I've never been too impressed with the Oirish Daily Mail but this particular op-ed about how awful things are in contemporary Ireland plumbed new depths of reactionary conservatism:
You don’t need me to tell you that Ireland has changed significantly over the last ten years and that among the changes wrought has been higher density living. As apartment complexes have risen up and spread across our urban geography, we find ourselves living at closer quarters for longer, especially as we watch bijou artisans cottages with postage stamp gardens and reasonable postal codes disappear rapidly over the horizon of affordability. Tensions are inevitable.[...]
Perhaps you’re living next to a flat which the Department of Social and Family Affairs has inveigled an unscupulous or, worse, innocent dupe of a landlord to fill with tracksuit-wearing howayas whose daily toil it is to smoke crack until all hours of the morning, interminably listening to a looped Aslan EP at deafening volume while their “burds” top up the household income with a little light prostitution. And your life is a Dantean purgatory.
In an increasingly urbanised and high-density Ireland, noise disputes are becoming more and more prevalent. And serious. Apart from the stress and nauseating worry which can result, what are the chances that the fifth time in as many nights that you pop down the corridor to have a word with those Latvian young fellas about the all-night techno parties which are keeping your wife and new-born child in a state of constant, mewling wakefulness, especially your wife, you’ll be bringing along your baseball bat?
Did I say Daily Mail? Sorry, got mixed up there. It was...
...of course, our old friend, "liberal" blogger Copernicus.
Makes one positively yearn for those halcyon days when the 'sans culottes' knew their place: corraled in Ronanstown, Jobstown etc. Why, the brazen effrontery makes one gag on one's Fallon & Byrne claret...I feel a letter to a quality Sunday paper coming on. And why, furthermore, can't the owners of those cottages just hurry up and die, already...talk about interfering with the natural order of things. I want my Arbour Hill artisan, and I want it 'maintenant'.
Posted by: Neil | September 14, 2006 at 09:46 AM
Of course, it's the very least a person of one's standing is entitled to
Oh, and:
corraled in Ronanstown, Jobstown etc.
Don't forget Neilstown!
Posted by: Frank McGahon | September 14, 2006 at 12:02 PM