The new Lonely Planet guide to Ireland is out and there are already some choice highlights which will keep radio phone-in shows, outraged newspaper columnists and, er, bloggers busy for a few hours.

Well, few will disagree with this summing up of the area in Dublin city-centre which really should have been turned into a bus terminal. Per the paper:

Businesses in Dublin’s Temple Bar will be unhappy to see the guide referring to “crappy tourist shops and dreadful restaurants serving bland, overpriced food . . . huge characterless bars . . . pools of vomit and urine that give the whole area the aroma of a sewer”.

That sound you can hear in the background is the sound of the residents of a large settlement in the south-east hauling themselves onto the high moral ground:

Residents of Waterford will be displeased to see their city being demoted to a town. It says the “seedy port-town feel is still evident in places” but adds that its recent facelift has made it a more attractive place to wander.

But, of course, there is an upside, as this passage from the guide, as quoted in the Irish Independent, shows:

Beneath all of the garrulous sociability and self-deprecating twaddle lurks a dark secret, which is that, at heart, the Irish are low on self-esteem. They’re therefore very suspicious of praise and tend not to believe anything nice that’s said about them. The Irish wallow in false modesty like a sport.

“Low on self-esteem”? Get me the number for Liveline now.