My critique of the “built environment” in Ireland’s countryside might have struck a few readers as unnecessarily harsh–like Tom “Spar” Doorley reviewing the deli section at a Statoil station. And I suppose one man’s sense of aesthetics is another’s snobbery.In my defence, I could say that I do bridle when I came across what seem like unfair digs at the oul’ sod.For example, when in Clare we picked up the latest edition of The Rough Guide to Ireland. The book features a “Culture and Etiquette” section to forewarn unsuspecting tourists.Under the rubric Racism, the authors claim “The Republic and Northern Ireland remain among Europe’s most backward places when it comes to racism, seemingly untouched by developments in more tolerant societies elsewhere.” But where exactly are these vastly more “tolerant societies”? The Netherlands? Germany? France? Britain? or the United States? And would it be bordering on jingoistic to offer the counterargument that, given the unprecedented international immigration into the country over the past decade, the Irish populace’s treatment of this wave of incomers has been not been significantly worse than that shown to other immigrants in other putatively more tolerant nations?