The New Emergency: ‘Keep Going...Sure it’s Grand’

To the rest of the humanity, the years 1939 to 1945 were known collectively as ‘The Second World War’.

Slogan for straitened times...
(and no, you don't have double vision) 

In neutral and apparently oblivious Éire, this global conflagration and mass upheaval was quaintly dubbed ‘The Emergency’*.

In retrospect of course, this kind of understatement probably isn’t that surprising when you consider that it comes from a nation where we shroud thirty years of black ops and internecine slaughter in the lyrical vagueness of ‘The Troubles’.

So, given then that Ireland is facing down a long road of bleak austerity, (the like of which hasn’t been seen since aforementioned ‘Emergency’); it’s entirely appropriate that Fergus O’Neill’s skewed propaganda poster;'Keep Going...Sure it's Grand', is starting to get some well-deserved media attention.

Earlier this week in the Daily Telegraph, Rachel Cooper ran a charming (and hardly at all patronising) little vignette about graphic designer Fergus O'Neill’s ‘mission to tackle Ireland's deficit’.

This is actually a story that started back in June when O'Neill cast a jaundiced eye over the post-crash polity and put an Irish spin on the British propaganda/morale boosting posters of World War Two.

But not satisfied with just creating an eye-catching piece of Agitprop, O’Neill actually has rather grandiose plans for this poster. For sheer chutzpah alone, The Deptford Croppy takes his Tam O’Shanter off to Mr O’Neill and that's why we wish him well.

O’Neill’s schtick is that he aims to sell 42 billion copies of the poster worldwide and that he will then give one euro to the state for every poster sold. The figure of €42bn was apparently arrived at on Black Thursday and was a rough estimate of what Anglo Irish Bank owed at the time.

I’m neither a mathematician nor a demographer but that still works out for me as around seven of these posters for everyone in the world. Isn’t this all a little bit well....quixotic?

“The bid to sell 42 billion of these posters may seem absurd but it can be deemed no more absurd than the outrageous practices and policies that landed us here. There is little we can do except be ourselves and get on with it.” Mr O’Neill said in defence of his proposal.

Maybe he should start selling T-shirts and future option contracts on the posters as well....

Of course, in these networked times, the aim is to push the poster and its message across a whole range of social media. The dedicated Facebook site has already gathered support from over 3,300 users at the time of writing, from a standing start in October.

O'Neill is still a long way off the targeted 42 billion but as the old adage goes: ‘tús maith, leath na h’oibre’ or 'a good start is half the work' for my Gaelically-challenged bredrin. (With a trove of homespun 'cawbogue-ry' like that, the Deptford Croppy is beginning to wonder if he ought not get into the sloganeering game himself...) 


So, if you want to pay off a piece of Irish sovereign debt and at the same time get someone a Zeitgeist-catching poster for crimbo click here...but don’t tell 'em I sent you....

*Actually so-called because of the evocation the State's Constitutional Emergency Powers provisions.