"Are you completely mad? To undertake all that work so that people could stay where they were simply to suffer inevitable food shortages a few more years down the line? Who would provide the workforce let alone the skilled labour required? Idiotic."

No more idotic than building the "famine walls"... many still standing today.

"At the same time a board of works would embark on a massive new road construction programme to provide employment for the rural poor - this eventually culminated in the much despised 'famine walls' built up throughout the country, but particularly in the hills and mountains of the west of Ireland, where walls were built solely to provide work to peasants in return for food. More often than not these stone walls provided no economic or infrastructural benefit, but were built anyway."

Is this some form of "My country right or wrong." issue? You can be proud of your nation and still acknowledge the fact that nations are run by people... and not always nice or good ones at that.

I can be proud of the good things done by America and still accept the fact that slavery existed, the native population was exploited and exterminated in many cases and that we have had robber barons and yellow journalists creating war fever. The list goes on... right now it includes the Tea Party and the Conservative Right... to be replaced by others in the future.