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« The London Conference - Josh 380 | Main | 'Tiny the Turbine' »
Wednesday
Aug242016

No room for St Jeremy - Josh 379

Another completely off topic Corbyn cartoon - he is a bit of a gift really and I couldn't resist. 

H/t to Marcus Leroux and The BBC

Cartoons by Josh

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Reader Comments (156)

Luckily we have a new hero ,the bloke that ran off with Eddie Izzard's pink Berret

Is it being reblocked to provide his Emnence wth a mitre to match Monckton's pink coronet?

Sep 5, 2016 at 8:24 PM | Unregistered CommenterRussell

Friends! My new Blog, “Let Us Now Ensure That Jeremy Literally Slaughters The Far-Right Red Tory Traitor, The Widely-Hated, Widely-Unknown Owen Jones [How many times do I have to tell you it’s SMITH, Lefty, dammit! – J.C.], As Part Of The New, Kinder And Gentler Politics, Friends!” is now available.

It contains some excruciatingly bad UB40-related puns, for which I apologise in advance.

https://supportourjeremy.wordpress.com/2016/09/06/let-us-now-ensure-that-jeremy-literally-slaughters-the-far-right-red-tory-traitor-the-widely-hated-widely-unknown-owen-jones-how-many-times-do-i-have-to-tell-you-its-smith-lefty-dammit-j-c/

Sep 6, 2016 at 9:38 AM | Unregistered CommenterSupportOurLefty

Supportourlefty.
Really surprised to still find you this side of the pond. With Nigel fawning all over the Trump, I felt sure you would have been given the call to help support Hillary. Merkel's looking a bit dodgy as well. Your talents are needed everywhere, you could make a fortune just like TonyB.

Sep 6, 2016 at 3:37 PM | Unregistered CommenterACK

@Jamespid
Loss loss.... People do not know the meaning of the word.
The totemic Hogans bar in Coachford village is now a flipping hair and beauty salon.
As far as I can make out there is now only one pub operating in both Dripsey and Coachford
All remaining premises are on their last legs.....

Sep 7, 2016 at 12:42 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

Courage , Dork- the Dripsey tapsters have been Air Bused on emergency iced lager duty to the Costa Del Sol , where temperatures in the Pause that refreshes passed 115 F Monday

https://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/comment.html?entrynum=342

Sep 7, 2016 at 8:51 PM | Unregistered CommenterRussell

So Dork did you fly over from Ireland to London City Airport to be with your Green Piss arse chums chained together on the Tarmac

Environmentalism so jaded these days they re having to appropriate other people's protests to stay in the limelight.

Sep 8, 2016 at 12:45 AM | Unregistered CommenterJamspid

@Jamspid
I am not what you call a classic green corporatist although I hold a great reverence for nature.

My attitude is closer to a peasants commonsense.
Peasants always and everywhere hate waste. ( energy not expended on consumption)
Burning vast amounts of Jet kerosene to buy cheap drink in Spain is well a unholy act.
I do not blame people for desperately escaping prices, I of course blame the Usury / scarcity merchants of debt.

Dripsey once had the shortest Saint pats day parade of them all.
Travelling from one village square pub to another but that's stopped nearly a decade ago now.
It was a interesting pilgrimage that is now lost in the mists of time.

The Lee valley Inn closed it's doors in 2008 I believe.

Sep 8, 2016 at 1:06 AM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jo2wPLZI-g0

What looks like English Morris dancers outside the Weigh Inn ( the other pub) back in the 2006 parade.

As you can gather I hold no hatred for pre Tudor English culture.
Oliver Cromwell and his travelling usury band is a very different story.

Sep 8, 2016 at 1:16 AM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

Roger Andrews over in the Energy Matters website wonders why the G20 carbon thingy is only interested in electricity generation and not the holistic economy.

The answer is simple: the goal is clearly not about carbon reduction.
The goal is of a financial rather then physical economy nature.
Carbon reduction is the convient excuse.
The goal is to raise domestic prices, end of.
This will create further empty Gdp / price rises.
Net national income will further stagnate as resources are wasted ( chiefly in the transportation sector) escaping domestic prices.
Again we are living inside a usury based economy.
Why cannot most energy observers grasp this very simple point?
I am baffled.
Are not these observers sentient?
Can they not see the obvious all around them?

Sep 8, 2016 at 3:47 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

So Dork you say you hold great reverence for nature okay then

So Dork please explain exactly what it is plants and trees do to all the CO2 mankind produces from burning Fossil Fuels.

Then explain why we got reason to worry.because without Fossil Fuel and Capitalism you wouldn't have anywhere to plug in your laptop to be able to come on the comments section on Bishophill in the first place.

Andrew Montford may have given up on Bishophill but the rest of us haven't.

Sep 8, 2016 at 9:18 PM | Unregistered CommenterJamspid

Jams
Plug?
What do I want with a plug?
A candle and a Keg of ale is enough for me.
It's something to look at while filling ones tank at least.
The Internet is the place you come to when you have no purchasing power for the pub.
Technology is generally designed now as a.substitute for the lack of self same purchasing power.

Facebook is perhaps the most obvious electronic zoo.
A place where primates come to self groom and nit pick while inhabiting the electronic ether.
I would most likely be quite comfortable being poor ( at least by modern middle class standards)
It's scarcity I have a intellectual and real problem with.
This artifical scarcity distracts from the real business of living.

What do plants do with co2 you ask.?
They grow and do other plant stuff.

Ps
Netflix now has a artifical fireplace film thingy to watch.
I believe it lasts one hour or so before you repeat the cycle if you wish.
Fancy that.
Technology is so empowering.......

Sep 9, 2016 at 12:44 AM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

No problem with fossil fuel.
What makes you think I have?
You dig it out of the ground and burn it when cold.
We can then keep our forests.

I have a problem with waste.
All "modern" society is now a particularly vicious combination of Maoist and mercantile waste practices.
I have a deep deep loathing for these dastardly modifications of what should be a easy and pleasant life.
I hold modern society in contempt because the rationing is pointless ( for most)

Bellocs definition of capitalism has stood the test of time.
The Servile State is one of the most prescient books ever written given it was published in 1912 before the ramping up of the war and subsequently consumer war economy.

You should read it.
It will form the backbone of spiritual thinking before moving on to the more concrete Soddy and Douglas works.

Sep 9, 2016 at 1:07 AM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

DoC. Reading the first two lines of your second paragraph in your 12.44am post, suggests you are again showing much promise as a poet. Please take advantage of the Eropoe helpline. As a citizen of loyal Ireland we will continue to offer assistance - unlike those poor poetic souls in the UK who we have already given up on (unless they criticize Brexit).

Sep 9, 2016 at 7:16 AM | Unregistered CommenterACK

Well have to say this site remains relevant as ever....

Sep 9, 2016 at 9:41 AM | Unregistered CommenterYouKnowNothingBishHill

Citizen..... I am beginning to like your sense of humour also but I am not sure it's deliberate.

That's the disadvantage of this medium rather then the pub.
I may be only seeing a reflection of my own thoughts rather then your understanding but that maybe a good thing.

This guy is the establishment historian in these parts but this Pdf document of his is educational. (coming soon)

Sep 9, 2016 at 10:34 AM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

https://www.ria.ie/sites/default/files/priac201508_fnl.pdf

Sep 9, 2016 at 10:35 AM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

DoC. Do be assured the humour (if any) is all in the mind of the reader.
Every time you mention that bigoted polymath Soddy I laugh aloud. I'm sure this was unintended.

Sep 9, 2016 at 11:16 AM | Unregistered CommenterACK

Friends! Contrary to Friend ACK's apparent belief, I remain 100% - and that's the absolute minimum! - committed to supporting Our Jeremy against all the attacks of the Far-Right Murdoch-controlled Monopoly Media, e.g the Hard-Right BBC!

My latest Blog, "What A Literally Stunning Performance By Jeremy, In Which He Literally Wiped The Floor With The Totally-Unknown, Widely-Hated Far-Right Red Tory Traitor Owen Jones (Or Whatever His Name Is – Who Cares, Quite Frankly, Friends?) On Last Night’s “Question Time” That Was, Friends!" is now literally available:

https://supportourjeremy.wordpress.com/2016/09/09/what-a-literally-stunning-performance-by-jeremy-in-which-he-literally-wiped-the-floor-with-the-totally-unknown-widely-hated-far-right-red-tory-traitor-owen-jones-or-whatever-his-name-is-who-cares/

Sep 9, 2016 at 12:00 PM | Unregistered CommenterSupportOurLefty

I could mention Harold Loebs publication on the American economy 1935.
It's a bit too fascist for my taste but very interesting.

Sep 9, 2016 at 3:05 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

SupportOurLefty my mistake, I felt sure that the true lefty wing of the Labour party could spare you to help the sisterhood in far off America and Germany. Is support for the Internationale waning?

Two epistles in one week, Oh be still my beating heart! My throat will be so sore from so much jolly singing. You know you should team up with Josh. He can produce fantastic images of our Jeremy, so good even his brother wouldn't recognize him. I'm not sure, however,if Josh could manage the evil blandness that is Owen Thingy. What sort of name is Owen? Now Jeremy, that's a name to play with, with its implications of entryism into the highest echelons of the BBC.

No doubt when our Jeremy assumes his position of power (I believe he already holds the key to the Privy) he will send a reindoctrinated Owen (whoever) off to a fact-finding mission to Aleppo.

PS. Please be a little more circumspect when referring to me. Calling me "friend" will do my cred here insufferable harm.

Sep 9, 2016 at 3:06 PM | Unregistered CommenterACK

https://archive.org/details/report00ofnationalnatirich

Read this and see what you make of it.
It starts off fine.
He talks of " real glut" where people may chose not to consume.
Today unfortunately people are forced to consume vast resources.
Therefore current consumption tradition goes against Christian and possibly semitic cult practices of the ancient Levant where people decided to abstain for spiritual reasons
Both unneeded consumption and concurrent rationing is now forced on unfortunate conduit people.

Loebs conclusions are interesting, in particular the dynamics of bankruptcy within a capitalist state.

I shall highlight the relevant passages soon.

Sep 9, 2016 at 3:27 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

Go to pages 242 and 243 for a description of bankruptcy dynamics.

However despite sort of recognising the gap between prices and income he inclines towards corporatist thinking.
Towards the productive potential of fixed capital investments and the like , for example unused refinery capacity in 1930s depression America.

He has clearly a anti humanist bent, perhaps simply because his income would be increased by a war economy programme.
Soddy had a different view.
I therefore agree with Soddy and not Loeb.

Sep 9, 2016 at 3:46 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

https://ia801408.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/29/items/report00ofnationalnatirich/report00ofnationalnatirich_jp2.zip&file=report00ofnationalnatirich_jp2/report00ofnationalnatirich_0272.jp2&scale=4&rotate=0

Sep 9, 2016 at 3:53 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

So we can now see clearly the US engaged itself with a dramatic fascist or corporatist programme post depression.
This bailed out and extended the reach of the large combines at the expense of Jeffersonian America.

You had figures such as Father Coughain who first embraced FDRs proposals and then recoiled from the project when realising the expanse of their dark ambition.
The gross resource requirements of America ( as a result of Loebs and others plans) is currently taxing the ability of the entire planet.

Meanwhile the net consumption of North Americans and Europeans ( who have been on the receiving end of this second American capitalist experiment) is pitifully low.

Sep 9, 2016 at 4:05 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

DoC. Can't wait for the HBO mini series. Full of Christian cult practices wow; sure to be a ratings winner. Loeb sounds too foreign, change it to Lowie? Great tune.

Sep 9, 2016 at 4:09 PM | Unregistered CommenterACK

DoC baby. It just gets better and better - "the US engaged itself with a dramatic fascist or corporatist programmes". Holy moley. Where can we get hold of this fellah Loeb; how much should we offer as a signing bonus. I can picture it now, strains of Hey Big Fellah" belted out by that Dame woman, as the camera swoops down to the mass St Pats Parade near Cork but going nowhere because one of the pubs has succumbed to inconspicuous consumption. We need a good scriptwriter. I understand this Bishop dude may be available.

Sep 9, 2016 at 4:22 PM | Unregistered CommenterACK

ACk
Thanks.
You make me feel like Gore Vidal after his last " debate" against Buckley.
When you fail to engage with my argument it means I have won.( these are the unofficial rules of the game)
However I prefer engagement as people may learn something from each other.
Sadly you strike me as a man with limited or no knowledge of history, society or the economy.

Sep 9, 2016 at 4:50 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

Imagine:
A man who comments on a climate change / energy blog who does not find Loebs groundbreaking and expansive ( at least in public) study of the American 1930s physical economic and energy system interesting.
It boggles me mind.

Sep 9, 2016 at 5:01 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

'Andrew Montford may have given up on Bishophill but the rest of us haven't.'

My bad, Jamspid- If only he hadn't read my blog's comment policy.

Sep 9, 2016 at 5:20 PM | Unregistered CommenterRussell

DoC. I bow to your intellectual magnificence, to the holy scriptures of the economic prophet Soddy, he the anti-semite and ex nuclear physicist guru, and to the present font of all current wisdom. I wish to take the Hajj to the holy city of Cork, but am fearful of being trampled underfoot by the legions of true believers.

Chastise me with your words of derision; I surely deserve them. My ignorance is overwhelming, I am not worthy to read your literary gems. Forgive my arrogance, however, you may wish to revise your opinion of my erudition when I tell you I got 11 O-levels.

Sep 9, 2016 at 5:40 PM | Unregistered CommenterACK

If you take the time to study Loebs anylasis of the American physical economy / energy system you will be struck by his method.
Unlike energy commentators today he does not wish to separate the monetary system from the physical input / output system
They must act in concert.

Sep 9, 2016 at 5:42 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

The late David Mccay is a classic example of current flawed energy commentary.

For example he may endorse the use of solar power in a high solar energy flux area exposed to summer tourism. ( Think Spain or maybe Vagas)
This is logical on the surface but he is only looking at energy from a 2 dimensionality perspective.

he fails to notice what is driving much of the influx ( price differences as a result of usury)
This unsuitable and unsustainable debt dynamic ( powered by Jet kerosene) results in inevitable malinvestment as the tectonic pressure within the monetary system builds.

A breakdown follows leaving stranded unused assets unable to recoup sufficient revenue to cover costs as happened in 2009.

Sep 9, 2016 at 5:56 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

ACk
Good on you mate. , I was a total failure in school.
Perhaps my only ability is to see patterns in the sand.

Sep 9, 2016 at 6:01 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

Apologies, Fr ... er, ACK, for damaging your credibility here. I have to say, though, that any damage your credibility has sustained is as naught compared with mine, now that you have mentioned the Hard-Right Bishop Hill, in what could be construed as a not-entirely unfavourable context, on my Blog!

Sep 9, 2016 at 6:47 PM | Unregistered CommenterSupportOurLefty

"The justice of Major Douglas’s views was confirmed by the Loeb Report (Report of the
National Survey of Potential Product Capacity, New York City Housing Authority, 1935.) No
one has been willing to dispute these statistics. Before entering this war every family of four
persons in the United States could have had a $4,000.00 to $5,000.00 Standard-of-Living. Only
the iniquity, the imbecility of the monetary-financial system prevented the realization of this
material welfare.
War was brought about to impede the utilisation of this abundance. Without scarcity monopoly
cannot impose unjust prices.
American money was not socialized. "

Ezra Pound

Again repeat.
Without scarcity monopoly cannot impose unjust prices.
When all subterfuge is exposed finance perhaps reluctantly will take nations into hot wars.

Sep 9, 2016 at 6:49 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

Again Loebs logic is impeccable.
However I disagree somewhat with his philosophy.

Sep 9, 2016 at 7:00 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

SupportOurLefty. Have I perhaps damaged your reputation by revealing your sordid dealings over here on this website? Trying to recruit from the diamond-hard Right. Or did our Jeremy know of this and approve? I wonder if you were always a member of Labour's SMERSH, now Hard Left SPECTOR, with a licence to blog. And Dianne is M.

Sep 9, 2016 at 7:45 PM | Unregistered CommenterACK

"In some ways, modern proponents of electronic money bearing negative interest rates are attempting to copy Silvio Gesell’s early 20th century work. Gesell proposed the use of stamp scrip — money that had to be regularly stamped, at a small cost, in order to remain current. The effect would be for money to lose value over time, so that hoarding currency it would make little sense. Consumption would, in theory, be favoured, so money would be kept in circulation.

This idea was implemented to great effect in the Austrian town of Wörgl during the Great Depression, where the velocity of money increased sufficiently to allow a hive of economic activity to develop (temporarily) in the previously depressed town. Despite the similarities between current proposals and Gesell’s model applied in Wörgl, there are fundamental differences:

There is a critical difference, however, between the Wörgl currency and the modern-day central bankers’ negative interest scheme. The Wörgl government first issued its new “free money,” getting it into the local economy and increasing purchasing power, before taxing a portion of it back. And the proceeds of the stamp tax went to the city, to be used for the benefit of the taxpayers….Today’s central bankers are proposing to tax existing money, diminishing spending power without first building it up. And the interest will go to private bankers, not to the local government.

The Wörgl experiment was a profoundly local initiative, instigated at the local government level by the mayor. In contrast, modern proposals for negative interest rates would operate at a much larger scale and would be imposed on the population in accordance with the interests of those at the top of the financial foodchain. Instead of being introduced for the direct benefit of those who pay, as stamp scrip was in Wörgl, it would tax the people in the economic periphery for the continued benefit of the financial centre. As such it would amount to just another attempt to perpetuate the current system, and to do so at a scale far beyond the trust horizon."

Nicole Foss recently of automatic earth writing about the war on cash ( enabling further centralization)

Yes folks, negative interest rates is a usurious practice under current circumstances.
It is usurious as it further extends the gap between prices and income.
That is the underlying objective of global finance.
It always has been.
The dysfunctional nature of our societies and commerce is a direct result of this very easily observed phenomenon.

Sep 9, 2016 at 9:10 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

So Dork are you flying over to wave your European Union flag at the Last Night of the Proms.

Almost as pathetic as Enviromentalists desperately seeking relevance and blocking the runway at London City Airport pretending to protest Black Lives Matter because everyone is bored of hearing about Climate Change hype.

Hopefully Tom Slater and the People from Spiked will also be in the Royal Albert Hall tonight waving Invoke Article 50 banners but the Union Flags will do just as well.

Ironic how the Irish under their own flag fought the British Establishment for so long for their own Soveriengty only for their own Establishment to hand it over to Brussels.

Sep 10, 2016 at 3:34 PM | Unregistered CommenterJamspid

Jamspid. Don't you read the inestimable but often indigestible posts of the Dork. In those you will find he thinks transport is a waste, and the Dork abhors waste. Flying to the Proms would be a big waste, when he could travel by corricle. Furthermore the nearest airport might well be blocked by countless planes bringing EU flags or protesters protesting against protesters protesting they "don't give a sh1t". Anyway all that pomp and circumstance represents inevitable malinvestment within the capitalist usury system.

Sep 10, 2016 at 4:07 PM | Unregistered CommenterACK

@jamspid
You are joking right?
It's getting increasingly difficult for me.
Irish and English humour generally does not mix and all.
Irish "Independence " is generally seen as a insiders joke.
Read King Goshawk and the Birds by Eimar O Duffy.
That will set you straight on the matter.

In all likelihood Churchill threatened to send a half a dozen Dreadnoughts up the Liffey and Lee unless we maintained a colonial mercantile relationship with the declining world superpower of the day.

Remaining possible stand alone nationalists conviently died of flying bullets or natural causes.
Collins had a Chesterton crush.
Griffiths was not very friendly to the Jewish faith

God knows what really went on.
We proles will never know.

Ps
Honestly, given the security in London.
Stuff like that does not happen unless it's given the nod by the city.
All organisations are heavily infiltrated.
Activism whether right or wrong is completely bloody pointless.

Sep 10, 2016 at 6:02 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

The one bit of semi effective activism in Ireland was the water charges thingy.
Many people remained pleasantly apolitical, rather that remaining bit of peasant common sense somehow managed to find its mark.
Everybody and his Auntie realized it was a gross attack on the commons.
We Irish are not very bright but it takes a particularly gifted salesman to sell the concept of scarce water to the Irish.
The entire episode was wonderfully descriptive.
( Ps, check out the last page of the Loeb Report, he mentions the particular absurdity of water rentier capture.)

Sep 10, 2016 at 6:12 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

ACk
Transport is a necessity.
However if it eats a larger and larger % of the energy pie....
Then it's a surefire indicator of something very wrong with the production / distribution)/ consumption system.
Guinness Dublin was a major exporter of stout to the UK before the tits up moment of 1914.
If you cannot read a energy balance sheet then witnessing the movement of heavy beer vast distances is the next best physical economic indicator of dysfunction.

Sep 10, 2016 at 6:30 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e5Z1dqJzxNo

"Savage eye" ( the comedian behind this programme has a republican background) interpretation of treaty talks.

Sep 10, 2016 at 6:47 PM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

DoC. The Guinness I drank in Connemara many years ago had a very different and much better taste than anything you could get in London. Perhaps connoisseurs would pay a premium to obtain the genuine article and offset transport costs. Certainly paying for water to be transhipped from France is a stupidity, but what about single malts to Australia? - a waste of money, or a waste of the peaty nectar?

Sep 10, 2016 at 7:44 PM | Unregistered CommenterACK

"...a waste of money, or a waste of the peaty nectar?..." --ACK

"...I often wonder what the Vintners buy
One half so precious as the Goods they sell." --Fitzgerald

Sep 11, 2016 at 12:22 AM | Unregistered CommenterFr. Jack of Craggy Island

I do not drink diageo products so I cannot tell if there is a difference.
Always drink local stuff even if it's a bit horrible.
Tennants in Scotland comes to mind...
Jaysus the stuff is rotten.
Whiskey has of course a higher thrust to weight ratio so it's consumption catchment is wider.

But Irish people do travel to Spain to drink whiskey distilled in East Cork...
When Irish whiskey and subsequently scotch was exported en masse to the States in the 19th century you did not witness people popping across the Atlantic for weekend to save on consumption expenses.

Believe me mate, the distribution system is a manic and crazed absurdity.
Much of the usury business is heavily disguised, hidden under a thick blanket of health fascism.

Sep 11, 2016 at 12:37 AM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

What typically happens now goes something like this.
Paddy from Coachford can no longer afford his slow and regular pints in Hogans bar.
But he needs something.... anything to look forward too.
As he works, rations (or possibly both if he has the bravely to have kids) he must have a vision of
Malaga or some other horrible sunny place in his little head.

So he can somehow manage to stop himself living if he has a dream, however mundane it may be.

This saving of time units to be spent in the future is a very typical capitalist practice.
Previously a peasant would encompass work and play together
Clock time would hold little meaning other then the passing of the seasons.
Now not much of peasant past remained by
the 20th century but the pub remained a sanctuary.
A sort of zoo for industrial traumatised misfits.
Now the zoo is no more.
Paddy walks out into a parched desolate tundra.
He wonders what the F£€k is going on?

Sep 11, 2016 at 1:00 AM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

Donal Connery, an American journalist writing in 1969, who concluded
that alcoholism was a problem, and that it had a seriously negative effect on
relations between the sexes, yet he cautioned:
"The pub is a booby-trap however, for anyone trying to take a true
measure of Irish life. The fact is that the majority of adults hardly ever
set foot in a pub. Most Irish females simply do not drink in public and
many never touch a drop in their lives, and among the men there are
more total abstainers than heavy drinkers ... I will admit, as I write this
that it is painful to go against form and portray the Irishman as
something other than a glorious drinker and an altogether devil of a
fellow. None the less, there are far more homes than pubs in Ireland and
it is in the homes that one must look for the Irishman as he is most of
the time. Away from the conviviality of the pub he’s revealed as
someone who is extraordinarily ordinary. He leads a far simpler and
certainly less sophisticated life than most other Europeans."

The 60s and 70s was the Irish peak pub.
Drink consumption per capita increased until 2001 ( the introduction of the euro) as a result of female participation and home drinking but the Irish pubs glory days was the 70s

It just goes to show the astounding perversity of mercantalism.
Just as they began to export utterly horrible Irish pubs abroad some of the most majestic little Irish pubs went the way of the dodo.
Dingle town of 1970s vintage was utterly marvelous.
52 pubs and nowhere to eat.
Now it's a sad little shithole.

Sep 11, 2016 at 1:30 AM | Unregistered CommenterThe Dork of Cork

DoC. In your near poetic description of the demise of the local pub, there is no mention of the student influence. Cork has a university the size of UEA. Certain pubs in Norwich are known for attracting the student shekel. As elsewhere pubs are in decline in and around Norwich and the young seem to prefer to spend their time more at night clubs.

Drink driving legislation and television have both driven stakes into the pub heart. Gastropubs have provided a partial resuscitation but have zombified the original. There are some eccentric pubs still around. Some time ago I visited one in North Wales where all prices were listed in old pre-decimalization coinage (although the landlord only accepted new-fangled money).

My father's favourite tipple was Irish Whiskey and I acquired the taste. Unfortunately now my liver plays warden.

Sep 11, 2016 at 6:55 AM | Unregistered CommenterACK

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