From "we will bury you" to "lend us a fiver"

Via Henry, an absolute treasure trove for fans of lachrymose self-pitying xenophobic bollocks. Apparently poor old Ireland is now the vassal of the fat and stealthy Germans, and their collaborationist friends the French. And this is going to be more unpleasant than being ruled by the British. What Ireland needs, in a rather curious and unpleasant metaphor, is a diplomat who knows how to skin a live cat. Hey, do you know another thing about those bloody Germans? They're apparently also racists who drink too much beer.

Not anyone's finest hour I think. They're wrong about the position of the Irish in the Nazi racial classifications too, by the way (oh, yes, they do go there!). The Irish, Welsh and other Celtic-speaking countries were indeed a couple of rungs below the English, but certainly not on the same level as the Poles. Eastern Europeans were really very very low on the scale.

Obviously it's a terrible editorial, but I have a certain sneaking sympathy for them. It really cannot be easy to go from champions of Europe, handing out advice to everyone else, to borderline vassal status. It was traumatic enough for England to lose the Empire, and we had forty years to wean ourselves off it, plus we remained a solid G5 country. The only remotely comparable experience I can think of is Russia, going from superpower to global joke in the space of five years.