U2: Rich man asks for rich people to be treated with respect

Larry Mullen is upset that the people of Ireland don't fawn over people who have lots of cash. It's got to stop, do you hear?:

Larry Mullen believes rich and successful people are being unnecessarily humiliated when coming in and out of Ireland, describing this as "part of a new resentment of rich people in this country".

"We have experienced [a situation] where coming in and out of the country at certain times is made more difficult than it should be -- not only for us, but for a lot of wealthy people," he said. "So it wasn't personal. It was to do with the better-off being sort of humiliated."

Who did you have in mind, rich Larry Mullen?

"You see guys and they're bringing a huge amount of money into this country and they do not deserve to be humiliated. Humiliate me, I can deal with it. I can kind of understand maybe a rock and roll band. Fine, OK, I can live with that. But when I heard and saw Dermot Desmond coming in with his family, what a thing to have done with him. He brought huge amounts of money into the country." "You see guys and they're bringing a huge amount of money into this country and they do not deserve to be humiliated. Humiliate me, I can deal with it. I can kind of understand maybe a rock and roll band. Fine, OK, I can live with that. But when I heard and saw Dermot Desmond coming in with his family, what a thing to have done with him. He brought huge amounts of money into the country."

... and so, presumably, should be treated like some sort of demi-god?

Perhaps the two billion euro that Desmond has made will help him get over it. Much of that money has been made from oil, aviation, mining and buying up former Soviet Union rights dirt cheap from under the noses of the people - the sort of exploitation of people and planet that you might have thought U2 Inc stood against.

But, naturally, U2 never suggest that the incredibly wealthy might be obscenely and unfairly rich. Because, erm, they do a lot of work for charidee:

"Love them or loathe them, all those rich wives, all those rich guys with all those balls, all those women that you see organising this and organising that, without them we'd be in a very, very different state than we are now.

"A lot of people who are well off in this country make huge contributions with their time and with their money."

And, boy, does Ireland need that largesse, what with how large earners like U2 arrange their tax affairs to avoid helping pay for State services.

The evidence that U2's main motivating factor is the smell of fresh printed bank notes keeps on growing, doesn't it?