How Ireland lost its craic

So, which country is putting health warnings and calorie counts on bottles of alcohol for the benefit of its citizens? Nope, not Canada or New Zealand. But you’re getting warm…

It’s Ireland, the country that gave us Guinness, Jameson, Bushmills and, for those who like that kind of thing, Baileys. That’s right: a health warning just like for cigarettes. But instead of rotting lungs, presumably there’ll be a lovely picture of a liver with cirrhosis. What effect will it have on me? None, dear reader, none. I drink to forget this sort of thing.

But that’s the way Ireland is going (actually has gone) for a generation: not so much the nanny state as the Miss Trunchbull state, one that would swing you round by your pigtails. A proud drinking culture is reduced to reading the calorie count of a pint. The one hope is that Ireland may find it gets a frosty response from the European Commission for imposing trade barriers on, say, German beer.

It doesn’t really square with most people’s idea of Ireland, does it? The country of the fighting Irish, the drinking Irish, the self-deprecating humorous Irish, has turned into a kind of parody of liberal authoritarianism while you weren’t looking.

Mind you, there have been any number of indicators of the way things are going. At the Oscars ceremony, the host Jimmy Kimmel made an anodyne joke about the five Irish nominees, ‘which means the odds of another fight on stage just went way up’. Cue boos during the live screening at the Irish Film Institute, and Colin Farrell sounding off about it being racist.

But then, the country has acquired a thinness of skin lately which means taking exception to the possibility of anything related to Ireland being humorous.