1 In 3 Irish Families Fear Hunger

[Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz]

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/One-in-three-Irish-families-fear-they-will-go-hungry--96967124.html

[deflation]

"The study found that 15% of of people feel that they may loose their job"

Even Irish journalists have the lose / loose affliction.

I thought I'd read on here that benefit was €200 a week in the Emerald Isle. There's a time limit on it maybe?

Edited June 24, 2010 by deflation

[TheEmperorHasNoClothes]

Maybe it's in their genes?

[Executive Sadman]

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity

OK, its nationmaster, so probably about as accurate as RBSs risk management, according to that, Ireland has world 13th highest obesity rate.

In a large fertile country like Ireland with a small population, i wouldnt think food is much of a concern.

Unless the EU decides to steal their land, which is possible.

Edited June 24, 2010 by Sadman

[interestrateripoff]

The study found that 15% of of people feel that they may loose their job while 45% say they would be unable to handle an unexpected expense of $1,200 within the next year.

Nearly 45% of respondents felt that they would be unable to keep up with rent and mortgage payments in the next 12 months.

Just 6% of respondents are currently falling behind on the payment of bills with a further 9% finding repayments a constant struggle.

That's one hell of a figure 45% thinking their own finances will deteriorate to such a level that they won't be able to keep up rent or mortgage repayments!!!

Nothing like debt to screw you over.

[NotMyHouse]

I'm sure this episode is stirring up racial memories of famine, just like the USA doesn't want deflation and the Germans don't want inflation.

Mind you, those were desperate times for the Irish and a stain on the rest of the UK for our failure to do very much to alleviate their suffering.

[Executive Sadman]

That's what they said the year before the potato famine

But there were more people in Ireland back then

Its us i worry about, loading up with immigrants with no coherent policy to house them, let alone feed them. I can see bloodshed occuring here very soon, if we have a bad harvest or if this BP toxic rain decimates crop yields in the US.

[peakoil]

"The study found that 15% of of people feel that they may loose their job"

Even Irish journalists have the lose / loose affliction.

I thought I'd read on here that benefit was €200 a week in the Emerald Isle. There's a time limit on it maybe?

sorry to pick on you (the irish), you were just the straw that broke the camels back - but has anyone else noticed that hardly anybody on this forum can spell lose?

you lose a job, and if you look down your shoelaces might be loose.

I see it every day and for some reason it drives me barmy. Perhaps I have OCD. no, that's not right they should be in alphabetical order or it looks wrong CDO AAGHH.

Edited June 24, 2010 by peakoil

[Guest_James Toney_*]

That's what they said the year before the potato famine

thats what you get for being fussy eaters

[Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz]

I'm sure this episode is stirring up racial memories of famine, just like the USA doesn't want deflation and the Germans don't want inflation.

Mind you, those were desperate times for the Irish and a stain on the rest of the UK for our failure to do very much to alleviate their suffering.

At least we did a little, eh, like sending over our soldiers to guard their landlords' standing and harvested crops, ensuring trouble free export.

Edited June 24, 2010 by gruffydd

[Guest Noodle]

But there were more people in Ireland back then

Its us i worry about, loading up with immigrants with no coherent policy to house them, let alone feed them. I can see bloodshed occuring here very soon, if we have a bad harvest or if this BP toxic rain decimates crop yields in the US.

Any chance we can knock this toxic rain nonsense on the head?

Anyway, it's not toxic rain, rather just rain. Living here in the midst of one of the worlds major food producing areas I can report that 'rainy season' was just so last century. Last few years have been very dry, but none so dry as this. We've had 12 inches of rain for the whole year so far and are expecting widespread crop failure.

A decade or less ago, whole swathes of the countryside would be underwater. So much so in fact that the road to town from here would be a couple of feet under water and it's on a berm raised about a metre above surrounding ground level. Now there's not even visible standing water in the fields.

[Mish Mash]

sorry to pick on you (the irish), you were just the straw that broke the camels back - but has anyone else noticed that hardly anybody on this forum can spell lose?

Or use captialisation? Such as at the start of a sentence, proper nouns, that sort of thing?

Punctuation (e.g. camel's back).

5/10. See me after class.

[Rare Bear]

At least we did a little, eh, like sending over our soldiers to guard their landlords' standing and harvested crops, ensuring trouble free export.

Speakinh as an Irishman, I wonder if it were possible to find an unbiased history of the time, how was Ireland treated compared to other English colonies?

I say if it were possible to find an unbiased history of the time as I was brought up as a Ctholic and my wife a Protestant and we learned totaly different versions of things at school. Not just Telegraph and Guardian type difference but totally different.

[Realistbear]

My grandmother was part of the post-potato famine emigration to England in the last quarter of the 19th century. Must visit the old country one of these days. I know I have Irish genes as I am finding myslef starting to say "at all" at the end of some sentences and when I get tired I repeat it twice!

The Irish have paid a very big price for 10 years of HPI madness that has impoverished them.

What is annoying me is that we have done the same thing and yet nothing has happened--people still buying overpriced houses, Range Rover Vogues with Class 5 Natuzzi leather seats etc. We are alone in the Western world to have had no fall out from HPI madness--at least not at street level. 15% down from peak maybe--BFD. :angry:

[Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz]

Speakinh as an Irishman, I wonder if it were possible to find an unbiased history of the time, how was Ireland treated compared to other English colonies?

I say if it were possible to find an unbiased history of the time as I was brought up as a Ctholic and my wife a Protestant and we learned totaly different versions of things at school. Not just Telegraph and Guardian type difference but totally different.

My wife's family were protestants from Cork and some of them were local JPs, etc. - still have the family papers in the loft - some of their (unanswered) calls for help for the starving are really upsetting. They also noted a military build up to protect standing and exported food across the country - Cork, Mayo, Waterford, etc. Whole regiments were sent out to collect meal from starving districts. If anything, they'd have been pro British, so I take this info as being pretty reliable.

As Oscar Wilde's mother put it:

"Stately ships to bear our food away amid the stranger's scoffing."

There's a proud array of soldiers what do they round your door?

"They guard our masters' granaries from the thin hands of the poor."

Edited June 24, 2010 by gruffydd

[R K]

Or use captialisation? Such as at the start of a sentence, proper nouns, that sort of thing?

Punctuation (e.g. camel's back).

5/10. See me after class.

(someone had to - I'll leave the grammar for a.n.other)

[Sour Mash]

Speakinh as an Irishman, I wonder if it were possible to find an unbiased history of the time, how was Ireland treated compared to other English colonies?

I say if it were possible to find an unbiased history of the time as I was brought up as a Ctholic and my wife a Protestant and we learned totaly different versions of things at school. Not just Telegraph and Guardian type difference but totally different.

Ireland wasn't a colony - it was a part of the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland'.

[indirectapproach]

I think one would be lucky to find an unbiased history of anything let alone something as emotive and exploited for political purposes as the famine.

My Godmother's mother was driven out of Ireland by the ethnic cleansing contra Protestants during the Irish civil war. Anyone aware of any history, biased or un of that episode?

[Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz]

Sure am aware of that bitter episode - interestingly the first President of the Ireland was a protestant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Hyde - Protestants seemed to divide along loyalty lines - many of those who felt their first loyalty was with Britain often left because they were p***** off with living in a foreign state, or were chased out as enemies of the state if they had been involved in pro-British killings/military actions during the war of independence, which some of them most defintiely were - some of them remained and were fine so long as they didn't go around hanging out union flags. Those who felt loyal to the new state were obviously fine too, though some found the Catholic church rather too dominant at times.

Perhaps try something by historian Roy Foster - a southern protestant Irish historian - not liked by some because of his revisionism, but he does come from the community you're interested in, so you might find his insights rather interesting.

PS. I find the Southern Irish protestant community rather fascinating, partly because I married into it and recall very interesting discussions with my wife's aged Aunts and Uncles who had very long memories.

Edited June 24, 2010 by gruffydd

['Bart']

(someone had to - I'll leave the grammar for a.n.other)

Once these things start, there's no stopping them.

You're a very angry man mike!

Particularly against Liverpudlians. Many of them have Irish roots I believe, which could explain his comment.

[scepticus]

Nothing like debt to screw you over.

its more the drop in output, not the debt that leads to the hunger.

[Malthus]

Speakinh as an Irishman, I wonder if it were possible to find an unbiased history of the time, how was Ireland treated compared to other English colonies?

I say if it were possible to find an unbiased history of the time as I was brought up as a Ctholic and my wife a Protestant and we learned totaly different versions of things at school. Not just Telegraph and Guardian type difference but totally different.

I did an Irish history module at university many years ago, first lesson everyone who has ever written a book on Irish history has an axe to grind.

[interestrateripoff]

I'm sure this episode is stirring up racial memories of famine, just like the USA doesn't want deflation and the Germans don't want inflation.

Mind you, those were desperate times for the Irish and a stain on the rest of the UK for our failure to do very much to alleviate their suffering.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_%28Ireland%29

The measures undertaken by Peel's successor, Lord John Russell, proved comparatively "inadequate" as the crisis deepened. Russell's ministry introduced public works projects, which by December 1846 employed some half million Irish and proved impossible to administer.[58] Sir Charles Trevelyan, who was in charge of the administration of Government relief to the victims of the Irish Famine, limited the Government's actual relief because he thought "the judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson". For his policy, he was commemorated in the song The Fields of Athenry. The Public Works were "strictly ordered" to be unproductive—that is, they would create no fund to repay their own expenses. Many hundreds of thousands of "feeble and starving men" according to John Mitchel, were kept digging holes, and breaking up roads, which was doing no service.[59]

The new Lord John Russell Whig administration, influenced by their laissez-faire belief that the market would provide the food needed but at the same time ignoring the food exports to England,[60] then halted government food and relief works, leaving many hundreds of thousands of people without any work, money or food."[61] In January the government abandoned these projects and turned to a mixture of "indoor" and "outdoor" direct relief; the former administered in work-houses through the Poor Law, the latter through soup kitchens. The costs of the Poor Law fell primarily on the local landlords, who in turn attempted to reduce their liability by evicting their tenants.[58] This was then facilitated through the "Cheap Ejectment Acts."[59] The poor law amendment act was passed in June 1847. According to James Donnelly in Fearful Realities: New Perspectives on the Famine[62] it embodied the principle popular in Britain that Irish property must support Irish poverty. The landed proprietors in Ireland were held in Britain to have created the conditions that led to the famine. It was asserted however, that the British parliament since the Act of Union of 1800 was partly to blame.[62] This point was raised in the Illustrated London News on the 13 February 1847, "There was no laws it would not pass at their request, and no abuse it would not defend for them." On the 24 March the Times reported that Britain had permitted in Ireland "a mass of poverty, disaffection, and degradation without a parallel in the world. It allowed proprietors to suck the very life-blood of that wretched race."[62]

The "Gregory clause" of the Poor Law prohibited anyone who held at least a quarter of an acre from receiving relief.[58] This in practice meant that if a farmer, having sold all his produce to pay rent, duties, rates and taxes, should be reduced, as many thousands of them were, to applying for public outdoor relief, he would not get it until he had first delivered up all his land to the landlord. Of this Law Mitchel was to write: "it is the able-bodied idler only who is to be fed — if he attempted to till but one rood of ground, he dies." This simple method of ejectment was called "passing paupers through the workhouse" — a man went in, a pauper came out.[59] These factors combined to drive thousands of people off the land: 90,000 in 1849, and 104,000 in 1850.[58]

Food exports to England

Records show Irish lands exported food even during the worst years of the Famine. When Ireland had experienced a famine in 1782–83, ports were closed to keep Irish-grown food in Ireland to feed the Irish. Local food prices promptly dropped. Merchants lobbied against the export ban, but government in the 1780s overrode their protests. No such export ban happened in the 1840s.[63]

Cecil Woodham-Smith, an authority on the Irish Famine, wrote in The Great Hunger; Ireland 1845–1849 that no issue has provoked so much anger and embittered relations between England and Ireland as "the indisputable fact that huge quantities of food were exported from Ireland to England throughout the period when the people of Ireland were dying of starvation." Ireland remained a net exporter of food throughout most of the five-year famine.

Christ what a screw up.

Although to be fair, the majority in the UK had no say in the matter. Once more it's the rich shafting the poor to line there own pockets.

However what was the UK going to do airlift in relief?

[Laughing Gnome]

I'm sure this episode is stirring up racial memories of famine, just like the USA doesn't want deflation and the Germans don't want inflation.

Mind you, those were desperate times for the Irish and a stain on the rest of the UK for our failure to do very much to alleviate their suffering.

Leave the "rest of the UK" out of it.

At the time, most of the "rest of the UK" had no say in public affairs and were half starved themselves.

['Bart']

At the time, most of the "rest of the UK" had no say in public affairs

Not much different now TBH.

Iraq war protests?

Referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon?