Ninety years ago almost to the day Ireland became an independent
nation and yesterday there was an auction here in Dublin in which
an original copy of the proclamation of that event was sold at a
Dublin auction house along with an original draft of the national
anthem and various other items all of them national treasures.
It was I belive Bob Dylan who said that "money doesn't talk, it
screams." and it was screeching its head off at the auction with
something in the region of three million euros changing hands.
Many of those who died fighting for an Irish Republic must be
turning it their graves and if ever proof were needed that we are
a gombeen state then this is it. Ireland is changing and changing
fast and not for the better. The curse of Ireland was alway
landlordism and now the whole population is motivated only by
the desire to own property and to exploit those who do not.
There was a time when people were not motivated by money
alone. When I was a child I can remember how my father would
send Irish Sweepstake tickets all over the world to help raise
money for the state and he and many like him would then put
some of their own money in with the receipts and consider it
a privilege to have the opportunity to help the country. But those
were different days and my father died many years age and
he died in England. The values of those days are long gone as are
the people who embodied them. Or at least most of the
people are gone but some are still to be found in the homeless
shelters of Britain, unwanted by the state and perceived as
nothing more than an embarrassment.
Yes, we have come a long way and god knows how far we
can go yet but we have lost more than we could ever realize
along the way. We are the second richest country in the
world and yet a bankrupt nation.