I don't know what this thing is with Jim and Richard and frankly I couldn't care less. However, there seem to be some underlying assumptions here:

1)The feckless Irish don't deserve help and in any case it shows that they aren't capable of governing themselves and we told you so:

2)Ireland is owed help by Britain on account of 800 years of imperialism and to suggest otherwise is racist.

The truth, as usual, probably falls somewhere in the middle. My own view is that partition set up not one but two corrupt sectarian states in Ireland. The smaller one had manifestly failed by the early 70s when the British abolished it and introduced direct rule. The second one carried on for a while longer under the pretence of 'Independence' even though, like Britain, it had surrendered its economic independence when it joined the EEC in 1973 - though even before that its independence was limited by the parameters of its relationships with other, richer countries (mostly the UK).

There's a couple of ways of looking at what the current situation means. As I mentioned earlier, there's the view that the mismanagement of the Irish economy is a function of the 26-county Irish state's lack of fitness for purpose.   In other words, independence, like partition, was an experiment which has now failed.

On the other hand, there's the view that Britain had to go to the IMF in the 70s and survived the experience. I think as far as the IMF issue is concerned this is the more realistic view. I don't see the IMF having any more leverage over Irish economic sovereignty than the bond markets, with the (limited) advantage that the IMF have, in theory, some accountability.

With regards to the question of bilateral aid from Britain to the Irish banking system I think it is quite reasonable to point out that this is being done to protect British financial institutions from the consequences of their own exposure to the Irish financial crisis. In other words, the Irish banks need propping up to protect British banks their own profligate lending to Irish banks over the last 15 years or so. If Irish banks fail, British banks take a bath. It's purely business and it has nothing to do with either altruism or imperialism (other than in the Leninist definition of economic imperialism).

I do think, however, that the crisis shows up fundamental flaws in the way Ireland is governed. Ireland has a system of government based on the Westminster model. I don't think it suits the country very well. For it to work in any real sense for the benefit of the governed there needs to be a real ideological difference between the parties in the legislature so that voters have a genuine choice (that's if you buy into the notion of liberal democracy in the first place - once Ireland gets mentioned on the Mudcat we always seem to hear from folk who clearly don't).

Without that choice parliamentarism and cabinet government quickly descends even further into cronyism, corruption and 'what's in it for me'. The only reason it ever worked even for a while in the UK was that we had a Labour party that was at least somewhat different from the establishment party and which had a grass-roots base in the working class. Plus there was a rival system in operation which posed a threat to the ruling class. To forestall revolutionary change based on another system of economic organisation the ruling class was minded to concede measures to forestall that change (like the NHS, the welfare state, the 40-hour week and so on). Now that that's gone the British state is every bit as corrupt as the Irish state.

The Irish state's weakness has always been that there's never really been an ideological underpinning to its existence apart from this thing called 'The National Question' - in other words identity of the state has always been defined in opposition to the state that is its closest neighbour and with which it has the most in common.

I'd go on but that's all I have time for just now.

Chris