Just got home from a family wedding in Ireland and am still slightly battered by the drive back; if I'm honest, my resolve not to use Ryanair ever again took a bit of a battering yesterday while stuck for an hour on the M6 somewhere east of Chester! However, it gave me the chance to watch a hawk hovering over a field, and watch the swifts chasing butterflies in and out between the lorries standing still on the tarmac. It's amazing how quickly nature reasserts itself when the human world come to a standstill!Ireland has had a tough year, as any search of the news shows, and there were a lot more boarded up shops and houses than I noticed last year. However, one thing really struck me about the Irish response - virtually every foodstuff in the shop is plastered with "made in Ireland" stickers - even the chocolate had a "made in Ireland" logo next to the fairtrade one. It's a fiercely proud response to the crisis and one that mocks the UK's feeble and frankly spineless attempts to support its own farmers and food producers. It seems to me like our supermarkets in particular go out of their way to hide the fact that the food is made elsewhere while fooling us into thinking it's home-grown, yet the Irish are doing it loud and proud. There were signs everywhere, promoting jobs, promoting Irish food, supporting tourism and the community.
I was pretty impressed; we could learn a lot from their example.
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