Bigot’s Day Out

There’s a nicely paranoid opinion piece in today’s Oirish Independent newspaper attacking Ireland’s Irish-speaking citizens. Why? For daring to speak Irish but of course! How dare these people speak their native language, the indigenous tongue of this island. Don’t they know that they live in Angloland? And with the indulgent tolerance of the Anglo-Irish what’s more. Ungrateful Gaeilgeoirí savages!

“According to a report on RTE News: Nine O’Clock, some Irish-language crowd was complaining that it costs more to send texts in Irish than in English due to the technical difficulty of adding the “fada”.

“No problem,” said I to myself. “What you do there is, you send your texts in English.”

I really felt that I could help these people with one simple message.

“Don’t send your texts in Irish, then. If you want to save yourself a few cents, send them in English, mate.”

I have been sending all my texts in English since I discovered texting about three weeks ago, and I can tell you, it works.

But as the report carried on, the mood darkened. Apparently the texters were seeing this as a human- rights issue.

Like others of their ilk, the actual message that they are communicating, matters less than the language in which it is being communicated.

So they regard the extra cost for the “fada” as a form of discrimination, perhaps even a breach of their Constitutional rights.

In passing, some of you out there with serious worries about your job, your health, your finances, must be marvelling that people with so little to bother them, can be presented as victims on the main evening news.

I mentioned recently in this column the sign on the front of the Dart to Greystones, which was in Irish only, Na Clocha Liatha, which surely discriminates against anyone who has no Irish — and there are a few.

By all means, let us have a conversation about the extra cost of the Irish language, the billions we have wasted on it.

Let us talk about this nonsense perpetuated for decades by Ireland’s gaeilgeoir elite to keep themselves in permanent and pensionable jobs.

And let us pause for a moment to weep, as we think of all the things which might have been taught to us instead of that twaddle, things which might have been of some genuine value to us.

Let us talk of the cost to RTE itself, which is probably more in thrall now to the Irish language industry than it ever was, historically a safe house for the gaeilgeoir elite.”

My eyes have been opened! Now I see the truth! Poor English Ireland and the subjugated English-speaking Irish. Forced to speak a language that is not their own, to read and write in it too. Daily assaulted with discrimination and disdain from their fellow Irish who speak a language alien to theirs and as a consequence treat them as little better than second class citizens with second class rights.

Oh the humanity…

If only there was a final solution to Ireland’s indigenous problem?