At work today, I wrote the following review of the new levels of Angry Birds Seasons – an update that celebrates St. Patrick’s Day, following on from previous batches of fresh levels themed around Halloween, Christmas and Valentine’s Day. After a brief discussion with my line manager, we mutually agreed that the piece wasn’t entirely right for the tone of our site.

As such, I’m publishing it here instead.

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Dear Finland,

Ah. We see you’ve updated Angry Birds with some new levels – all in celebration of our patron saint, St. Patrick. That was nice of you! However, one or two quibbles. Now, we might be reading a bit too much into this here, but having had a brief glance at our history books just to remind ourselves, we can’t help but wonder at your decision to depict Irish people as pigs. Thieving pigs, to put not too fine a point on it. Is that possibly, we don’t know, a touch insensitive? A little awkward on the symbolism front? Thieving green pigs in green hats with big red beards, in fact. No. Wait. Thick evil thieving green pigs with stupid beards WHO HABITUALLY STORE LARGE AMOUNTS OF EXPLOSIVES IN THEIR RAMSHACKLE HOUSES.

Jesus, honestly, why didn’t you just superimpose Oliver Cromwell’s face on the Red Bird and have done with it? Look, perhaps we’re getting a little paranoid here – that is probably because we are ALWAYS DRUNK, by the way – but still, we’re picking up a pretty strong ‘the thieving Irish pigs must be destroyed at all costs’ vibe from this thing.

We suppose we should be thankful that we’re just portrayed as stealing eggs. We half expected it to be Lucky Charms.

Still, it’s all just a bit of fun, isn’t it? So, in the spirit of jovial national fraternity, let us simply say: Finland, go fuck yourselves, you reindeer-munching, Renny Harlin-producing, forty-four places below us in the FIFA rankings, haven’t made a decent smartphone in years, can only win Eurovision when dressed as a bat, so boring we had to look you up on Wikipedia to find out enough bloody stereotypes runkkarit.

To be sure.

Lots of love,

Ireland

P.S. Don’t suppose you could lend us some money? We’re a bit short.