How the Irish see us, and other things.

I've just returned from a fascinating week doing "touristy" things based on Galway in the West of Ireland.  I do not claim on the basis of a one week visit to have cracked the Irish perspective on everything, but here are four interesting pointers.

1.  Brexit I.  A leader in the Irish Times (does Murdoch own that one too?), on, I think, Friday 21st July, said something like

 "We are sorry to lose our friend and close ally [from the EU], but that will not preclude us from picking at the carcass"  (or maybe it was 'cadaver').

 This struck me as being surprisingly friendly, in view of the bitter history between our two nations, but, in seeking to attract those financial services, and perhaps other industries fleeing from a UK no longer in the EU, essentially practical.

And good luck to them.  Ireland shares one of the great "pull factors" which attract foreign firms to settle in the UK:  the English language.  And they speak it in a way I find absolutely charming.

2.  Brexit II. Here's a letter published  in the Irish Times on Thursday 27th July:

With the prospect of a UK-US trade deal likely to result  in the flooding of the UK with US-produced GM food products, chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-laden beef, surely any "Ireland-UK friendly" Brexit deal  will mean that we are also  vulnerable to exposure  to these products? I can think of a multitude of UK-based food outlets in Ireland where such exposure is not only a risk  but a likelihood  and wonder what the Government  is doing to safeguard  such a prospect.?  
Yours etc, Kevin Nolan.

Mr Nolan may genuinely wonder what his government will do. I don't wonder at all  about ours. . It will almost certainly be "Nothing " - a complete cave in to any demands that the  US is likely to make in order to secure any sort of trade deal.

3.The Famine. By far and away the most moving experience was to see the National Famine Monument, a Coffin Ship at the base of Croagh Patrick in Murrusk, County Mayo. This depicts skeletons intertwined with the rigging of one of the ships which took the desperately starving migrants to a better world across the Atlantic - if they survived.  For details see here.

In 1997, the 150th anniversary of the end of the Famine, Tony Blair "apologised" for it as follows:

"That one million people should have died in what was then part of the richest  and most powerful nation in the world  is something that still causes pain as we reflect on it today.  Those who governed in London at the time failed their people"

Sadly the collective leadership of Europe, with the UK as one of the most culpable, will need to make a similar apology  at some time in the future for our indifference to the sufferings of migrants and asylum seekers desperately, and across the Mediterranean dangerously, fleeing similar poverty today. 

4. Equality. Opposite the splendidly modern but imposting cathedral in Galway is a sculpture by John Behan depicting Emerging Equality.  In the inscription below is the definition:

Equality is but difference - respected and celebrated.

I'll try to remember that next time someone taunts those of us who believe in equality  that we want everybody to be the same.  Not at all: different, yes  please, but still equal.

A cost-free improvement for the NHS

I have not actually seen the film "The Sense of an Ending" but was sufficiently intrigued by the adverts to buy Julian Barnes's book.  There I was delighted to read, put in the mouth of the first person narrator, Tony Webster, sentiments that coincide exactly with my own:

Do you know something I dread?  Being an old person in hospital  and having nurses I've never met calling me Anthony, or worse, Tony.  Let me just pop this in your arm Tony.  Have some more of this gruel, Tony.  Have you done a motion, Tony?*  Of course, by the time this happens,  over-familiarity  from the nursing staff  may be well down  my list of anxieties, but even so. (Page 69)


Change "Peter" and "Pete" and that's exactly how I feel, not just in the context of old age and physical incapability, but in all contexts when discussing matters with people I neither know nor am likely to know. (eg buying insurance over the telephone, receiving letters from my Party's leader).

However, Barnes is right (presuming he is airing his own views.) that the situation is most acute in the medical context, when we feel at the most vulnerable.  In that situation the last thing we need is to addressed  by authority figures in a manner which takes us back to our days in the mixed infants.

So the free improvement for the NHS is that all staff should  address people by their honorific (Mr. Mrs, M/s or something posher) and family name  and that should be the default position.   If patients then prefer their first name, nickname or something more familiar that's fine, but the initiative should come from the patient, not the practitioner.

I am not and never have member of BUPA or any other private medical scheme, but I'm pretty sure  that in those places patients are" Mistered" and "Missised" routinely.

More generally, the English language, which is so prolific is most other areas (we have half a million words and counting, compared with a mere 100 000 in French) we have no equivalent of the French Monsieur,
Madame or |Mademoiselle, which can be used indiscriminately without any sense of status difference or servility.  The French also get around the difficulty of distinguishing between Missises and Misses by addressing every woman who appears to be over 30 as Madame. (though that may be an unwelcome rite of passage)


In English, outside school, the army, police  and high-end department stores , "Sir" and "Madame" sound deferential, and outside Buckingham Palace and detective stories featuring senior female officers I suspect no-one uses the abbreviation  "Ma'am" (to rhyme with "jam," not "psalm").

I have no suggested alternatives to make but should be pleased if someone could come up with one to replace "Pall", "Mate" "Squire " (ugh) or nothing at all.

Of course, here in Yorkshire the unisex "Luv" covers all cases

*Barnes himself has dispensed with quotation marks

Great Britons

I spent last week walking on the Western edge of the Chilterns with an Anglo-French  group.  As is our custom we took a day off from walking midweek and did touristy things.  In this location the obvious choice was Cambridge, where we took a ride on a punt on the river, which was very good value, and a walking tour round the colleges, which had the cheek to charge £20 per head  ( though as "concessions" we got it for £18)   which included all " entry fees to colleges,"  but as we didn't actually enter any, or King's College Chapel, was a bit of a rip off.

When we were told of the original of Newton's Principia Mathematicae  in the Wren  Library (along with the drafts and sketches for Winnie-the-Pooh), the college to which Professor  Stephen Hawkins belongs,   and pointed to the pub where Watson and Crick relaxed whilst uncovering the structure of DNA, my British bosom swelled with pride.

A quick search on the internet will tell you that Cambridge University has, at 61, more Nobel Laureates than any other university in the world (Harvard is next with 48), and there are lots of other distinguished literary alumni (E M Forster, C S lewis and Bradford's very own J B Priestley) in addition to A A  Milne.

I do not subscribe to the view fostered by our school history courses that  Britain  has been "top nation" for most of the time since the reign of Henry VIII until the Americans took over, but the Cambridge experience is a reminder  that for the past few centuries we have been among the leading nations for science, medicine, exploration, literature, politics, philosophy, engineering, economics and culture.

Britons have made serious and significant contributions to making the world a more civilised, stimulating and comfortable place.

Nor do I suggest that, post-Brexit, no one from these islands is ever gong to write another decent book or make another scientific discovery.  But if we go ahead with Brexit not only shall we be economically poorer - that seems now to be almost universally accepted - but we are deliberately dropping out of the big league.  The implications, especially for  science, are particularly severe.