Leaving on a jet plane
by Brendan Coffey
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The radio this morning announced that stations were being inundated with requests for the John Denver song ever since the miraculous plane crash in the Hudson River, where the pilot managed to safely land and safely secure the lives of everyone on board.
Fortunately for those that were saved they won’t have been distracted by the woes of another bunch of people set to head off in a jet plane.
Last night’s Late, Late Show - the record-breaking, eternally-running Irish chat show that was once a public institution but now more a vehicle for easy going pop artists to propel their careers - took a welcome break from it’s risible attempts at light entertainment in favour of a piece about the current wave of young Irish people emigrating from the Emerald Isle. It was a welcome return to form for the programme which has always done serious discussion best under its politically-minded host Pat Kenny.
The tales were all too familiar. No jobs, no prospect of work and too many debts to pay. These people weren’t lackeys, they were graduates, college-educated young men and women with energy and enthusiasm to burn.
Except unlike 20, 30 and 40 years ago when Irish people left in their droves, sometimes wakes were held to mark their departure because like a funeral it might be the last the natives would see of them, this time there are few places with a loadsa jobs economy like there was in the post-War years or the boom times of Germany in the early 90s.
There is a rumour now that in Poland, a country where jobs are on the increase because the high paid workers in Ireland aren’t affordable anymore especially when there is a cheap and willing labour force available across the continent, that they don’t want any Irish applying. Some from the construction sector are heading East in search of work, ironically having been inundated with Polish workers on their sites during the boom years of the Celtic Tiger. Except poor treatment of workers has apparently fuelled the Polish contempt for their masters of old.
An Irish teenager from the 80s told me that when he upped and left for Germany in the mid-90s to work for a chain of pubs, the managers used to fight over the Irish barman because they had a reputation for being hard workers. Strange that our legacy from an impoverished era is being rundown by our behaviour in an era of plenty. But then the kids of the lean years were hungry for anything they could get their hands on.
When we seemed to have anything we wanted we probably had less. Too much choice can be no choice just like having everything can mean having nothing.
When Ireland was an economic basket case, when it was a nation ruled by high priests whose authority couldn’t be questioned, our imaginations got us through and the fight to provide a better life for those that came after us.
It’s not that we’re losing much in this recession, it’s that we never really knew what we gained from the boom years beyond the new car and the extra holiday.
As the Late, Late showed last night this is a time for imagination, a time to use our minds and a time for us to nurture and support entreprenuerial thinking. The rush on public service jobs now is a sign of Irish people neglecting to use what they gained from the boom years, a fabulous education compared to our forebears and a chance to see the world like our parents never saw it.
You can fly away and leave town but the only way out of a recession or a depression is through your mind.
Another friend told me of a holiday to Florida over Christmas.
“They’re in a recession over there as well but they don’t keep going on about it all the time the way we do.”
A time for clear minds and clever thinking. This is exciting.
Tags: Celtic Tiger, John Denver, Late Late Show, Pat Kenny, Poland
