Scotland, the United States, Canada and Australia.

Opinion at the time was sharply critical of the Russell government’s response to and management of the crisis. From the start, there were accusations that the Whigs failed to grasp the magnitude of the disaster and this criticism was not confined to outside critics. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Clarendon, wrote to Russell on 26 April 1849, urging that the government introduce additional relief measures.

“I do not think there is another legislature in Europe that would disregard such suffering as now exists in the west of Ireland, or coldly persist in a policy of extermination.”

According to Peter Gray, in his book The Irish Famine, the government spent seven million pounds for relief in Ireland between 1845 and 1850. Contemporaries noted the sharp contrast with the twenty million pounds compensation given to British slave-owners in the Caribbean in the 1830s.

When Ireland had experienced crop failure in 1782-83, the ports were closed to keep food in Ireland and local food prices promptly dropped. That export ban did not happen in the 1840s thanks to the Whigs and their devotion to free trade. Ireland thus remained a net exporter of food through most of the Famine. Therefore there was no real famine here but a situation where an ecological failure of the potato was compounded by a social failure to give the poor something else to eat.

Charles Trevelyan described the Famine in 1848 as “a direct stroke of an all-wise and all-merciful Providence” and many commentators have argued that the impact of this holocaust in Irish folk memory has had effects similar to that of genocide. English historian Robert Kee has suggested that the Famine can be seen as comparable in its force on “national consciousness to that of the Final Solution on the Jews”. Given that a million people died from starvation and related diseases and that at least another million emigrated on the coffin ships in the same period, this can hardly be seen as an exaggeration.

LordSutch

Everybody 'on this thread' knows about Bob and his terroble British Empire exploits, but what ever happened to the rest of the rats? might they be fundrasing for Al-Qaeda based famine relief?

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EgQ1blRU8VM/UQaPCrYPTII/AAAAAAAAjiM/ir01KwhuDS4/s1600/Boomtown+Rats.jpg

MadsL

LordSutch wrote: »

Everybody 'on this thread' knows about Bob and his terroble British Empire exploits, but what ever happened to the rest of the rats? might they be fundrasing for Al-Qaeda famine relief?

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EgQ1blRU8VM/UQaPCrYPTII/AAAAAAAAjiM/ir01KwhuDS4/s1600/Boomtown+Rats.jpg

Nah, Johnny Fingers works for the evil Japanese empire and the Emperor. How very dare he.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnnie_Fingers

Yellow121

MadsL wrote: »

I see your reading comprehension isn't great. I'll spell it out for you, the Irish parliament voted for the Act of Union which irrevocably shackles the Irish with the worst excesses of the British Empire in the 1800s. Those nasty Proddie landowners were agin it.


Did you learn that in Primary school history?


More silliness. Go right ahead if it makes you feel like you are winning somehow, I'm sure the mods will appreciate it.

What happened two years before? As I said, the vast majority of Irish people played no hand nor part in the destruction caused by the British empire.
You really don't like facts do you? They wanted home rule because they thought it was the best they could get. FACT! Don't cry about it Brit boy.
Oh no, running to the mods now. Little baba, go to the Brits they'll give you something to suck on.

Yellow121

MadsL wrote: »

A million what now? Are you going to unleash some primary school level version of the Famine on me now?

You seem obsessed with talking about primary school, you like little kiddies? Sicko.

MadsL

HansHolzel wrote: »

Wall of text

It is customary to quote sources.

HansHolzel

MadsL wrote: »

It is customary to quote sources.

Since your brain hurts, go read David Irving. I'm sure he'll have all the sources you like.

MadsL

HansHolzel wrote: »

Since your brain hurts, go read David Irving. I'm sure he'll have all the sources you like.

I'm quite reasonably asking for your source for the above analysis of the Famine, and you insult me. I have no idea what a holocaust denier has to do with it? Are you that insecure about where your wall of text came from?

Mod

Yellow121 banned.

HansHolzel

MadsL wrote: »

I have no idea what a holocaust denier has to do with it?

We know that much already.

MadsL

HansHolzel wrote: »

We know that much already.

Still no source eh?

HansHolzel

There are several sources IN the thing.

Try reading it, one word at a time if that's easier for you, before making a nuisance of yourself.

MadsL

HansHolzel wrote: »

There are several sources IN the thing.

Try reading it, one word at a time if that's easier for you, before making a nuisance of yourself.

There are several sections of editorial comment. Who wrote the article you cut and pasted? It is customary to supply sources, it is also customary on AH not to insult people who make a simple request for the source of your cut and paste efforts.

HansHolzel

Comedy show

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2013/nov/29/bono-geldof-review-comedy-bussman

MadsL

HansHolzel wrote: »

Comedy show

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2013/nov/29/bono-geldof-review-comedy-bussman

Were you searching for a source for your wall of text when you came across that?

VeryVexed

There was a story going around that geldof and that fool johnny rotten threw two buckets of urine at Rory Gallagher while he was playing live on stage at a Hot Press award ceremony.

Any time I see geldof on screen thats all that comes to my mind.

Rory Gallagher was a unique individual, a true Bluesman with a gentle soul.

If the story has any truth to it, then that geldof should hang his head in shame.

Brinimartini

For me I hate his hubristic self regard and rather stupid voice.
Fair enough if he did well but the man himself is an ass.
In Kilkenny a few years ago he was playing with the Bobcats and childishly shouted
from the stage "Who is James Taylor anyway".
JT was topping the bill and I thought that was the most assinine ignorant thing to say
about someone. Geldof would'nt be fit to hold JTs plectrum.

MadsL

VeryVexed wrote: »

There was a story going around that geldof and that fool johnny rotten threw two buckets of urine at Rory Gallagher while he was playing live on stage at a Hot Press award ceremony.

Any time I see geldof on screen thats all that comes to my mind.

Rory Gallagher was a unique individual, a true Bluesman with a gentle soul.

If the story has any truth to it, then that geldof should hang his head in shame.

Standing in front of us was one Johnny Rotten aka John Lydon (of Sex Pistols fame), along with Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats and a publicist I was to meet later, as well as a few other friends of theirs. Lydon had come in with this bucket of urine, and his friend had another one, and they threw it at the band. Me and Lloyd rushed over to stop the second bucket being thrown. The security was quickly there and they were thrown out. Yes, Sir Bob included! Rory was raving, although none of the urine reached him. If it had gone on his guitar or the amps they could have been electrocuted or set alight.

Sauce

Lydon and 'his friend' - Geldof just happened to be there.

VeryVexed

MadsL wrote: »

Sauce

Lydon and 'his friend' - Geldof just happened to be there.

I read an account of of the story where geldof was a litttle more then a innocent bystander.

I'm trying to find it or I may have read it in Gerry McAvoy's book, I honestly can't remember.

Anyways, its my reason for not likeing geldof, even if he did'nt throw the urine, he was there and is in my opinion guilty by association.

MadsL

VeryVexed wrote: »

I read an account of of the story where geldof was a litttle more then a innocent bystander.

I'm trying to find it or I may have read it in Gerry McAvoy's book, I honestly can't remember.

Anyways, its my reason for not likeing geldof, even if he did'nt throw the urine, he was there and is in my opinion guilty by association.

So were a whole crowd of people. Harsh imo.

VeryVexed

MadsL wrote: »

So were a whole crowd of people. Harsh imo.

Where the whole crowd asked to leave ? or just geldof a his mates ?

MadsL

VeryVexed wrote: »

Where the whole crowd asked to leave ? or just geldof a his mates ?

Let me ask you.. If a prosecution was brought for assault, would there be a case against Geldof for standing next to someone who threw the urine?

VeryVexed

MadsL wrote: »

Let me ask you.. If a prosecution was brought for assault, would there be a case against Geldof for standing next to someone who threw the urine?

Might be; if it was proven, with the sworn testimony from any withness present, that geldof was the person whome encourged the act in question to be undertaken but I've really no idea about law in this regard.

I not getting your point ? Any personal opinion I have on geldof is just that, a personal opinion.

I presumed that was the purpose of this thread.

MadsL

VeryVexed wrote: »

Might be; if it was proven, with the sworn testimony from any withness present, that geldof was the person whome encourged the act in question to be undertaken but I've really no idea about law in this regard.

I not getting your point ? Any personal opinion I have on geldof is just that, a personal opinion.

I presumed that was the purpose of this thread.

I'm just pointing out that contrary to your earlier basis for not liking him (he threw urine on Rory G) he was in fact only with someone who failed to throw urine on Rory.

If these facts fail to change your opinion then I suspect there is another reason for your dislike - or you are stubborn enough to persist in your dislike even if it has no basis in fact.

VeryVexed

MadsL wrote: »

I'm just pointing out that contrary to your earlier basis for not liking him (he threw urine on Rory G) he was in fact only with someone who failed to throw urine on Rory.

If these facts fail to change your opinion then I suspect there is another reason for your dislike - or you are stubborn enough to persist in your dislike even if it has no basis in fact.

No other reasons.


My opinion of that geldof will not change.

MadsL

VeryVexed wrote: »

No other reasons.


My opinion of that geldof will not change.

I see. Your opinion of someone who you thought actually did something will not change when it transpires they didn't not in fact do that thing.

Nice to see how you give people the benefit of the doubt.

VeryVexed

MadsL wrote: »

I see. Your opinion of someone who you thought actually did something will not change when it transpires they didn't not in fact do that thing.

Nice to see how you give people the benefit of the doubt.

I think that I already later stated that in my opinion geldof is guilty by association i.e. he was there with these members of the Sex Pistols, doing the 'oul tough man punk thing.
He was ejected from the event with the rest of them (not the whole crowd; i'd hate to get my words twisted) . There is a more detailed version of the events which transpired that night,which I earlier said that I was trying to find.

My only issue with geldof is that he showed disrespect, in my opinion, to the great Rory Gallagaher... a man whome would never, ever disrespect anybody, in my opinion, and from what I've read, was a true gentleman.

Weather geldof supplied the urine, threw the urine, stood beside the person who threw the urine, or simply just laughed when it was done; it all shows lack of respect for Rory.

Say what you will, pick on points I make, twist my words to suit your own adgenda, that ok, or are you just looking for the last word ?

He showed no respect for Rory and I will never like him.

Temptamperu

"Just give us your money" said the talentless man.

MadsL

VeryVexed wrote: »

Weather geldof supplied the urine, threw the urine, stood beside the person who threw the urine, or simply just laughed when it was done; it all shows lack of respect for Rory.

With exception of standing beside the person who did that, there is no evidence he did any of those things.

And I'd hate to be judged for my entire life on some of the stupid I laughed at when I was young and foolish.

VeryVexed

MadsL wrote: »

With exception of standing beside the person who did that, there is no evidence he did any of those things.

And I'd hate to be judged for my entire life on some of the stupid I laughed at when I was young and foolish.

Do you know where geldof was when Rory Gallagher, with Taste, played his landmark gig at the Isle of White Festival 1970 ?

MadsL

VeryVexed wrote: »

Do you know where geldof was when Rory Gallagher, with Taste, played his landmark gig at the Isle of White Festival 1970 ?

In Blackrock college doing his Leaving I expect...???

What is your point? That Rory was older than Geldof?

Look - I had the great privilege of hearing Rory play at the Birmingham Odean in 1978. He's amazing, a legend.

I also respect Geldof's music.

It's not either/or.

VeryVexed

MadsL wrote: »

In Blackrock college doing his Leaving I expect...???

What is your point? That Rory was older than Geldof?

Look - I had the great privilege of hearing Rory play at the Birmingham Odean in 1978. He's amazing, a legend.

I also respect Geldof's music.

It's not either/or.

When a young 22 year old Rory Gallagher was playing at this major music festival for its time, geldof was again their in the crowd but this time he did'nt directly insult Rory. No, no he was far too busy selling drugs.

MadsL

VeryVexed wrote: »

When a young 22 year old Rory Gallagher was playing at this major music festival for its time, geldof was again their in the crowd but this time he did'nt directly insult Rory. No, no he was far too busy selling drugs.

Again, I'd hate to be judged all my life by my actions as a 17 year old.

VeryVexed

MadsL wrote: »

Again, I'd hate to be judged all my life by my actions as a 17 year old.

It was just an example of the contrasting caliber of both men.

anncoates

Am I really reading a heated argument about whether or not Bob Geldof threw a bucket of piss over Rory Gallagher?

MadsL

anncoates wrote: »

Am I really reading a heated argument about whether or not Bob Geldof threw a bucket of piss over Rory Gallagher?

Yeah, like you've never read AH before

MadsL

VeryVexed wrote: »

It was just an example of the contrasting caliber of both men.

Show me the child I'll show you the man kinda thing? Jesuit schooling by any chance?

MadsL

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/bob-geldof-years-of-sacrifice-never-made-stone-of-his-heart-29814708.html

keithclancy

Why do so many people hate people on telly anyway ?