The truth about the Irish and the English

WesternZulu

gormdubhgorm wrote: »

Hurling is the ancient sport in fairness. But people forget that Gaelic Football which has overtaken Hurling in popularity. Gaelic football was only a very recent invention in comparison. It was largely done in response to soccer.
In my experience there seem to be broadly two types of person with the GAA those who love it and those who hate it.

Bollocks, every sport is recent if you pitch it against hurling. Gaelic football isn't any more recent in relevant terms compared to soccer and rugby. In fact I'd it shares far more similarities to earlier catch and kick games (i.e. caid) than other codes of football.

WesternZulu

WesternZulu wrote: »

One main difference I have found is that Irish people have a more global outlook whereas English people focus on domestic issues and don't care for much else. Brexit is a direct result of this.

This is probably due to the fact Irish people are far more predisposed to emigrate if needed as it's very much part and parcel of our history. The English not so much.

The Irish are obsessed with what is going on in the UK and US, but have next to no idea what is happening in their own country.

trixi001

I found at conferences over in England, the Irish & Scots tended to form one group and the English another. This was especially noticeable with those from the South of England, the northerners were different and often much more on the same wavelength as the Irish/Scots.

Its not anti-English - i think its much more a class thing, most of the Irish/Scots have a working class background - even if its a few generations back - whereas a lot of the ones I met in England came from families where their grandparents were doctors etc...

Culturally - Ireland & England are similar in a number of ways, but also very different too, but culturally Kerry is different from Kildare, Limerick is Different than Louth, and Dublin is different from Derry too.

People from D4 are maybe happier to congregate with a doctor from Kent, than a farmer from Tipp - people naturallu gravitate towards those like them, regardless of where they are from.

Obviously the language makes a difference too - if someone has English as a 2nd language, who although reasonably fluent, isn't going to pick up on humour, sarcasm, slang etc, it makes having a conversation that much more difficult, so if you have an Irish, German & English at a conference, yes the Irish will tend to gravitate towards the English and not the Germans/

gormdubhgorm

WesternZulu wrote: »

Bollocks, every sport is recent if you pitch it against hurling. Gaelic football isn't any more recent in relevant terms compared to soccer and rugby. In fact I'd it shares far more similarities to earlier catch and kick games (i.e. caid) than other codes of football.

I agree on the similarities it Gaelic football is much easier to ball than hurling. Which is why hurling is so niche and many counties struggle to play it competitively. I would say in the future Hurling is in serious danger of going the way of the Irish language.

Funny part is Cricket used to be massive in many of the now hurling areas. Before it was discouraged by the 'Gaelic Revival'.

From an image mythical image point of view - hurling is a much more powerful image of Irishness than Gaelic football will ever be ironically.

Gaelic football always has that it was invented because it makes us seem 'less Englishy' about it.

gormdubhgorm

Deleted User wrote: »

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9316507/Pontins-banned-customers-using-secret-blacklist-titled-undesirable-guests.html

Anti Irish sentiment still alive and kicking in Engerland these days.

Comment section typical daily mail too.

Noel and Liam raging I heard.

Snickers Man

Feisar wrote: »

Is she the one that suggested starving us out or some such?

that's the one. She's called Priti but she really isn't. At least, not on the inside.

Snickers Man

Marcusm wrote: »

The thing is that Jacob Rees Mogg is not actually that odd for an Englishman. There are so many of his type with the overly affected accent, trust me I worked with lots of them. Most would have a more limited pedigree than JRM.

What do you mean "limited pedigree"???

Mr Rees-Mogg has quite a lot of Irish in him. Where do you think he got all that Catholic mumbo-jumbo??

bullpost

simongurnick wrote: »

I live in Canada and work for one of the banks here. Was at this big conference once and noticed one of the fellas at our table was an English lad. Once the first coffee break hit, everyone is milling around talking awkwardly or trying to network.
I make a bee line for the English lad with one thought in my mind, a good chat about the footie. After exchanging a few pleasantries and the usual "hows the weather" chit chat, I throw in my opener. "So what football team do you support?"
Yer man answers " I don't really watch football".
My face dropped and I don't even think I registered what he said. I was like, "sorry, what??". He repeats it and I just go "oh, right", stare off in to the distance for a few seconds, then make my excuses and leave.
Still haven't got over it.

I was in New Orleans on holiday back in the day and a brit spotted me and made a beeline to say hello, assuming I was British. As soon as he heard the Irish accent his jaw dropped and he backed away very quickly.

Snickers Man

Snickers Man wrote: »

that's the one. She's called Priti but she really isn't. At least, not on the inside.

You mean these comments?

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/eilis-ohanlon-brits-want-to-starve-the-irish-is-the-definition-of-fake-news-37607873.html

It ranks alongside the fiasco of the Irish writer commissioned by Chanel four to write the next big comedy, who promptly announced he was thinking of basing it during the time of the famine.

The responses of “oh my god, the Brits think the famine was funny” were comedy gold in themselves.

pgj2015

I remember being in Majorca a few years ago. having a few drinks in an Irish bar, this stuck up posh English family stopped at the bar, the wife says will we go in here for a drink? the husband says I don't know, they will be playing their music wont they? he said it like he was disgusted by it. Then they went somewhere else. how dare us Irish have the cheek to play Irish music in an Irish bar lol

Yurt2

vriesmays wrote: »

The English are led by graduates of Oxford and Eaton; the Irish are led by schoolteachers.

If you've met enough of this set, you'd wonder why their parents went to the expense and bother if the point was intellectual development. It might impress and intimidate a lot of people, but some of these types are actually dumb as a brick once you scratch the surface.

The Eaton to Cambridge / Oxford trajectory is used by upper-middle-class English to give their sons social capital and a bullet-proof professional network for life. And generally, it works, as most of these Tim nice but dims have an armchair ride through life, until they're exposed by a red top for groping the intern in their Westminster office. The Oxbridge entrance system for the longest time was designed to reward the hubris, empty rhetoric and a smattering of Greek and Latin that is drilled into young students from the elite schools. It all functioned as a clearing house for the elite. It's slowly changing, but not fast enough for the UK who have to suffer through being governed incompetently by a self-replicating, self-congratulating, overrated and incredibly homogenous (in perspective) class of people.

The smart ones and the ones you should watch out for, are those who came from far more humble family backgrounds in state schools and hustled their way into the decision-making classes in the UK.

bullpost

Yurt! wrote: »

If you've met enough of this set, you'd wonder why their parents went to the expense and bother if the point was intellectual development. It might impress and intimidate a lot of people, but some of these types are actually dumb as a brick once you scratch the surface.

The Eaton to Cambridge / Oxford trajectory is used by upper-middle-class English to give their sons social capital and a bullet-proof professional network for life. And generally, it works, as most of these Tim nice but dims have an armchair ride through life, until they're exposed by a red top for groping the intern in their Westminster office. The Oxbridge entrance system for the longest time was designed to reward the hubris, empty rhetoric and a smattering of Greek and Latin that is drilled into young students from the elite schools. It all functioned as a clearing house for the elite. It's slowly changing, but not fast enough for the UK who have to suffer through being governed incompetently by a self-replicating, self-congratulating, overrated and incredibly homogenous (in perspective) class of people.

The smart ones and the ones you should watch out for, are those who came from far more humble family backgrounds in state schools and into the decision making classes in the UK.

Well you could say the same over here for a lot of the South County Dublin contingent - Ross O'Carroll Kelly land.

Yurt2

bullpost wrote: »

Well you could say the same over here for a lot of the South County Dublin contingent - Ross O'Carroll Kelly land.

You could indeed. It's a huge danger for governance and a healthy democracy in my opinion.

It's not quite as bad as the UK, but I can see from social media one particular political party has already lined up the next generation of young bratty political footsoldiers at councillor and activist level and in the party generally. They tend to be brash, armed to the teeth with empty rhetoric, convinced of their greatness and as per their pals in the UK, extremely uniform in their educational and social background. I don't even need to outline what political party that is.

Is it deliberate? Hard to tell, but if you have pretenses of leading the country as opposed to just your postcode, our political STV PR voting system thankfully doesn't reward loudmouths jamming their fingers in the public's eye telling while telling them how great they are.

DrumSteve

The north of England is good.

The south of England is not good.

guitarzero

Having worked with countless nationalities and lived abroad with language barriers aside, I think what seems to bridge the Irish and English psyche is bant and a kind of taking the piss. What I was a bit disappointed by was this really isnt the norm at all for many other walks of life and some find it even a bit rich for their liking, as though just having a laugh of making jibe is immature. Staying within parameters topically such as work, money and what activities you got up to seems to be the starters, main course and dessert for a lot of other cultures.

pgj2015

The swiss always seem like robots to talk to, nice people but I don't know if it is their basic English or what but its impossible to get any craic out of them.

Yurt2

pgj2015 wrote: »

The swiss always seem like robots to talk to, nice people but I don't know if it is their basic English or what but its impossible to get any craic out of them.

Italian or French Swiss are generally alright, German-speaking Swiss though are even more dour than their Swabian and Bavarian cousins.

bullpost

Yurt! wrote: »

You could indeed. It's a huge danger for governance and a healthy democracy in my opinion.

It's not quite as bad as the UK, but I can see from social media one particular political party has already lined up the next generation of young bratty political footsoldiers at councillor and activist level and in the party generally. They tend to be brash, armed to the teeth with empty rhetoric, convinced of their greatness and as per their pals in the UK, extremely uniform in their educational and social background. I don't even need to outline what political party that is.

Is it deliberate? Hard to tell, but if you have pretenses of leading the country as opposed to just your postcode, our political STV PR voting system thankfully doesn't reward loudmouths jamming their fingers in the public's eye telling while telling them how great they are.

Yeah - We've gone the other way. The Cute Hoor - Just take a peek at the wealth of the Healy-Raes

CelticRambler

gormdubhgorm wrote: »

Ireland and England's glue is the English language and English cluture. An Irish person has far more in common with an Englishman. Then they would with a German, Frenchman or Spaniard. Those countries are completely culturally different to Ireland.

This is total nonsense. Most "English" culture is derived from either French or German culture, and as much of it that the Irish share with the English, they also share with the Continent.

I live in a French hamlet of 14 households. One of them is English, and although I know the family name, I wouldn't recognise any of them unless they had a sign over their head. My mother can't understand why I'm not friends with them; the explanation is simple - I have nothing in common with them, other than a language. They don't share any of my interests don't mix in my circles, don't turn up at any of the activities in which I take part.

Someone above said that they'd have "nothing to talk about" with a Continental. Huh? Believe it or not, French people, German people, Italians, Greeks ... they talk about the same things! In the pre-Covid days, I'd regularly spend time in several different parts of (mostly Western) Europe - never had any trouble finding people to talk to; rarely English (or Irish) though.

DrumSteve

DrumSteve wrote: »

The north of England is good.

The south of England is not good.

South west is lovely, my lover. London is nicer than people sometimes think.

Nqp15hhu

trixi001 wrote: »

I found at conferences over in England, the Irish & Scots tended to form one group and the English another. This was especially noticeable with those from the South of England, the northerners were different and often much more on the same wavelength as the Irish/Scots.

Its not anti-English - i think its much more a class thing, most of the Irish/Scots have a working class background - even if its a few generations back - whereas a lot of the ones I met in England came from families where their grandparents were doctors etc...

Culturally - Ireland & England are similar in a number of ways, but also very different too, but culturally Kerry is different from Kildare, Limerick is Different than Louth, and Dublin is different from Derry too.

People from D4 are maybe happier to congregate with a doctor from Kent, than a farmer from Tipp - people naturallu gravitate towards those like them, regardless of where they are from.

Obviously the language makes a difference too - if someone has English as a 2nd language, who although reasonably fluent, isn't going to pick up on humour, sarcasm, slang etc, it makes having a conversation that much more difficult, so if you have an Irish, German & English at a conference, yes the Irish will tend to gravitate towards the English and not the Germans/

I wouldn’t say this is a class issue. All southern English people are generally very reserved and passive in their communication. They don’t tend to show emotion and beat around the bush in communication...

This is very different to the Irish approach. I found the south to be quite foreign at times to be honest.

And found it odd how they would go out of their way to avert eye contact, almost as if a glance was a negative thing.

Hamachi

[Deleted User] wrote: »

London is nicer than people sometimes think.

I don’t get this thing that people say about Londoners being really cold and rude. I’ve never really experienced that.

To be honest, I don’t see much difference in the level of friendliness between Dublin and London.

bullpost

Hamachi wrote: »

I don’t get this thing that people say about Londoners being really cold and rude. I’ve never really experienced that.

To be honest, I don’t see much difference in the level of friendliness between Dublin and London.

Yep - And of course the huge London-Irish scene which gave us cultural pearls such as The Pogues.

Hamachi

Hamachi wrote: »

I don’t get this thing that people say about Londoners being really cold and rude. I’ve never really experienced that.

To be honest, I don’t see much difference in the level of friendliness between Dublin and London.

Lots of cliches on this thread.

vriesmays

The Irish think the Wicklow-set horror movie Rawhead Rex is awful, silly and laughable; the English think it's a cult curio from the unique oeuvre of Clive Barker.

Mad_maxx

Yurt! wrote: »

Italian or French Swiss are generally alright, German-speaking Swiss though are even more dour than their Swabian and Bavarian cousins.[/QUOTE

German speaking Swiss are the vast majority

monkeysnapper

I work in a place full of Irish, 5 English and 1 Welsh 1 American .... the Welsh being myself ....

There would be regular slagging between us all but in general we all get along fantastic except when the 6 nations is on.

Most of us have Irish partners and children. I have 3 Irish children and my wife is Irish ... I don't really consider myself different to rest of people here and have never in my 22 years here ever been treated differently.

The English are a great nation of people in my opinion.

monkeysnapper

monkeysnapper wrote: »

I don't really consider myself different to rest of people here and have never in my 22 years here ever been treated differently.

Do the Irish get much grief in Wales? I've never really heard much about how Irish people get on in Wales, i'd suspect its much like in England or Scotland. They will get some abuse but probably not that much.

vriesmays

The Englih are divided by left and right-wing politics, the Irish are divided by Fine Gael and Fine Fail.

ulster

jetsonx wrote: »

Anybody foreigner reading internet forums would probably think that the Irish and English can't stand each other.

However, like a lot of things in life, what happens on the internet and what happens in real life is totally different.

When the Irish are in a room full of Europeans, the Irish and the English gravitate towards each other paperclips to a magnet. Over, the years I've seen this countless times in workplaces, conferences and other events. The fact is the Irish don't generally gravitate towards Sylvia from Stuttgart or Kurt from Klagenfurt. After just a few minutes, they will be talking to Nigel and Sally from Slough. And a few weeks ago, the great Tommy Gorman mentioned this phenomenon as well from this his time in Brussels. The Irish contingent working for the EU were not hanging out with other Eurofolk but they were hanging out with Brits.

So despite all the negative talk about Brexit, I think it finally time for the Irish to admit that culturally we are much closer to Britain than any other country in Euroland and they might actually like each other.

I wouldn't mind gravitating towards Sylvia from Stuttgart, she's got a great rack!

TAFKAlawhec

Nqp15hhu wrote: »

I wouldn’t say this is a class issue. All southern English people are generally very reserved and passive in their communication. They don’t tend to show emotion and beat around the bush in communication...

This is very different to the Irish approach. I found the south to be quite foreign at times to be honest.

And found it odd how they would go out of their way to avert eye contact, almost as if a glance was a negative thing.

This might help? Replace "Northerner" (from England, of course) with "Irish" and I don't think it would be much different...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT0ay9u1gg4

pgj2015

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InhQxhLa1BE

I was thinking of this thread when I saw this on the news last night.

Ireland is so similar that our food is a good substitute for British food if they are stuck.

murpho999

pgj2015 wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InhQxhLa1BE

I was thinking of this thread when I saw this on the news last night.

Ireland is so similar that our food is a good substitute for British food if they are stuck.

Well it's hardly a surprise that a country that was colonised for centuries by it's larger neighbour has similarities with things like food, language etc.

Still doesn't mean we're the same.

Like Austrians are not the same as Germans or Canadians are not same as Americans.

NeuralNetwork

Hamachi wrote: »

I don’t get this thing that people say about Londoners being really cold and rude. I’ve never really experienced that.

To be honest, I don’t see much difference in the level of friendliness between Dublin and London.

My experience of London is it’s by and large friendly and extremely diverse. I never encountered a cold vibe and found them generally chatty.

Nobody is going to strike up a conversation on the tube, but when’s the last time you had a chat with a randomer on a packed Luas? I think we have an imagination about some of this stuff or are thinking about a bygone era.

Some of the coldest and rudest conversations I’ve had in England were in Yorkshire oddly enough. It’s also the only place I’ve encountered genuine anti-Irish sentiment and mockery of what were totally neutral Irish accents by someone who had an extremely strong Yorkshire one. I just wrote it off as parochialism.

I’d add though you’ll encounter plenty of English people are clueless about Irish history or anything to do with Irish politics, but they’re often fairly clueless about those topics domestically. I’ve often encountered people who couldn’t really define what the U.K. is, never mind the history of Irish independence.

For a whole variety of reasons, I think Ireland tends to be more politically engaged. It’s possibly even driven by the PR voting system. If you’re in England or the US you’re just largely picking Team Blue or Team Red and don’t engage much beyond that. I noticed a lot of English people wouldn’t even be aware of who their local MP was but just voted for them because they were Labour or Tory. They could be Mr Blobby or a robotic reincarnation of Margaret Thatcher, with extra evil AI, and as long as they were on the ticket for their party they’d put an X in the box. That’s the result of their system though, not their culture.

Achebe

ShatterAlan wrote: »

China is hundreds of times larger than Japan but you can be sure the Chinese are well aware of their history with the Japanese. The same is most definitely true for large Russia and their history with comparitively tiny Germany.

Yeah, because in those cases the smaller countries pillaged the bigger ones.