micco is right. it’s like the palestinians in iowa.
or suggesting that all the non-aboriginal australians go back to europe because it’s being handed back to the original inhabitants. we’re talking about 300 years people, australia’s been “settled” for less.
you are talking about people who know everyone around them, about breaking up communities, and about 1 million people, 90% of whom aren’t involved in the troubles.
and if you did suggest this, then belfast would be a new berlin, with a partition down the middle. you REALLY want that? i don’t.
look, the republic has removed any constitutional claim to us, the good friday agreement is in deadlock because of decommisioning and the brits don’t want us either.
our best chance is to get the guns out of our politics, the RUC reformed, and wait until paisley dies.
then we wait and see.
one day there will be a united ireland. until then, we have to try and see past our differences, rather than using them as self-identifiers.
i’m a protestant and a nationalist, and at the moment i have to tick “other” in a survey of political/ religious beliefs. according to both governments i don’t exist.
i object to my religious convictions invalidating my political beliefs.
the terms protestant, unionist and loyalist are not interchangeable, neither are catholic, nationalist and republican.
you tread a fine line when you get involved in our politics.
i suggest you do more research.
wow dude, what a great suggestion. Your powers of perception are incredible. I can no longer detain you here reading my posts. Go! Go! for the good of the city!!
And for the rest:
It’s not just removing the gun from politics. Thats only a small part of the problem. We also have 400 years of bigotry to deal with.
I would think that the UK would want to hold onto Northern Ireland b/c of the $$$ (Wedgewood is there, I believe, perhaps Lenox) as well as the shipbuilding industry. It might just be worth it, financially speaking. Also, simple ego. Plus, of course, all the other reasons listed in pervious posts.
NI is a financaial sink zone as far as the UK is concerned, the shipyards barely survive and are constantly having to lay off workers, NI produces less revenue, a net loss in fact, per worker than any other region of the country.
If such an economic didster zone were to be transfreed to Ireland then it would be a deadweight on that economy, it would lead to cutbacks, maybe increased taxes, right now the Irish government would rather leave NI alone until peace breaks out properly when there might then be a chance of rebuilding.
The cost to Ireland of NI joining it without the consent of the majority population would be disastrous, it could not afford the security needed to keep the Unionists under control and no doubt it would be faced with its own town and cities being bombed, there would probably be sectarian area cleansing and a land grab.
NI’s actually been doing a lot better lately than it used to, though I can’t be arsed to look up the figures Ironically a lot of it is spinoff from the Celtic Tiger economy … which is now in a downturn so, uh, never mind …
Here is something interesting regarding Britain’s opinion of the NI question.
jeez. i was being sarcastic about Paisley. and yes Ian Jr. is also biccies. but then so is Jeffrey Donaldson, the UDP and most of the LOL.
look it’s not about moving to a better place if you want it, or about economics. it’s about the way people PERCEIVE their identity. they are defined by their politics and religion more than anything else.
this is a place where if you mention a name to someone, they will probably either know them, or a member of their family or be related to them.
we all know our politicians are a bunch of tossers, we know are election results are fixed, we know that some people would rather die than back down.
as for the rest of us, it’s about protesting, quietly.
by carrying on our normal lives as if none of this were going on.
by walking past army outposts as if they don’t exist.
by making jokes about the situation.
by not letting it get us down or become the main focus of our lives.
by acknowledging that we have some of the most beautiful countryside in the world.
this is OUR country, and whether it’s british or irish, we don’t want any of those immoral, murdering, terrorist bastards to get it. no matter which side they’re from.
if all the decent people leave, then we surrender and the men of violence win.
we cannot, and will not win the war and lose the peace.
now i’m going to go to bed, before i upset some more people.
from irishgirl; the only north down protestant nationalist who’s willing to stand up and be counted.
Throwing cash around will solve nothing. No matter how many take the cash a sizable number will not, ever. It’s a point of principle. It’s a question of birth right. Some things really cannot be bought.
It doesn’t take much imagination to come up with names those who ‘sell-out’ will be called. And you can guess just how annoyed the population of Britain would get once the displaced Irish population came across flashing all their new wads of cash and buying up all the good property.
Nor is a question of those left behind having to live under another government. The chief number one problem the Unionists have with the Dublin government is that they believe it to be dominated by the Catholic church. They really, really don’t want to be told what to do by the Catholic church. Quite apart from anything else this is primarily a religious dispute. So don’t expect any sense or reason.
Any attempt to manipulate the population of NI in this way would either be rejected as contemptable, or only result in the Unionists becoming the oppressed minority (either perceived or actually). The situation would be exactly the same with just the positions swapped around.
irishgirl, the last guy I dated was from North Down and his mother was a Protestant nationalist. So you’re not alone there, even if it feels that way
Futile Gesture, I’ll add that it isn’t simply that unionists see RoI as run by the Catholic Church (which it isn’t, but we’ve been over that before). They also feel (for the most part wrongly again) that past RoI governments have sheltered and even aided republican terrorists. In their view, Irish unity would essentially be a takeover by a hostile foreign country. Eliminate the religious aspect completely and you’d still have that problem to deal with, and make no mistake about the enormity of it.
I think that the reason many Unionists think that Rol government has helped or sheltered IRA members is due to the problems on the border regions where attacks have been carried out and the culprits have crossed into Southern Ireland.
It took much lobbying by the UK government before Rol would allow ‘hot pursuit’ by British army units, but then I would think that not many governments would be overjoyed at the thought of having foreign soldiers running around on their soil with orders to apprehend or shoot.
One sticking point was that there was supposed to be co-operation between security units of NI and the Garda but often there just was not the Garda manpower available in the area to carry out an effective search, this has been interpreted as unwillingness to co-operate and further extended by extremists in the Unionist movement as proof of Rol complicity in IRA attacks.
I also believe that it has come to light that certain sensitive intelligence has allegedly been shared between NI and Ireland and it has leaked, with suspicion conveniently placed on the Irish side of things, but it is easier to blame others for these weaknesses rather than be more objective.
I hold no position either way on these border co-operation issues but every time an error is made there are those who will use it to their own ends, especially in NI.
I don’t know about $$$, but there are very few £££ to be had from Northern Ireland. But based on the fact that somebody posts something to this effect in every thread on Northern Ireland, I can only imagine that it is a popular misconception in North America that NI is some kind of economic powerhouse for the UK.
Northern Ireland is nothing but an expensive liability from Great Britain’s point of view. It might have been doing a bit better lately, as ruadh suggests, but it was starting from a very low baseline. It is a recipient of European Structural Funds, making it not only one of the poorest regions in the UK but one of the poorest regions in Europe.
[And FWIW, Wedgwood [sic] are based in The Potteries, an area around Stoke-on-Trent in England which is famous as a centre of the ceramics industry.]
A poll in today’s Guardian (which ruadh provided an insirect link for above) shows that about 40% of people in Great Britain (i.e. the rest of the country, excluding NI) favour a united Ireland, and only 20-odd percent favour the retention of NI in the UK. In other words, most British people either don’t give a toss about Northern Ireland or would rather be rid of it. Again, the contrary view seems to be widely and erroneously held in the USA.
Here’s an article from The Guardian that goes into a little more detailabout the poll but I can’t find any information on how the question (s) were framed.
Extract:
"Nor will they draw any comfort from the high proportion of “don’t knows”: 33% on the united Ireland question and 27% on the question of blame. Pollsters often cite apathy or indifference as the explanation for such high scores, suggesting Northern Ireland is simply not relevant to many Britons. "
