Discussion Main / Oireland

What does the line "this has a certain amount of always an actor about it" refer to? There isn't a Always An Actor trope (hence the red link), and I'm not aware of the meaning of the phrase.

Sorry, but I'm afraid there's a few errors here. The Leprechaun part IS true, but there have been latter stories with benevolent at best and mischevious at worst leprechaun stories from Ireland also- and let's be fair, that's because society has become more mellow- and that's for the better, IMO! I also feel Irish tempers being quick to anger, but also quick to calm down and laugh, ESPECIALLY the humour aspect, has a fair amount of Truth in Television. And having just been in Ireland, I can assure you red hair IS common in Ireland- although I suppose this article more claims it as an exaggeration rather than completely untrue, although I don't think it's much of an exaggeration. And yeah, this Post-Trials business- I think the British are traditionally hated by the Irish, but obviously the animosity has greatly lessened over the years- but I honestly don't understand this point about Americans receiving casual hatred from the Irish. Basically, I'm born and bred in England, but both my mum's parents, and my dad's mum, were all from Ireland, although in the latter case, she was born in Ireland, but grew up in Yorkshire. I know my mum's parents were on the receiving end of much racism when they first arrived in London, as was common at the time, but anyway... basically, I don't think the English or the Americans are actually hated that much by the Irish these days, which is probably helped by the fact that both nations have quite a lot of people of Irish descent... anyway, sorry for the essay, but it's just, I feel that while the page makes some good points, it has a fair few errors, but I'm willing to listen to other people's views too- I'm sure this page has a fair few people from Ireland/of Irish descent

Hide / Show Replies

I just read the first feature and I'M SORRY BUT SINCE WHEN WAS AUSTRALIA KNOWN FOR SHEEP! Wales, yes. The Calder Valley, more so. Some days I wake up and see a half dozen on my front lawn. We make jokes about how our volunteer organisations should accept applications from sheep. Going on a walk? You're going to see a dead sheep, wool attached to EVERYTHING and thirty dozen flocks of sheep and rams which make no fuss because they recognise humans round here. In fact, there are nearly a few hundred sheep to every person. The other year the fire service were called out to rescue two sheep which fell in the canal. It's sheep country.

Hide / Show Replies

Removed:

• Ryans Daughter although heavily averted by the general darkness of tone, strong casting and performances, and the absolutely wonderful camerawork. The storm scene alone is only equalled by the storm scenes in Master And Commander. On the other hand its absolutely rife with Unfortunate Implications from the likable characters being entirely played foreign actors (rather obviously in Rosy's case) to the highly sympathetic view of the British soldiers (compare how the film portrays them to the portrayl of the IRB.)
• Rather bizarrely averted in the Jackie Chan film The Medallion. The film is set and filmed in Ireland but the villain is English, as are the love interest and Jackie's sidekick (who apparently live and work in Ireland in a large Interpol office entirely staffed by British agents - the Irish police are not mentioned). The sidekick has a Chinese wife and the villain's henchman is African. There is not one named, speaking character in the entire film who is Irish. None of this is ever explained or even acknowledged.
• Waking Ned Devine is set on a small island off the coast of the Irish mainland. The town has a population of 52, a beloved village priest, a pig farmer, a pub as the town's informal meeting place (characters repeatedly say that if they won the lottery, "There would have been a mighty party,"), and a general air of absolute innocence. As it's actually an Irish-made film with an Irish cast (including David Kelly of Fawlty Towers fame), there's an acknowledgement that not all of Ireland is like this: one of the major characters is a middle-class fellow from Dublin, who works for the lottery company.
• Averted in Badly Drawn Roy, which almost entirely takes place in a normal-looking suburb of Dublin. In addition, the whole cast is Irish as well as the groups that funded and commissioned it.

Based on their descriptions, none of these appear to be examples.

Ref. the recurring comment about the native Irish being antipathic towards immigrants. It keeps being added, deleted and readded (although not by me)

Can I attest to a certain truth underpinning this? The following text may be contentious and I resepct the mods' rights to ask me to remove it from elewhere on the site, but there IS an issue with uncontrolled immigration into the British Isles, a lot of reservations are shared equally in Ireland, and it would be incomplete and misleading to pretend that this does not exist.

A residual moral justification for Britain taking immigrants is that these are citizens of countries formerly part of the British Empire, and that in some way accepting their citizens is pay-back for Imperial exploitation.

This can in no way be said to be applicable to Ireland, one of the relatively few European nations that was itself colonised rather than sending its people overseas to do the colonization.

It might be worth noting that Ireland altered its nationality requirements fairly recently because too many pregnant immigrants were getting in and taking the p*** - they knew they could not be kicked out as illegals if there was only a month to go before the birth, as legal process took at least six weeks. So the child was born Irish, and as it's cruel to seperate an infant from its mother, the mother, who would otherwise have been deported as illegal, got permission to stay in Ireland indefinitely to raise her Irish-born child. And of course this meant immediate unquestioned access to social security benefits, socialised medical care, et c. All those benefits of a first world European country that its own people have to live and work and pay tax and otherwise prove entitlement to.

This really hacked off lots of real Irish people, just as it does the British - seeing immigrants who would otherwise have been kicked out as ineligible working the system, and getting social benefits they had not contributed to - so the posters were right, there was and remains a *big* problem with economic migrants. Fundamental law had to change to say a child born in Ireland only counts as Irish if one of its parents can claim Irish birth or nationality. Otherwise - feck off, you're from Senegal and not Donegal. At least the Irish government is addressing this and restricting entitlement - more than can be said for British politicans who appear to be sitting on a time-bomb, dismissing perfectly valid fears as "racism". (And I'm on the political left and I acknowledge there's an issue! How blind can politicians get!)

The new law has put a big crimp in the Jackie Charlton Principle, but there you go, you can't have everything.. it probably knackers the hopes of a lot of supposed Irish-Americans to legally count as Irish (I mean, your umpteen-times great grandparents left County Guinness in 1785 because the evil English pissed over the potatoes, cackling evilly as they did so. And you've been Americans ever since, with your residual Irish blood being inevitably diluted further by admixturs of other nationalities. Where does it cut off? There must be a point where you stop being Irish and start being American?)

Edited by AgProv Male, early sixties, Cranky old fart, at least two decades behind. So you have been warned. Functionally illiterate in several languages.

I can't help but read this article in my head with a terrible Oirish accent. Begorrah.

Mad Stephen from Braveheart, who was possibly based on:

Based on what? Something should be following that colon, but I don't know what it is.

Searching for plausible mechanisms. Hide / Show Replies