Ire Land

Good grief, is it that time already? It must be, I suppose. The decorations have been on the streets for weeks and the shops have been seriously hustling since Halloween. It’s dog eat dog and cat eat mouse and you can rag mama rag all over my house.

Time was when children were happy with an apple, an orange and a red and blue pencil. So I’m told by the elders.
But for generations Christmas has been a time when people splurged. For better or worse, and it was often for worse, you spent what you had and usually what you hadn’t as well.
There’s nothing new in blowing a wad on your family, your partner, yourself. What’s new is the scale.
Ten years ago a woman reporting for the BBC stopped me in Grafton Street. She asked me about this new phenomenon of the time, Dublin as hip central, Europe’s party capital and the coolest and most glamorous place to be.
I said it’s a city full of young people and full of money. Put those together and what do you get? Glamour and sex and drugs and rock’n’roll.
That phase has passed. We’ve grown used to the money. The glamour thing has palled. We’ve traded E for alcohol and charlie. The visitors are staying and working. We’ve swapped the night club for the night shift.
The cool is gone and with it the sense of optimism and fun. Instead there’s something of the gold rush about our society now. We’re more rich and rough and ready. Nowadays the Irish work very hard and play very hard.
From having been described as ‘a Mediterranean people trapped on a Northern European island’ they have become, clearly and inarguably, a colder and harder northern European people.
Is this better or worse?
Better, according to a new survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). This claims that Ireland has the best quality of life of any country in the world and the positive aspects of living here greatly outweigh the negative.
They surveyed 111 countries on a range of indicators including income per capita, life expectancy, political freedom and stability, family and community life, climate and gender equality.
Overall they found that poor scores in family and community life pulled many wealthy countries down. The authors argue that increased affluence in western countries has been accompanied by a breakdown in traditional institutions, an increase in alcohol and drug abuse and rising levels of crime.
In their words, Ireland ‘combines the most desirable elements of the new – material well-being, low unemployment rates, political liberties’ – with the preservation of certain traditional values such as ‘stable family life and the avoidance of the breakdown of community’.
Well! Try telling that to Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly… In early November she became the latest of the great and good to lament the state we’re in. She was speaking to Céifin. This is described as a research institute that promotes discussion of changing values in society.
Her paper was reproduced by the Irish Times, many of whose columnists have expressed similar opinions in the past months. Her opening paragraph set the tone – ‘many of us recoil at the vulgar fest that is much of modern Ireland. The rampant drunkenness, the brutal, random violence that affects the smallest of our townlands and villages, the incontinent use of foul language with no thought of place or company, the obscene parading of obscene wealth…the fracturing of our community life…’
Sounds like San Francisco during the gold rush!
Much of this kind of scathing analysis comes from people aged 40-55. These are people whose teenage children, or their friends, are coming home drunk, winding up in A&E wards, shopping like shits, talking like Friends and getting fat.
That would be okay were it not that a scary common ground has emerged between those who might once have been described as liberals and those best described as illiberals. Think Emily O’Reilly as above and Michael McDowell as ever.
What they have in common is that they are appalled at modern Ireland. Not for them the best place in the world. No, it’s a crass and seamy cesspit.
The former liberals, many of whom seem to work in the media, remember their youthful championship of personal freedoms and feel guilty. Call it a mid-life crisis. They’ve begun to shoulder the blame for all our societal ills and conservatives are only too happy to go along with that.
But if you want to see just how appalling the vista of a common front of hard-ass conservatives and former liberals now concerned with ‘values’ can be, look to Blair’s Britain. In particular, look at the operation of the wretched draconian mechanism known as the Anti-Social Behaviour Order.
In a month when Dickens’ Christmas Carol is referred, we would do well to ponder how it could be that for all its wealth and sophistication Britain now has laws in place that are more draconian and hostile to teenagers than those of Dickens’ age.
Indeed, were Dickens writing today he would find impoverishment and alienation as grim and unrelenting as that of a century ago.
So, for the next few weeks we’ll spend spend spend. Okay, let’s not get too hung up. Much of what we see around us is just gold-rush fever. It’ll settle. San Francisco did.
Happy Christmas.