Mad Ireland: Enda, Cricket and the Rubberbandits

Why have I decided to embark on this blogging crack?

I guess because I'm having trouble coming to terms with the Irish wasteland that exists after the wake of the Celtic Tiger. What a country this has become.

Mass Unemployment, the return of emigration, the rise of Jedward and Enda installed as Holy Emperor. As sure as Summer becomes Autumn, or Eoghan Harris changes his core political beliefs, you can be assured that change is fluid and never ending. But who could have foreseen this level of change?

At the last general election in 2007, Bertie was God and his incoherent mutterings about a "soft landing" for the Irish property market were still treated as intellectual truth. The likely chart toppers were Rihanna and Akon, while football was the nations number one sport. Rugby had recently been accepted but was still considered by most in rural Ireland to be an "Anglo Saxon" game. David McWilliams was a crank, Eoghan Harris was a Fianna Fail Senator and close friend of Berties, and Irish people generally believed that Brian Lenihan knew what he was doing.

Fast forward to post tiger 2011, a place where you'd be more likely to see Mad Max racing down the M50 than the once prevalent convoys of builders vans. Its a land where Vincent Brown is a household name, and the Average Joe can explain the difference between subordinated bondholder and sovereign bondholders. People here take Pat Kenny serious! Its a place where kids play cricket on the over grown greens of ghost estates, dreaming of one day representing Ireland in the cricket world cup and earning a one way ticket to a "civilised" country. Its a country where two fellas with spar bags over their heads top the charts, and being a Fianna Fail member is akin to peddling heroin to play school kids. Its a land of lost opportunity, failed dreams and all encompassing depression.

Its the land of Enda. Its a place where Eoghan Harris is only one step away from cutting eye holes in his bed sheet and declaring himself a Klansman, but yet is rarely off the airwaves.

These are interesting times. (If your the kind of person who finds the portaloo death scene in The Hills have Eyes 2 interesting. And Ive decided to become one of the thousands to write my own two cents about the situation. As an unemployed, republican socialist, contrary pot bellied pig owner, I think its the only thing that might keep me sane.