No, it's not the travellers, who still bank fortunes every time a bar decides not to serve them because the last one that did ended up like this.

And it's certainly not the asylum seekers refusing to leave their holiday camp accommodation.

Needless to say, it is Irish people returning to Ireland from abroad.

While the quasi-bankrupt state continues funding Pamela Izevbhekhai's millions of euro in legal fees and hands six figure cheques or luxury houses out to squatting travellers, it refuses welfare to Irish people returning home.

What a sick inversion of priorities this morally vacant government has, that they would plough tax money into zombie banks and gombeen developers, and throw money, education and accommodation at any liar off the plane from Nigeria, yet they deny basic welfare to their own citizens.

It's time for the revolution, I think.

I've fairly simple criteria for what it means to be Irish.

Are you from Ireland? If you can answer yes, then you're Irish in my book.

Of course, not everyone sees it the same way. And according to a new study by a Protestant academic, apparently Irish Protestants are seen by many of their compatriots as somehow being a lesser form of Irish.

Which is frankly despicable, especially in this day and age when the Irish Times and the many, many statefunded multicult quangos spend so much effort trying to insist that people from distant continents who arrived here in the last few years to scam our welfare system are, in fact, 'new Irish.'

Let's be blunt - Irish Protestants are Irish. Some may like, as indeed some Irish Catholics like, to carry other passports too. But they're no less Irish for that or indeed for their choice of religion or their family background.

This study is now likely to be used as another stick with which to beat the Irish nation. A cold house, Rome rule, etc, etc.

But I think perhaps something else is feeding into this.

All Irish people are familiar with the selective co-opting of Irish people by Britain when it suits them.

When Michelle Smith was winning Olympic medals, she was hilariously described as 'one of ours' by the BBC. But when she was caught urinating whiskey into drug sample bottles, of course she became an Irish cheat.

And let's not forget Samuel L. Jackson's legendary correction of Brit telly hackette Kate Thornton when she sought to claim Colin Farrell as British.

But this trend continues today, even in something as vapid and irrelevant as Piers Morgan's top 100 British celebrities list. The former tabloid hack states up front that Irish celebrities 'such as Bono and Colin Farrell' aren't included.

Then he goes on to list a bunch of Irish people on his list anyway - Kenneth Branagh, Christine Bleakely, Graham Norton.

Let's go through that carefully for a moment. Branagh and Bleakely are from the North, which is British-ruled. But Norton? Born and raised in Cork, for goodness sake. And where's Liam Neeson or Terry Wogan, surely bigger stars than either Branagh or Bleakely?

Obviously the real criterion here is their religious background. According to Morgan, you're British if you're an Irish Protestant, even if you're from Cork, but you're not British if you're an Irish Catholic, even if you grew up under British rule or lived your entire working life in England as the beloved voice of middle-aged Middle England.

We remain firmly in the cultural hinterland of London, and hence it isn't surprising to me to find that research indicates a reticence about the Irishness of Protestants, when the British media still firmly insist that the Protestant community of this island belongs to them.

I look forward to the day when Irish Protestants start directing their anger at attempts to dilute their nationality, not only at their fellow Irish people, but also at the British who continually assume prior claim to them.

One further criterion I ought to have added above: you're Irish only if you want to be Irish.

So while I consider it despicable that some Irish people see their fellow citizens as somehow lesser, I think the only way that can be addressed is for the Irish Protestant population to be a bit more vocal in insisting on their nationality, especially when it comes under such regular assault from our ever-colonial neighbours.

You're Irish - shout it out and then no one can dispute it, not your Catholic neighbours or your British ones.

This is what Mammy Skinner raised me for, I have no doubt.

Last night I achieved a podium finish in the Irish Whiskey Tasting Championships!

I came third, and won a nice bottle of Connemara Cask Strength which I suspect will get polished off by my better half.

This marks a modest but notable improvement on my respectable joint fourth finish in the Australian Malt Whisky Tasting Championship last Summer.

Fair play to the lads at the Celtic Whiskey Shop for organising the event.

Hopefully one day the nascent Irish Whiskey Society will take over the reins of running the tasting competition, though.


There were some very interesting drams included in the tasting last night, which meant that everyone had a chance to taste something new to them.

I was especially pleased to try the now legendary Red Breast 15 year old again, and the sherried Connemara single cask.


Needless to say, my head hurts this morning!

Football without the divas.

Football without the multimillionaire brats smashing up Ferraris and getting arrested in nightclubs.

Football without the Beckham soap opera.

Football without the expensive flight abroad, mandatory overpriced two nights in craphole hotel and dreadful seats so high in the stadium you'd get a nosebleed.

Football without the fawning commentary from bitter ex-pros with vapid insights who missed out on the lottery cheque paydays.

Football without the mind-numbingly bland autobiographies, ghostwritten by anonymous sports hacks who don't get credited, that invariably feature a chapter on kicking a ball against a wall as a kid, a chapter on cleaning someone's boots, and a chapter on their debut game, but entirely gloss over the teen roastings, coke snortings, attacks on people in nightclubs, rows with t he trophy WAG in the mansion and six figure gambling debts.

Football without the bribed refs, fixed matches and corruption scandals.

Football without the Sky Sports network dictating the kick-off time.

But...

Football with the passion, the skill, the talent, the excitement, the drama.

Football played by ordinary guys in your local area at a reasonable ticket price where you can get right up close to the pitch without remortgaging your house.

Football with heart, with soul, with community.

Football as it used to be and ought to be.

Welcome back, the League of Ireland. Go watch your local team this season.

Who had their inaugural founding meeting this week in a packed Bowes' pub in Dublin.

(Off on a tangent: I've been loathe to add my voice to all the others gabbling incessantly about the recession. After all, I'm not an economist, and it's all pretty obvious what's going on and how it's going to get worse in the months to come.
Instead, I've been trying, in these dark January days, to find something to be positive about. It hasn't been easy, which is why I haven't been posting much. But at last there's something to be cheerful about. Ireland's finally getting it's very own whiskey society! End of tangent.)

It's been a long time coming, but the response has been staggering, especially when you consider that all advertising of the society was done solely by word of mouth.

People from all over the world have inquired about joining. I mean all over. We're talking India, North America, Sierra Leone even.

People came to the inaugural meeting from Hungary, Belfast, Galway and plenty of other places. It just goes to show the massive interest and passion there is for Irish whiskey.

And fair play to the two of the four Irish distillers (Cooley and the Porterhouse) who showed up. No doubt once the society is established and on its feet the big two will come in behind it as well. After all, it's a society founded on a devotion to their industry!

Anyone interested in finding out more should contact (Scottish!) founder of the society Michael Foggarty via the society's website.

In the meantime, David Havelin's excellent blog about Irish whiskey is available to keep anyone who loves Irish whiskey informed about all the latest developments.

The Irish holocaust of the 1840s, that is.

Our gombeen government has decided, a mere 160 or so years on, to finally commemorate the fact that half of the country died of hunger or were forced to leave their homeland due to a deliberate policy of forced starvation.

They've decided to call this commemoration of the dead a 'Famine' memorial day. The commemoration is long overdue.

But it's not a famine we should be commemorating. Because there was no famine. A famine is when there is not sufficient food to feed the population. What happened in Ireland in the 1840s was attempted genocide.

Let's look at the evidence, and I don't mean the mounds of dead, some containing the remains of over 10,000 people, that dot our landscape. Nor do I mean the ghost towns of the West of Ireland. I mean the documentary evidence of genocide.

What is a genocide? In common terms, it is the attempt to murder an entire race of people. But the United Nations has a legal definition. In fact, it has an entire convention on genocide. The relevant part is section 2, which defines acts of genocide.

As a single reading of 2c reveals, what happened in Ireland in the 1840s was a genocide. This has been confirmed by international legal expert F.A. Boyle, Professor of Law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who wrote:

"Clearly, during the years 1845 to 1850, the British government pursued a policy of mass starvation in Ireland with intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnic and racial group commonly known as the Irish People.... Therefore, during the years 1845 to 1850 the British government knowingly pursued a policy of mass starvation in Ireland that constituted acts of genocide against the Irish people within the meaning of Article II (c) of the 1948 [Hague] Genocide Convention."

But some people object to the suggestion that there was intent on the part of the British government of the time. They suggest that the famine was an act of God, of nature, a tragic accident caused by a fungus on a tuber which had nothing to do with any human action or intent. To demonstrate the intent of the British colonial administration of the time, it is important to look at their own stated documents on the matter.

Firstly, let's consider what Robert Murray, writing in his 1847 book "Ireland, Its Present Condition and Future Prospects" had to say about the alleged famine:

"The surplus population of Ireland have been trained precisely for those pursuits (unskilled labor or agricultural) which the unoccupied regions of North American require for their colonization. That surplus is an overwhelming incubus (demon) at home, whether to themselves or others. Remove them and you benefit them in a degree that cannot be estimated. Precisely as you do so, you raise the social condition of those who remain."

In other words, a policy of clearing Ireland of its 'surplus' of people and driving many of them to America would be of benefit to the American economy and to the easier administration of Ireland by Britain! Bear in mind this was written at the height of the horror - Black 47. This isn't some sort of 'Modest Proposal' type of joke. This is a genuine policy proposal.

But perhaps Murray did not represent mainstream British opinion? Let's consider instead the London Times, which crowed:

"They are going. They are going with a vengeance. Soon a Celt will be as rare in Ireland as a Red Indian on the streets of Manhattan...Law has ridden through, it has been taught with bayonets, and interpreted with ruin. Townships levelled to the ground, straggling columns of exiles, workhouses multiplied, and still crowded, express the determination of the Legislature to rescue Ireland from its slovenly old barbarism, and to plant there the institutions of this more civilized land."

In other words, the newspaper of record in England records with glee the imminent demise of the Irish as a nation in the hope that its land can be cleared for plantation by Britons. But again, perhaps it is unfair to attribute these mainstream British opinions to the government itself? Let's look at what they had to say.

On April 26th, 1849, one hundred years before the Genocide Convention was signed, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of Clarendon, wrote to the then British Prime Minister, John Russell, expressing his feelings about the lack of aid from Parliament:

"I do not think there is another legislature in Europe that would disregard such suffering as now exists in the west of Ireland, or coldly persist in a policy of extermination."

Bear in mind, this is the voice of Britain in Ireland speaking. And he is speaking of a policy of extermination of the Irish people. I call that genocide. But perhaps I'm wrong. So let's look around for other views. According to holocaust historian and expert Richard L. Rubenstein in his book "Age of Triage: Fear and Hope in an Overcrowded World":

"A government is as responsible for a genocidal policy when its officials accept mass death as a necessary cost of implementing their policies, as when they pursue genocide as an end in itself."

Rubenstein is the man who invented the term 'genocide', so I think we can defer to his definition of the word. So it seems absolutely indisputable: under the terms of the UN convention on genocide, Britain was guilty of conducting genocide on the Irish people during the period variously and incorrectly referred to today as the great famine or An Gorta Mor.

Now, I'm not interested in a Brit-bashing exercise. I can't imagine that the British of today would in anyway feel guilty (nor should they) for something committed by an elite that ran their country and ours a century and a half ago. Britain is historically responsible for a number of attempted genocides, at least one committed on their own soil (the Highland clearances.)

Indeed, the 'great hunger' was not the only attempt at genocide on the Irish people. Cromwell's exploits two centuries earlier spring to mind. I can't imagine that it would ruin relations with Britain or indeed the British people if we were simply to pay proper tribute to our own dead.

In fact, I think many British people might find it illuminating to know what really happened. Certainly, given how the 'famine' is taught in our schools, I believe it would be illuminating for a lot of Irish people too. I accept the British apology for what Tony Blair's word is worth. Which is little, in fairness, but I accept it anyway. But that's not the point.

The point is that our own government fails to acknowledge that it was a holocaust, not a famine caused by a lack of available food. The Irish holocaust had little in common with famine or hunger. Should the focus of Jewish holocaust commemorations be on preventing gas poisoning?

What would any self-respecting Jewish person say if people expected them to euphemise away the horror their people suffered, or suggested that they get over it and grow up as a people? The Rwandans and Armenians would not accept anyone else trying to diminish the attempted genocides that happened to their peoples. So why do we accept it?

Sure, some Shinners might want to use the designation of any commemoration for some Brit-bashing. But that in no way invalidates the core point, which is nothing to do with the Brits of today. It's to do with our own acknowledgment of our own history in accurate terminology.

When we can do that, then we can really move on as a nation.

What happens when the irresistable blog meets the immovable earner?

The thought crossed my mind recently as I noted the passing of two of Ireland's more popular blogs - Sigla and Present Tense.

Both are now firmly in the past tense, as their authors move on to pastures new and, crucially, paying.

I can appreciate the difficulties for a journalist who has a blog. You write for a living, which is hard enough. Getting paid for writing is even harder. So where's the motivation in doing it for free? A blog is in a way only encouragement for people to expect your work for nothing - including that nefarious species, editors.

I don't think it's a coincidence that both Sinead and Shane were functioning hacks before they blogged. I get the sense that blogging was something they tried and found ultimately incompatible with the day job.

Other hacks, like Richard Delevan and Sarah Carey, seem able to keep both plates spinning in the air. But then again, Sarah came to journalism via her blog being noticed by the Sunday Times, while Richard has long mastered the high wire act of keeping both in balance.

Maybe he manages it because his articles tend to be lengthy, considered pieces of work, whereas his blog is often home to much shorter items that have come to his notice.

There are other blogs by Irish journos. But by and large they're either by youngsters starting out on their career or they're done under pseudonyms.

Perhaps the former are just looking for an outlet, somewhere to practice their chosen trade, maybe even get noticed. Perhaps the latter are looking to put things into the public domain which their paymaster won't publish. I'm speculating here, of course.

The clash of cultures between 'old' media and 'citizen journalism' has become a somewhat hackneyed topic for debate, and to me it seems defunct as we're still in some sort of transitional arrangement wherein both forms are seeking to find a way to marry into each other, like a messy corporate merger.

But the intersection between blogging and the media does seem to produce regular casualties, and those casualties are nearly always the blog, which doesn't pay, as opposed to the media work which does.

It would be great to see more established journalists commence blogging in Ireland. But sadly the trend seems to be going in the opposite direction. Anyone remember this from one particular Irish media titan?

And he got paid for it. Just not enough, presumably, for it to continue into the present.

When the need and opportunity to progress a career in the media clashes with blogging, it's the blog which is the first casualty. Because they take time and consideration and thought, and they don't pay.

This isn't restricted solely to hacks, of course. Other good blogs have fallen by the wayside as their authors lacked time to blog because they were busy earning elsewhere.

And even though blogs are free to read, we're all a little poorer for that loss.

It strikes me that the payment available to bloggers (other than a pittance of adsense revenue or similar) is in the interaction from reader comments. You don't get that in the mainstream media (letters pages and radio phone-ins just don't carry the same capacity for initiating a considered debate instantly.)

It doesn't compare to getting a cheque in the mail, but it is a small reward when someone notes something you've blogged about and takes issue with it, or agrees fervently, or says you've opened their mind, or merely links to it from a blog of their own.

So if we're not going to pay bloggers cash, then it might be nice if more people left more comments as they bounce around the blogosphere. It won't pay the rent, but it will add further relevance and vitality to the medium, while also giving the authors some form of payback.

This BBC radio 3 debate was only recently drawn to my attention. It dates from December 2006, prior to Liverpool's assumption of the European City of Culture title. But it has possibly more relevance now.

The question posed is fiendishly simple: Is Liverpool really an English city?

Or is it actually the primary outpost of Irish cultures (Gaelic and Dissenter) in Britain, some sort of proto-capital of a notional East Ireland?

Or is it better seen as a city state, a one-time global port now irreparably independent in spirit with a greater regional than national sense of identity?

Or perhaps like Hong Kong or Cape Town, Liverpool is really just the nearest of the many obscure outposts of the Empire to London, a post-colonial entity struggling to shrug off the post-imperial hangover?

There's no doubt that the city suffers disproportionately from negative stereotyping and slurs from the rest of the nation it purports to be part of. And there's no doubt that the denizens of Scouseland love to assert their separateness in a wide range of ways.

So, is Liverpool really an English city? Best listen and find out what the locals think.

Following on from my nigh-legendary guidance on drinking in general, here's a few pointers about Irish whiskey just in time for St Patrick's Day.

1. It's whiskEy not whisky. With an 'E' and it's Irish, without and it's Scotch. Some Yanks like to spell their Bourbon the Irish way, with the E. This is a mistake, since the vast majority of Bourbon isn't proper whiskey at all. In my opinion, of course.

2. Unlike the Scots, who cleverly kept most of their distilleries open, we stupidly shut nearly all of ours. Therefore, there are really only three distilleries left. To make up for that, they distil a bewildering display of whiskies to make it look like there are lots more than there really are.

3. Scots tend to make the most sought-after single malts. Irish distilleries make some excellent malts too, but what they really excel at is blends.
The Scots also tend to use peat to dry the malt in their whiskies, which can make them smoky. The Irish don't, with two notable exceptions.
Irish whiskey is generally triple distilled, which Scotch rarely if ever is. Hence Irish whiskey is generally the smoother tipple.

4. You have Bushmills on the North Coast of Antrim, probably located in the most Protestant, Unionist town in the world, but still aware of the marketing value of calling their famous product Irish, rather than Ulster, whiskey.
Bushmills make their own basic blend, Old Bushmills, which is sweet, young and good for skulling lots of during a whiskey binge, if that's your thing. Black Bush is the more upmarket blend, very tasty indeed and good value for money.
They also do a great range of single malts, including the green bottle 10 year old, which is yummy, and a truly sumptuous 16 year old, which is finished in three woods and tastes incredibly complex as a result.
At the top of the range is the 21 year old, matured in madeira casks, and a special 400th anniversary whiskey currently only on sale at the distillery, which is just fantastic. Also only at the distillery is the 12 year old reserve single malt.
In the past, the distillery has done limited edition single cask special editions. These are extremely overpriced gimmicks. Having said that, I'm open to receiving any of them on Christmas or birthdays!

The verdict: If you want that genuine Irish whiskey binge experience, the basic Bushmills is a good contender. If smooth single malts with vanilla and complex wine notes are your thing, feel free to move up the Bushmills single malts ladder as far as your pocket will allow you. The 16 year old is probably the best value of the lot.

5. Midleton is a little town just outside of Cork, where distilling has been going on for a very long time, and they're good at it.
This is just as well, because probably nearly all of the best known Irish whiskies are actually all made here now, especially since distilling in Dublin died out with the closure of the Jameson's distillery at Bow Lane, which is now a nice museum.
So prolific is Midleton, that they even make the grain whiskey that goes into Bushmills blends, and the whiskey that goes into Bailey's Irish Cream.
But what they're best known for are the Jameson range, which they inherited from Bow Lane, Paddy's and Powers Gold Label. Personally speaking, I don't rate any of these.
In fact, I'd go as far as to suggest that anyone who recommends any of these doesn't know their whiskey.
Powers and Paddy's are fine for kids to mix with Coke, or for use in Irish coffees and hot whiskeys, of course. Same with basic Jameson, which is just about good enough to drink on its own or on the rocks.
Further up the food chain are some heavily overpriced Jamesons, including the 1780 which is a 12 year old blend, an outrageously pricey 18 year old, and Crested Ten, which has a reputation in some quarters which is unwarranted.
The Jameson Gold is probably the best value in the brand range, but is generally only spotted in duty-free shops, more's the pity.
Midleton does make the extremely good value Tullamore Dew, which is very young as whiskies go, and quite popular in the US. For sheer bang for your buck, this is probably the best of the Midleton productions.
For quality though, one is forced to pay through the nose for the Midleton Very Rare, a deliberately limited edition whiskey sold in an ostentatious wooden box for figures upwards of 100 euro a bottle.
Each year the 'vintage' is slightly different, which adds to the collectible value. It's a lovely whiskey, whichever vintage you sample. But is it worth that money? Probably only to those who will leave it in the bottle for twenty years, untouched.
But Midleton does produce one genuine all-round gem of a whiskey. It's a pure pot still whiskey, a traditional method unique to Ireland, and it is superb and very reasonable value too.
This is Redbreast, of course, a 12 year old whiskey that has to be sampled to be believed.
And at the price it generally retails at, you can afford to put a bit more money to what you were going to spend on Jameson or Powers and get the proper good stuff.
There is another little historical anomaly produced at Midleton too. And thank God for it. Once upon a time, Ireland's many distilleries would produce bonded whiskies for pubs, wine importers and other independent establishments. All bar one of these no longer are produced.
There is one left though, Green Spot, which is produced at Midleton for Dublin wine merchants Mitchells. And it's fantastic. This is probably the best value Irish whiskey there is.
Sadly, it's produced in limited quantities and generally is only found in Mitchells' own shops, of which there are only three, and they're all in Dublin.

Verdict: Forget Paddy's and Powers. Of the Jamesons, Gold is the only one worth your money. But for gulping whiskey, Tullamore Dew is the one, for sipping whiskey go with the Redbreast, and if someone else is buying, try a Midleton Very Rare. But the one worth flying to Dublin just to buy is Green Spot.

6. The last of the three distilleries is Cooley, located almost on the border between British-owned Ireland and the independent free bit.
One thing Cooley has going for it is that unlike the other two, which are both owned by massive corporate conglomerates, Cooley is genuinely independent and hence deserving of support.
And a lot of people like what Cooley are doing, since they can't stop winning awards for their whiskies.
I once had a bad experience with their main single malt, Tyrconnell. I don't like it much and I don't like the fact that Cooley took the name from a venerable old whiskey once distilled in Derry at the now long-closed Watts distillery.
But Tyrconnell is loved by many, despite its youth. I'd be more inclined to look out for the limited edition finishes of Tyrconnell, though. They're marginally more interesting than the basic number.
The Greenore single grain whiskey is also, to my mind, completely worth ignoring, I'm afraid. The small amount of it they make inflates the price for what has to be the blandest whiskey in Ireland.
Their Kilbeggan blend is an adequate alternative to Paddy's or Jameson for those who want whiskey in their cola, and personally I'd recommend doing so just to give Cooley the business.
Cooley claims that their other blend, Locke's (also named for a whiskey that died a long time ago) is very hard to make and complex. I find it pretty bland again, even at 8 years old.
But before you think I'm completely down on the border boys, let me discuss what Cooley do uniquely and do incredibly well: peated Irish whiskey.
But JC, I hear you protest (because I have special powers which allow me to hear over the internet), didn't you say it's the Scots who peat whiskey?
Yup, they do. And if you've a taste for smokey Scotch, or a friend who loves Scotch who you want to convert to Irish whiskey, then you need to stock up on a couple of Cooley whiskies.
Specifically, you want to get the Connemara single malt, which just keeps winning awards.
It's very like a smokey island Scotch single malt, which was the point of the exercise really. In fact, it keeps outdoing Scotch equivalents at competitions.
And with a delicious 12 year old and a beefy cask strength option, there's a little range of options to enjoy, and though both of these can hurt the wallet a little, they're worth it if you like the basic Connemara number. Like pretty much all whiskey lovers do.
But for me, the real gem at Cooley is Inishowen (again, a name nicked from an old Watts whiskey).
There is literally nothing like Inishowen on earth. It's an Irish blend whiskey, with peated malt in the mix. In other words, it's the Giant's Causeway of whiskies, the missing link between Irish whiskey and Scotch whisky. Also a multiple award-winner, it is so reasonably priced that it's hard to fault it, despite its unique qualities.

Verdict: Everyone's waiting to see what emerges from the old Kilbeggan distillery, which Cooley has taken out of the mothballs, and hurrah for that. But judging on their current performances at Cooley, it could go either way. So for now, play it safe and stick with their peated range, Inishowen and Connemara.

6, There are other Irish whiskies out there. All are made by the above three distilleries for foreign markets, or for independent bottlers. I'd name a few, but apart from Coleraine (made at Bushmills and only recently improved to drinkable quality), or Millars Special Reserve (made at Cooley for a UK off-licence chain) I wouldn't accept a half-un of any of them to be honest.

7. Sadly, some of the best Irish whiskies are the remaining stocks of long-closed distilleries. As a result, these gems are generally very hard to find and appallingly expensive.
Examples would include 'Dungourney 64', which came from a single cask from the Old Midleton distillery that went missing for 30 years before being discovered and bottled.
Or Dunville's, a whiskey distilled in Belfast until the place closed Seventy years ago, a cache of which surfaced in Bushmills some years back.
Or Coleraine 1959, a limited edition 34 year old bottling of the last cask ever produced at the old Coleraine distillery.
Or Old Comber, which was bottled in the Eighties at around 33 years old from the last couple of casks remaining from the Ulster Distillery in Comber, which shut down in 1953.
Or Knappogue 51, which surfaced after 36 years and was bottled, and is now marketed as the rarest Irish whiskey in the world.
Which it probably isn't, as no doubt someone out there has a unique bottle out there of something ancient and preposterously rare.
But these are mostly museum pieces, articles for collections. Not for drinking unless you have deep pockets.
For St Patrick's Day, I'll be sipping some Green Spot, some Redbreast, some Bushmills 16 year old, and a little drop of Old Comber as a special treat.

Good luck and enjoy whatever you're having yourself! Slainte!

Obviously every single day you can pick up an Irish newspaper, any of them really, and roll your eyes in horror at the errors, misspellings, pretensions, outrageous opinion masquerading as objectivity, and blatant spin.

So I'm going to reserve this occasional series for serial offenders and major errors of fact.

In the first category is long-time frustrated poet, Irish Independent sports writer Vincent Hogan, whose airbrushed, outdated 'matinee idol' byline picture is only matched by his fondness for prose more purple than a crate of Ribena.

Maybe you were busy Wednesday night, and didn't catch the Ireland V Brazil game? Thought you'd pick up the Indo on Thursday and read all about it? Vince has other plans for you.

From the casual racism of the opening line - 'It was settled by the deftness of a street thief" - you knew this was going to be vintage Hogan balls.

There's the one word sentences, the irrelevant multi-paragraph digressions, and the errors of fact that make you think he wasn't at the game at all. (On this occasion, the suggestion that the Brazilians were singing Ole. Ole is a Spanish word, associated in South America with Brazil's bitter rivals Argentina. It was the Irish fans chanting Ole, Vince.)

Receiving my inaugural 'Liam Lawler's Hooker' award for getting their facts completely wrong in an Irish newspaper is inevitably the Daily Mail, who've never enjoyed the closest relationship with factuality.

In a heavily topspun and overwritten article about the British Embassy employment dispute (with inevitable tired references to Ferrero Rocher and ironing newspapers), the offending scribe Lucie van den Berg manages a whopping error in her opening paragraph. See if you can spot it:

"It had all the appearances of the final days of the Raj. The last bastion of the Perfidious Albion's Imperialism in Ireland - or the British Embassy as we now call it - was the site of outrage among what Edmund Burke called 'the swinish multitude' yesterday."

It's got everything, hasn't it? The ridiculous analogy with the Raj is a nice starter, followed by a main course of ungrammatical factual error. Last bastion of English imperialism in Ireland? Erm, try 70 miles north of Dublin, love. And for desert, a sickly sweet pointless quotation culled no doubt from www.findmeaquotetomakemesoundsmart.com.

The story itself, you ask? There isn't one, really. Some people at the British Embassy were laid off, and their mates took a two hour picket action in sympathy.

Congrats to Vincent and Lucie, penning Irish media drivel at its finest.

Congratulations to the delegation of Irish bishops who yesterday called on the EU and Ireland to review their ties to the apartheid state of Israel, after concluding that the Zionist regime had turned Gaza into little more than a large prison for the indigenous Palestinian population.

I hope that when they address their concerns to An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, they will be listened to. I hope also that their meeting with Ahern will result in a severing of trading ties with the regime, which was accurately described by the Bishops as conducting an injustice upon the Palestinian people.

Injustice is a very mild word for stealing someone else's homes, systematically killing them and herding them into large open air prisons behind huge walls (see above and here), harrassing them as they try to move about and work in their own land, and denying them access to their families and medical treatment when they find themselves on the 'wrong' side of such illegal barriers.

The illegal Israeli regime, which has long survived only due to being propped up by American money and weapons, is always quick to denounce those who condemn the horrors they perpetrate as anti-semitic.

In fact, they are the true anti-semites, as they steal the land from the Semitic Palestinian people and allocate it to fake Jews imported from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia to serve as soldiers and service industry underclass to the Ashkenazi elite.

It is high time, as the Bishops have said, that the people of Europe stand up and denounce this shoddy, apartheid regime and the genocide they are seeking to commit on the Palestinian people.

And it is high time that our own government showed some leadership in this regard by severing ties with such an abhorrent entity.

Like the song goes, idiots rule. But for them to rule, then a large proportion of the rest of us have to follow. Which makes us the even bigger idiots. How does this work? Let's examine a few current examples:

1. China expects to be short by about 30 million marriageable women by 2020. This one's not rocket science. They couldn't have seen it coming?

Okay, so first the Government tells you to stop breeding under pain of death and prescribes stringent laws punishing people for having more than one child. What to do? Overthrow your mad-as-a-brush government is what.

Don't listen to the idiots - if you do, you end up killing your girl children and your sole son will have no one to marry when he grows up, which he will have to do entirely surrounded by other lads, which will probably make him gay.

2. A thousand Poles have applied to join the PSNI. Again, when you throw the doors open for half of Eastern Europe to come in, sooner or later those people are going to want the nice public sector sinecure jobs instead of the nasty meat-packing ones. This one could have been predicted.

But again, idiots rule. Why? Well, primarily because such is the endemic xenophobia in Northern Ireland that Polish officers could expect plenty of trouble everywhere they go.

Also because there does not appear to be sufficient vetting of the candidates, and because even Poles with police experience back East are unlikely to be suitable due to the fact that up until not very long ago their police were psychos suppressing the people.

Not unlike the PSNI, you say? Fair enough. As you were, gentlemen.

Don't listen to the idiots who reckon you deserve a yellow-pack police service, people. My suggestion? When PC Pawel comes knocking on the door, conduct your conversation in Irish or Ulster-Scots. If he arrests you, appeal to Nuala O'Loan. You'll get off, you'll get millions in compensation and Pawel will be deported.

3. Also, little Albania has shown up the rest of us so-called civilised countries by taking in as refugees those people who, after five years (Happy Birthday, Gitmo!) of incarceration by the US in Guantanamo Bay, have been proved innocent but are unable to return to their homelands for fear of death.

America is sending these people to Albania because, of course, it fears for their safety and is concerned about human rights in their countries of origin, which include Uzbekistan, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

According to the US State Department's deputy director for War Crimes (yes, they really have such a role in Government, and no, she isn't pursuing George W!), one Sandy Hodgkinson, "The US position is clear."

Tell us what that position is please, Sandy?

"We will not send individuals to places where we believe it is more than likely they will be tortured," she says. So that's nice and clear. Except for one thing: The US sent them to be tortured BEFORE they got to Gitmo, and the entire time they were held against all international law and human rights IN Gitmo.

Among the places, Gitmo incarcerents were sent to be tortured by the CIA are Uzbekistan and Egypt, ironically enough. So why the sudden crisis of conscience when letting them out?

Yes, idiots rule alright. Don't listen to the idiots who tell you they're concerned about torture and human rights while they're simultaneously practising torture and ignoring human rights. Their double-think permits them to rule you despite their being idiots.

The Darwin Awards were invented to celebrate the deaths of people so stupid that their removal from the human gene pool is considered to be an improvement for humanity as a whole.

But sadly, in this day and age of affluence and emergency services, fewer and fewer of the morons who so deserve this award are able to attain it, due to being saved from their own idiocy at the last minute.

Chief among these are the unnamed 'extreme' surfers, who refused help from the coastguard last month when they ran into difficulties at sea off the Cliffs of Moher.

(Incidentally, when is the usage of the word 'extreme' to describe acts of fratboy stupidity going to run its course?)

These imbeciles were facing death as they jetskiied around the Atlantic in search of a 35 foot wave (apparently called Aileen) to kill them. Yet they refused help from the helicopter crew that came to assist, because the chopper crew refused to take their surfboards too!

Well, why not save the exchequer the cost of the rescue and the human gene pool while you're at it by simply leaving dickheads like these to die next time?

It really infuriates me when peabrains go sailing in force nine gales, or climb mountains in bikinis during December, then cost the State tens of thousands for their rescue. And this at a time when grannies still lie on trollies for days in hospital for lack of funds for beds.

If people want to get 'extreme' in their pastimes, they can do so safe in the knowledge of the safety net provided by emergency services and funded at great cost by you and me, the taxpayers.

So in future, I'd suggest that when total spanners get themselves into difficulty in the sea and up mountains where they'd no sensible reason for being, they should be forced to pay the total cost of their rescue themselves.

It'll save money, and cut down on the amount of incidents where well-meaning emergency crews end up risking their own lives for people who would otherwise undoubtely be Darwin Award recipients.

The first politician to call for dickheads to pay the cost of their own rescue gets my vote next time out.

Do it for granny on the trolly in the Mater. Do it for the future of the human gene pool, dammit.

It seems that everyone is very animated all of a sudden over the recent spate of fatal car crashes in the country. I won't call them accidents - in the vast majority of cases, human error or impairment is to blame.

On top of the media calling for Martin Cullen's head (no bad thing in itself, but in fairness, it's not like he was driving any of the cars), all sorts of Irish bloggers from Sunday Times' Sarah Carey to acerbic smoker Twenty Major to the Swearing Lady appear to be very agitated about the issue.

So, working on the counterintuitive logic that people have heard enough about road safety, and also operating on the basis that as long as we have cars we'll have car crashes, I'm going to discuss something entirely different.

What passes for news in this country?

The front pages of the morning papers make desolate reading sometimes. Whether it's the warmed over Government press releases that dot the Irish Times front page, or the shrill moralising usually found on the front of the Irish Daily Mail, it's hard to discern actual NEWS anywhere.

Today's Daily Mirror - and I'm not picking on them specifically, it was just the only one I bought this morning - was a case in point that actually had me wondering whether the papers in this country would recognise news if it swanned into their offices wearing a T-shirt that read 'I'm news, print me!'

Front cover of today's Mirror had the jawdropping revelation that Robbie Keane is going to marry his long-term girlfriend. Yup, a football millionaire is going to marry the girl he's been with for five years. Sometime. We're not sure when. But they are engaged. Even though she's had a ring on her finger for weeks. And this is FRONT PAGE NEWS.

The other revelation from the same front page? 'POSH - Raunchiest pictures yet.' Accompanied by a snap of Skeletor flashing half a malnourished silicon tit.

Now, were the reader somehow brave enough to get past this smorgasbord of irrelevance and actually open the paper, page two is equally fascinating. Actual news - that we're not going to let the Bulgarians or Romanians in - makes an appearance.

And down the side of the page, between a tale of rabbits in Antarctica and the fact that apparently lots of Japanese people are really old, we get the following story. This is it in full, by the way:

France behind 1994 Genocide
France is being accused of taking part in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. French troops there are believed to have armed the Hutu militants who killed 800,000 Tutsis in a 100 day bloodbath. France has denied officially taking sides.

That's it. That's all you're getting. Yes, I know it's a tabloid. Yes, it's about a massacre long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away from CelticTigerland. But clearly I'm missing something here.

Isn't the suggestion that one of the world's major powers armed and caused the massacre of nearly a million people NEWS? More than a suggestion, in fact. A downright overt allegation from someone who ought to know - the man who was Rwandan ambassador to France at the time.

We get a full page of puff about Posh Spice's new 'fashion guide', and three sentences about how one of our allies and neighbours conducted the devastation of an entire country?

According to Reporters Sans Frontieres today, we have the most free press in the world, along with Finland, Iceland and Holland. This, of course, is an assessment that predates Minister McDowell's plans for a privacy law that will devastate the media's ability to report the news.

So with such press freedoms, why do we get such an appalling news agenda across the board?

Go on, people. Someone please explain this to me before I go mad entirely.