It's hard for me to understand any English-speaker getting to adulthood without reading "A Modest Proposal"...heck, I had to read it in my high school freshman English class!

Redwolf

Exactly so, the wheat and barley did not fail - ? - sold for profit and exported while the locals died of starvation. Some kindly landowners allowed the locals to scrounge for droppings or tailings that contained insufficient nutrition - and died more slowly of starvation. But I didn't know this until a few years ago, there are whole lumps of one sided history taught in our Australian schools.

As someone else said, and I do love Downton Abbey - set through the time of all kinds of trouble everywhere - and with an Irish co-star, but not even a real mention of Irish issues over the breakfast table and the reading of the newspapers.

Le meas

JulieA

At one stage of my life I was involved in the publication of the 1000 vols. of the 19th century British Parliamentary Papers published by Irish University Press in the 1960's and 70's. Within those volumes were. eight vols. detailing Select Committee Reports on the Famine. These looked at the failure of the British in dealing with the Famine but also the behaviour of some Irish during that time. One item has always stuck in my mind. Lord Powerscourt in Co. Wicklow gave a widow with seven children two bushels of corn. A neighbour offered to take them to Enniscerry market to sell and buy bread and milk to feed her children. He did, but then went into a local bar and spent the money on whiskey. A week later she and her children were found dead.

I mentioned this to a professor of Irish history who told me that I was mistaken.
So I told him to go to his University library and read them for himself. He did, and had the grace to apologize. What bothered me was that here was fundamental research papers on his subject and he knew nothing about them. The other side of the coin is that it suited the placemen in Irish society to blame the Brits for everything that was wrong.

So, I think that all schools in Ireland should use these Reports to give an even account of those times.

It's an extremely controversial issue. I've read that some historians view it as a genocide with regards to how the British handled it (referring to the actions mentioned above - and more!).

I think, at the very least, that this proposed show is in very poor taste. You wouldn't set a comedy show in Auschwitz or in the Hanoi Hilton or in one of the "Indian Schools" in the U.S. (if you tried, the project would get shouted down pretty quickly).

How advertising-driven are programs over there? Here you'd have the addition leverage of urging advertisers to boycott the program, at least it it were proposed for regular network television. Is that an option in the UK and Ireland, or are such programs heavily subsidized?

Redwolf

Well as far as I know some programs are commissioned, some are produced in-house, some are bought-in from other TV stations and others are produced by private production companies and sold on.

What I meant was, are the networks dependent on advertising? Here they are quite dependent (other than PBS, which is supported by donations and government subsidies)...if advertisers refuse to buy time for a particular show, they often will pull it.

Redwolf

Oh, I see. All TV stations in the UK depend on advertising apart from BBCTV which depends on the TV Licence for its revenue. I would be inclined to wait until the "comedy" airs before getting hot and bothered. You never know but it might use comedy to get very serious views across. If it turns out to be offensive we can lambast them with complaints and boycott the advertisers....bring it on!

I haven't heard any more about the proposed programme, but I stumbled across this today and remembered that it had been mentioned in a thread a while back, but couldn't remember why. Anyway 'A Modest Proposal' is available free here to read: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1080/1080-h/1080-h.htm

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