From: punditster@gmail.com   
      
   On 1/25/2026 11:55 AM, Julian wrote:   
   > You know when you’re a kid and your parents finally get on your wick so   
   > much that you think, ‘that’s it – I’m gonna run away’? At the age   
   of 15,   
   > I actually got to London, selling scent in a chemist in King’s Cross   
   > Station for six weeks – but most children only get to the end of the   
   > road before slinking back after a few hours. To add insult to injury   
   > their families don’t even realise they are gone.   
   >   
   > When I think of this clownery, I’m reminded of the celebrities who stay   
   > in England and bang on about Ireland, or buy a holiday home there. It’s   
   > the equivalent of running away to the end of the road for celebs who   
   > want to seem a bit special. Like a luxury belief, it’s a luxury   
   > passport. I call them the Lie-rish, as the foundation on which their   
   > ‘belief’ is built is so false.   
   >   
   > We’re all aware of those hilariously sulky Remoaners who started fussing   
   > about having an Irish grandparent when they lost the Brexit referendum –   
   > the poor little oofums – and now the famous are doing it too. Take Steve   
   > Coogan, who somewhere along the line turned from a sparky bloke you’d   
   > like to hang out with to a left-wing Alan Partridge, apparently utterly   
   > unaware of how pompous his pronouncements sound. Like this one: ‘I’ve   
   > always felt that I have slight antipathy towards the British flag I’ve   
   > been raised with. It’s not like a contempt for it – it’s just holding   
   > the Establishment at arm’s length because of history.’ Hmmm – would   
   that   
   > be the bit of history that saw us stand alone against the Nazi war   
   > machine while the Emerald Isle was conveniently ‘neutral’, one wonders?   
   > Coogan then intoned, ‘I am a part of the Irish diaspora.’ (Is it just me   
   > who finds the taking up of the traditionally Jewish word ‘diaspora’ by   
   > every Tom, Dick and Paddy rather repulsive?) He continues: ‘I’ve always   
   > felt like I lived in the middle of the Irish Sea because I feel like   
   > I’ve been spending all my summers in Ireland… Even though I was born in   
   > England, people would say “When are you coming home?”’ In a foul yet   
   > oddly profound statement, he adds, ‘I always think that if I get   
   > captured by Isis, I’m less likely to get my head chopped off with an   
   > Irish passport than a British one.’ Well, Isis are certainly Nazis, and   
   > Nazis have certainly been friendlier towards the Irish than the British   
   > in the past, so the fool may have something here.   
   >   
   > Let me make it clear that when I talk about ‘Ireland’ in this context,   
   > I’m not talking about beautiful, brave Northern Ireland here. No, I’m   
   > talking about Eire or whatever it calls itself. That earthly paradise of   
   > pink-cheeked colleens which was neutral in the second world war and   
   > where there are statues of Nazi sympathisers in public parks. Sean   
   > Russell, who travelled to Nazi Germany in 1940 to seek arms, support and   
   > training for the IRA’s campaign against Britain, pleasingly died from a   
   > perforated ulcer while on a German U-boat off the coast of Galway in   
   > August 1940. He is commemorated with statue in Fairview Park in Dublin.   
   > This is, after all, the country where anti-Semitism is probably the   
   > worst in Europe, despite having a tiny Jewish population of around   
   > 2,700. Disturbingly, according to a recent 200-page report by the great   
   > investigative reporter David Collier:   
   >   
   > ‘The spread of anti-Semitism throughout the Irish mainstream is clearly   
   > worse than in almost any other Western nation. It requires a massive   
   > educational drive to even begin to unravel some of the damage. In   
   > Ireland, anti-Jewish racism spreads within the corridors of power and   
   > unlike in the United Kingdom or the United States, appears to be as much   
   > driven from the top-down as the reverse. Some Irish politicians are   
   > obsessed about attacking Israel and Zionism, treating it in a manner   
   > different from the way they treat all other international issues. Irish   
   > politicians share material that is clearly fake and that comes from   
   > social-media accounts that are blatantly anti-Semitic. The argument that   
   > allegations of anti-Semitism are about stifling “criticism of Israel” is   
   > used to shield some of the most horrific anti-Jewish racism imaginable.’   
   >   
   > The Irish establishment – including the artistic establishment like   
   > Kneecap – have always had a thing about the Jews. Is it a Biblical   
   > thing, the way Jewish schoolkids in New York used to get beaten up by   
   > Irish classmates for ‘killing Jesus’? It seems somewhat simple-minded,   
   > but then some folk are. What’s far weirder are people of Jewish origin   
   > like Daniel Day-Lewis (Jewish mum) who in 1987 nabbed an Irish passport   
   > and blew half a million quid on Castlekevin, a country house in County   
   > Wicklow. This led his friend Stephen Frears to harmlessly quip, ‘I knew   
   > Daniel before he was Irish’ to which Day-Lewis hissy-fitted ‘I never   
   > knew Frears before he was a facetious slob’.   
   >   
   > Why are the Lie-rish so sensitive? Is it because they know they’re   
   > phoneys? Is it because they crave in the Emerald Isle things they’d   
   > consider ‘too white’ on the mainland? Perhaps the unspoken secret of the   
   > Lie-rish is that they like it there because parts of it – the rural   
   > parts – are like England before that nice Mr Blair decided that open   
   > borders were dead groovy. We’ve got the English equivalent in people   
   > like Billy Bragg who bang on about the glories of multiculturalism and   
   > then go and live in a dirty great mansion in one of the whitest counties   
   > in England. Overcrowding and an end to Englishness for plebby old thee –   
   > but not for lovely famous me.   
   >   
   > But the irony is that the Irish are getting very angry indeed about   
   > immigration from faraway shores themselves now – and the ethnic group   
   > which their masters wanted them to turn on, the Jews, haven’t featured.   
   > And it must be said that Irish anti-immigration activists are a good   
   > deal fonder of arson and fire-bombing than their more phlegmatic English   
   > counterparts.   
   >   
   > Still, I’m thoroughly in sympathy with the showbiz section of the Lie-   
   > rish. You want to go there – and we want you to go there too. Leave   
   > London, leave the acting work so readily found here, leave the lovely   
   > well-paying voiceovers to British actors who don’t aim to make   
   > themselves seem superior by making their country seem worse. And take Ed   
   > Sheeran with you; the Yorkshire-born, Suffolk-raised crooner recently   
      
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