Head scratcher from the Irish Times

I'll admit I don't know everything that's going on in this country but as far as I know nobody is seriously suggesting we rejoin the Commonwealth. The few times I've heard this mentioned has been by assorted 'media' personalities (usually on radio) and it always sounded like a flag flying exercise to me.

That being said todays Irish Times has a column by somebody called Newton Emerson who preemptively 'sets us straight' on the topic and warning us that we are definitely not welcome.

What on Earth makes anyone think we’d have you? For almost a century, the Irish have used multinational institutions to defame, insult and attack the British state.

Am ... ok, Irish people can sometimes get a bit over heated when discussing "The British", it can be embarrassing, but this does seem to be a slight exaggeration and a tensey bit shrill. He continues;

Commonwealth meetings provide our country with international respite from Ireland’s nationalist spite. There, Her Majesty’s diplomats may meet their peers without dreading the whiskey-dark whine of another lament from the bog.

Oh boy, I suppose the world should be grateful theres at least one "Irish need not apply" club left on the earth. You can't blame them. Remember that time when Bertie Ahern addressed the joint house of The Commons, got drunk, took off his shoe and started banging it on a desk while moaning and weeping about the famine?? No? I'm sure it happened!

Nobody serving my country abroad should have to endure the recreational Anglophobia of bad- mouthing Irish exceptionalists.

Imagine the embarrassment of discussing food aid to Zimbabwe, only to have some bitter buffoon bring up the potato famine.

It would be mortifying alright - why, just the other day Obama was discussing the tragedy in Darfur when Brian Cowen blunty cut him off to tell him about what happened at Kinsale. Happens all the time.

None of this would stop every Irish delegate moaning about “anti-Catholic racism” because they personally will never be king.

This is the number 1 topic of conversation in any Irish pub. Seriously! When Tony Blair became Catholic we all felt terribly sad that he could never become king.

It is especially galling to realise that Irish Commonwealth membership is often suggested as a “confidence-building gesture” to my own tribe. Why would Ulster unionists want yet another place to meet the Irish? We already have a British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, a British-Irish Council, a North/South Ministerial Council and Tesco in Newry.

You can easily spot the difference between and Ulster Unionist and an Irishman because the Unionist will walk upright and his features will be less simian. I can only assume he forgot to mention he can also meet Irish all over Northern Ireland, you know, the ones who live there. Maybe google maps draws special routes for him whereby he avoids any Irish (and/or boggy areas) anytime he goes out?

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I'm not one of those Irish people who thinks (or even wants) 'everyone' to like us, but there is something about the jumped-up bigotry, sectarianism and defensiveness of Unionists that really gets my goat.

Anyway, to show there's no hard feeling, here's a picture of me at work today