Brits claim Donegal, Southern Irish told to lump it

markodaly

These things are usually posted to show their apparent superior intellect. Clickbait goldmine

Doltanian

Just repartition east of the Bann stays Orange, everything else ruled from Dublin, initiate an Govt sponsored resetlement into East Bann territory within a few years we outnumber the Unionists and then a United Ireland.

_Dara_

I lived in the UK briefly in a place that wasn’t one of the top five cities. A smallish city but not that obscure. People from home hadn’t a notion where it was or how to pronounce it.

Why would the average British person know where in Donegal is on the map?

AlanG

AlanG wrote: »

I would say most Irish people could not name all the states of the EU or identify its border but it is for most intents and purposes our international border. You would be lucky if 5% of Irish people realise that an area of South America the size of Ireland is part of the EU even though it is in the news every time there is major ESA rocket launch and appears on the Euro note map.

French Guiana? :pac: I never noticed it on the Euro map but there you go. The more you know.

donegaLroad wrote: »

As an aside, you generally can't use Northern Irish Sterling in Scotland or England.. at least thats the way it used to be. Ive been caught out myself.

I almost was. I tried to use a NI £10 note in Liverpool. The staff member looked at it and took it upstairs, then came down and said it was fine. She hadn't seen one before.

riffmongous

_Dara_ wrote: »

I lived in the UK briefly in a place that wasn’t one of the top five cities. A smallish city but not that obscure. People from home hadn’t a notion where it was or how to pronounce it.

Why would the average British person know where in Donegal is on the map?

Well the issue is that they seemed to think that it was in the UK

Charles Babbage

AlanG wrote: »

I would say most Irish people could not name all the states of the EU or identify its border but it is for most intents and purposes our international border. You would be lucky if 5% of Irish people realise that an area of South America the size of Ireland is part of the EU even though it is in the news every time there is major ESA rocket launch and appears on the Euro note map.

In general people shouldn't be allowed vote until they can answer basic questions, although I wouldn't include finding Réunion on a map in that.

ArnoldJRimmer

_Dara_ wrote: »

I lived in the UK briefly in a place that wasn’t one of the top five cities. A smallish city but not that obscure. People from home hadn’t a notion where it was or how to pronounce it.

Why would the average British person know where in Donegal is on the map?

Why are we constantly making excuses for ignorance? This is basic geography, taught in primary school. And I level the same charge against Irish people who don't know what currency is used in Donegal, or not having heard of one of the top 20 English cities.

They are being asked to draw one of the borders of their own fcukin country, its not as if they're being asked to draw the border between Kazakhstan and Russia

_Dara_

ArnoldJRimmer wrote: »

Why are we constantly making excuses for ignorance? This is basic geography, taught in primary school. And I level the same charge against Irish people who don't know what currency is used in Donegal, or not having heard of one of the top 20 English cities.

They are being asked to draw one of the borders of their own fcukin country, its not as if they're being asked to draw the border between Kazakhstan and Russia

I’m certain you wouldn’t be able to point out on the map the county in the UK that I lived in. People’s sanctimony is misplaced here. And they are overestimating their own knowledge.

ArnoldJRimmer

_Dara_ wrote: »

I’m certain you wouldn’t be able to point out on the map the county in the UK that I lived in. People’s sanctimony is misplaced here. And overestimating their own knowledge.

But the county you lived in was not the border of Ireland, or any country I've lived in? As someone pointed out earlier, they were not asked to draw the border between Cork and Tipp, which is the equivalent of what you're asking here.

um7y1h83ge06nx

I don't see how this can be defended. You are asking people from the UK to define the borders of the UK. It's not a question of understanding a foreign country, it's a question of understanding their own place.

Surely that's something that is reasonable to expect.

Being able to draw the border accurately is a comparatively minor issue. When it comes to the young lady who drew the border halfway down the country, for example, I think that's more due to a failing of the British education system than it is her own ignorance. I'd be surprised if there was any other country in Europe that learns less about their history than the British.

That old bat in the red hat, however, not even recognising Ireland is a separate sovereign nation....that's the real worry. Her ignorance is probably representative of a not-unsubstantial demographic of Pro-Brexit Little Englander voters. It is a failing of democracy that her vote is equal to that of an educated person; I don't care how snobby that sounds but people like her should not be allowed vote (ideally, they shouldn't be allowed breed).

_Dara_

ArnoldJRimmer wrote: »

But the county you lived in was not the border of Ireland, or any country I've lived in? As someone pointed out earlier, they were not asked to draw the border between Cork and Tipp, which is the equivalent of what you're asking here.

I don’t see why that matters. What’s inside the NI border does, what’s outside of it is Ireland. The average person isn’t going to care what county it actually is. Just like individual English counties don’t generally pique our interest. You’re not really trying to see this from the point of view of a British person. We notice the mistake because it’s our country but it’s self-important to express shock at British people not knowing when our knowledge of their geography isn’t much better or at all better. Donegal is just to them an arbitrary county. It’s not particularly interesting or essential knowledge. Northern Ireland I’m sure seems quite distant to mainland UK folk.

splinter65

riffmongous wrote: »

Well the issue is that they seemed to think that it was in the UK

If I showed people on grafton street a blank map of the UK and asked them to draw the border between Scotland and England, how would it go?

splinter65

splinter65 wrote: »

If I showed people on grafton street a blank map of the UK and asked them to draw the border between Scotland and England, how would it go?

Are those people on Grafton Street UK citizens? If not, then the border between England and Scotland is not a border of their nation and so it's understandable they would not know it.

Are Am Eye

East to West.

ShowMeTheCash

The reality is this.
Northern Ireland unionist want to be part of the union, the rest of the union, England, Scotland and Wales could not give a flying f##k about Northern Ireland.....
If there was a referendum in the rest of the UK in what to do with Northern Ireland it would be the most one sided vote I think Britain has even seen!

Now that being said, I did laugh at them drawing the map, I likened it to the time Americans where asked to point Iraq out on a map.

But what do you expect, I was watching I am a celeb get me out of here the other day, Amir Khan the boxer was in, he asked has the UK ever had a female Prime minister...... Good question Amir good question!

riffmongous

splinter65 wrote: »

If I showed people on grafton street a blank map of the UK and asked them to draw the border between Scotland and England, how would it go?

Better than if you asked people in London to draw the border between Leinster and Munster I can guarantee you

_Dara_

riffmongous wrote: »

For balance..

https://twitter.com/rtenews/status/935942196989186048?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rte.ie%2Fnews%2Fbrexit%2F2017%2F1129%2F923781-can-you-draw-the-border-with-northern-ireland%2F

Half the attempts there were terrible. And even some nearing accuracy had some big mistakes. Interesting to see that a few lumped Donegal in with NI.

All this shows us is that many people struggle with geography as anyone who regularly watches Pointless knows well.

riffmongous

_Dara_ wrote: »

I don’t see why that matters. What’s inside the NI border does, what’s outside of it is Ireland. The average person isn’t going to care what county it actually is. Just like individual English counties don’t generally pique our interest. You’re not really trying to see this from the point of view of a British person. We notice the mistake because it’s our country but it’s self-important to express shock at British people not knowing when our knowledge of their geography isn’t much better or at all better. Donegal is just to them an arbitrary county. It’s not particularly interesting or essential knowledge. Northern Ireland I’m sure seems quite distant to mainland UK folk.

They were not asked to pick out Donegal on a map though, they were asked to draw the boundary of their country

Blazer

AustinLostin wrote: »

64% of 18-24 year olds who were registered voted, which is quite high.

Definitely wasn’t as high as that. I think they said around 36% of 18-24 bothered voting and of those who did 78% voted for remain.

_Dara_

riffmongous wrote: »

They were not asked to pick out Donegal on a map though, they were asked to draw the boundary of their country

And from your RTÉ News clip there, some Irish folk did the very same, lumping Donegal in with NI. And they only have one island to consider. Struggling with geography isn’t unusual. And Northern Ireland is very far from the radar of many mainland British people. In other news, water is wet.

Wheety

Bridget Sticky Register wrote: »

The RTE report on the streets of Dublin this evening was even more worrying, as many Irish people drew the border with NI to include Monaghan, Donegal and Cavan.

https://www.rte.ie/news/brexit/2017/1129/923781-can-you-draw-the-border-with-northern-ireland/

And they just had to look at the UK map to get an idea of the shape of the North :-)

kupus

_Dara_ wrote: »

I’m certain you wouldn’t be able to point out on the map the county in the UK that I lived in. People’s sanctimony is misplaced here. And they are overestimating their own knowledge.

I think it is more a case of people overestimating their countries importance.

Ireland is only really revelevant to its inhabitants and companies that like to pay as little tax as possible.
Who cares if they cant draw a map of some country they will likely never visit.

Might as well ask them to draw a map of Gibraltar that would be funnier.

There was another comment earlier that polish people know more about this country than english people.

I'll go further and say that a lot of polish people know more about ireland than a lot of irish people.

_Dara_

kylith wrote: »

I'd be more inclined to buy that if NI wasn't a wee cutout on every UK weather forecast.

It being a cutout makes it even easier to understand why Donegal is forgotten about when a full map is shown. They’d visualise the cutout taking up the whole top part of the country because they wouldn’t be used to seeing the chunk of the left-hand side that isn’t within the border.

riffmongous

_Dara_ wrote: »

And from your RTÉ News clip there, some Irish folk did the very same, lumping Donegal in with NI. And they only have one island to consider. Struggling with geography isn’t unusual. And Northern Ireland is very far from the radar of many mainland British people. In other news, water is wet.

Only the first girl missed it completely.

It's still their border, supposedly their country. Really the whole thing is a tacit admission that Northern Ireland isn't anything to do with them, it's an Irish issue. But you would still expect a bit more knowledge of their own borders though considering the political situation at the moment

10000maniacs

donegaLroad wrote: »

Some of the Polish people who live here have a much better knowledge of Ireland and Northern Ireland, than a large amount of British people.

Well to be fair, they had to travel here. If I emigrated to Manchester, I would know more about Manchester than someone who didn't emigrate there.

_Dara_

riffmongous wrote: »

Only the first girl missed it completely.

No, there was more than one.

It's still their border, supposedly their country.

It's our border too. And we only have one small island to keep track of so it's even more unforgivable, to be honest. There was a few other weird borders drawn in the RTÉ clip that had Donegal in Ireland but extended weirdly in other ways.

What's happening in NI currently isn't massively interesting to many and certainly won't inspire someone to brush up on their geography.

murpho999

kupus wrote: »

I think it is more a case of people overestimating their countries importance.

Ireland is only really revelevant to its inhabitants and companies that like to pay as little tax as possible.
Who cares if they cant draw a map of some country they will likely never visit.

Might as well ask them to draw a map of Gibraltar that would be funnier.

There was another comment earlier that polish people know more about this country than english people.

I'll go further and say that a lot of polish people know more about ireland than a lot of irish people.

Why can't people get that they're not actually being asked a question about Ireland but about a border of the UK which is their own country? They should know it.

steddyeddy

Sonics2k wrote: »

I'm fairly sure if you asked a lot of Irish people to draw the boarders between England, Scotland and Wales they'd fail miserably.

Are they are borders though? The Irish-UK border is their country's border.

Irish Guitarist

Not being able to draw the border is one thing but the girl that said "obviously they're separated by water" is an airhead.

Having said that they obviously put up the most stupid reactions. I'm sure plenty of people said something sensible but they didn't make it into the video.

EDit

Although I think this is a pretty pathetic thing for people to be getting their knickers in a bunch over (9-10 pages of vitriol and bigotry over whether people can accurately draw a ****ing border!), I’ll bite

What’s being ignored by most posters going on about it being “their country” is that they don’t see it that way. English people tend to see England as “their country”, Welsh people tend to see Wales as “their country”, same with Scotland. If they don’t and are perhaps more inclusive, they tend to see Britain (ie, England, Scotland and Wales) as “their country”. I’m not saying it’s geographically or politically accurate, but in reality NI is the forgotten part that is usually ignored (hence your average joe not being able to draw a border)

VinLieger

Bridget Sticky Register wrote: »

The RTE report on the streets of Dublin this evening was even more worrying, as many Irish people drew the border with NI to include Monaghan, Donegal and Cavan.

https://www.rte.ie/news/brexit/2017/1129/923781-can-you-draw-the-border-with-northern-ireland/

Im pretty apalled at the basic lack of geography knowledge Irish people seem to have. Not knowing where donegal is and putting wales in the middle of the UK is just something I cannot comprehend.

Granted its a random street poll and RTE probably did the same as C4 and chose the most inflammatory ones but how can anyone have so little knowledge about where they live and their closest neighbours?

whisky_galore

EDit wrote: »

in reality NI is the forgotten part that is usually ignored (hence your average joe not being able to draw a border)

N.I. only gets noticed when 'the Boys' get busy...otherwise it's a little backwater populated by people with strange traditions.

seamus

Hilarious that Irish people were clearly just as clueless about the border, when arguably they should know it much better.

And they even had the thing pre-drawn right there, and they still got it wrong.

Goes to show that it's not parochial ignorance or nationalism, just straight up human nature.

_Dara_

murpho999 wrote: »

Why can't people get that they're not actually being asked a question about Ireland but about a border of the UK which is their own country? They should know it.

The RTÉ video showed that people here couldn’t get it right either. Not everyone but some. And we only have one island to keep track of. That makes getting it wrong worse, IMO.

I watch Pointless a lot. Consistently it shows that many, many people are just weak on geography. Get off yizzer high horses.

whisky_galore

_Dara_ wrote: »

Consistently it shows that many, many are just weak on geography. Get off yizzer high horses.

I think it's because many people here are so obsessed with our relationship with the uk, they cannot comprehend why someone does not know this.

_Dara_

whisky_galore wrote: »

I think it's because many people here are so obsessed with our relationship with the uk, they cannot comprehend why someone does not know this.

The UK is much more obsessed with being spitting distance from France.

VinLieger

whisky_galore wrote: »

I think it's because many people here are so obsessed with our relationship with the uk, they cannot comprehend why someone does not know this.

I just think its basic fvcking knowledge everyone should have, international borders aren't a hard thing to learn, look at a picture once and you've got them.

PandaPoo

VinLieger wrote: »

I just think its basic fvcking knowledge everyone should have, international borders aren't a hard thing to learn, look at a picture once and you've got them.

Get out of town... Why should everyone know it? It's like being in school and learning all sorts of crap that's pointless. Id rather people learned things that will be useful to them. I say that as someone who would know more about geography than the average Joe.

whisky_galore

VinLieger wrote: »

I just think its basic fvcking knowledge everyone should have,.

Why?

Should everyone know their 12 times tables off by heart as well because they did it in school?

VinLieger

whisky_galore wrote: »

Why?

Should everyone know their 12 times tables off by heart as well because they did it in school?

Ideally yes unless they have the memory of a goldfish, like im not saying they should have to prove them but again they arent that difficult either.

Are you claiming that all these people have never not even once in their lives looked at a map or been exposed in any way to a visual representation of the borders of ireland and the UK? Like I said all you need to do is see it once and your good i dont understand why that is such a hard thing for people to be able to recall?

VinLieger

PandaPoo wrote: »

Get out of town... Why should everyone know it? It's like being in school and learning all sorts of crap that's pointless. Id rather people learned things that will be useful to them. I say that as someone who would know more about geography than the average Joe.

Well quite obviously its useful now so people have a fvcking clue what they are doing when voting for or against brexit and understand the complexities at hand

server down

seamus wrote: »

Hilarious that Irish people were clearly just as clueless about the border, when arguably they should know it much better.

And they even had the thing pre-drawn right there, and they still got it wrong.

Goes to show that it's not parochial ignorance or nationalism, just straight up human nature.

I saw one person getting it wrong. And since we didn’t hear any accents we don’t know where she was from.

server down

VinLieger wrote: »

Ideally yes unless they have the memory of a goldfish, like im not saying they should have to prove them but again they arent that difficult either.

Are you claiming that all these people have never not even once in their lives looked at a map or been exposed in any way to a visual representation of the borders of ireland and the UK? Like I said all you need to do is see it once and your good i dont understand why that is such a hard thing for people to be able to recall?

It actually shows how little NI does matter. If the map is shown on school walls and reinforced by appearing on tee shirts (like team GB) and on television then people wouldn’t even have to remember.

VinLieger

server down wrote: »

It actually shows how little NI does matter. If the map is shown on school walls and reinforced by appearing on tee shirts (like team GB) and on television then people wouldn’t even have to remember.

I think the issue there is the brits see it so often on the weather reports and in other ways as a just a disembodied piece of land so have no perspective to how it looks when connected to the rest of the island

whisky_galore

VinLieger wrote: »

Ideally yes unless they have the memory of a goldfish, like im not saying they should have to prove them but again they arent that difficult either.

Are you claiming that all these people have never not even once in their lives looked at a map or been exposed in any way to a visual representation of the borders of ireland and the UK? Like I said all you need to do is see it once and your good i dont understand why that is such a hard thing for people to be able to recall?

Maybe it's not difficult for you.
They know the entity that is N.I. exists, maybe they didn't think how the border could be a sticky wicket...which is the burning issue, being remote from peoples' everday lives.

How important is it that they can draw a line on a piece of paper?

seamus

server down wrote: »

I saw one person getting it wrong. And since we didn’t hear any accents we don’t know where she was from.

Lol. Maybe she was a dirty foreigner. I think you've revealed more of your bias there than you intended, by immediately making the suggestion that someone who couldn't draw the border may not be Irish. Did you ask the same of anyone in the Channel 4 video?

There were seven. Two of them got it wrong by including Donegal. Another two made it farcically small, leaving Tyrone and Fermanagh in the Republic. Making it too small is just as bad as making it too big - after all, "Oh ffs. It’s the national border. Their border."

So 3 out of the 7 got it right. Less than half. And they actually live here on the island. Not on another island.

VinLieger

whisky_galore wrote: »

Maybe it's not difficult for you.
They know the entity that is N.I. exists, maybe they didn't think how the border could be a sticky wicket...which is the burning issue, being remote from peoples' everday lives.

How important is it that they can draw a line on a piece of paper?

It's probably not that important I just cannot comprehend how its in anyway difficult considering how they have without a doubt seen it in some version an innumerable number of times.

Also I'd disagree about them knowing the entity NI exists, as from the C4 video alone we know there's people who seem to think NI and ourselves are either one and the same or that we are separate but Ireland still is in some way part of the UK. The level of ignorance around Ireland/NI that the general british public have is staggering.

server down

seamus wrote: »

Lol. Maybe she was a dirty foreigner.

There were seven. Two of them got it wrong by including Donegal. Another two made it farcically small, leaving Tyrone and Fermanagh in the Republic. Making it too small is just as bad as making it too big - after all, "Oh ffs. It’s the national border. Their border."

So 3 out of the 7 got it right. Less than half. And they actually live here on the island. Not on another island.

As I said we didn’t hear the accents. Your use of “dirty foreigner” is well poisoning. The woman who thought that Wales was half of Britain probably was foreign. About 20% of Dubliners are. We know more about Britain than they do about us for obvious reasons.

In the bbc we did hear the accents (as I said) and they were all middle class accents. Particularly the girl who took up half the island.

Your analysis is deliberately wrong. Getting the exact size of the border correct is tough - knowing it’s the north east, not the north is the essential part. Otherwise since people know it’s Northern Ireland they are free to draw lines anywhere northish of the island. That’s a guess.

A fairly amazing albeit shoe gazing defence of the British from people who presumably think that Brexit was a bad idea.

Maybe lack of understanding of Britain’s place in Europe would have been helped by a better education system. First item on the agenda - here is where you live.

seamus

server down wrote: »

As I said we didn’t hear the accents. Your use of “dirty foreigner” is well poisoning. The woman who thought that Wales was half of Britain probably was foreign. About 20% of Dubliners are.

Getting the exact size of the border correct is tough - knowing it’s the north east, not the north is the essential part. Otherwise since people know it’s Northern Ireland they are free to draw lines anywhere northish of the island. That’s a guess.

I'll just leave this here.

server down wrote: »

Oh ffs. It’s the national border. Their border. Stop with the ludicrous excuses.