Think differently? Think again!

Copyerselveson

I really don't think I could have put this better myself. This is from an article written by Sineád O'Shea on Roy Greenslade's blog in the Guardian.

The narrative that Ireland presents internationally is that of the cute survivor of British colonisation. The reality is that the abused turned abuser a long time ago. Dissent is not welcome.
A polite way to describe Ireland is as a developing culture. Irish business leaders hate that. In fact, Ireland's economic and social problems are similar.
The economy has been built on cronyism, group-think, the double talk of absurdly low corporate tax rates and light touch regulation, the cult of the leader, an over reliance on "strong" international forces. These were the factors that caused the Celtic Tiger to collapse.
This has had consequences for all. It's the same for the system of shame and sexual repression. The impact has not been restricted to its most obvious victims.
Ireland is not just a bad place to be a woman or an immigrant, it's a bad place to be in any way "different." As a result, sadly, it's a bad place to be anyone at all.

Source:http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/jun/20/ireland-childprotection

If there's one thing we need to eradicate in Ireland is the culture of Group Think - we are particularly good at forcing people to follow the same view and narrative in this country. Dissenters will be crushed.

Barely There

Copyerselveson wrote: »

If there's one thing we need to eradicate in Ireland is the culture of Group Think

I agree with this fully.

What should we do instead?

The King of Moo

Arrah 'tis true enough I suppose, but sure what can you do?

dxhound2005

What qualifies her to be an authority on all things Irish?

Mr. Incognito

The economy has been built on cronyism, group-think, the double talk of absurdly low corporate tax rates and light touch regulation, the cult of the leader, an over reliance on "strong" international forces. These were the factors that caused the Celtic Tiger to collapse.

No they werent. Ffs. The corp tax rate is the only thing that stopped us becoming greece.

The celtic tiger collapsed when cheap credit ran out and we stopped selling each other over valued houses.

Overindulgent tripe

Mr.McLovin

I don't know about you but I'm going for a pint...

SEPT 23 1989

100,000 employed in multinationals 800,000 in SME's

who do the establishment bend over backwards for?

jimgoose

Isn't Sineád O'Shea one of these one-legged carbon-neutral Ethiopian peace-lesbians that writes for Al Jazeera? I say if it's so difficult to be anyone at all in Ireland she should probably fcuk off to Oman or somewhere similar.

My name is URL

jimgoose wrote: »

Isn't Sineád O'Shea one of these one-legged carbon-neutral Ethiopian peace-lesbians that writes for Al Jazeera? I say if it's so difficult to be anyone at all in Ireland she should probably fcuk off to Oman or somewhere similar.

Kind of proving her point there, really

jimgoose

My name is URL wrote: »

Kind of proving her point there, really

Excuse me for opening my mouth. I'll stone myself to death quietly when I get a minute.

Duckworth_Luas

jimgoose wrote: »

Isn't Sineád O'Shea one of these one-legged carbon-neutral Ethiopian peace-lesbians that writes for Al Jazeera? I say if it's so difficult to be anyone at all in Ireland she should probably fcuk off to Oman or somewhere similar.

She's writing for the Guardian, she has to outdo the self-flagellation of the English leftie writers to get noticed!

conorhal

It's the 'everything is shoite, we're shoite, nothing changes because... shoite' liberal self-flagilation groupthink of that article that I find it hard to deal with.

Dyr

Mr. Incognito wrote: »

No they werent. Ffs. The corp tax rate is the only thing that stopped us becoming greece.

The celtic tiger collapsed when cheap credit ran out and we stopped selling each other over valued houses.

Overindulgent tripe

Dem greeks with their debt write downs, there but for the grace of god go us

what ****ed the greeks was that their nod-and-wink cute hoor culture ran way deeper than ours

seamus

What a bizarrely disjointed article.

She's right on one point - that Ireland, taking the nation as a whole, isn't as cosmopolitan as we like to think, and there's a huge difference from place to place in regards to social attitudes to women. But that's a symptom of our bizarre population spread (a quarter of the country live basically in one county) and the fact that we're new to the multi-cultural thing. But we're catching up quickly.

What makes me laugh is this:

Ireland is not just a bad place to be a woman or an immigrant, it's a bad place to be in any way "different."

A bad place to be a woman or an immigrant? This, in a British paper? Ireland ranked number 6 in a recent study on the gender gap. As in, the sixth best place in the world to be a woman. The UK ranked at number 18.
Immigration? How many anti-everyone-who's-not-white-and-Irish parties have we among our elected officials? Oh yeah. Here's a nice article on that topic. In 2007, a small Irish town elected a Nigerian-born mayor, who'd only been in the country 7 years. Yeah, really intolerant of immigrant we are.

Assuming Ms O'Shea is Irish, she has somewhat become a parody of her own article - an Irish person with a "very small and immature sense of self". To quote herself, she's "a sort of weak-minded teenager", effectively, "OMG Ireland is sooooo crap, like everywhere else is so much better, why are Irish people so uncool". Which, quite amusingly appears to the self-deprecating Irish group-think she laments so much.

Maximus Alexander

I disagree with all of you!

Am I doing it right?

c_man

Oh god, I'm gonna have to put up with this ****e all weekend from people who make a point of telling you they read The Guardian. Top marks for getting a few digs in at low tax rates though, I would have found it hard to link that with the dead babies myself.

jimgoose

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

I disagree with all of you!

Am I doing it right?

It's very simple - one man likes Tayto crisps, the other lad likes King! :pac:

suicide_circus

My name is URL wrote: »

Kind of proving her point there, really

I suppose the point he is making is that oh shea is happy to paint ireland in pretty dire terms while also happy to work for Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer bin Mohammed Al-Thani, member of the Qatari royal family and chairman of aljazeera...modern Qatar being built on the corpses of abused migrant workers, indemic unbridled corruption and not quite being a beacon of progressive libertarianism

The One Doctor

She has to give a completely over-the-top opinion to get paid. Remember this the next time you read an opinion piece.

bear1

seamus wrote: »

What a bizarrely disjointed article.

She's right on one point - that Ireland, taking the nation as a whole, isn't as cosmopolitan as we like to think, and there's a huge difference from place to place in regards to social attitudes to women. But that's a symptom of our bizarre population spread (a quarter of the country live basically in one county) and the fact that we're new to the multi-cultural thing. But we're catching up quickly.

What makes me laugh is this:
A bad place to be a woman or an immigrant? This, in a British paper? Ireland ranked number 6 in a recent study on the gender gap. As in, the sixth best place in the world to be a woman. The UK ranked at number 18.
Immigration? How many anti-everyone-who's-not-white-and-Irish parties have we among our elected officials? Oh yeah. Here's a nice article on that topic. In 2007, a small Irish town elected a Nigerian-born mayor, who'd only been in the country 7 years. Yeah, really intolerant of immigrant we are.

Assuming Ms O'Shea is Irish, she has somewhat become a parody of her own article - an Irish person with a "very small and immature sense of self". To quote herself, she's "a sort of weak-minded teenager", effectively, "OMG Ireland is sooooo crap, like everywhere else is so much better, why are Irish people so uncool". Which, quite amusingly appears to the self-deprecating Irish group-think she laments so much.

Well said.
Reading that I was thinking that would be a nice counter article to her.
There have been mistakes made in Ireland in the past present and there will be in the future too but every country is like that.
The UK is hardly an innocent country but I'd imagine she wouldn't have an article published about the UK like that.

Knex*

Seamus, of course, put it far better than I could.

Article is rather amusing when you stop taking it seriously.

The One Doctor wrote: »

She has to give a completely over-the-top opinion to get paid. Remember this the next time you read an opinion piece.

This makes sense, I suppose.

The Diabolical Monocle

The self flagellation continues ... wu tang ... wu tang

The_Captain

seamus wrote: »

our bizarre population spread (a quarter of the country live basically in one county)

That's a pretty normal spread to be fair. About 20% of English people live in Greater London, 40% of Australians live in Melbourne and Sydney, about a quarter of the French live in the Paris area.

seamus

The_Captain wrote: »

That's a pretty normal spread to be fair. About 20% of English people live in Greater London, 40% of Australians live in Melbourne and Sydney, about a quarter of the French live in the Paris area.

Indeed. I think what's probably oddest about Ireland is the way we've spread. We have a very small population for the size of our landmass, and outside of Dublin we tend to spread ourselves out quite widely. Other developed countries tend to have a large capital city (or two), and a handful of other large cities. Ireland by comparison (just taking the Republic) has the behemoth of Dublin and that's about it for major urban areas. Cork is a city, but dwarfed by Dublin. And beyond that the largest urban areas are comparatively tiny.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland_by_population

40% of our population live in rural areas, which is quite different to other developed countries like the UK, US, Aus and France where rural populations are 20% or less.

It's not completely exceptional, there are other developed countries in the same boat, but what it does mean is that social ideas and social changes are slower to disseminate across the entire population.

Un Croissant

suicide_circus wrote: »

Sheihk Hamad bin Thamer bin Mohammed Al-Thani

Tl:dr

kneemos

If I think of something new and it becomes popular is that then groupthink?

Vito Corleone

Laughable article.

The_Captain

seamus wrote: »

Indeed. I think what's probably oddest about Ireland is the way we've spread. We have a very small population for the size of our landmass, and outside of Dublin we tend to spread ourselves out quite widely. Other developed countries tend to have a large capital city (or two), and a handful of other large cities. Ireland by comparison (just taking the Republic) has the behemoth of Dublin and that's about it for major urban areas. Cork is a city, but dwarfed by Dublin. And beyond that the largest urban areas are comparatively tiny.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland_by_population

40% of our population live in rural areas, which is quite different to other developed countries like the UK, US, Aus and France where rural populations are 20% or less.

It's not completely exceptional, there are other developed countries in the same boat, but what it does mean is that social ideas and social changes are slower to disseminate across the entire population.

It's quite unusual in that regard. It's shocking to think that even after more than 150 years, we still have a lower population in this country than we did in 1830.
If you look at the actual population demographics, 23 counties in this country have a lower population today than they did in 1830, with Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare being the exceptions

Crash

Her article does drive one point home though - if there's one thing we've always had a knack for and haven't lost, we are the best small country in the world to practice self-flagellation.

Especially if you get a chance to go do it in a neighbouring countries newspapers.

Maximus Alexander

The_Captain wrote: »

It's quite unusual in that regard. It's shocking to think that even after more than 150 years, we still have a lower population in this country than we did in 1830.
If you look at the actual population demographics, 23 counties in this country have a lower population today than they did in 1830, with Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare being the exceptions

What I find really startling to think about is that, if Ireland's population had grown at the same rate as Great Britain's since about 1800, there'd be about 30 million people living on this island!

old hippy

dxhound2005 wrote: »

What qualifies her to be an authority on all things Irish?

What qualifies anyone to comment on the negative aspects of any country?

jimgoose wrote: »

Isn't Sineád O'Shea one of these one-legged carbon-neutral Ethiopian peace-lesbians that writes for Al Jazeera? I say if it's so difficult to be anyone at all in Ireland she should probably fcuk off to Oman or somewhere similar.

I see. Speak out of turn, dissent and you're sent packing... sounds familiar....

Duckworth_Luas wrote: »

She's writing for the Guardian, she has to outdo the self-flagellation of the English leftie writers to get noticed!

conorhal wrote: »

It's the 'everything is shoite, we're shoite, nothing changes because... shoite' liberal self-flagilation groupthink of that article that I find it hard to deal with.

The Diabolical Monocle wrote: »

The self flagellation continues ... wu tang ... wu tang

The irony

Copyerselveson

old hippy wrote: »

What qualifies anyone to comment on the negative aspects of any country?



I see. Speak out of turn, dissent and you're sent packing... sounds familiar....







The irony

Absolutely. Someone says something a lot of Irish people don't like, and our reaction is to silence them, ridicule them and send them into exile.

c_man

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

What I find really startling to think about is that, if Ireland's population had grown at the same rate as Great Britain's since about 1800, there'd be about 30 million people living on this island!

All that building work... *drool*

bb1234567

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

What I find really startling to think about is that, if Ireland's population had grown at the same rate as Great Britain's since about 1800, there'd be about 30 million people living on this island!

I wonder what the biggest population ireland could feasibly support is
Id say about 8 million

kneemos

bb1234567 wrote: »

I wonder what the biggest population ireland could feasibly support is
Id say about 8 million

Is there a limit?

ToddyDoody

Catholic harmony - Ireland. Protestant newspaper - The Guardian. Next.

dxhound2005

Copyerselveson wrote: »

Absolutely. Someone says something a lot of Irish people don't like, and our reaction is to silence them, ridicule them and send them into exile.

Lots of Irish people like what she said. But they do not like it when other people question their point of view. It results in them making up stuff like she was sent into exile.

RDM_83 again

Terrible terrible article, The Online version of of the Gaurniad at least seems to be trying to challenge the Daily Mail as the worlds foremost producer of click-bait (though coming from the Right-On perspective).
These articles have to be viewed through the perspective of the ROI being held up as an example to the UK during the Celtic Tiger era, as some one who reads the Guardian quiet a lot over the last few years they do enjoy a good bit of Ireland bashing when the opportunity arises since the countries fall from international grace.

bb1234567

kneemos wrote: »

Is there a limit?

I would imagine there is yeah

Copyerselveson

RDM_83 again wrote: »

Terrible terrible article, The Online version of of the Gaurniad at least seems to be trying to challenge the Daily Mail as the worlds foremost producer of click-bait (though coming from the Right-On perspective).
These articles have to be viewed through the perspective of the ROI being held up as an example to the UK during the Celtic Tiger era, as some one who reads the Guardian quiet a lot over the last few years they do enjoy a good bit of Ireland bashing when the opportunity arises since the countries fall from international grace.

That explains it all of course. It's the Brits bashing the plucky poor old Irish. Always is.

(apart from the fact that the author of the article is Irish and Roy Greenslade is one of the most pro-Irish and knowledgeable commentators about Ireland in the British media)

The problem is when someone holds up a mirror to our faces, sometimes what we see back isn't all that pretty. There has long been a culture of groupthink in Ireland and who hasn't heard the expression "whose yer man?" at any time. Ireland remains a stiflingly conformist society. The long story of emigration from our country isn't simply an economic one, many of those who can't or won't conform simply leave.

Shakespeare's Sister

Self reflection/constructive self criticism at a national level is a good thing, an important thing; we have seen the results of this not being done/allowed - never good.
But this article is not self reflection/constructive self criticism - it is whingeing. It is bitching about everyone else who's Irish but the author somehow exempting herself... despite also being Irish. It is blamey. It is judgemental. It is arrogant.
It's the same as the "Irish people are sheeple" troglodytery of the reader comments to TheJournal.ie/Independent.ie/Facebook groups (and that is TOTAL groupthink) - just articulated better.

seamus wrote: »

What a bizarrely disjointed article.

She's right on one point - that Ireland, taking the nation as a whole, isn't as cosmopolitan as we like to think, and there's a huge difference from place to place in regards to social attitudes to women. But that's a symptom of our bizarre population spread (a quarter of the country live basically in one county) and the fact that we're new to the multi-cultural thing. But we're catching up quickly.

What makes me laugh is this:
A bad place to be a woman or an immigrant? This, in a British paper? Ireland ranked number 6 in a recent study on the gender gap. As in, the sixth best place in the world to be a woman. The UK ranked at number 18.
Immigration? How many anti-everyone-who's-not-white-and-Irish parties have we among our elected officials? Oh yeah. Here's a nice article on that topic. In 2007, a small Irish town elected a Nigerian-born mayor, who'd only been in the country 7 years. Yeah, really intolerant of immigrant we are.

Assuming Ms O'Shea is Irish, she has somewhat become a parody of her own article - an Irish person with a "very small and immature sense of self". To quote herself, she's "a sort of weak-minded teenager", effectively, "OMG Ireland is sooooo crap, like everywhere else is so much better, why are Irish people so uncool". Which, quite amusingly appears to the self-deprecating Irish group-think she laments so much.

Spot-on.

And I am a woman born and raised in Ireland - and I suspect a much older woman than Sinead. News to me that Ireland is a bad place to be a woman.
There was a time when Ireland wasn't a good place for a lot of women (although plenty of that was due to fellow women) but I think they'd find it laughable for someone to say things are as bad today.
Homophobia and racism - they exist in Ireland for sure. Look at these pages alone. But endemic in society? Perhaps pockets of Ireland, but I think it's unfair to say Ireland is a racist or homophobic society.

Some people however like looking for/manufacturing persecution. Maybe she grew up in a backwater but that doesn't represent all Irish people.

It does seem to be the case too that po-faced right-on people who are on a permanent crusade to find offence, have no issue with blanket slatings of people of their own nationality (not constructive criticism - blanket slatings; it should be easy to tell the difference) oblivious to the irony. Possibly because they think anything other than hostility towards their own country is what's required in order to look non nationalistic. This doesn't just apply to Irish people.
"Self flagellating", "self loathing" are spot-on phrases. "Self deprecating" - no; that's actually laudable and endearing.

Maximus Alexander

bb1234567 wrote: »

I wonder what the biggest population ireland could feasibly support is
Id say about 8 million

Dunno, but Great Britain is less than 3 times the size of Ireland and has a population of > 60 million.

krudler

seamus wrote: »

Indeed. I think what's probably oddest about Ireland is the way we've spread. We have a very small population for the size of our landmass, and outside of Dublin we tend to spread ourselves out quite widely. Other developed countries tend to have a large capital city (or two), and a handful of other large cities. Ireland by comparison (just taking the Republic) has the behemoth of Dublin and that's about it for major urban areas. Cork is a city, but dwarfed by Dublin. And beyond that the largest urban areas are comparatively tiny.

*snigger*

donegal__road

ToddyDoody wrote: »

Catholic harmony - Ireland. Protestant newspaper - The Guardian. Next.

The PIIGS countries have a thing in common... confession and the so called examination of conscience. Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Spain are all catholic countries.. and Greece is Orthodox. The Orthodox church also has confession just like the Catholic church.

This would suggest that a person could lie, cheat and steal for all their worth, and have these sins absolved at confession, rinse and repeat.

Where on the other hand, many Protestant, Anglican faiths believe in salvation through hard work.


*sorry if this seems a little off the wall, few venos on board.

sock puppet

Copyerselveson wrote: »

That explains it all of course. It's the Brits bashing the plucky poor old Irish. Always is.

(apart from the fact that the author of the article is Irish and Roy Greenslade is one of the most pro-Irish and knowledgeable commentators about Ireland in the British media)

The problem is when someone holds up a mirror to our faces, sometimes what we see back isn't all that pretty. There has long been a culture of groupthink in Ireland and who hasn't heard the expression "whose yer man?" at any time. Ireland remains a stiflingly conformist society. The long story of emigration from our country isn't simply an economic one, many of those who can't or won't conform simply leave.

You're absolutely right. Anyone who disagrees with the blogger is engaging in groupthink.

crockholm

donegal__road wrote: »

The PIIGS countries have a thing in common... confession and the so called examination of conscience. Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Spain are all catholic countries.. and Greece is Orthodox. The Orthodox church also has confession just like the Catholic church.

This would suggest that a person could lie, cheat and steal for all their worth, and have these sins absolved at confession, rinse and repeat.

Where on the other hand, many Protestant, Anglican faiths believe in salvation through hard work.


*sorry if this seems a little off the wall, few venos on board.

Have you been Reading "Max Weber for dummies" with that vino?:P;)

There really are so many things wrong with that school of thought.

Maphisto

Danger Will Robinson - Welcome to the Politics Cafe

strobe

Maybe its a generational thing, or maybe a city versus more rural thing, I dunno, but I seemed to have slipped through the net of this 'think differently, think again' Ireland my entire life. Since I was a kid, right through to the age of 30 now, the most prevalent attitude I've experienced from Irish people towards myself and others has been 'if you're sound I like you, if you're not I don't' and its seems to apply to women, immigrants, all races, religions, creeds, sexualities, political persuasions and hair styles. I've come across people that weren't like that of course but they were very much the exception rather than the norm.

Have I lived my life in some weird and rare micro-climate of Irish attitude? Am I the only one here with this kind of experience of growing up and living in this country? Have I been just that abnormally lucky?

Seaneh

donegal__road wrote: »

The PIIGS countries have a thing in common... confession and the so called examination of conscience. Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Spain are all catholic countries.. and Greece is Orthodox. The Orthodox church also has confession just like the Catholic church.

This would suggest that a person could lie, cheat and steal for all their worth, and have these sins absolved at confession, rinse and repeat.

Where on the other hand, many Protestant, Anglican faiths believe in salvation through hard work.


*sorry if this seems a little off the wall, few venos on board.

Absolute tosh, on both national traits and Christian doctrine. Neither Catholics nor Protestants nor coptics nor Assyrian nor Evangelicals believe in salvation through hard work, Christianity, regardless of denomination believes in salvation through faith alone and all place importance on confession.

donegal__road

Seaneh wrote: »

Absolute tosh, on both national traits and Christian doctrine. Neither Catholics nor Protestants nor coptics nor Assyrian nor Evangelicals believe in salvation through hard work, Christianity, regardless of denomination believes in salvation through faith alone and all place importance on confession.

I did mention that I was drinking... and this is AH.. so lighten up m8

donegal__road

crockholm wrote: »

Have you been Reading "Max Weber for dummies" with that vino?:P;)

There really are so many things wrong with that school of thought.

spot on crockholm.

From the Max Weber book, the Protestant Work Ethic...

The Protestant work ethic (or the Puritan work ethic) is a concept in theology, sociology, economics and history which emphasizes hard work, frugality and diligence as a constant display of a person's salvation in the Christian faith, in contrast to the focus upon religious attendance, confession, and ceremonial sacrament in the Catholic tradition.

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