Irish Government "Losing your job" Website

A sign of the times: http://www.losingyourjob.ie/ .The last item in the menu is a useful guide to "Leaving Ireland". I'm always impressed by the usefulness of the Irish Government sites, but this one if a bit depressing.

It''s interesting that if you view the page about leaving Ireland in Irish (as Gaeilge) then you see nothing (http://www.citizensinformation.ie/categories-ga/ag-bogadh-tire/imeacht-thar-lear/eire-a-fhagail) but if you switch over to English then you see all the info. I guess they don't want the Irish speakers leaving :-) Or maybe the person whose job it is to translate the page to Irish lost their job and left the country.

The US is not quite at the point where the government would have a page about unemployment which includes tips on "Leaving America".

A collection jar for the IRA

Today's Boston Globe shows a photo of a money collection jar labeled "IRA". It's ironic that it's shown in a paper representing an area which historically collected a lot of money for the IRA, and that the photo has nothing to do with the actual IRA at all:

http://www.boston.com/business/taxes/gallery/yearendtaxtips?pg=4

Martha Coakley's weird accent

I guess I'm not the only person who thinks that Martha Coakley has a weird accent - a quick Twitter Search shows people remarking on her accent.

Listen yourself to this YouTube video and draw your own conclusions. With the lilting and the off-sounding vowels she sounds to me like she's from Fargo via West Cork. Certainly not Massachusetts though.

Massachusetts farm for sale - with promise of US Green Cards

The Irish Times reports a home, farm, and restaurant business for sale in Tully, Massachusetts (near Orange) which comes with the promise of a Green Card also, if the buyer employs 10 or more US citizens.

At about $1.5m (about 1 million euro) it's still a lot cheaper than the equivalent property in Ireland.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/property/2009/1126/1224259470681.html

Quincy "Best place to raise kids in Massachusetts"

Judging by the photo in BusinessWeek, it's also the home of giant people who sit on the sidewalk teaching their kids to read:

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/11/1117_best_places_to_raise_kids/22.htm

Yousef Islam jeered at Dublin concert

A priceless quote here:

Radio presenter Gerry Ryan, who was there, said he had never seen such a “level of hate and bile and viciousness” from an Irish audience. He heard one fan shout at the singer: “play Peace Train, you f***ing b******” .
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/1117/1224258981275.html?via=mr

US Teacher Fired for posting a picture from the Guinness Brewery

A teacher from Georgia visited the Guinness Brewery in Dublin on a trip to Europe, and posted the obligatory photo of her drinking the "free" beer from the Gravity Bar. A parent then reported her "alcohol use" photos (she had another of her drinking a glass of wine) and she was fired. Hard to believe. Full story on CNN.com

The "Jedward" thing

During my trip last week to Ireland, it was hard to avoid the "Jedward" thing. These are twins (John and Edward, hence "Jedward") from Dublin who are contestants in the X-Factor talent show with Simon Cowell.

My cousin, who lives in England, told me that the received wisdom in England is that it is Irish voters who are keeping them in the competition. Having watched them on TV, I can confirm that they are not very good singers by the standards of American Idol, but then again that is not such a big deal. They certainly have been shifting a lot of magazines.

Full disclosure: I went to the same school as the Jedward twins - KH school in Palmerstown, Dublin.

DeValera a British spy?

Certainly a lot of circumstantial evidence, according to a new book...

HalloweenTown this weekend

HalloweenTown looks like fun for kids, and it's close to the Children's Museum too.

If you are a Zipcar customer, you can donate $5 to pay for a kid to go to HalloweenTown, and Zipcar will give you $10 credit. Win-win.

Boston Noir

What a great article by Peter Keough in the Phoenix about Boston Noir.

When I was growing up in Roslindale a few decades back — among tribes of ignorant, second-generation immigrant kids whose favorite words began with “f” and “n” and who liked to torture small animals and beat up small children before they moved on to their future vocations as petty criminals, dead dope users, or real-estate agents — it didn’t occur to me that this was a setting rich in literary and cinematic potential.
http://thephoenix.com/Boston/Movies/91670-Hardboiled-hub

Now with films like "Mystic River" and "The Departed", there is a Boston Noir look - low cloudy skies, closed-in streets lined with triple-decker houses, dark clothes. And now a book, Boston Noir, to be launched on Saturday at the Boston Book Festival by writers including Dennis Lehane.

Like everything Boston related, there is more than a little bit of Irish influence in Boston Noir. I've always thought that Seamus Heaney's poem "Whatever you say, say nothing" reminds me of parts of Boston as much as the north of Ireland:

Smoke-signals are loud-mouthed compared with us:
Manoeuverings to find out name and school,
Subtle discrimination by addresses
With hardly an exception to the rule

And, from the same poem, this next piece was originally written about northern Irish Nationalists. They were "besieged within the siege" - besieged within the larger Unionist population, who themselves felt under siege in Ireland as a whole. And, figuratively hiding, they were like the Greeks whispering to each other in the Wooden Horse of Troy. But recently it makes me think of the working class Irish neighbourhoods of Boston, themselves feeling "besieged within the siege" of other minority groups who themselves would feel under siege in America as a whole.

Where half of us, as in a wooden horse
Were cabin'd and confined like wily Greeks,
Besieged within the siege, whispering morse.

All of which makes for paranoia, suspicion, tribalism, and, of course, noir. I'll try to head down to the Boston Public Library on Saturday to get a copy of Boston Noir.

http://www.bostonbookfest.org/index.php/bookfest/schedule_detail/schedule_boston_noir_launch/

Premier League soccer in Boston?

Speculation that an English Premier League game could be staged at Fenway Park. However: (a) Fenway Park is pretty small for the crowds would go to a Premier League game, (b) I can't see the Premier League putting a game in Boston before it runs one in New York or Los Angeles [or indeed Dublin or Dubai or Shanghai], (c) if the game is after the baseball season, then it may be too cold in Boston, or there could be snow, and (d) FIFA would not allow it.

Nice idea though.