Losing the oil, gas battle

Exactly 1,000 years ago this week on the sands of Clontarf, thousands of brave Irish warriors faced off againsed the hordes of Viking invaders that had pillaged, murdered and raped their way up and down this country for so long.

The scale of catastrophe of that onslaught can easily be quantified by the fact that so few of the Christian manuscripts, masterly crafted gold jewellery and other artifacts survive to this day. I wonder would these Viking crusaders have believed in their wildest dreams that almost exactly 1,000 years later that this same little country would surrender a finite national resource of such wealth that it would make the golden halls of Valhalla seem like the echoing emptiness of the Irish state treasury?

Although the blame for the squandering of our natural gas and oil reserved lies with the incompetence of successive Irish leaderships, I can’t help but say... nicely played Statoil.