Brand Ireland

[Digout]

Can these jokers not come up with a half decent idea, we do pay them a bloody fortune after all.

[joel]

Can these jokers not come up with a half decent idea, we do pay them a bloody fortune after all.

What do you suggest? Anything in that black brain of yours besides complaining?

[Fraxinus_]

What do you suggest? Anything in that black brain of yours besides complaining?

Bateman you ol dog....don't hear you dishing out many ideas.

[joel]

Bateman you ol dog....don't hear you dishing out many ideas.

You're Bateman - with your hundred user names.

[Malbekh]

Hmm. Well TA, can I turn the question in a new direction? All countries 'brand' themselves. All countries seek to portray themselves and their people in the most positive manner possible. In the settled, civilised world, the branding tends to be for reasons as basic as tourism. In the less civilised world, it's used as a way of focusing the attention of the populace away from internal problems and strife.

So, how do you like brand 'America', or Britain, or France. Brand Finland anyone? Brand Switzerland? Brand Angola or Zimbabwe? Brand Madagascar?

Oh, I'm sure there are some brands we like, I'm quite taken with Brand New Zealand and Brand Ghana. But from my perspective we do pretty well when it comes to branding and image. Even these days, despite our many, many failings, we are liked, admired and cosseted by countries that count for us and for our people.

[Fraxinus_]

You're Bateman - with your hundred user names.

No doubt you'll be promoting St. Paddy Bateman Day on the 17th of March.

[toxic avenger]

Hmm. Well TA, can I turn the question in a new direction? All countries 'brand' themselves. All countries seek to portray themselves and their people in the most positive manner possible. In the settled, civilised world, the branding tends to be for reasons as basic as tourism. In the less civilised world, it's used as a way of focusing the attention of the populace away from internal problems and strife.

So, how do you like brand 'America', or Britain, or France. Brand Finland anyone? Brand Switzerland? Brand Angola or Zimbabwe? Brand Madagascar?

Oh, I'm sure there are some brands we like, I'm quite taken with Brand New Zealand and Brand Ghana. But from my perspective we do pretty well when it comes to branding and image. Even these days, despite our many, many failings, we are liked, admired and cosseted by countries that count for us and for our people.

I wouldn't mind if we were portrayed as something close to what we are (or at least to what we were). But we never are. And I don't view New Zealand or Ghana as brands, I view them as countries. The only people who talk of these things are people who dress in photocopier salesman suits and talk in clichés or overworn managementspeak gibberish because that's all their second-class minds can cope with whilst simultaneously trying to speak in that self-loathing trans-Atlantic abomination of an accent they use and also hoping that no-one notices the trail of greasiness they leave behind them as they scurry around pushing their filthy wares on people too vacuous and materialistic to recognise common-or-garden vermin when they see it.

[Malbekh]

I wouldn't mind if we were portrayed as something close to what we are (or at least to what we were). But we never are. And I don't view New Zealand or Ghana as brands, I view them as countries. The only people who talk of these things are people who dress in photocopier salesman suits and talk in clichés or overworn managementspeak gibberish because that's all their second-class minds can cope with whilst simultaneously trying to speak in that self-loathing trans-Atlantic abomination of an accent they use and also hoping that no-one notices the trail of greasiness they leave behind them as they scurry around pushing their filthy wares on people too vacuous and materialistic to recognise common-or-garden vermin when they see it.

Shall we go back to basics then? Who are we? Are more specifically, who were we?

[toxic avenger]

Shall we go back to basics then? Who are we? Are more specifically, who were we?

We are about five million different things - living in different environments, having different worldviews, different interests. What we're NOT are arran-wearing morons who stand by horses in fields while ethereal pseudo-Celtic fakeyness plays around us, before heading to fakey pubs where everyone is smiling and playing bodhráns and whistles. Or at least I'm not. Nor were we ever. My grandparents were rural north-west Ireland, were relatively content but lived in grinding poverty where every day was a struggle. One grandfather was in the IRA, interned during the Civil War, became embittered about what happened, and what became of the country he fought for. My parents grew up with nothing and had to emigrate in their teens, in those days almost a bereavement. The local TDs were part of a new aristocracy, dynasties abounded. The doctors and the priests were too good, in many cases, to talk to you because you were beneath them. The country is partitioned and a large section cut off from the rest of us. People now are more materialistic (and some materialism is a good thing, better than the poverty of before) but to the point of it being a new religion, out-of-town shopping centres being the new cathedrals. Television and popular music are very influential, more often than not inane and mediocre, sometimes downright offensive. There are many young people here with bright minds and ability, and they have to leave, as it always was. Going out at night usually involves trying to avoid talking to the acne-ridden, rat-faced morons who need to kick off for no reason whatsoever when they're not vomiting the two bottles of some dyed-blue 'alcoholic' piss they had drunk too fast. When you go to the shop you get ripped off, everyone rips everyone else off here, and if you have the temerity to react by going across the border to shop you're accused of being 'unpatriotic' (going to Newry or Derry, ffs, as if it's France) by the same f*ckers who couldn't give a stuff about patriotism when they were charging us double what our neighbours were paying. Our politicians and bankers play the same game, and we re-elect them, despite the fact that they connived in what was effectively a giant criminal conspiracy against us for the last ten to twenty years. That is Ireland.

I doubt any of that'll be stuck on the tourist adverts... I'm not saying it should be. I just don't like the fact that the government, through these marketing parasite types, then has us portrayed abroad as caricatures, as loveable simpletons, which I take as a complete p1ss-take and almost treacherous. I would simply prefer we were portrayed as something closer to what we are - normal human beings with flaws and graces like anyone else. But what we certainly aren't is a 'brand'. That's just pure, scum-sucking, twisted, self-loathing, moronic, witless evil...

[Pauli]

We are about five million different things - living in different environments, having different worldviews, different interests. What we're NOT are arran-wearing morons who stand by horses in fields while ethereal pseudo-Celtic fakeyness plays around us, before heading to fakey pubs where everyone is smiling and playing bodhráns and whistles. Or at least I'm not. Nor were we ever. My grandparents were rural north-west Ireland, were relatively content but lived in grinding poverty where every day was a struggle. One grandfather was in the IRA, interned during the Civil War, became embittered about what happened, and what became of the country he fought for. My parents grew up with nothing and had to emigrate in their teens, in those days almost a bereavement. The local TDs were part of a new aristocracy, dynasties abounded. The doctors and the priests were too good, in many cases, to talk to you because you were beneath them. The country is partitioned and a large section cut off from the rest of us. People now are more materialistic (and some materialism is a good thing, better than the poverty of before) but to the point of it being a new religion, out-of-town shopping centres being the new cathedrals. Television and popular music are very influential, more often than not inane and mediocre, sometimes downright offensive. There are many young people here with bright minds and ability, and they have to leave, as it always was. Going out at night usually involves trying to avoid talking to the acne-ridden, rat-faced morons who need to kick off for no reason whatsoever when they're not vomiting the two bottles of some dyed-blue 'alcoholic' piss they had drunk too fast. When you go to the shop you get ripped off, everyone rips everyone else off here, and if you have the temerity to react by going across the border to shop you're accused of being 'unpatriotic' (going to Newry or Derry, ffs, as if it's France) by the same f*ckers who couldn't give a stuff about patriotism when they were charging us double what our neighbours were paying. Our politicians and bankers play the same game, and we re-elect them, despite the fact that they connived in what was effectively a giant criminal conspiracy against us for the last ten to twenty years. That is Ireland.

I doubt any of that'll be stuck on the tourist adverts... I'm not saying it should be. I just don't like the fact that the government, through these marketing parasite types, then has us portrayed abroad as caricatures, as loveable simpletons, which I take as a complete p1ss-take and almost treacherous. I would simply prefer we were portrayed as something closer to what we are - normal human beings with flaws and graces like anyone else. But what we certainly aren't is a 'brand'. That's just pure, scum-sucking, twisted, self-loathing, moronic, witless evil...

There is a poetic beauty in your writing when you go all "stream of consciousness", TA.
Great stuff. You're certainly on form tonight.