Worse Than Stormfront

I apologise for the idiotic racist comments I made in a previous post.

The word 'darkies' is clearly an offensive word, and although I was expecting it to be taken in the light-hearted, half-serious manner that it was used, I realise now that its use in that context was ill-judged and in bad taste. I make a mistake and I'm sorry.

Please understand that while I do hold politically incorrect views, those views in no way affect how I treat other people outside of the internet. I work with several non-white people and I'm very proud of the unbiased and colour-blind way I treat them.

Not only would I never use that word 'darkies' in real life, but I wouldn't tolerate that kind of language from anyone else either. I should have known better and I'll make sure to avoid such inappropriate language in the future.

I apologise as well for the name-calling. It was immature of me to use the name Aspergers boy. It was partly as a result of my anger and frustration at him for having exposed my numerous errors and factual inaccuracies and partly because I wanted some way to distinguish him from the other Anonymous posting on the site. I was wrong to call him the name I called him though. I can understand why he found it insulting.

Anonymous, I regret that my behaviour has resulted in your decision to stop posting on the blog. It's entirely my own fault and I don't for a second believe that it represents any lack of ability on your part to respond to my comments. You've shown that you're more than capable of holding your ground in the debate and so I know you would never bow out so easily. Other people would have given up a long time ago. I think you've made some very valubable contributions and I would be grateful if you would reconsider your decision.

Alot of people wonder how it is that old Mac came to hold such extreme racist views. I'm not going to pretend that it all happened instantly but there was one thing that first got me thinking about the world in racial terms. It was this map of the world:





I first saw a map similar to the one above during a geography class in 4th year in secondary school. I was browsing through the geography book when I came across a chapter that dealt with global poverty. They made the point that the world could be divided into a prosperous northern half and an impoverished southern half. While on the surface it seemed to make sense - most of the poor countries in the world clearly are located in the southern hemisphere - when I looked at the map more closely I noticed something strange. The line seperating the northern and southern halves doesn't run parallel to the equator. It seems to take a detour in order to take in Australia and New Zealand in the southern hemisphere. It then takes another detour to take in South Africa.

That's when it suddenly dawned on me. This is not a map dividing the southern and northern parts of the globe, this is a map separating the countries populated by fair-skinned people from the countries populated by dark skinned people. The rich countries of the world are populated by fair-skinned people (East-Asians, Europeans and their descendants in the new world) while the poor countries are populated by the dark skinned people of Africa, Southern Asia, and South America. It seemed so obvious to me at the time that I was amazed that nobody had failed to point this out. Of course at that time I wasn't aware of political correctness and the pressure that people are under not to point out the obvious facts of human development. But still, it got me thinking. I suppose I had always known that white countries tend to be richer than black countries but I hadn't known enough about the world to know if this really was the case.

I was only 17 year old at the time and I had never even thought about the subject of race before. It was a year or two later when I first got access to the internet that I began to explore the issue in more detail. Like most young men who have unsupervised access to the internet the first thing I looked up were the racist, neo-nazi sites (actually it was the second thing I looked up) with all the Aryan white-power literature. The first night I was on the internet I found this page
http://www.davidduke.com/library/race/african101facts.html

After reading that there was no going back.

Anyway, that's how old Mac became a racist. It was nothing personal. It's not like I was attacked by one of them. In fact, all my personal dealings with people of colour have been positive, just as I would like to think that their dealings with me have been positive as well. My views on race are scientific rather than ethical. They're related to matters of fact rather than matters of value. I don't believe in discrimating against people on the basis of their colour and I'm opposed to any kind of mistreatment of people on account of their race or gender or religion or sexual orientation.

Now that I've shared an important formative influence on the development of my worldview maybe Aspergers or Wicknight might like to share with us how they came to hold their views. I'll even post their comments in a separate post.

And how Macmorris do you think using the term darkies is funny?

Because it's the language that working-class people used back in the old days to refer to them. I don't use the term to make fun of black people. I use the term to make fun of uneducated, working-class people and they're backward, prejudiced ways.



And why do you use it on the internet in the first place since you dont have the balls to do it in public?

It's not that I don't have the balls to do it, it's just that I won't do it because I don't want to hurt people's feelings. As an educated young person from a middle-class background, I would consider it in very bad taste to use that kind of vulgar working-class language to refer my fellow human beings.



Does it make you feel like a big man?

A big man with a big balls. Like Stalin!

While I appreciate your straightness,

Nobody could ever call old Mac a bender



I had hoped that we could get through this entire debate without calling each other names.

What's wrong with calling each other names? If we don't call each other names how will we identify each other? Just as a prostitute doesn't refer to her clients as Anonymous, I feel uncomfortable addressing my oponents with that term. I have no problem with you calling me Macmorris or Big Mac or Big Ian or whatever affectionate name you and your liberal buddies have for me. I have no problem either addressing you by whatever name you want to be addressed.

The reason I'm calling you Aspergers is so I don't forget to be careful in the words I use. I know you have to be very patient with Aspergers sufferers.




Are you suggesting that my debunking of your entirely spurious facts and figures makes you think I’m autistic?

Not autistic, aspergers is a mild form of autism, but they're not the same thing. One of the personality traits associated with people suffering from Aspergers syndrome is the inability to distinguish between the literal and figurative use of language.

I don't mean it as an insult when I call you aspergers boy. Aspergers is linked to high intelligence and creativity. Bill Gates is supposed to have Aspergers and he hasn't done too bad for himself. You should consider it a compliment. I wouldn't regard it as a sterilisable defect.



I don’t buy it. If I wanted to call you a lying dishonest scare-mongering racist I would at least have some evidence to support my position.

You can call me a scare-mongering racist if you want but I'd be interested in seeing what evidence you have that I'm a liar. A lie is a deliberate falsehood, it's to say something that you know isn't the case. I did lie when I made it seem that I thought the 14,000 PPS numbers covered the first three months of the year but I don't think you would accept that as a lie. I'm not aware of having told any other lies.



I think this exchange of views has, for the most part, been refreshingly civil. Indulging yourself in name-calling and racist stereotyping after the argument has been lost seems like bad form to me.

Now look here, you gay-bandit son of a whore, nobody has ever gotten away with accusing old Mac of indulging in name calling or racist stereotyping.



Notwithstanding that, I am happy to deal with your question.

You're not going to give a simple answer though. Instead of dealing with it, I'd be happy enough if you'd just give a straight answer the question.



The starting point for this was an erroneous report in the Irish Independent, where the reporter half-read a press release by Henk Van der Kamp (relating to the “Twice the Size?” project)

So have you read the press release by Henk Van der Kamp then? If you have, can you provide the link to it? If you haven't, how do you know the reporter only half-read it?



that mentioned future population projections of 8 million in 2030 and 12 million in 2058. The journalist then wrote that Ireland was “expected to reach a population of eight million by 2033 and 12 million by 2058”.

How do you the journalist didn't have another source for the claim that the the population is expected to reach 12 million by 2058?

I don't myself believe that the population will reach 12 million by 2058 (I think it will be closer to 7-8 million) but I think it's interesting that there are serious people treating it as a serious population prediction. The men who worked on that report know far more about demographics and planning than you do or I do and so I'm sure they must have a good reason for mentioning it in the press release.



This was simply not the case – if the reporter had read the document properly he would have understood that

It's simply not the case that the population is expected to reach 8 million by 2030 and 12 million by 2058? Do you have any evidence to support this. And remember, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.




the purpose of this project was to start a discussion based on an imagined significant increase of the population

It was based on a projected significant increase in the population, not just an imagined increase. If you project from last year's growth rate of 2.5% into the future, the Irish population would reach 14 million by 2058.




(which could only be brought about by a deliberate Government policy)

Not true, the report doesn't mention anything about a deliberate government policy being required for a significant increase in the population.



and not that the population was EXPECTED to reach that figure. You then quoted this article and that’s where I came in.

It doesn't say it was expected to reach that figure but then what makes you think Ralph was using the report as the source for the claim that it was expected? Maybe he got it from somewhere else.



The 12 million figure mentioned by Van der Kamp in his press release, as we know, was not in the actual “Twice the Size?” document.

And what difference does that make? He mentioned it in his press release. Is that not enough?



What I wrote in response to your claim was this: … you're simply wrong when you say that our population is expected to rise to 12 million by 2058.

Simply wrong? If I was simply wrong it would be a relatively simple task for you to show that the population is not expected to rise to 12 million by 2058. Are you certain that there aren't any serious proffessional people who expect the population to reach 12 million by 2058?



You should read the actual report, which suggests that Government policy should be to make efforts to double the population by 2030.

I have read the report and I haven't been able to find anything suggesting that the government should make efforts to double the population by 2030. Where in the report is it?



(Quoting from the report) "At national level, it would not be realistic to assume a doubling of population by 2030

Hold on a second there now. You claimed in a previous comment that the report suggests that the government should make effots to double the population by 2030. Now you're correctly quoting the report as saying that it would not be realistic for the population to double by 2030. Why would the report be suggesting a policy which they themselves consider to be unrealistic?



....such a doubling of population over a similar time-frame would require a specific, targeted Government growth strategy in favour of Ireland’s Gateway and Hub settlements."

I think you might have misread that quote. The word 'require' is not referring to what is needed for the population to reach 12 million, it's referring to the government's response to that increase. A targeted government growth strategy is required to accommodate the increase in the population, not to bring that increase in the population about. They're two very different things.



I subsequently wrote … with regard to the article you cited, you say "the population of the republic of Ireland is expected to reach 12 million by 2058". I think my post below is clear enough but I'll repeat myself. The study on which the article is based says no such thing.

The study doesn't but the article does. I've never used the report as a source for the claim, I used the article in the Irish Independent as the source. You have yet to show that the the journalist who wrote that article didn't have a source for the claim that it's expected to reach 12 million by 2058.



The line I quoted (from that study) demonstrates this, saying that it would take a concerted deliberate Government strategy to bring such an increase about.

What line are you talking about? There is no line in the report saying that it would take a deliberate government strategy for the population to reach 12 million. Do you not realise you're contradicting yourself. One second you're saying that the report doesn't mention the 12 million figure and the next you're talking about some line that says it would take a deliberate government strategy for the population to reach 12 million by 2058. Why can't you just admit that you made a mistake.



Now while the figure of 12 million is not specifically mentioned,

So it's based purely on an assumption then? You assumed that because it's not likely on current growth rates for the population to double by 2030 that that therefore means it's unlikely for it to reach 12 million by 2058. If you worked it out in Excel you would see that it's an incorrect assumption. Not only is it possible for the population to reach 12 million but if the current growth rate continues we can expect it to be as high as 14 million by 2058.



it is nevertheless entirely true to say that, based on the figures in this document, it would take a “concerted deliberate Government strategy to bring such an increase about”.

Come on now Aspergers, you know better than to carelessely throw around phrases like 'entirely true'. If I said thing that you would be on top of me in a second, and not in a gay way either, in a metaphorical, figurative sort of way. Are you absolutely certain that it's entirely true to say that it would take a concerted deliberate government strategy for the population to reach 12 million by 2058?



An increase in population of 4 million people in twenty-five years or of 8 million in fifty years is just not realistically going to happen without such an intervention.

Not true, it would be unrealistic for the population to double by 2030 based on current growth rates but not for it to reach 12 million by 2058.



Using the figures in the report, we discover that “during the period of most rapid growth - the decade preceding April 2006

The decade preceding April 2006 is not a valid representation of the current growth rate. Population growth in the years prior to the beginning of mass immigration a few years ago was very low and so including the average over those years brings it down to a level that's completely unrepresentative of what's happening now. It would be like treating the decade before 1971 as being representative of the violence in the north.



the decade preceding April 2006 – Ireland’s population grew by just under 17%, which is 1.6% per annum compound”.

That's taken from an average over a decade which included years of very low population growth. If you were to take the average over the last four or five years you would get a much more representative figure for current growth rates.
Even if you use that figure of 1.6% population growth every year though, if that continued for the next fifty years the population would still reach as high as 9.5 million by 2058. According to this the population grew by 2.5% last year. That means that even if the current growth rate fell by more than a third and didn't rise above that for the next fifty years, the Irish population would still reach 9.5 million by the year 2058.



In order to achieve a population of 12 million by 2058, we would need to increase that rate by 33% to 2.13% and maintain it there for the next fifty years.

We wouldn't need to increase it by anything. According to this and this, the population grew by 2.5% last year

If a population growth rate of 2.5% continued for the next fifty years the population would reach 14 million by the year 2058. Even if it was reduced to 2%, the population would reach 11 million by 2058. And even if it fell to 1.6% it would still reach 9 million by 2058



I’ll repeat that – we would need to increase the rate of population growth from its highest ever rate by one third and maintain it at that level over the next fifty years.

Not at all, we would need to reduce the current level by almost fifth (from 2.5% to 2.13%) and then maintain that level for the next fifty years for it to reach 12 million by 2058.



Given that the growth rate of the period 1996-2006 occurred with a backdrop of unprecedented economic growth and immigration from the accession States of the EU and that both of these are now falling

I don't think it is falling. What's happening this year is nothing more than a temporary slow-down due to the slow-down in the economy. I think the long-term trend will show a continuation of the high growth rates of the last few years. The downturn in the economy is only temporary and once it recovers next year or the year after we can expect to see a return to the massive numbers of them coming here.



that the CSO’s projected rates of population growth for the period 2006-2041 vary between roughly 0.42% and 1.48%

Where did you get that from? Do you have the link to it?

It would save a lot of trouble if you could provide an online source when you make these claims so that I don't need to follow up on it.



and that Eurostat’s for the period 2004-2050 is 0.62%, I think it’s fair to say that,

Don't just throw these figures around without putting them in context and providing a link to a source. Eurostat's projections for what? For population growth in Ireland or for growth in the EU?

Some academics in Dublin think that non-nationals now make up as much as 18% of the total population. See how annoying it can be when people just throw around statistics like this without backing them up with an online source.



barring a very active and unforeseen Government policy, there is no way that our population will hit the magic number of 12 million people by 2058.

I don't believe it will happen but I don't think it's impossible either. You have produced no evidence to show that there's no way our population will hit 12 million by 2058.



To say that it is EXPECTED to reach that figure is, I hope you can agree, laughably wrong.

So why did that Dutch character mention it in the press release so? If it's laughably wrong why would serious academic people mention it in a press-release?



You stated as fact that we just have too many immigrants coming here

I'll make allowance for your aspergers but I think most other non-Aspergers sufferers understood that I used the word fact figuratively and not literally. I consider it to be a fact in the same way that I consider it to be a fact that Greenland is a cold country.



and used a whole load of wrong numbers to support that position, building a case on foundations that were simply not true.

Whole load of wrong numbers? Even when you use the right numbers my argument is still just as strong. The thing about my position is that I have plenty of room for error. Even if you managed to show that the problem isn't half as bad as I make it seem, I can still show that the problem is twice as bad as it is in most other countries.

The Irish population might not have fallen from 98% to 86% in ten years but according to the CSO it has fallen from 91% to 87% in the space of just four years. Even if you proved that the CSO are wrong and that the population only fell by 2% in that period that would still be reason enough for us to be worried. If the native population continued falling at that rate we would be a minority within 80 years. At a rate of 4% every four years we would be a minority in 40 years.

The Irish population might not be expected to reach 12 million by 2058 but the size of the population in itself has never really been the issue. The important thing is the percentage of the population made up of native Irish people and the percentage made up non-native people. I don't know what the population will be in 2058 but I'm certain that the percentage of that population made up of indigenous Irish people will be significantly lower than it is now. If you can give me any reason to believe otherwise then I might reconsider my position. Can you assure me that it won't be significantly lower?



We are not likely to be a minority by 2050

I disagree, I think it's very likely that we'll be a minority by 2050 if we keep on going at the same rate as the last five years. What makes you think otherwise? Incredulity?

I think one of the main factors that will determine the population make-up in 50 years from now will be the differences in birth-rate between the natives and the foreigners. People of colour reproduce more rapidly than the fair skinned people and so even if we put a complete stop to immigration, the percentage of the population made up of people of colour will still increase relative to the natives.

It's like what happened in the north between the catholics and the protestants. Despite having had no help from immigration, the roman catholics have managed to increase their share of the population through their higher birth-rate. I don't know what the difference in fertility-rate was betweent the roman-catholic women and the orange-women in the north but I've a feeling it probably wasn't as great as the difference between Irish women and Nigerian women, or Irish women and muslim women. According to this the Irish fertility rate is 1.91 children per woman while the Nigerian fertility rate is 5.8 children per women. That means that for every two children an Irish woman has, the Nigerian woman has at least five. I don't know what will lead to in the long-term but I know that we'll have a lot more people of colour running around the place in twenty or thirty years than we do now.



And the President of DCU never said that we would be.

He didn't, but he chose to give credence to unpublished research showing that we could be by 2050 years if current trends continue. You might not consider it relevant but for a leading academic like the president of a university to treat it as a serious possibility I don't that's the kind of thing that can be easily dimissed. You yourself admitted that he used it as a starting point for a debate. If he thinks it's worthy of a debate then I too think it's worthy of debate.



Our population is not expected to be 12 million by 2058.

You have no grounds for claiming that. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I don't believe it will reach 12 million by 2058 but that's a matter of opinion. I've seen no evidence that would conclusively rule out the possibility either that it can't happen or that some people expect our population to reach 12 million by then. Until you can produce that evidence I will continue to treat it as a serious possibility.



The percentage of Irish people in our population has not dropped from 98% to 86% in a few short years.

No, but according to this chart in the 2006 census, the percentage of the Irish population made up of Irish people fell from 91% in 2002 to 86.5% in 2006
http://hiberniagirl.blogspot.com/2008/04/147-per-cent-of-residents-in-2006.html



Your fundamental belief may not have changed despite all that I’ve told you, but your argument had no factual support and so collapsed.

My argument has collapsed? Prove to me that it's highly improbable that the percentage of the Irish population made up of the native Irish people will fall below 80% of the total within the next ten years and then I'll happily admit that my argument has collapsed.



I would be happy to continue a discussion about immigration with you and to hear your opinions.

And I would be very happy to hear your opinions. All the focus so far has been on my opinions and so I think it's time that we turned this around and started to hear some of your opinions. What are your opinions on the issue? Do you welcome mass immigration as as an entirely positive thing for this country or can you at least partly understand why many Irish people share my concerns about what the long-term consequences of mass immigration will be? Do you think it's all just xenophobic scare-mongering?

Anonymous, you haven't yet identified yourself so until you do I'm going to call you Aspergers boy.

I was about to reply to your comments but having read them carefully I realise there's nothing I can say in response. Everything you wrote is correct. There isn't a single one of those eleven examples that you've listed below that I could disagree with. It really hurts me to say it but you've succeeded in showing me to be a mistake-making, egregious-error making, scare-mongering purveyor of misquoted and unsusbtantiated, hysterical, over-the-top half-truths.

This is really going to do alot of damage to my reputation and so when I first read what you had written I had seriously considered deleting that list of errors to prevent other people seeing them. Then I realised that you would probably have a copy of them and that you could easily post them over on eirenet.

Then I thought about retaliating by compiling a list of factual errors and inaccuracies that you've made. I thought that might make me a look a bit immature and a bit Un-British though and I would hate for this to drag on for longer than necessary. The shame is bad enough as it is that I just want this to come to a quick end. I decided I'd just take the beating like a muslim woman is supposed to take it from her muslim husband. Anyway, it's not the first beating old Mac has had to take and I'm sure it won't be the last. There's life in the old boy yet.

There is one thing I disagree with you about though. It's not in the list of examples, it's something you said afterwards. It's the point you made about how the facts underlying my argument have been been shown to be nearly all wrong. I don't think the facts underlying my argument have been shown to be nearly all wrong. I may have misquoted or misrepresented those facts but I don't think the facts themselves when they are presented accurately in any way weakens my argument that immigration into Ireland is at a worryingly high level.

Ta ceist amhain agam duit chomh maith. I'm sure you're probably sick of me constantly bringing this up but can you take a quick look ar seo.

"Secondly, with regard to the article you cited, you say "the population of the republic of Ireland is expected to reach 12 million by 2058". I think my post below is clear enough but I'll repeat myself. The study on which the article is based says no such thing. The line I quoted (from that study) demonstrates this, saying that it would take a concerted deliberate Governement strategy to bring such an increase about."

Do you stand by that comment?

Agus ma sheasain tu faoin e, ta ceist amhain eile faoi. You claimed that you quoted from a line demonstrating that it would take a concerted deliberate government strategy for the population to reach 12 million by 2058. You subsequently admitted that the report doesn't contain any mention of the 12 million figure so I'm assuming you must have taken that quote from somewhere else. Where did you get that line you quoted from?

Over to you Aspergers boy

1. You were wrong about the number of PPS numbers issued for the first two moths of this year. I pointed this out
to you and you said “You're right, it was a mistake and I'm grateful that you spotted it and set me straight.”

2. You were wrong when you said that we have an open-borders policy. We don’t. We allow EU citizens to work and
live here but that in no way constitutes an “open-borders policy”.

3. You were wrong to say that “the population of the republic of Ireland is expected to reach 12 million by 2058”.
This is simply not true. Who expects this to happen? On what basis do they make this prediction and where was it
published? Did the reporter see your Excel document? Your source for this claim was an Irish Independent article
that said “The study -- dubbed 'Twice the Size -- Engineering the Future of Irish Gateway Cities' -- warned that
Ireland has badly underestimated growth over recent years, with Ireland expected to reach a population of eight million by 2033 and 12 million by 2058.” It’s quite clear that the journalist made a balls of reading the report. You surely understand this now, but are being deliberately obtuse. You hitched your wagon to very sloppy journalism and seem reluctant to admit your mistake. Without any supporting material the Independent article does not in itself qualify as a source. Do you seriously not understand what I’m saying? If you need me to explain the fundamentals of journalism to you I’m happy to do so (for a very reasonable hourly fee).
If you’d read the report in The Irish Times I think it’s less likely you would have erred so egregiously. “Urban Forum chairman Henk van der Kamp said the report, Twice the Size? Imagining the Future of Irish Gateways, was aimed at stimulating debate on planning for an island with population projections of eight million people in 25 years' time and 12 million by 2058.” (IT 14/03/08 )

4. You were wrong when you claimed that the DCU President said that the Irish would be a minority by 2050. He
said no such thing. He quoted unaccredited and unpublished UK-based research to that effect as a starting-point for a speech. Do you understand the difference? I’m sorry to be patronising but you seem to have some difficulty with the notion. If, for example, YOU were to say that black people are mentally superior and will be running Ireland in 50 years time and then, subsequently I were to say to some of our friends on Eirenet, “Macmorris says that black people are mentally superior beings and will be running Ireland in 50 years time” I have quoted you. It would be wrong, I’m sure you can agree, to say that I made that prediction. In a similar way, your original
statement was simply wrong. He quite clearly did not say that we would be a minority by 2050, nor did he predict that we could be. He quoted the material and then said “Whether this turns out to be an accurate prediction or not, we have to prepare for a very different kind of society.”

5. You were wrong when you said that “nobody ever reported” the DCU President “as saying we would be a
minority.” You did so and admitted afterwards that this was a “mistake”.

6. You were wrong when you said that “The indigenous Irish made up 98% of the population of the Republic of
Ireland in 1998”. When corrected, you admitted “I was wrong when I said that the foreign population was 2%
back in 1998”. You were. By a very wide margin.

7. You were wrong when you said the percentage of Irish people in Ireland fell from “98% to maybe 86% in just ten years.” When I pointed this out you said “I admit it was wrong”.

8. When I gave you correct figures from the 1996 census you said “You are taking the piss. There's no way the
numbers of foreigners in the country was that high back in 1996.” That was also wrong on your part. I wasn’t taking the piss. You went off and had a look and then wrote “I checked the census figures on the CSO website for
1996 and you're right”.

9. You were wrong when you said “The fact is that we have too many people coming here.” That’s not a fact. It’s an opinion.

10. You were wrong to say that I used the expression “deliberate concerted government effort” but, more
importantly, you were wrong to suggest that I said, directly or indirectly, that the “population would never reach
that high because it would take a deliberate concerted government effort.’” What I wrote was that based on the
contents of the report, the population could not be said to be expected to reach that figure. I didn’t say that “the
population would never reach that high”. Can you understand the difference?

11. Not so much a factual error, but you were wrong to bring up entirely irrelevant comparisons with Britain. In
response I said “I don't care how many immigrants Britain get” and you said “Well I do”. You then revised this opinion, saying “I was wrong to mention Britain in the first place.”

there is a world of difference between saying “we will be a minority” and “we could be a minority”.

You're right, there is a world of difference. What is your point?


To say the first requires evidence and proper data to support your case. To say the second requires no evidence whatsoever.

I've already stated explicitly that there is nothing inevitable about Irish people becoming an ethnic minority by 2050. If we take action to reduce the number of people entering the country it's very unlikely we'll ever become a minority.



I recognise that the possibility exists that we could be a minority by 2053, while thinking it highly unlikely.

What makes you think it's unlikely? The indigenous Irish population is already down to 86% of the total after only a few years. If we get another five or six years of this it's very possible we'll fall below 80%.

And regardless of how low the probability might be (and I don't believe that it is low) that the Irish people become a minority by the end of this century, the probability would be much lower if we took action to reduce the number of immigrants entering the country.



And it’s worth noting again, the DCU President wasn’t expressing his own opinion here. He was quoting unpublished UK-based research and using it as a starting point for a speech he was making.

Which is all the better, it means that he was relying on a source for his claim. If he was merely expressing his opinion I'm sure you would just brush it aside as the opinion of someone who was unqualified to comment on the issue. The fact that he chose to repeat the prediction just shows that he though worthy of discussion.



It is inaccurate to say that he “made a prediction about the ethnic make-up of the Irish population.” He didn’t. He quoted a prediction (from an unspecified source), which is an entirely different thing.

The professor did make a prediction. He predicted that we could be a minority by the the year 2050.



I’m not sure what your point is with regard to the Irish Independent article, the Twice the Size project and your claim that our population is expected to rise to 12 million by 2058.

My point is that you were wrong when you said that the report rules out the possibility of the Irish population reaching 12 million by 2058. The report says no such thing.



As far as I can see the journalist made a hames of reading the Project – as we agree, it says nothing about 12 million people by 2058.

So why did you try to use it to try to disprove my prediction about the population reaching 12 million by 2058?



Where then does this figure come from? Did the reporter pluck it out of mid-air?

I don't know where it came from. It didn't come from the published report that I read but I don't think either of us believe that it was plucked out of mid-air either.



Who expects that the Republic’s population will be 12 million in fifty years, and on what basis is their expectation founded?

I believe it's based on the assumption that the population will continue to grow at the same rate for the next few decades. The current growth rate of the population is 2.5%. If that rate continued for the next fifty years, the population of the republic of Ireland would reach 14 million by 2058



If you can’t answer these questions you have no source for your claim.

I do have a source. My source is the article in the Irish independent.



The fact that a reporter reports it, won’t do.

Why not? What if the prediction made by that reporter can be supported with the help of Excel?



I didn’t say that “the population would never reach that high because it would take a 'deliberate concerted government effort’”.

No, you didn't use the words 'deliberate concerted government effort'. I made a mistake when I used the words 'concerted deliberate Governement effort'. You used the words 'concerted deliberate Governement strategy' instead.

That's another one of my factual innacuracies you can take credit for exposing. You're really making me look bad.



I said that you couldn’t conclude that the population is “expected” to reach that figure based on what is in the report. Once again we are dealing with the difference between “will be” and “could be”.

We both know you said more than that. You also said that the report claims that it would take a concerted deliberate government strategy for the population to reach 12 million by 2058.

"Secondly, with regard to the article you cited, you say "the population of the republic of Ireland is expected to reach 12 million by 2058". I think my post below is clear enough but I'll repeat myself. The study on which the article is based says no such thing. The line I quoted (from that study) demonstrates this, saying that it would take a concerted deliberate Governement strategy to bring such an increase about."

Do you stand by that comment? Do you still believe it would take a concerted deliberate government strategy for the population to reach 12 million by 2058?



To say that the population is “expected” to reach 12 million by 2058 based on this report, is simply not true.

Can you please read what I've written already. I've stated very clearly already that I didn't use the report to get the prediction that the population would reach 12 million by 2058. It was you who first brought up the report to try to use it to show that the population could not reach that without the concerted strategy by the government.



Recognising that the report does not specifically exclude the prospect is not a capitulation. I made no mistake.

You did make a mistake. You referred to the report as saying that it would take a deliberate government strategy for the population to reach 12 million by 2058.

"Secondly, with regard to the article you cited, you say "the population of the republic of Ireland is expected to reach 12 million by 2058". I think my post below is clear enough but I'll repeat myself. The study on which the article is based says no such thing. The line I quoted (from that study) demonstrates this, saying that it would take a concerted deliberate Governement strategy to bring such an increase about."

That statement is simply incorrect. The report at no point says that it would take a deliberate conserted government strategy for the population to reach 12 million by 2058. When you made that comment above you were clearly mistaken. Either that or you were being deliberately misleading.




I can assure you that I too am a democrat. Indeed, according to the material posted here I’m a better democrat than you, being quite fond of the one man (or woman), one vote system. I voted last year and have lived happily enough with the result.

So as a democrat would you support the idea of a referendum on the issue of immigration so that people can vote on whether they think that immigration is too high?



With regard to your inability to believe that I think of a person who grows up in Ireland as Irish, I’m not sure what to tell you.

Tell me that you honestly consider the Irish-born offspring of two Nigerians to be just as Irish as the Irish-born offspring of two native Irish people. Tell me as well that you could honestly consider the Japanese-born offspring of two Norwegians living in Japan to be just as Japanese as the offspring of two indigenous Japanese people.



I know what I think and I’ve been honest with you about that. It seems like a failure of imagination on your part not to recognise that I’m not you and therefore I think differently.

It's called naive realism. I just can't understand why people don't see the world the way I see it.



You have been consistently factually incorrect throughout this discussion.

I realise that and I'm determined to change my ways.

Just to make sure I don't repeat some of them again, would you mind listing all the factual inaccuracies I've made so far? I know I made one factually inaccurate statement about the non-Irish population being 2% back in 1998 and I incorrectly quoted you as using the word 'effort' when you actually wrote 'strategy', but I'm having a hard time remembering the others.



Your inability to guess what I’m thinking (despite me telling you what that is in precise terms) suggests that your instincts are similarly unreliable.

My instincts are unreliable? What the hell does that mean?



Between speculation about what I REALLY think and stupid comparisons it seems like your willingness to engage in an actual argument is fading.

I think you know that I'm more than capable of engaging in an actual argument.

No matter how hard they try nobody has yet been able to get the better of old Mac. Wicknight gave up, OscarBravo gave up, Harvey gave up, allthedavids gave up, those fat bastards over on boards.ie gave up and had me banned...the list goes on. I'm a legend.



If you’re handed a photo of a person, can you tell me what language they speak, what accent they have, where their parents came from, where their life has been lived, what passport they carry, what their nationality is?

Show me a picture of a person and I think I can could do a very good job of determining what part of the world their ancestors came from. Show me a picture of an Irish man and an Indonesian without identifying which is which and I can guarantee 100% that I can correctly tell from looking at them which one is the Irish man and which one isn't.



A person’s nationality is not something that can be taken off like a dress. It is an important and defining part of who they are.

Exactly. My nationality is an important and defining part of who I am and it's not something that I could easily take off like a dress. I'm sure it's also an important and defining part of the people entering this country and I wouldn't expect them to to take it off like a dress either.



Do you really believe that someone with Norman blood is not ethnically Irish?

When did I say that I believed someone with Norman blood isn't ethnically Irish? The normans assimilated into the native Irish population centuries ago.



Someone whose antecedents came to this country four hundred years ago?

If their ancestors intermarried into the native population, if they adopted their culture and were genetically and culturally not that different from the native population, then it's fair to say that they have become part of the ethnic Irish population.



Or one hundred? Or fifty?

Yes, it's possible. There have been several prominent Irish people who have had recent non-Irish ancestry. Eamon De Valera and Padraig Pearse both had non-Irish fathers.



If you accept the principle that non-Irish people have become Irish through a process of intermarrying and the passage of time, why should that stop now?

Because the circumstances are different. It was easy for previous waves of immigrants to assimilate because becaues they were so few in number and because they were culturally and genetically not all that different from the native Irish among whom they settled. The exception in the north-east of the island only proves the rule.



If you want to draw a line in the sand and say that only pureblood Irish people (checkable through DNA) should be part of the Irish nation, then good luck to you.

I don't think it's necessary to go to the trouble of checking people's DNA. Just putting a stop to this massive, unprecedented influx of foreigners into our population should be enough.



If you’re being strict neither you nor I will make the grade though.

I think I would make the grade. I don't think I'm different genetically from the rest of the indigenous population. The overwhelming majority of my ancestors were indigenous gaelic Irish people and even though I have English ancestry, I share those exact same English ancestors with thousands of other people in the west of Ireland and so I don't think I'm in any way unique. English people are genetically similar to the Irish anyway so they didn't leave much of a mark on the gene-pool.



Your concept of what Irishness is, seems absurdly narrow and impractical and ungenerous and unrealistic.

I think my concept of Irisness is much more realistic and much more in line with what happens in the real world.



People move around.

Not in Ireland they haven't. The evidence from genetics seems to show that the current indigenous population of Ireland are mostly descended from the original settlers of Ireland who came here 9,000 years ago.



Some go home. Some get settled and fall in love and have children. Sometimes this even happens across races. To view this as a dilution of our nation and a terrifying prospect that will make the place less Irish, is a little hysterical.

I think the problem is in the use of the word 'some'. Which word would be more accurate, 'some' or 'many'?



Ireland in 1500 was a very different place to the Ireland of 1800.

You're right, it was a different place. What's your point?



The differences between Dublin in 1914 and 2008 or even 1970 and 1999 are very clear. You can view these changes as a downward slide, a rollercoaster or as a general improvement.

And what exactly is your point?



Ireland is still Ireland, a distinct place with its own identity.

Australia in 1500 was a distinct place with its own identity. It was still a distinct place with its own identity in 1900.



The scare-mongering stories that you originally presented about our becoming a minority have turned out to have little basis in fact.

Not at all. The factual basis of my scare-mongering stories are as firm as they have always been. It's still a fact that the president of Dublin City University predicted that the indigenous Irish people could be an ethnic minority by the year 2050. And it's still a fact that the the indigenous Irish population fell from 91% to 87% of the total in the space of just four years between 2002 and 2006, a rate that if allowed to continue would see us becoming a minority by 2043.



The definition of what it is to be Irish has changed in parallel with how our society has altered and will continue to do so.

I don't know what you mean by this. Can you give an example of how the definition of what it is to be Irish has changed in the past?



It’s nothing to be afraid of.

If it's nothing to be afraid of why do you continually label everything I say as 'scare-mongering'. Why call it scare-mongering if it's nothing to be afraid of?

I dont think MacMorris is a democrat at all.

I am a democrat because I believe the government should be accountable to the people it governs. When 80% of the population say that they want restrictions on immigration I would like to think our government might take that into account when deciding on the future of their immigration policy.



In fact here is a quote from him on boards.ie

"Instead of allowing everyone the right to vote, everyone should be allowed to right to earn the right to vote. If I had my way, I would limit the franchise so that it discriminated in favour of the more intelligent people."

You need to put that quote in context. I was not saying that certain people should be denied the right to vote. What I said is that everyone should be allowed to vote but that the more educated people should be allowed more than one vote. I believe that people should have to complete a test of general knowledge to measure their knowledge of the kinds of issues that they will be called upon to vote. The higher that people score on the test, the more votes they would be given.

I got the idea from a short story I read by Mark Twain called The Curious Republic of Gondour. It's available online if you want to read it.
http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Curious-Republic-of-Gondour.html



So that 80% figure you quote. Were they the intelligent people or the ignorant people?

I don't know, but as the number is so high I would assume that a large number of intelligent people are included in that figure. 50% of the population have above average intelligence. Even if you assume that the 20% who said they don't want restrictions are the most intelligent people in the country, that still leaves 30% of the rest who would still be of above average intelligence. That means that of the 50% of the population who have above average intelligence, 60% (30% of the total) think there should be restrictions on immigration and 40% (20% fo the total) think there shouldn't.