The last few weeks have given me final proof that Lloyd George did not partition this island in 1922, the then Prime Minister of Britland.
Nope.
Lloyd George was just a patsy.
I now have inclusive evidence that the Border was the brainchild of a chimpanzee on acid.
I have the evidence here in front of me.
It’s the map of Ireland.
Only a hallucinating primate could create a state for most of the island that left Donegal tethered to the other 25 counties by a thread running through Ballyshannon.
Even with supposed Cross-Border co-operation the situation of this county is insane.
I took the bus to Dublin on the night of the 11th.
It was the 15.00 hrs from Letterkenny.
Sammy made sure that the normal 4-hr shift turned into a seven hour all through boreens at the back of Cavan.
The driver was a star, very skilful, good craic all the way.
The night before there had been an attack on a Bus Eireann wagon on the main drag from Omagh to Strabane.
It is, it would appear, ludicrously easy to effectively cut off North Donegal.
As ever with debates on the state of the county-especially the North & North West-transport is the key.
It wasn’t an unconnected discussion I had with a good friend of mine who is in the tourism business.
This year has been yet another disastrous season.
Last year was as bad.
Another season like it and a quality Bord Failte approved tourism provider will go to the wall.
The rest of the tourist trade around this part of the county is reporting same.
One restaurateur in the West of the county described to me that the last few weeks which should be slap bang in his peak season wasn’t as busy as a midwinter week a few years ago-that bad huh?
As an enemy of nonsense I was indebted to the top boy in the Northern Ireland Tourist Board who spoke a few weeks ago about three days of Mad Dogness at Drumcree had scuppered the Six Counties’ tourism trade for the next two years.
That means that Sammy Alsatian has also banjaxed the Donegal tourist trade for the next two years as well.
My friend’s business has-pardon the terminology-bombed during & after the Drumcree stand off.
His business relies on a Dublin based market driving to Donegal for a package trip that is Bord Failte approved.
Because of the monkey business with the border that means that people have to drive through the Six Counties.
There wasn’t a single tourist on the bus I go up to Donegal on Sunday night, not one.
Not even a New Zealand backpacker…..
Nope, it was just yer own, coming here because they’ve got no choice, because it’s home.
Tourism is potentially hugely important to this county.
Farmer’s will not like me saying this, but I believe that agriculture is finished and would, have been finished 30 years ago in this country West of the Shannon/Bann border had it not been for Euro subsidies.
Take farming out of the equation and what have you got left?
You can have Fruit of the Doom, Flybynight Teo & Grantsgrabbed of Dusseldorf.
Or you can build a sustainable tourism product based on what we have.
Scenery, craic, ceol agus gaeilge.
It is, partly, a chicken & egg scenario.
We need tourism numbers to improve & develop the product.
To have the numbers you need the product.
One thing is sure that a whole range of tourism enterprises will go under in this county unless we get serious government help for them or the Six Counties ceases to be somewhere that conflict junkies tune into every summer.
I honestly don’t see any light at end of this particular tunnel for a long time.
There is still in the Six Counties a culture of supremacy in the so-called Unionist tradition.
That, of course, must be broken on the Hill of Drumcree.
The first fissures are now appearing in my opinion.
Orangeism is in the process of becoming socially unacceptable to the Protestant middle class.
This started to happen in Scotland in the 1950s.
The Orange Order in Scotland now has about as much social standing as Mad Dog’s Alsatian.
In the Six Counties it is normal for salaried professional men to be out banging the Lambeg Loony Drum every twelfth.
I believe that will change-in the meantime Donegal remains handcuffed to a barking lunatic.
I’ve wracked my brains over this one and I don’t see anyway out thanks to that bloody chimp.
We’re fecked till Samuel grows up.
At least you always know when sammy’s went back into his cave for another year.
A Bord Failte suit comes out and tells you what a bumper year it’s been for Donegal tourism!
Phil Mac Giolla Bhain
