[old hippy]

Originally Posted by VEN

minus the scenery, sun etc. the rest, south of portugal is the worse part. ok it is very poor there, but i walked on enough dog and cat **** to do me a lifetime.
lisbon is a dangerous spot at night, mostly from non-nationals.
don't let the brochure with its tourist areas fool you. they're paid to be nice.
try living there. never again.

We found parts of it edgy but no real fear. Unless the locals were scared of us, me & the wife being non-nationals and all...

[Dionysius2]

In Ireland, our desire to beat illegal drug usage through law enforcement is just stupid. If it was possible to get the whole Iriosh nation to tour the world and in so doing to take in all the vagaries of life that abound in the world and to face the reality that there are countless different beliefs and practices that must be accommodated in life, the we would begin to understand that private behaviour cannot be regulated.

Let's just take a peep at what we thought we could regulate, suppress, defeat, control, through legislation.

* Birth control......I won't even go into it because anyone who would not see how utterly stupid our governments egged on by rampant clericalism, behaved, cannot be enlightened by words from this quarter. Irish solution for an Irish problem....eh ?...Irish problem....?...Huh.

* Divorce......Oh no, not for the people of this fair land. Not in Patrick's plan for the salvation of the Gael.......but where is it now ?

* Abortion......thorny one but hey reality is the ultimate ruler.
The 5000 per annum crossing the Irish sea for terminations provide concrete evidence of what needs to be done. The rest is just mood music.

Clericalism has been wonderful and awful in terms of it's impact on Irish society but it's time for it's promoters to leave the stage and I'm glad to say that young Ireland is already delivering that reality.

As regards contreolling drugs by law enforcement as some think we should be able to do, just consider this point. It is probably true that 60 to 70% of our Univ students in Ireland have used some, at least of the drugs controlled by law. If they were all detected and criminalised........how would that contribute to a better society ? If Sir Walter Raleigh had brought back Cannabis rather than Tobacco then the drug controls would be reversed. All that vast tax that governments collect on tobacco would be collected on cannabis.

The OP is very meritorious and we should take more note of it.

Never ask to know for whom the bell tolls..../.